He is trying to find former Towson resident Patricia Arlene Kelly, whom he first met in 1942 when they were both in the fourth grade in a three-room schoolhouse in Brewerton, N.Y., according to a letter 73-year-old Claude Chubb Wilkins, of Syracuse, N.Y., sent to the Towson Library..........
Towson MD JW Patty Kelly sought by lost love
by Fe2O3Girl 3 Replies latest social current
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Fe2O3Girl
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rebel8
Link is dead. This is nearby. What is the story?
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Fe2O3Girl
Not sure why the link doesn't work. Try going to www.towsontimes.com - the story is on the main page at the moment.
Looking for a lost love 50 years later
04/04/07 By Loni Ingraham
Email this story to a friendIs there anyone out there who can help him?
He is trying to find former Towson resident Patricia Arlene Kelly, whom he first met in 1942 when they were both in the fourth grade in a three-room schoolhouse in Brewerton, N.Y., according to a letter 73-year-old Claude Chubb Wilkins, of Syracuse, N.Y., sent to the Towson Library.
"Love needs recognition or to be secured in its rightful place in one's heart," Wilkins wrote in the letter. He has been wondering about Patty Kelly for far too long.
Now, thanks to library manager Jennifer Haire, who passed the letter on, and to word of mouth that spread like wildfire on telephone sand the Internet, Wilkins has dozens of sympathetic Towson High School alumni wondering as well.
They have joined the search for Patricia Kelly, Class of '52.
"The telephone lines and the on-lines are buzzing, trying to catch up with this young lady," said Ruth Schaefer, Class of '51.
In one sense, Wilkins knows where she is. That little 10-year-old freckle-faced, strawberry blonde has resided in his heart since he first saw her in 1942.
That day after the teacher left the room for a minute, he was among the boys who wrote "I love you" notes, he wrote in an e-mail. They wadded them up and tossed them on "the new girl's" desk.
Patty, as he always called her, picked his up, read it and blushed "red as a firetruck," he said. She looked at him with a faint smile.
"Without question, I was a king and the tallest kid in the world that day and for many days to come," he says. "My foster mother had to wonder what had happened to all the buttons on my shirt that day."
It was his first taste of puppy love, but it went nowhere because they were both shy.
She lived only 133 steps from where he lived, but he didn't have the nerve to start walking her to and from school until three days before she moved with her family to Towson in 1945.
He asked if he could write her in Towson and she said "yes," but his foster parents said "no."
But in 1946, after his birth mother showed up at the school to take him home to live with her, he was allowed to correspond with Patty. They shared letters and photographs and intimate thoughts.
After all these years, he still remembers the Edgewood Road address in Towson.
Big man on campus
After joining the Army and earning his airborne badge in 1951, he recalls spending part of his first leave at the Kelly home in Towson.
Patty's mom gave him directions to Towson High School, so he could go there and walk her home.
When he arrived at the school, he was told to wait, that Pat would be coming down the hallway.
"The next thing I knew, every speaker in the school announced to 'Patricia' that her soldier friend was waiting at the office for her," he said. "The rooms emptied and students lined the hallways whistling and carrying on as Pat came toward me.
"Both our faces were red as could be, and we were glad to leave the school grounds."
During his visit, he and Patty discussed their future and acknowledged their desire to be together, he said.
A few months after he returned to duty at Fort Benning, he received a letter from her. She had decided to become a Jehovah's Witness missionary instead.
"Patty's mom was a Jehovah's Witness, and Patty loved God as her mom did," he said. "Although I was terribly hurt by her letter, I was also very happy for Pat. I loved her beyond being selfish and never stopped loving her for who she was and what she was -- a beautiful person."
He went on with his life. He married and had two sons.
In 1955, he secured a legal separation and took custody of the boys. He began writing to Patty, who indeed had become a missionary, and he ended up celebrating News Year's Eve with her in the Kelly home.
Again, they decided they wanted to be together.
But her father, a widower by then, didn't like the idea of her raising someone else's children. Her father told her if she continued to see him, she would have to leave their home.
At her request, Wilkins backed off, partly because Patty had told him that she had reached out to him for consolation because of her mother's death. He knew in his heart that might be true.
He never saw Patty Kelly again.
Seeking closure
He eventually resumed his marriage and had two more children before divorcing in 1965.
In 1966, on his way back to New York, he stopped at the Edgewood Road address on the remote chance that Patty still lived there. A lady invited him in and gave him tea and pastries, but could not help him.
He then called Kingdom Hall in Towson, where he had attended church services with Patty when he was in the Airborne. He was told by the woman who answered that Patty had married an older man who was high in the leadership of Jehovah's Witnesses, and they had a 3-year-old daughter, but he never found out her married name.
His desire for some sort of closure was thwarted.
His love for Patty was always chaste, he said.
When he was in her presence, he didn't need more, he said. "I was always at peace when I was close to her. I was in love."
He knows it's quite possible that Patty has passed away.
"If so, I would like to know where she's interred so that I could visit her grave and pay my respects," he says.
"If she still lives, and I pray that she does, I would like to make contact with her. However, I am an honorable man and would respect whatever her desires in this regard may be."
He has had a recurring dream about Patty through the years.
In it, he and Patty are walking on a hill blanketed with flowers overlooking a valley.
They are always dressed in the same clothes, he said. She is wearing a flowered dress, white socks, black shoes, a bonnet, and she is carrying a basket of flowers.
He is dressed in a button-up shirt, knee socks, a cap, shoes and knickers.
He can't understand why the knickers are in the dream. He hated them and would hide them to get out of wearing them, he said.
"The dream just comes to an end with nothing of importance happening," he said. "Maybe the important thing about these dreams is that we are together."
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ramtrucker
That's a very touching story. I hope the two are reunited. I myself have often wondered what happened to a little blonde girl, Jerri, that I had a crush on in the little three room grade school she and I went to located a few miles west of Yakima, WA. In the mid-late '40s, we didn't even have indoor plumbing facilities.