The Girl From Lost Creek

By Judy Thompson

The story of Judy Hartzell begins with the disappearance of her father and the murder of her mother--two events that shocked the small community of Lost Creek, West Virginia, a region of Appalachia in the 1940s. She is separated from her six siblings when she and her sister are eventually adopted by a couple in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with just stories and shadowy memories of her childhood. Judy finds a deep inner strength and independence that would lead her through a life of work, acquiring a college education, raising a family while traveling, and living in various cities in the United States and abroad.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9798886445848

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The Girl From Lost Creek

Judy Thompson

ISBN 979-8-88644-583-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88644-584-8 (Digital)

Copyright © 2022 Judy Thompson

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Table of Contents

Author's Note

Prologue: The Visit

Lost Creek

Dad Missing

Murder

Aftermath

The Farm

Oklahoma

Adoption

The Richardsons

Another Move

Judy Meets Gene

Leaving Grace

Oklahoma Again

Hidden Away

Final Consent

Postpartum

A New Beginning

Reunion

Epilogue: The Pink Box

About the Author

Author's Note

This memoir is a work of creative nonfiction. I have reimagined some of the early scenes from the stories I heard retold time and again by my siblings—keepers of my memories until I was old enough to have my own.

Prologue: The Visit

I sat in Russell's living room, forty-four years since our mother's murder that horrible night in October 1952, listening to the same confused rhetoric of my siblings trying to unravel the events. I had been listening to this since I was twelve years old. In fact, this is how I learned of my mother's murder. I really thought they were trying to sort it out, get the facts straight. Then I realized that the conversation hadn't changed over the years. So I introduced new insight that I had found about the legal process that took place in 1952. I tried to walk them through the gaps, where the man had been taken to serve his time and when he'd gotten out.

Did he get the punishment he deserved? I asked.

Hell no! They all raised their voices to me. This set off a barrage of angry comments about the ten of eighteen years he'd served for killing my mother.

Well, let's go see him and tell him how we feel, I suggested.

A few days later, the lady on the phone at Seton Hall Nursing Home confirmed that they had a patient named Glenn Greathouse—my mother's murderer.

I drove up East Main Street in Clarksburg just fifteen minutes away. Seton Hall—a three-story colonial revival house—once had a large front porch with pillars and decorative trim, but now, the porch was enclosed. A woman in a blue uniform led me down the hallway to his room.

Glenn did not match the picture of the monster that my brothers had painted over the years. I was almost startled finding myself standing here in front of this man who looked so much like my father. He didn't match the picture I had stored of him either. The man who had once unsettled us with his reclusive way of life. The man who had spent time with his tools spread on the floor of our kitchen with half his body under our sink. I knew the name and what he had done, but I realized I had never known this man who had once wanted to marry our mother. The smell of urine and cigarettes filled my nostrils as I watched his dark eyes looking me over. I watched his face for any sign of recognition as I introduced myself.

I am Judy Hartzell, Agnes Hartzell's daughter, I stated as I leaned down to his level. He looked small sitting in the big chair. His skin was paste white against the dark vinyl. His eyes drifted to the television across the room. If he recognized the name, he showed no visible sign that I could see. Perhaps he wanted to ignore me, so I moved a chair closer in front of him.

Do you remember Aggie Hartzell? I asked again. I said it a little louder, thinking he may have been hard of hearing. He looked right into my eyes. His gaze was intense. His brows raised, but I couldn't tell if he recognized her name or if I had just startled him.

I wanted to startle him. I wanted to shake him. I wanted to know why he took my mother away from me. I wanted to see shock when I said her name. I wanted him to know that we were still dealing with the consequences of his actions forty-four years later. I felt I had the right to hear at least that much from his mouth, and so I tried again.

Why did you hurt Agnes Hartzell?

Lost Creek

For as long as I can remember and before I understood why, I was called Nose. It was Russell who started it. I stepped into the circle he had just drawn in the dirt for his marble game.

Aw, why don't you go play somewhere else? he said as he grabbed my arm. My heart sank, and my eyes filled with tears.

What's going on out there? Mother called from the screen door.

She keeps taking my marbles. She's always following me around and nosing into everything. Can't she play somewhere else? he complained.

From that day, my brothers—so much bigger, older, and taller—tapped me on the top of my head and pronounced me Nose. They could outrun me, taking my doll in one big swoop and laughing as I tried to reach up to their arms stretched high over their heads. Other times, hard as I tried, I couldn't get my foot on the first rung of the ladder nailed on the big oak tree down by the creek. I was reduced to playing under the grape arbor watching as they, screaming and laughing, swung like Tarzan on the long rope dropping down into the creek on hot summer days. Their fast bikes slid to a stop in a cloud of dust.

Nose

Even when I tried leaning them against the side of the house, I still couldn't reach the pedals. They pushed and pulled, sending me and my tricycle on a fast path out of control and out of their way.

The big yard around the Lost Creek, West Virginia, old rectory house that we rented in 1948 was the extent of my whole world. Our house sat facing toward town and Main Street on about an acre of land that included a large vegetable garden at the back. Lost Creek ran parallel to the house on the west side. It was a small creek shaded by the tall oaks that lined its banks. A small wooden bridge where we dangled our feet in the cool water crossed the creek to the alley that led to town or school.

The large grassy space from the creek to the house was always full of activity—Mom hanging clothes and bikes taking shortcuts between the house and pump house down to the creek and over the bridge. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) paralleled the house on the east side. A chain-link fence covered in honeysuckle and Mom's pink roses ran along the front yard separating our yard from the Martins.

It was on the north side, just before the garden, that Grandpap rested under the big apple tree defending his space with his cane or an apple aimed at anyone who threatened his peace. My oldest sister Jean and her friends sat out there on summer evenings and watched as I caught fireflies in a jar. Mother rested here sometimes too on her way to or from the garden.

House in Lost Creek, West Virginia

Russell, Robert, and Carl

Sharing this old parish house with three of my older brothers—Carl, Robert, and Russell—was like living with a swarm of bees. Their boundless energy drove them out the back door in the mornings, leaving me behind with the smell of toast and hot chocolate. When an interest caught their attention, like the leaves falling from the big oak trees that left them black and naked, they did not return until the last of daylight disappeared behind the hills. A mountain of leaves of deep red and gold became forts or soft landings for me being tossed from the arms of Carl to Robert and eventually into the pile of dry rustlings screaming with laughter. I begged them, tugging on their legs, Please, Carl, one more time? The thrill of my brothers playing, no matter how rough, thrilled me and created memories that I cherish today.

Charlie, my oldest brother, was handsome, a slim six feet one. He had dark hair and brown eyes. There wasn't much that Charlie couldn't do, and he was not shy about telling you of his accomplishments either. Later in his life, his wife, Patty, would pat him on his shoulder or thigh and say with a kind gentle smile, Now, Charlie. He was good with his hands. His long arms gave him a big advantage for cutting glass. He could handle large pieces of window glass and cut faster than anyone at the glass factory. He was not only a good student in high school but the star basketball player all four years. He was a tenor in the church choir and sang at weddings as well as school plays. As I was growing up, Charlie showed me his special maneuvers that allowed him to fake out all the other basketball players. Walter was always jealous of our older brother and worked hard to try to keep up with him in school and on the basketball court.

It was my sister Jean who made it clear to me that I was to answer to Judith Ann. Judith Ann, you get yourself in here before I tan your hide or Judith Ann, you hold still so I can get the soap out of your hair. Jean was a beautiful brunette with hazel eyes. She was only five feet, four inches tall but full of life and energy at seventeen. I would later call her sister-mom, and she would become my memory of my childhood. Over the years, Jean told my sister Linda and me of our births, many times. I can't remember my sister without a cup of black coffee beside her with a cigarette either in her mouth or an ashtray. She would sit with one of us between her legs, combing and braiding our long thick hair as she passed on her memories.

I remember her story about my birth. I remember it word for word like some favorite children's story. We had no books. The stories we were told had been passed down about family members and things that happened to them.

Jean put her cigarette between her fingers and took a long drag on it. Then, taking a sip of coffee, she began her narration of the birth. Well, she would say; she always started her tales with well. It seemed to give her time to exhale the smoke through her nose and recollect the facts and get them in order before she began.

I was born the eighth of nine children on a Tuesday. Dad and Charlie left for work as usual driving to the Adamston Flat Glass Company. Mother got up early and worked until her labor took her to her bed, signaling to all around that the time had come. Jean and Mom had worked and planned that week, discussing what needed to be done just as she had six years before with Russell, running up Main Street for the doctor. Jean was to help Mother deliver if the doctor didn't come. Carl and Robert were to take the sheets after my birth and bury them in the garden at the back of the house. It was a hot humid day, and the lawn was already brown and crunchy from lack of water. All the windows and doors were open, waiting to let a breeze into the house. No breeze—just Russell blew through the open door.

He's on his way right behind me, Russell, out of breath, announced much to the relief of my sister.

Jean stood beside Mother's bed, patting her forehead with a wet rag, acting brave and not wanting to upset her. Mother's face registered her painful contractions, her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth drew tightly closed like she might be holding a scream. By the time Doctor Pletcher appeared in the doorway, Mom was grunting hard, pushing the rag and Jean's hand away. Cries and relief filled the house. Doctor Pletcher announced a baby girl, ten pounds, two ounces.

Well, old Doc Pletcher handed you to me. You was kickin' and cryin', and I was tryin' to wash you off. I guess that doctor cuttin' that cord and slappin' you made you mad. Your chubby little legs just kickin' like you was ready to get up and run away. You were big, and I seen that you were a girl and I was so happy, said Jean.

And so it was with my birth on June 4, 1946, that started my lifetime of memories, stories, secrets, and jokes. Mother had lost her first child, a little girl just a few months old, to pneumonia. Mother never talked about it. It was a surprise forty years later when family history research revealed that she had been previously married. This information also solved the mystery of a picture of the unknown man with our mother. She was just eighteen in October 1924 when she married Ira C. Lutes, a rough handsome-looking man who rode a loud motorcycle much too fast for the neighbors. He was the opposite of her second choice of a husband our father. However, they would both leave her.

My mother, Agnes May Matthews, was described by friends and family as a pretty woman. She had brown hair that she wore wound around a form up and away from her full face and blue eyes. She was five feet, two inches and heavy after giving birth to nine children. She was particular about her home and appearance. Although we couldn't afford it, Mother ordered all her clothes from expensive stores like Kauffmann's in Pittsburgh. She measured her feet with clothespins in order to size the shoes she ordered. She sat at her vanity at night, carefully cleansing her face with Ponds Cold Cream—advertised to keep the wrinkles of time away.

My father, Wesley Miller Hartzell, was born just a few miles from my mother in Hempfield Township, Pennsylvania. Distraught from the loss of her child, Mother fled to her grandmother's and her best friend Dorothy in Jeannette, Pennsylvania. Her marriage to Ira was not going well. She and her friend Dot were planning to spend some time together while my mother recovered.

It was Dot who first heard my father Wesley play the piano on KDKA Pittsburgh and told Mother about him. Wesley, like his father, went to work at the Jeannette Glass Factory owned in part by Dot's father Mr. James Donahue. Dad, born in 1902 and his brother William in 1897, like so many young boys, had to go to work to help their families. They needed the extra income for clothes, food, and that month's rent. He was one of the 5,658 kids that became known as the Glass House Boys between 1890 and 1917.

The boys were part of the Pennsylvania state's glass house small help program earning seventy-five cents a day or $1.35 per night. The boys, some just eight years old, fetched and carried for the glass blowers, adding to their speed and wages. The skilled workers were paid by the piece, so the faster they worked, the more they earned. As they worked, the men and boys sang songs from their homelands of France, Belgium, Ireland, and Wales to take their minds off the dust from the batch mixing process and the extreme heat that reached 145 degrees, completely closing the factories during the month of August. Then, there was the extreme cold in the winter in factories with no insulation.

Dad was one of the lucky ones. At fourteen, he apprenticed under his father as a glass flattener. His mother, also named Agnes Elizabeth Smeltzer, was not happy about her son working with his hands. These hands, she had hoped, would play beautiful music. She had begged and pleaded with her husband—first for the piano lessons for Wesley and then to not have him work in the factory. Agnes already had two sons and a husband working in the factory, and she wanted just one to have a different life.

One day, when Mother was still in Jeannette recovering from the loss of her child and her marriage, she went to visit her friend Dot.

Agnes, come walk with me to meet my dad, said Dot, knowing they might encounter Wesley as the men filed out of the factory. She knew Agnes needed something to cheer her up. She hadn't told Agnes about Wesley yet, not wanting her to reject the idea until she met him.

All right. I guess if that's what you want to do, agreed Agnes, still depressed after all that had happened. James Donahue, Dot's father, was already in sight as Dot and Agnes made their way to the entrance. Dot could hardly contain her excitement when she spotted Wesley right behind him.

Agnes, this is Wesley Hartzell, James introduced my mother to my father. That evening, Agnes and Dot compared Wesley's appearance to the young actor Edward G. Robinson, the 1920s king of gangster films. They both had thick black hair combed neatly straight back from their foreheads, revealing a widow's peak (a genetic trait that would be passed on to me) and a full face, dark-chocolate eyes, and full lips forming a soft gentle smile.

Yes, and he plays the piano beautifully. I heard him play on the radio, Dot told Agnes.

Wesley and Agnes were married the seventeenth of May 1927 at the Orphans Court of Westmoreland County in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. The ceremony was a simple one attended by their parents, brothers and sisters, and a few friends. Cake and coffee were served at the home of my mother's parents. Their eight-by-ten wedding portraits carefully hand tinted in soft pastel blues and browns now hang on my family picture wall. These pictures, like the others that document my family history, were not carefully placed in a family album and neatly stored on a shelf but were tossed in a cardboard box that Jean would bring out on her visits to family members over the years.

There was no honeymoon for my parents but instead a room at Charles and Agnes Hartzell's, my father's parents' home, where they lived for the next year and a half. I am not sure what happened other than my brother Charlie's birth in that year and a half, but Mother never wanted to go back. Anytime Dad even mentioned going up to Jeannette to visit his parents, Mother just threw a fit. She came down with a headache before it was time to leave. And she really didn't like Aunt Margaret, Dad's sister. Mother's opinion of that side of the family was passed on to us kids. Any of the boys would have said that they all disliked Aunt Margaret and avoided her when she was around.

Two years after my parents' marriage and about the same time as the stock market crash of 1929, my father and Grandpap, Walter Scott Matthews, were recruited by Mr. Donahue to go to Cameron, West Virginia, to work at his new factory. My grandparents, my parents, and siblings all moved into the old house up on Schoolhouse Hill. The depression and then World War II left people looking for work. Unemployment had moved up from 17.2 percent to 19 percent, and they were happy to move anywhere they could work. Eventually, the struggling economy hit the Cameron Chimney Glass Factory, and first my Grandpap and then my father were laid off.

They turned to fishing and hunting, raising chickens and rabbits to help sustain the family until Grandpap found work managing a pool hall when the owner joined the Army. My father found work on a government-sponsored WPA Project, a program that Franklin D. Roosevelt started as part of the New Deal. These were public works projects building dams, bridges, tunnels, parks, and in Cameron, a swimming pool and community center. This put people to work from 1935 to 1939. Many of these projects, like the Golden Gate Bridge and the Cameron Pool, are listed on the National Registry as historical sites today. The pool was unique not only because of its half-moon shape and size but the 235,000 gallons of water it held could be used to fight fires as well.

I find it hard to believe that I never actually met my grandmother Matthews. I had seen her pictures many times growing up as they were passed around the room. The pictures left vivid images of her large frame, her full bosom hanging over her apron, and her round face. All the shared memories of her over the years brought her to life, making me feel like I was right there with them.

Mom and Grandma

They told me how, on Monday mornings, Grandma got up early. She and Mother washed clothes and hung them on the clotheslines strung across the backyard. Grandma took her broom on Saturdays through the house and under beds, extracting pet groundhogs that the boys had slipped into the house. Carl loved animals and had one groundhog trained to stand in a corner and eat a banana. Grandma Matthews had been there to cook for the family. She and Mom worked side by side, canning all the summer fruits and vegetables while listening to the radio.

After listening to my siblings' musings, hadn't I tasted her homemade jams and pies and eaten her Sunday dinners too? I must have been around the table on those Sundays with cousins Paul, Dean, Nevin, Reba, and Uncle Frank and Aunt Laura. And hadn't I just been too young to remember Grandpap taking me to church on Sunday mornings with the boys and singing those hymns?

After my grandmother's death in the spring of 1939, seven years before I was born, my mother had a hard time dealing with the loss of her mother and her support. When Russell was born, he was Mother's first child born without Grandma at her side. So much of the family care had now fallen solely onto my mother's shoulders.

It was in April 1948, Mother was five months pregnant with our sister Linda when Dad and the doctor decided a move to the old parish house in Lost Creek might help with Mother's fits as we called them. It was not a big move, just seven winding miles over and around the gently rolling hills. The legend goes that Lost Creek had been so named when an early resident found a skeleton beside a tree somewhere down along the creek. I am lost, and the initials K. D. were carved into the trunk above it.

I don't remember if it was the move to Lost Creek, another pregnancy, or the condition of the old house that sent Mother off into a crying fit. She wanted her bedroom painted her favorite color blue. She wanted a sofa for the den and a black linoleum floor with new curtains she had seen in a catalog. Perhaps she had even dreamed of a prominent place in the community, as she sat before her vanity mirror applying cold cream or quietly playing the piano. Her grandmother's lace tablecloth covered the now seldom used dining table. Mother closely guarded it, running and yelling if anyone dared to put anything even a pencil on it. The crystal vase made by her grandfather sat empty in the center. Her good dishes reserved for special occasions sat in the china hutch in the corner of the dining room.

Mother hadn't ventured out into this new town. She had not been out anywhere in daylight since Russell was born. Her dark moods had intensified. She spent more time in her room. We were left downstairs waiting for her to reappear. We listened to the muffled voices of Mom and Dad arguing and then the door slam. Dad had pressed her to go to a movie. Oh, I have nothing to wear, she said before she checked the windows for neighbors. When she saw Mary Alice, the neighbor's daughter, out in the yard, she flew over to the window.

Just look at that bathing suit, there is nothing to it, Mother said hotly. It's shameful. No daughter of mine will be seen wearing anything like that in public. And those shorts she had on yesterday, she declared. She quickly grabbed the blind rolled up above the window and pulled it to the windowsill.

Sunday mornings became particularly hard for Mother. She could see women dressed in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, better than her simple house dresses, as they passed by the house on their way to church. I think that this was about the same time Mom told Jean that she was not to bring her girlfriends home anymore and to cut out any pictures of women, especially in ads, posing in scant clothing before Dad came home from work. This new suspicion that Dad was watching these women became so exaggerated that Dad called on Dr. Pletcher. He thought Mother might be having some sort of postpartum breakdown.

There was no cure at the time, the diagnosis was still unclear, and there certainly wasn't any Prozac or Zoloft—only a mental hospital. He knew of women that had trouble leaving their beds and rooms after they had given birth. A nervous condition, the doctor called it. He'd said he'd read where patients were sometimes sent to mental hospitals for some kind of shock treatments. Dad cried and said he just couldn't send her away.

Hey, Dad, you coming to watch the game tonight? Walter asked. Mother stopped midway from the table to the sink with dishes in her hands. She glared at Dad as we all waited for her response. It was his first basketball game at the new school, and he was excited.

He'll do no such thing. Wesley, this sink is leaking, and the washer is making that funny noise again, Mother stated as she placed a stack of dishes in the sink.

I won't stay long. I'll just watch the first half and be back before you know it, Dad said. But he knew as soon as he said it that it was not going to happen. He could tell by the look on her face. Her jaw was set firmly, and her body seemed to follow suit.

Well, you can't just go off and leave me here with the kids all the time, Mother snapped as she threw the dishrag into the sink. She started to cry as she made her way to the stairs. The room got quiet as the boys, knowing what was coming, slowly disappeared. They knew the signs of what they called Mother's bad days. Days when they came home from school and all the blinds would be drawn down. They knew before they went into the house that Mother was in bed and that the laundry was where it had been that morning. Dinner would be whatever they could find in the refrigerator.

Aw, come on now, Agnes. I just want to see the boys play ball, Dad pleaded. Their voices rose as they climbed the stairs. He knew where she was going, and he was trying to work his way around her to block her.

I might as well go in here and never come out! she shouted back. Then you all can do whatever you want. Mother was referring to the bathroom. Dad ran to the shed and dragged the ladder over and leaned it against the house under the bathroom window. He climbed up to the window, prying it loose from years of paint and weather, pushing it up and holding it while he climbed in and turned the gas heater off.

Walter knew not to expect Dad at the game; and of course, by the time Dad convinced Mother to come out and go to bed, any school activities were over.

Mother

On Mothers good days, we could hear her playing the piano in the den. It was on these days Mother spent extra time at her vanity in the morning, carefully applying rouge and tangerine lipstick highlighting her face, bringing out the blue in her eyes, before making her way downstairs in her crisp freshly pressed cotton dress and white sandals. It felt special seeing her come slowly down the stairs, not just because she looked bigger from the bottom of the stairs but the way she stepped down with her chin high and smiling.

It was like watching a performer walk on stage. When Charlie and Walter came home, they pulled the piano out into the center of the den while coaxing Mother to play The Old Lamplighter, a new song by Sammy Kaye from the movie The Best Years of Our Lives. Mother took her seat on the little stool with the big clear marbles clenched in the black claws of the feet. Charlie and Walter started humming the song until Mother found the right key. After the long weeks of silence, the music floated through the house touching each of us with its melody pulling our attention away to its lyrics. Everyone it seemed, except Dad, that is. Dad didn't move from the rocker in the dining room. The boys, turning the radio off, silencing the calls of High Ho Silver, left Dad with his book and pipe.

Grandpap—the boys called him old Walt—made his way slowly down the stairs, his cane tap and then his footstep like a rhythm all his own. His deep bass voice so strong it seemed to lift his aging body upright filling the house with music. It was absolutely thrilling, almost startling, to hear and see my mother interacting with other people doing something outside the kitchen or laundry room.

The music and voices eventually lulled me into a sleepy trance as I hid under the dining tables, trying to avoid the taps on my head that my height made so available to the boys. In spite of the age discrepancy between us, my nickname and these taps on my head made