Seaching for Anna - #2

[Annasmom]

Hi Annas Mom -

I wanted to make sure that it was ok with you that I mentioned Anna on my Website.

http://www.tomorrowsclassroom.com/philanthropy.html

If you would like me to take it down, make any changes, add more information, etc - just let me know. I'm here to help.

Thank you,

Melanie

Melanie, thank you so very much for this beautiful page. I loved looking at all the pictures side-by-side like that, and your story was very moving and so well-written. I am most grateful.

 

[SherlockJr]

Wow MB, great job! Wouldn't it be great to start a new thread on all the links where Anna is featured. Even those who read the threads who have not signed up can feature Anna on their websites, then e-mail us to let us know, and we can add their website to our list.

 

[Niteowl]

Melanie, this is wonderful seeing Anna's pictures side by side. I have been trying to look at all of her pictures together on my computer screen for a while to get a better idea of how she might look aside from the age progression sketch. Thank you so much.

Annasmom, do you think that Anna may look very close to what you look like? especially when you were the age that she is now. The reason that I ask this is because I was very blonde as a child, and my hair color was similar to my mother's when I was in my 30's. Also when we went places together, people often asked if we were sisters! (She loved this) So many times we would come home and look in the mirror and see same cheekbones, chins, noses, mouths, very similar teeth.
And I will now apologize for asking this since you have not been able to enjoy your wonderful daughter, and it breaks my heart.
PS I think about you and Anna frequently and read all the Anna threads , but I rarely post because I seem to have the "teacher" voice.

 

[mbroemsen]

Annasmom,

You are quite welcome - and thank you for the permission, as well as the compliments you and others have left me.

On a side note, I was very blonde as a child - but I began turning dark around age 4 - 5. Today my hair is a very dark brown, almost black. I believe this is due to the italian heritage in my family. Just a thought - could that be the case with Anna? I also started going gray very early (in my 20's thanks to more family genetics) so I color my hair. It's so popular, it might be a good idea to have an age progession with darker hair? Just a thought?

Another (sad) side note - I live about a mile from Jesse Davis' home. What a horrible, horrible, thing to have happened...

 

[Annasmom]

Annasmom, do you think that Anna may look very close to what you look like? especially when you were the age that she is now. The reason that I ask this is because I was very blonde as a child, and my hair color was similar to my mother's when I was in my 30's. Also when we went places together, people often asked if we were sisters! (She loved this) So many times we would come home and look in the mirror and see same cheekbones, chins, noses, mouths, very similar teeth.
And I will now apologize for asking this since you have not been able to enjoy your wonderful daughter, and it breaks my heart.
PS I think about you and Anna frequently and read all the Anna threads , but I rarely post because I seem to have the "teacher" voice.

Niteowl, I have the "teacher" voice, too. I know what you mean. As a child, Anna resembled her father somewhat more than she did me. Both of us had brown eyes and brown hair which sunburned easily, making it look blonde in the summer (I was fairly blonde as a child). Anna's ears were definitely like George's, not like mine. Somewhere on the forum are some black-and-white sketches I made, adjusting the age-advanced picture from the NCMEC. I pictured her with glasses, with short hair, and I tried to somewhat change the shape of her head, which was longer and more egg-shaped than the computerized picture shows. Don't feel sad for me (though it is kind of you to have these feelings). Anna has always been alive in my heart.

 

[MagicRose99]

When I was younger, I looked more like my father and his side of the family. I had 2 girl cousins on that side of the family and we could have passed for sisters. Now, I look in the mirror and get a jolt - I see my mother!! The older I get the more I seem to be my mother's daughter...

I think it would be helpful to try and do an age progression with Anna looking like a younger version of mom... with her dad's ears...

 

[InterestedNHelping]

Melanie that is a great page! It's amazing how much Anna's story has touched us all. Her story caught my eye, because I had a friend by the last name of Waters (no relation to this) and I was hooked on helping. I have always believed that there is so much hope here, I believe she is alive and well. Every night when I bathe my 5 year old (I have grown children too) I think of Anna and her mom, and how I am fortunate to have those simple moments, and how I need to treasure them. Funny that I think of it then, but it matters so much. I have felt connected to this case from day one, and will do whatever I can to help, as long as it takes. With people like Melanie, it really gets the word out, the more the better!

Just my two cents worth here...I have always thought the pictures of Anna look very much like her father

 

[Annasmom]

When I was younger, I looked more like my father and his side of the family. I had 2 girl cousins on that side of the family and we could have passed for sisters. Now, I look in the mirror and get a jolt - I see my mother!! The older I get the more I seem to be my mother's daughter...

I think it would be helpful to try and do an age progression with Anna looking like a younger version of mom... with her dad's ears...

MagicRose, I know you are a real wizard with this sort of thing. Do you have enough to work with, among the images which have already been posted, or should I look for another picture of me at 39 or 40?

 

[Annasmom]

I have just written to Jerry Nance, who is in charge of Anna's case at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, asking whether Anna's age-advanced picture has been circulated outside the United States, particularly in Italy or Greece, since we have some slight indication that those locations are of interest in our search. I'll let you know what he says.

 

[Dr. Doogie]

..Somewhere on the forum are some black-and-white sketches I made, adjusting the age-advanced picture from the NCMEC. I pictured her with glasses, with short hair, and I tried to somewhat change the shape of her head, which was longer and more egg-shaped than the computerized picture shows...

Here is the revised age progression:

 

[christine2448]

Here is the revised age progression:

WOW...Thanks Dr. Doogie for posting.

It has to be so strange for you all so close to this case to see the Age Prog. pics.

We recently rec'd the 1st one done on Rose Cole and it was very emotional to see, and I have never met her. I can't imagine looking at one of my own children/relatives.

Always thinking of you all! You are in all of our hearts and minds.

 

[MagicRose99]

MagicRose, I know you are a real wizard with this sort of thing. Do you have enough to work with, among the images which have already been posted, or should I look for another picture of me at 39 or 40?

I'm not sure I have any pics of you... it might be better to send me fresh one(s). You can email me through my profile or, I believe Doug has my email addy. I can get Anna's off of here, so I can play and see what I can come up with for you!

 

[Gina_M]

Recently I've come across some MySpace sites helping to look for missing children on an international level. One in particular is called Missing People Around the World - the person running the site is in the UK but is also Italian. Here's the link:

http://www.myspace.com/missingpeopleeverywhere

This may be a good site for us Myspacers to keep bookmarked.

 

[Annasmom]

I have just written to Jerry Nance, who is in charge of Anna's case at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, asking whether Anna's age-advanced picture has been circulated outside the United States, particularly in Italy or Greece, since we have some slight indication that those locations are of interest in our search. I'll let you know what he says.

Jerry Nance answered me right away, saying that Anna would not have had her own passport in 1973, but instead would have had to have a photograph of her with a parent or guardian (the same passport). I recently found a tiny previously overlooked photograph in the BFH of GW holding Anna. This must have been taken at about the time he left home, so she was still an infant. However, I do have a copy of GW's last passport application (with his picture, none of Anna), so I don't know just what this means. He may have intended to apply for a passport with her, and yet we have no indication that he did so. Remember also that he insisted on having joint custody of Anna, even though he never visited her. I do know that other countries would amend passports when children were traveling with the passport holder, simply stapling their photographs into the existing passport, but apparently this was not US policy in 1973.

Jerry Nance said that he could put Anna's poster on Interpol, and that he would check to see what the National Center could do for Italy and Greece.

 

[Annasmom]

Annasunc has been in touch with the forensic artist/technician at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and he is incorporating some of our suggested changes to the picture of Anna posted on their web page, correcting the position of the mole, etc., so that the picture conforms more to our idea of family resemblance until they do another update, which would be next year. They'll post it when it's ready.

 

[Annasmom]

The new age-advanced picture is really quite remarkable, and it will go up soon on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's web page. The forensic artist considered several different changes, among them the idea suggested in the forum that Anna's hair probably got darker over time.

We have been trying to find out about adoptions in Italy or Greece, since GW's last passport application indicated that he might travel in Europe or Greece. I learned that 10,000 children were illegally adopted in the 1960s and 1970s through several Greek orphanages, one of them in Thessaloniki, where GW taught for a year in 1964. Sherlock found a link to an organization which has a site dealing with reunited adopted children and their birthparents, and I have registered Anna with them. Though most of those adoptions had to do with placing Greek infants with American families (and only 375 have been reunited with their birth families over the past two years), all this seems worth looking into.

 

[Dr. Doogie]

At a time when I really wish that I could be narrowing the possibilities instead of expanding them, let me throw this one out: Could she have been placed in a greek orphanage, then returned to the U.S. through one of these illegal adoptions?

 

[InterestedNHelping]

Anything is possible! I can tell you from personal experience, that the very state we are in, California, was willing to take children from parents they 'deemed unfit' and put them up for adoption, with no legal recourse for the parents, and this still continues to this day...If you have the money for a good adoption attorney, you can get a child. Most adoptions are rightful, but I have seen firsthand, that they can do anything they want, with the right wording on the paperwork, I am sure of that.

 

[Annasmom]

At a time when I really wish that I could be narrowing the possibilities instead of expanding them, let me throw this one out: Could she have been placed in a greek orphanage, then returned to the U.S. through one of these illegal adoptions?

That's just what I was thinking. Of course, most of these children WERE Greek infants, and Anna was not only older, but pretty articulate, which would make this possibility less likely. However, I was shocked by the numbers. This story ran in the Athens News, an English-language newspaper, a few years ago and came up while I was doing a search on Greece and adoptions.

 

[InterestedNHelping]

I truly suspect that if GW and GB were involved in this, that this was done privately and for a specific (though crazy) reason. It was not a general adoption in my opinion, to 'throw her out there', it would be specific to something religious, superstitious or whatever was 'needed' for her specific upbringing... Possible that she was put up that way, but I cannot see it happening, given the controlling issues and directives of 'specific perfections' that GB had.