Event circa September 1965.
Written March 1986 at Judson, for The Scribblers.
What a beautiful moment in our lives! Robert was retiring from a busy and strenuous
practice of medicine. Our youngest child, Charles, was recently discharged from
the Air Force, where he had been a missile launch control officer. It seemed an ideal
time for us to travel, leaving “Charles in Charge” [A popular TV series at the time. ed.] to cope with things
domestic. He was living at home, with his married brother and sister living near
enough to help him.
Robert and I agreed, “What better time was there to go abroad?” No grass grew under our feet until we found ourselves downtown seeking our passports. Robert, being Cleveland born, had no difficulty since his birth certificate was recorded properly.
I had a different problem, being born in Santiago, Chile. I would have to produce a birth certificate and proof that I was a citizen of the U. S. A. That incensed me!
My attorney confirmed that I was a U. S. citizen. Pointing out that my parents had not given up their citizenship failed to impress the pompous little official in the passport office.
I further explained that the Cleveland Board of Elections questioned my voting eligibility in 1926 and was satisfied by this same explanation. They put my name on their books as an eligible voter, allowing me to conscientiously vote, right or wrong, since 1926. I threw this additional argument into the pot, but all my pleas were ignored. I would have to produce proof of my birth and citizenship.
My battle to qualify for social security also revolved around the facts of my birth. Its concern would be determining when I was born, not caring where. The passport people were only concerned with where and how I was born. I naively assumed that a common eligibility standard might apply both to social security and passports.
I humbly asked, “What should I do? How should I go about it?” I was presented with a list of chores:
- I should write to Santiago requesting a record of my birth.
- Failing the above, I should produce a record of my birth from a family bible.
- Failing the above, I should obtain a certified statement from an older relative telling when and where I was born.
- Failing the above, I was to prove my legitimacy and in addition produce a certified statement that I had lived in the United States on a specific date long ago, and what my age was then.
- Failing the above, I should quit bothering them.
We came home somewhat crestfallen, and I set to work. I wrote to Santiago, receiving a polite reply months later saying in Spanish that no record of my birth existed. It further said a birth certificate could have existed and been destroyed in the revolution.
The cathedral, where my beloved Josefina had had me baptized a Roman Catholic, had no record of my baptism. The visiting Methodist Bishop who baptized me for my parents’ satisfaction also left no record. If we had certificates of baptism, they were lost in my parents’ disastrous 1924 house fire that destroyed almost everything we owned.
Seeking an older relative with direct knowledge of my birth was not easy. There were no relatives with us in Santiago when I was born, and I suddenly realized that there were none in Ohio either! I was now the oldest, the matriarch of the family! That was a shock.
I would have to resort to the family bible. Bibles yield truths to live by and record when family members began living by them. Ours was of no use. It burned in 1924.
I then collected several items that I thought would make the authorities relent and give me a passport. There was a picture of me at age two taken in Santiago, along with a printed, dated invitation to my second birthday party, given by the proprietress of the school. I reminded them that I had voted in Cleveland in 1926. With high hopes I took these records down to the passport office, only to be rejected. This was most depressing.
Now I was told I would have to prove my legitimacy. This added insult to injury. I felt degraded and despondent. I had always been proud of my ancestors, strong, brave, good moral pioneer people who helped open up Ashland and Wayne counties before Ohio became a state. Our men had fought for their country in three wars. Now I couldn’t prove I belonged to them, let alone to my town and country. I had even gone through an excruciating political election twice, so I could serve on my town’s school board. In Ohio, that alone made me an “Officer of the State” — now a dubious honor.
I hallucinated. Was I ever born? Was I living in a bad dream? I felt as hurt as I did when, as a little child just home from South America, my cousins teasingly called me a “foreigner.” Being a woman without a country hurt both then and now. It hurt worse now.
My men folks felt my depression and decided to do something about it. A celebration of my 65th birthday was in order. Robert suggested we go out to dinner, then to Wooster and Ashland to search the courthouse records.
Off we went on what was to become as memorable a trip as The Trip to New Haven, but with the Model T Ford becoming a smaller but more reliable Ford Mustang. The day was beautiful, and it was comforting and reassuring to be with two of my beloved men. Perhaps I was alive after all, even if the state denied it.
At Wooster, we found that the records around my father’s birth date had been destroyed by fire, so we rushed on to Ashland. There we found my mother’s birth record, and surprisingly, my father’s. He had been born in a house built on the county line between Ashland and Wayne counties. His doctor thought the bedroom in which father first saw the light of day was in Ashland county, so that was where he recorded him.
The prize at Ashland was finding my parent’s marriage certificate, dated Aug. 17, 1899, with the quaint written comment on it “They are going to South America as missionaries.” It must have been very unusual for young people to travel so far away in 1899. We had now established that my parents were citizens and married, but had not proven that I was their child.
Hugging the photocopies of those precious documents, we started home, stopping in Wadsworth to visit my elementary school. My parents were teaching in Mississippi when I was in elementary school. They sent me to Wadsworth in alternate years to live with my grandmother, feeling I would get better schooling that way than I would get in Mississippi.
We found my school in the heart of town closed. My heart sank. I needed that record. Then I found out that all the old school records had been taken to the new Central High School on Broad Street at the edge of town. On the way to the new school, I was delighted to go past my grandmother’s house. It was still there, reminiscent of the love and hospitality I had received there over 50 years earlier.
School was just out when we arrived at the new school building. We went directly to the office, where an accommodating clerk got out my fifth-grade records from 1910. With the statement we obtained from the school we had finally established my age and who my parents were.
At the school, Robert and Charles were eager to see my grades, mostly A’s, except for deportment. I vaguely recall that my fifth-grade teacher possessed no sense of humor and did not appreciate my putting many night crawlers in her desk drawer.
What really caught Robert’s eye was the name Willard Hunsberger, who was also in my fifth-grade class. Robert said, “I knew Willard Hunsberger in Oberlin. He played on the football team.” The clerk said, “Why he has taught here for 19 years, and he just left the building a few minutes ago. He would be delighted to see you. He lives right on your way home.” She gave us the address, and we debated whether to stop. Deciding to stop, Charles said “I’ll sit in the car while you go in.”
Willard and Robert immediately recognized each other at the door. Willard invited us in and introduced us to his wife, daughter, and two AFS students staying with them.
Willard asked what had happened to me after I left Wadsworth. I told him that we had moved to Berea, Kentucky. “Oh!” said his wife, “My sister is married to Professor Hershey of Berea College.” “Why his Lois was a special friend of mine,” said I. “They lived only two houses down the street from us, and I studied Spanish and French with him.”
Willard then asked where my children went to school, and I mentioned that my son Charles had gone to Oberlin. He asked where he was now, and I said: “He is out in the car.”
Willard immediately sent his daughter, Grace, outside to bring him in. It turned out that Grace’s sister Debbie was a college classmate of Charles. We thought that this was the end of the coincidences.
Meanwhile, the two AFS students had begun to take an interest in our story. In recounting it we discovered that they were from Santiago themselves, and attended the same school in which I was born and in which my parents had taught.
When we finally got home I took my precious documents to the Federal Building. This time they accepted them, but to become an official citizen I had to temporarily join the graduation ceremony for an immigrants’ citizenship class. Along with these people I raised my right hand and swore allegiance (at that late date) to the United States of America.
My illegal voting and being an “officer of the state” finally came to an honest end. Inadvertently I had also established my age for social security purposes. But best of all, I had a birth certificate, Citizenship papers, and a passport that would allow me to travel out of the country and come home again. Truly, I had become “A Born Again Citizen.”
Mary W. Dial
Transcribed April 1990 by CED
Posted Mar 14, 1986 at 00:49.
Revised Jan 23, 2023 at 20:01. EDT.
Retrieved Jun 1, 2026 at 11:03.
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