[SIZE=+3]Whatever happened to Marjorie West?[/SIZE]
[SIZE=+1]BY HAROLD THOMAS BECK[/SIZE]
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Mountain Laurel Review published the story A MISSING CHILD in June 1994 and May 1995 and WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MARJORIE WEST? in December 1995, May 1996 and May 1997. The
Bradford Era, picking up the lead from the
Mountain Laurel Review published its own story near the tragic anniversary in May 1996. It, like our first stories, had several inaccuracies. This story has been verified by Marjorie's own sister.
The first two stories were taken from newspaper accounts and the memories of young men who searched the woods of McKean County for four-year-old Marjorie West. We were contacted by her older sister, Dorothea, which gave rise to the December 1995 article. While she was interested in our historical news article about her sister, she also offered help in clearing up several inaccuracies we brought forward from the reporting of the time. As she helped, she also said: "I get the creepy-crawlies though...why now after so many years? So many whys..."
On May 8, 2001 it will be 63 years that Marjorie West disappeared. Today, if she is still alive, she would be turning 68.
Local stories claim that she was taken to Canada and hidden by members of the family. Others assert that she fell down an abandoned oil well. None of these items of gossip bears any credence except to note for those who continue to read on that the meanness of a small town is unmatched by the worst war crime that can be imagined. All of the local rumors that have been repeated over and over again have no resemblance to the truth. With the passage of time, unless they are refuted, unfortunately they become fact instead of lore. It is our intent to do just that as we provide an accurate report from the only living survivor (except with God's Will, for Marjorie) the account of that day and the days that followed. Keep in mind, if she is still alive, Marjorie West will be 64 this June. Journey back in history to that day.
It is now Mother's Day, May 8, 1938.
Eleven months ago, Japan invaded China. It was Dr. V.K. Wellington Koo who went to the League of Nations in Geneva and demanded that China be provided "material" aid against Japanese aggression. England and France, during a full session of the League of Nations, looked the other way and ignored the Chinese Ambassador. Japan was allowed to continue its rape of China unchecked.
At the same time they allowed Ethiopia to be erased from the list of member nations and become a part of Italy. Chamberlain was negotiating with Hitler. Stalin was purging the Generals of his Army and sending hundreds of thousands of his citizens to Siberia. The Jews and Gypsies were already in the beginning stages of The Holocaust and the German war machine increased its military might with each new day. That was the world situation on Mothers Day around the world in 1938.
It was no different for the people of McKean County, or the West family, as they rose on that Sunday and prepared to go to church. It was a typical day in America and a typical day in McKean County. Our nation and our county were still untouched by the tragedy of war.
Following church, the West family, consisting of father Shirley Mills West, mother Cecilia R. West, Dorothea age 11, Allan age 7, and Marjorie age 4, accompanied by their friends Lloyd and Helen Akerlind, planned a picnic. They would leave Bradford, PA and go south on Route 219. At Custer City they would follow the old Pennsylvania Railroad grade up into the hills to Marshburg. There they would continue along the old grade to the White Gravel area along Chapel Fork Road. In all, the trip would take nearly 40 minutes.
To reach that remote area they would travel through hills that had been timbered to the point that they were naked of trees. Only stumps and the scattering of pumping oil wells would be visible then. This was the case for most of the hills in McKean County. They had been timbered and the oil and gas industry was now making a heavy mark.
However, the mountains south of Marshburg were not only heavily wooded, but untouched by the oil industry because of the forbidding terrain. The former railroad grade, now a fire road, ran from Marshburg to the town of Morrison. It was a well known shortcut for the people of the area. Also, with the tracks gone, it was now ideal for Sunday drivers, or young couples just wanting to be alone. It was also a fast way out of the county to the roads leading south.
Dorothea told us about that day.
"My mother, Mrs. West and Helen Akerlind were at the car which was parked in a clearing where we were going to picnic. Marjorie and I were picking spring violets near a rock. I remember it as a boulder. I had been cautioned not to go on the other side of the rock where Mother and Helen could not see us. Even though Lloyd and Dad had checked the area, they were worried about rattlesnakes.
"Allan was with Lloyd and Dad at the stream fishing. We children were not permitted on the fire road because of traffic. Mother and Helen never had a chance to put out the picnic lunch that day. I tried to show Marjorie how to pick violets with the stems, not just the heads, and showed her a little spot on the far side of the rock where there were lots of violets. I told her I would be back and went to the car. I said 'Happy Mother's Day' and gave mother her bouquet. I told Helen, 'Marjorie is going to bring you a bouquet...OF VIOLET HEADS' and laughed. When I returned to the rock, I didn't see Marjorie and started calling her. Mother and Helen came running and they were calling her name. Dad and Lloyd heard us and they, with my brother Allan, came running."
This happened around three in the afternoon. At about the same time two cars were seen traveling the road. The first was going south to Morrison just before three o'clock. The second was going toward Marshburg just after three. Both cars passed the rock just prior to the discovery that Marjorie was missing.
Dorothea continued remembering what happened.
"When we couldn't find her, Lloyd left for Marshburg to phone the State Motor Police in Kane for help. He took Allan and me with him. Later, bloodhounds were used to search for Marjorie. They went around the rock to the road and stopped. There, alone, near the road, was the small bunch of flowers Marjorie had picked."
The story of the missing child would be front page news across the nation for three days. It would be on the front page of Pennsylvania newspapers until May 26, 1938. Over 2,500 people would search for Marjorie. Governor George H. Earle would become personally involved, sending in the Commissioner of the Pennsylvania Motor Police, Admiral Percy W. Foote, to take command. In the end all that was found was a crumpled bouquet of wild violets.
Dorothea remembers: "All the news items upset and devastated my Mother so in May 1938. Losing my sister, seeing my Mother in tears, hearing her cry about the untruths in the Press, the police and newspaper men going through our home nearly ruined our family. There was no privacy. I was upset and I remember throwing up a lot. I remember many prayers and prayer services. I remember one vividly at a church in Limestone, NY because my Dad came out of that church sobbing. That is the only time in my entire life that I ever saw my Dad cry."
On that first night a report was made that a child resembling Marjorie West was seen with a man in a car in Thomas, West Virginia. The report was made to the West Virginia State Police.
A taxi driver parked at a taxi stand in Thomas, West Virginia, at 11:35 P.M. on May 8, 1938, reported seeing a girl that matched her description. Donald MacRae told the West Virginia Motor Police the following: "He drove up and asked me where there was a hotel. I pointed to the one across the street. He had a little girl in the car with him. She was wearing a dress and had red hair. She wasn't asleep. She sat up in the seat and looked at me when he asked for directions. He drove across the street and went in. They must not have had any rooms because he came back and asked me where he could buy a bottle of liquor. I told him about a bar down the road and he drove off going south."
Several days later MacRae was shown the picture of Marjorie West. He immediately identified the picture as being the little girl in the car with the man. MacRae gave no description of the car other than it was a dark sedan, and he did not remember the state the license plates were from.
In those days, the days before interstate superhighways, there were only so many roads to travel. U.S 219 was one of those roads. It began in Buffalo, traveled south through New York to Bradford and cut Pennsylvania in half before entering West Virginia. Anyone leaving Bradford going south to the Carolinas would surely take 219. They would take it south across the state and go into West Virginia and if they were on Chapel Fork Road around three that afternoon, they would have been in Thomas, West Virginia on schedule at 11:30 P.M. that night. Thomas was also a railroad center and a coal mining town of 3,000.
If the girl and the man were Marjorie and her abductor and if no harm had come to her by that time, chances are that the man who took her never intended her harm in the first place. What if the man seen with the little girl was returning home after spending the winter up north working in a refinery or the oil fields? In those days work was plentiful and many men suffering from the effects of the lingering Depression down south came to McKean County to work. What if he and his wife had recently lost a child? In those days it would have been easy to explain where another child came from and have no problems with school records and the such. Between the ages of four and five is when a child loses its baby memories and little Marjorie could have easily been raised as someone else's daughter. The memories of Allan and Dorothea, mother and dad, could be explained away as a dream. What if Marjorie West is alive today?
Today, Marjorie would be 67 years of age turning 68 in June. If Thomas, West Virginia was only to be a nights stop on the way home, where would home be then? Route 219 ends near Bluefield, West Virginia. Route 19 continues south into Virginia and Tennessee. Continuing one more full day on a southwesterly line we come to Kingsport, Morristown, Knoxville and Chattanooga. Finally, on a third day, Alabama, Louisiana and Eastern Texas would all be in reach. The coastal areas were then just coming into their own in the oil business. With war on the horizon the man who took Marjorie West probably never returned to McKean County. He and his wife probably loved and cared for the little blue-eyed red-headed girl who already talked with a slight southern accent.
If that was the case, what would her life have been like?
She would not have immediately forgotten her mother, father, sister or brother. She would have had dreams of home and they have probably persisted all of her life. If she was in the south, she would remember a place with large amounts of snow and it being very cold in the winter.
She could be married today with a family and grandchildren and have no knowledge of what really happened. She probably still has the same dreams of a place in the mountains and snow and a sister and a brother. What if we could find her?
The readership of the The
Mountain Laurel Review is wide. We send it across the United States and abroad through subscriptions. Now we are on the World Wide Web at
www.mlrmag.com. We need your help to get this story out. We do not believe that Marjorie West met with foul play and died in 1938. We believe she may be still alive. If she is, she deserves to come home and see her sister once more. Help us if you can.
Dorothea has kindly supplied us with pictures of Marjorie at age 4 and of herself at the age Marjorie would be today. The family resemblance is unmistakable. She sent us a picture of her own daughter, Melanie Elizabeth Francis, and says:
"Mother started taking care of Melanie when she was 4 years and 5 months so I could go to work. Mrs. Saxman, who lived next door, and other neighbors told me they got goose bumps seeing Melanie play on Mother's porch and front yard. It was as though Marjorie had come back. Marjorie was 4 years and 11 months when she disappeared."
Baby pictures of Dorothea and Marjorie were mistaken for one another. Today, the sisters would bear a remarkable resemblance to one another. What if Marjorie is still alive? How can we find her? Help us if you would like. Take this story or even the whole magazine. Send it to talk shows. Send it to friends who have connections. The disappearance of Marjorie West is McKean County's own unsolved mystery. What if we can finally find out whatever happened to Marjorie West?
New developments and a possibility was brought to our attention by City of Bradford Chief of Police Richard Cavallero. Several years ago the television series UNSOLVED MYSTERIES ran a story about The Tennessee Children's Home Society in Memphis, Tennessee.
In 1947 the director, Georgia Tann, won national praise for placing over 5,000 small children in loving families so they would not have to languish in an orphanage into their teens and adulthood. Mrs. Tann was distinguished for the placement of children dating back to the early 1930's and was able to find homes for children in nearly every state in the union. Oddly enough, investigators would later discover that very few children were ever adopted in Tennessee even though there were waiting lists every bit as long as the states in which Mrs. Tann did business.
It appeared that small children, usually six years of age or younger, were regularly taken before Judge Camille Kelly of the Memphis Juvenile Court. In each and every case Judge Kelly would award custody to Georgia Tann and the Tennessee Children's Home Society. Once in her custody, Georgia would send out groups of children (quite often to New York or Los Angeles) where they were legally sold to childless couples. In a matter of weeks following the sale of the child, legal adoption papers from Tennessee would be sent on to the new family.
This black market baby ring operated as early as 1932 with children literally being stolen from nearby states bordering Tennessee to as far away as the state of Connecticut. From 1947 until 1951 over 1,200 babies were sent from the Tennessee Children's Home Society to Los Angeles and New York City alone.
Is this what happened to Marjorie West? Was Georgia Tann or one of her agents on a return trip to Memphis from delivering a child or a group of children somewhere in New York or New England and happened on to the young child picking violets on that Mother's Day? If that is what happened the sighting later that night would certainly make sense. If you were going to travel back to Memphis, West Virginia would have been on the route.
We are sending this article along with the pictures we have received from Dorothea to:
Tennessee Right To Know
P.O. Box 34334
Memphis, TN 38134
We send this article along with hope that once and for all we can find out WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MARJORIE WEST?
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: WE RECEIVED NO ANSWER FROM THE
Tennessee Right to Know ORGANIZATION.
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