The Fourth Child: Five Decades of Hope

By Theresa A. Moseley Fax Ph.D.

The format of the book is unique. She writes a story about each person and experience that had a profound impact in her life. After some stories, she writes a heartfelt letter to the person to thank them for helping her become the person she is today. It was her experiences both positive and negative that gave her the opportunity to grow and find truth. It is her story, The Fourth Child, Theresa Ann Moseley Fax, PHD. She is a mother, wife, sister, school administrator, college adjunct professor, three time award winning educator, member of the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Radio and Television, National Association of Black School Educators (NABSE), and a world traveler. Shes had experiences that many people encounter everyday and they have no hope of survival. She is HOPE. Although in her life she was emotionally abused as a child, suicidal, physically assaulted, homeless, mugged, and lived in a shelter for battered women for a month, she found a way not to be the victim anymore. The Fourth Child is a story of perseverance, faith and hope. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Feb 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490726052

Theresa A. Moseley Fax Ph.D.

Dr. Theresa Moseley Fax is an award winning educator. She is a school administrator and college adjunct professor. She tells her story through five decades of hope and fear. Her story provides details of how life experiences, historical events and personal tragedy have impacted her life and lessons learned along the way.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

1960: Augsburg, Germany

Dominique Wilson was born in a military family. Her father, Charlie Wilson, was a sergeant first class in the army. He was an airborne ranger and a chef. He was short, around five feet six inches tall. He had a beautiful smile with a gold tooth in front. He was very popular and had a lot of friends. He could sing and play the guitar and piano, and he was an excellent cook. He never looked his age. He loved his only girl, Dominique Wilson, and was very proud of her. He always told her, I love you.

Her mother, Melanie Wilson, was fifteen years younger than her husband. She graduated from high school and got married a few weeks later to a soldier she only knew for six weeks. They had five children by the time she was twenty-five years old. Melanie gained a lot of weight with each pregnancy, and she would over eat every day. At one point, she weighed close to three hundred pounds. After consulting with a doctor, she went on the Atkins diet in 1962 and lost over one hundred pounds. She never gained that weight back. She was a compulsive overeater. When she liked something, she would eat it until it was all gone.

She was also five feet six inches tall, but wore high heels to be taller. She liked to yell a lot, but she also had a compassionate side. She loved her church and her neighbors. She sponsored a community group that met in her home on Sunday afternoons to discuss how to better the neighborhood and keep it safe. Melanie was very patriotic and loved being an American. She worshipped the Bible and the United States flag. She had a schedule for every day. On Sunday, her family would go to Sunday school and church. On Friday, she would go grocery shopping and come home and wash her hair. She used a straightening comb to straighten her hair. Saturday was cleaning day. She washed clothes and hung them on a clothesline in the backyard. When she cleaned her house, she scrubbed the floors on her hands and knees. She was a member of the Eastern Stars and pledged Zeta at fifty-five years old. She loved to travel and visit foreign countries. One of the first things she did when she went to a foreign country was find a phone book and look for her last name. She was always curious about the origins of her married name. Her health was always an issue as she suffered from diabetes and heart disease.

Dominique had four brothers. Terrance was the oldest, born in 1953. He loved sports and played football in high school. Lamont was born in 1954. He was a sharp dresser and loved kids. Larue was born in 1957. He was Dominique’s best friend. She always felt like he failed third grade to be in the same grade with her. Dominique was the fourth child and was born on February 27, 1958. She was born on the same day as Elizabeth Taylor, who was one of her favorite actors. The baby boy, Perez, was born in May of 1960. He was very smart and creative. He loved playing the piano and performing magic tricks. Shortly after the baby was born, the family moved to Augsburg, Germany, for a three-and-a-half-year overseas assignment. Dominique’s first recollection as a child was when she was three years old.

In 1961, Dominique Wilson and her mother went on a tour of Auschwitz. She does not remember how they arrived, but she knew when she arrived that it was a dark place. Auschwitz was a concentration camp operated in Poland by Nazi Germany. Dominique Wilson’s first recollection was the iron gates. In 2008, she was watching the movie The Reader. When Kate Winslet went to the concentration camp and looked at the gates and the ovens on the wall, Dominique Wilson had to leave the theater as it brought back memories of a time when she was there. The post-traumatic stress from that experience was fresh in her mind. She cried as if she was three years old again and reliving the experience. Dominique Wilson remembers walking around the concentration camp, and at one point, she saw what appeared to be ovens. She asked her mother, What are those things? Her mother replied, They are ovens! If you ever lie, cheat, steal, or disobey your mother, you will burn in one of these ovens in hell! She began to cry. Stop being stupid, and shut up! The three-year-old tried to hold back the tears. From that day forward, Dominique Wilson told herself she would never do anything wrong because she did not want to burn in hell in one of those ovens. She thought she had to be perfect. She would live her life in fear of making mistakes and burning in hell because of them.

Dominique Wilson went to Sunday school in Augsburg, Germany, every Sunday. She learned the Ten Commandments. Honor thy mother and father was one of the Ten Commandments that she feared the most. Her mother was so mean to her, but she was concerned that if she did not love her and honor her, she would burn in hell. This was difficult for Dominique Wilson. She had no one to talk to about her fears. She lived for years in fear.

On a cold winter day, she was walking home from Sunday school in Germany. Her hands froze. When she arrived home, her fingers were frozen and the pain was severe. She told her mother, Ma! My fingers hurt! Her mother said, Oh, shut up and take off those gloves! Her mother always yelled responses to her. I can’t. They are frozen! Her mother grabbed her hands and tried to pull the gloves off as Dominique Wilson screamed. Her mother finally got the gloves off and tried to put the child’s hands in hot water to thaw them. The steam from the water hurt Dominique Wilson’s hand. Dominique Wilson shouted, No! Noooo! Her father walked in and saved her. She crawled in his arms and put her hands under his armpits, and slowly they thawed. She often wondered if the things her mother said and did to her were out of anger or she just didn’t know any better.

Dominique Wilson would encounter more trauma and fear in her life because her mother refused to explain things to her. One her birthday, February 27, 1961, her mother scheduled to have a professional photographer photograph the family. When Dominique Wilson saw all the equipment and flashes, she was frightened. Instead of telling her what was going to happen, she let her cry and to continue to think that something bad was going to happen. Dominique Wilson remembered, every time the children lined up for something, it was going to be an unpleasant experience like getting shots at the hospital. They took the family portrait, and Dominique Wilson had the saddest face. The flashing light was extremely bright, and it scared Dominique. It wasn’t until the end of the photo shoot that she realized the camera was not going to shoot her. Once again, her mother told her, You are stupid with no common sense.

On January 13, 1962, Dominique Wilson and her family boarded a train to Berlin, Germany. Her father had a temporary-duty assignment (TDY) in Berlin. In August of 1961, the Berlin Wall was constructed. The wall cut off West Berlin from East Germany and East Berlin. Before the wall was built, 3.5 million East Germans defected from the German Democratic Republic by crossing over to West Berlin. Most emigrants were young and well educated. Economics drove them to West Berlin. When the wall was built, some tried to escape over the wall. Some died in the process. Dominique Wilson remembers riding on the train in a sleeper car with her four brothers and mother during this Berlin Conflict. All of a sudden, the conductor told her mother to move to the back of the train. Dominique Wilson did not know what was going on but knew better than to ask. Her mother told her children are to be seen, not heard. As she walked to the back of the train, she saw soldiers with guns standing outside the train. She did not know if they were there to protect them or harm them. She began to panic. It was a quiet panic as she knew she could not cry out. It was commonplace for her mother to tell her to shut up or stop being stupid at age four. All of a sudden, the fear she had at Auschwitz returned. She said to herself, Oh my. Am I going to die? Have I been good? Is this my fault? She could not let anyone see her fear as her brothers were amused by the guns and laughing. Dominique Wilson quietly went to a place inside her mind where no one could bother her. She began to dream about singing. In her head, she sang A Tisket, a Tasket. Years later, while in junior high school, she would have to read about the Berlin Wall and the Holocaust. Little did her peers know that she’d been to both places.

Dominique Wilson had a lot of friends in Germany. One of her friends was a German girl named Gina. They used to speak in German together. Dominique Wilson knew just as much German as she did English. She loved to speak foreign languages. As a small child, she sang songs in German. Music was the instrument that gave her peace. When she returned to the States, she named her first and only dog Gina after her best friend. Her father taught Gina how to climb the fence. Gina was so frisky she had puppies every six months. One day, Gina mysteriously disappeared. It was decades later that she figured out what happened to Gina.

When her family left Germany, they settled in the town of Fayetteville, North Carolina. Her parents bought a home in a middle-class neighborhood full of teachers, military personnel, and working-class Americans. There was a nice front yard and large backyard fenced in. Dominique thought it was interesting that there were five kids but only two bedrooms. The oldest, Terrance, and the youngest boy, Perez, slept in a queen-size bed while Dominique and her two other brothers slept in a three-layer bunk bed. Dominique slept on the bottom bunk. Larue slept on the next bunk, and Lamont slept on the top bunk. Larue used to tell jokes at night that made Dominique laugh. She was close to all her brothers, but Larue was her favorite. He was the only one that would play with her. Once, he pulled a trick on her when they were playing tea. He had her drink something yellow, but it was not tea. Years later, they would laugh about that.

When Dominique was ten, her father built another large bedroom on the back of the house. She watched her father