Minka was the tender age of 16 in 1928. She was on an innocent picnic in the woods that, the day she was assaulted and raped. Innocence can disappear quickly when something like that happens, and the trauma could easily destroy a young girl’s emotional well-being forever. Minka grew up in rural America and was a farm girl. Even then, she thought storks delivered babies on the front porch.
Minka was pregnant as a result of that rape, and in that day and age, it wasn’t uncommon for the baby to be born in secret. She gave birth to the baby she named Betty Jane in that way, in secret. The baby was immediately put up for adoption and Minka somehow managed to move on. But moving on never meant forgetting. How could anyone forget?
Minka searched for many years and for decades wrote letters in an attempt to try to find her daughter. She did love that baby, that child, that woman. She prayed they would meet again someday knowing that it was not very likely. So many years had passed.
Minka, 80 years later, was still hoping for that unlikely reunion. That’s when she whispered her prayer out loud for the first time:
“Lord, I’d like to see Betty Jane before I die. I promise I won’t bother her or interrupt her life. I just want to lay eyes on her.”
What Minka didn’t know was that on that exact same day, a judge was discharging and releasing the sealed adoption records to her 77-year-old daughter. It wasn’t long after that when Minka got a phone call, and the impossible happened.
