Dr. Beare's Daughter: Growing Up Adopted, Adored, and Afraid

"As if You Were Our Own"

It was 1947 in Celina, Ohio, when Dr. Ralph Beare and his wife, Lou, childless and in their early forties, adopted a four-and-a-half-month-old orphan from a Home in nearby Dayton. They named her "Janice Lucinda." "Janice" because it couldn't be shortened into something "gawd-awful," and "Lucinda" after her new mommy. Janice always knew she was adopted, because her mommy read her a book every day about how she was special because the Beare's chose her out of a Home. "Other people have to take what they get," her mommy said. "But we chose you. We love you as if you were our own."

A Lucky Orphan

Janice soon learned that most grown-ups in town knew her as "Dr. Beare's Daughter." Her daddy took her everywhere and people stopped to stoop down and tell her how her daddy had saved their baby's, their grandpa's, and other family members' lives. Whenever the nuns from her church spotted Janice on the street, they would pat her on the head and remind her how lucky she was to have been adopted by such wonderful parents.

Janice found that she often thought, said, and did things that surprised her parents-things their own child would never think, say, or do. She was also aware that with her red hair and freckles, she didn't look like her dark-haired parents. She constantly struggled to pretzel herself into the golden child she thought they really wanted. Her struggle came with the erasure of her own identity and was further complicated by the strict rules of the Catholic Church and the norms of Celina.

A Privileged Child

Before she started grade school, little Janice was used to socializing at adult parties with her "Aunts" and "Uncles" (her parents' influential friends). She was an honorary member of the Lou-Jan pit crew of her daddy's winning hydroplane racing team. She had spent every February in Florida, and had traveled throughout the U.S.

Branded a Snob

On her first day of first grade, she learned just how different she was from her classmates. They don't like me because I'm different. I have red hair and ugly freckles, I'm adopted, I'm rich, my dress is nicer than theirs. I talk like an adult. Unsure of herself with her peers, and unused to being the brunt of teasing, she kept to herself at school.

"Their Own was Something I Could Never Be"

In spite of her best efforts to be the perfect child her parents wanted, there was a small voice, deep inside her, that popped up at the most inconvenient times, reminding her "I'm here." Try as she might to silence it, her true self often slipped out to take charge, and then there was trouble.