I enjoyed doing my presentation and I thoroughly loved listening and watching the other presentations.  I see what an important tool story telling can be to helping children learn.  I hope that I remember this and use it in my classroom.  The following is a copy of my story,  I am so grateful to be Edna's granddaughter!

Edna and Roberta

Good Morning, my name is Mary Edna Coombs, though I go by Edna; I never did like the name Mary.  I was born in El  Vado, New Mexico. Does anyone know where that is? It is over near Chama and on Heron Lake. I was born to John and Delzia Langston.  My father was a logger and my mother cooked for the men in the Logging camps.  I grew up spending the summers in the logging camps and the winters in Manassa, Colorado, going to school.  I loved being in the logging camps, where we could play outside all day. I was the oldest girl in the family and so I had to look out for my younger brothers and sisters; there were seven of us, and I had to help my mother do the cooking. But that’s where I learned to be a very good cook. My mother could make the best biscuits, oooh, wow they were good!

Well many years later I met the most handsome man I had ever seen, his name was Robert Warren Coombs; he had beautiful, wavy, red hair, and blue eyes, oh he was a handsome man.  We married and bought some land in Richfield, Colorado, and began our family.  I had two sons born to me, Larry and Jason, and two daughters, Jolene and Dorene.  Jason didn’t live very long, he died when he was just eight years old of ruematic fever.  Jolene and Dorene each had the fever too, but only Jason died of it.  It sure left a hole in my heart, it hurt so much to lose him.  I had one other daughter too, but she wasn’t born to me, she came to me in a different way, and that is the story I want to share with you today.

 My three children were pretty much grown, Larry was serving a mission in Guatamala, Jolene was in college and Dorene was out of school and working, I decided to take a job at the drive in to earn some extra money.  I was a cook at the concession stand, I made pizzas and hotdogs, popcorn and stuff like that.  There was a girl who worked there, just a young thing, she was about 15 years old.  We got to be pretty good friends, her family life wasn’t very good and she needed someone to talk to sometimes.   I was happy to talk to her and help her.  Well this girl had a boyfriend and she became pregnant, oh I was sad for her, she wasn’t even out of high school yet and the boyfriend wasn’t very good to her, I was really sad, but, I continued to be her friend and helped her during her pregnancy.  She was pretty nervous about what to do with the baby because she didn’t have any support from her family, she knew she wasn’t prepared to take care of the baby.

Well time went on and one night I was home making dinner for my husband when a knock came on the door and when I answered it, it was this girl, she had her baby all wrapped up in a blanket. She had come to show me her new baby girl.  I invited her in and took the baby, oh what a beautiful baby she was, such a head full of hair! All curly and thick, her little tiny hands and such long fingers, I thought what a great piano player she would be.  Well, what a beautiful baby she was and as I handed her back to her momma, there were tears in her eyes and when I asked what the matter was, she looked up at me and said, “I want you to keep her.”  “What?” I said, “ she is your baby.”  “I can’t take care of her, and you can.  I know that you would be a very good mother, and I need to finish school and grow up.”

Well I just sat there a minute in shock.  I knew that she was right, she did need to grow up some more before she had to take care of children, and I knew that I could take care of her, of course I could, she was such a beautiful baby, but she belonged to this girl and I knew what it was to lose your child, I still ached for my Jason.  I just sat there for awhile thinking and she sat there crying. 

I finally told her that I would like to but I would have to talk to my husband and my children about it first.  She said okay and took the baby and went home.  I would talk to her again in a couple of days. 

Wow, I had some news to share with Warren when he got home.  I wanted to take the baby, I wanted her to be mine, but I was thirty years old and my children were already grown, and the biggest thing was that this baby was Mexican.  I am white, and I knew that this could cause some problems with my family.  You see where I grew up and where I was living, the white people didn’t think very much of the Mexicans, they called them names and told jokes about them.  It was going to be hard. 

When Warren came home, I sat him down and told him what had happened.  He listened and thought for a few minutes and then told me that it was fine with him.  If I felt good about it and was willing to go through with it, he would support me.  I next talked to my daughters about it and they were fine with it also.  I wrote a letter to my son in Guatemala and asked him how he felt about it, he thought it was fine.  So we adopted the baby and named her Roberta Ann.  She was a very beautiful, happy baby.  But as I had worried in the beginning there were some hard times because she was Mexican.  Friends and people at church would make hurtful comments to me but ,the worst persecution came from my own brothers and sisters.  They were prone to make comments that would hurt my feelings and give me a hard time for accepting a Mexican baby as my own.  I didn’t understand, they were my family and they should be supporting me.  The only difference between this child and my others was the color of her skin.

One day we were all together and I had had enough.  They were my family and were supposed to support me, and Roberta was my family, she was my daughter, whether she had been born to me or given to me, she was my daughter, and I had to stand up to them and tell them that.  I told them that I would not put up with any more of their comments or jokes; they needed to accept that fact or we would have to stop being family.   

Well, that shocked them a bit and it took awhile, but eventually they agreed.  We all loved each other too much to break up.  My daughter grew into a beautiful young woman has been such a blessing in my life.  Warren died when she was just 15 years old and I don’t know what I would have done without her, she has taken care of me and loved me.  And I was right, those long fingers were just right for playing the piano, she plays beautifully and brings such joy to my life, I am forever grateful to her birth mother for sacrificing and giving up her child to me.  She is grown now and has five children of her own, such a beautiful family.

Well, it is time for me to go, I think that there are others coming to visit you.  Thank you for being such a good audience.

 Here are some remembrances of the whole show...