Many people dream of a big family, hoping to have a whole brood of kids running through the house, their voices echoing gleefully down the hallways. However, this fantasy does not always turn out to be as perfect as it may first seem. Barbara Lane and her sisters know first-hand what it’s like for this dream to crumble.
Barbara grew up with ten sisters for the first three years of her life. Tragically, her family fell apart when she was still a toddler after her mother kicked their father out of the house. Although Barbara has little information about why her mother decided to kick her dad to the curb, she knows this was the start of their downfall.
Barbara shared that her parents’ marriage had failed for numerous reasons, and her mom had found someone else. After their father left, Barbara’s mother decided to run away with her new boyfriend, but the children had no place in the new plan. Instead of taking her daughters with her, the mom left them all alone.
Although conditions certainly weren’t pristine, Barbara had her sister with her, and they provided each other with comfort and love.
December 1945 had just arrived, and it was an especially cold year. Barbara recalled, “It was December in St. Louis, and it was a particularly cold December. She turned off the heat and sold all the furniture, and just left us.” Barbara and her sisters, some older and some younger, were left to fend for themselves.Banding together, the sisters survived for a few days. The exact time lapse differs, depending on each sibling’s account, but Barbara insisted that it was at least three days before the neighbors realized there was no one to look after the children. Finally, social services and nuns from Catholic Charity showed up to take the kids in.
Barbara’s Life Growing Up
Barbara’s mother, Lucky Lane, had only taken the youngest of her children with her. When social services came, one of Barbara’s sisters, Laverne Lane, decided to run away instead of facing the unknown world of orphanages and foster care. There was a story that Laverne found their father, but he had no interest in welcoming her into his new life.
Life with their foster family was terrible, but Barbara and Kay stuck together.
At the age of three, Barbara was taken to an orphanage with seven of her sisters, where they stuck together, looking out for and comforting each other. Two of the oldest sisters had already married and moved out of the house by that point, but the ones that remained were still too young to care for themselves properly.Barbara found the orphanages they landed at not entirely pleasant but better than many would imagine. Although conditions certainly weren’t pristine, Barbara had her sister with her, and they provided each other with comfort and love. The young Barbara barely missed her mom, describing her sisters’ love as a “beautiful experience.”
The same couldn’t be said for her older siblings. They had a better understanding of what was happening, and they missed their mother dearly. But Barbara’s blissful ignorance wouldn’t last. Over the next several months, the sisters were separated, each taken to a new home with a foster family.
Barbara spent nine months in the orphanage, slowly seeing her sisters walking away with their bags packed. She had no real idea where they were going, but eventually, the nuns also took Barbara and her sister Kay, older by only 18 months, to a new home. When they arrived at the tiny two-bedroom house, Barbara knew she didn’t want to live there.
Whether they wanted to or not, the nuns left them with their new foster parents, and the two siblings spent much of their youth there. Barbara described her foster father as a “mafia grunt” and referred to the home as “the hellhole.” Over the next few years, she would try her best to contact her other sisters, to no avail.
Finally Reconnecting
Life with their foster family was terrible, but Barbara and Kay stuck together. They were only allowed to leave the house for school and to go to the grocery store, and they had no friends to speak to. Barbara also recalled how abusive her foster father was, adding that she found it hard to believe her foster mother was unaware.By the time she was 14, Barbara braced herself and bravely stood up to her foster father. Knowing he had no hold over her anymore, her foster father stopped the abuse, and Barbara and Kay could live a relatively normal life. Four years later, at the age of 18, Barbara took her sister, and they left their foster home.
A year after ridding themselves of their foster parents, Barbara married a boy she had fallen in love with a few years prior. She had three children with her new husband, but memories of her past still plagued her, and she never forgot about her sisters. She restarted her search for her sibling in earnest once her foster mother died in the 90s.She combed through old newspaper articles, Catholic Charity adoption registries and even hired a private detective, but Barbara could find no trace of her sisters. Never giving up, Barbara waited for a trace of her long-lost siblings. Little did she know, her sisters were doing the exact same thing.
One of the sisters, Ellen, had kept track of all her siblings, making sure she knew where everyone ended up. The only ones she couldn’t find were Barbara and Kay, whom she referred to as the “two lost babies.” Ellen had kept a newspaper clipping showing the two, along with their foster parents’ number.
Apparently, Ellen had contacted the foster parents before, but they lied, saying Barbara and Kay had gone to another family and they didn’t know where they were. Eventually, Ellen tracked Kay down through her marriage license and called her. The other sisters rushed to the phone to call Barbara, 45 years after they were all separated.
The very next day, Barbara jumped on a plane back to St. Louis, where it all started. The reunion was filled with tears, laughter, and sisterly love. Sadly, five sisters died after the reunion, but Barbara immortalized their tales in a book. She shared, “It was like we were never apart… it was like we’d been together our whole life.”