Newspaper Clipping of the Day, Christmas Edition

Via Newspapers.com

Usually, my annual Christmas clipping post contains an array of varying horrors. However, this year features one story: a holiday tragedy that at one point, looked as if it had a happy ending...only to revert back to tragedy. And enduring mystery.  The “Boston Globe,” December 25, 1999:

GLOBE CORRESPONDENT HOBART, Okla. - For nearly a half-century, the owners of this town's newspaper have known the truth about Lewis Edens' missing daughter and never reported it. Joe Hancock honored his father's request to keep the story out of the paper, to keep it a secret. Now, however, on the 75th anniversary of the Babbs Switch schoolhouse fire that killed 26 people, Hancock says the full story should be told.

The Dec. 24 fire at the one-room schoolhouse at Babbs Switch, a small community about 5 miles south of the county seat of Hobart, is one of the state's worst tragedies. The story is known throughout Oklahoma for several reasons: So many people died; it occurred on Christmas Eve; and little Mary Edens was never found.

For years, people speculated on Mary's fate. Then one day in 1957, a woman who said she was Mary arrived in Hobart. And that led to the tale Joe Hancock refused to tell until this week.

The story began on Christmas Eve 1924, when more than 100 parents and students crowded into the 26-foot-by-36-foot school-house. The dirt highway was slick with a light frosting of snow. Those who drove their Model Ts drained the water from their radiators to keep them from freezing.

The program began at 8 p.m. By 8:30, Dow Bolding, 16, was handing out presents. He gave a doll to 4-year-old Lillie Biggers Braun; the doll nearly was as big as she was. He gave mechanical tarantulas to Edward and Gene Bolding, his kid brothers who shared a double desk in the front row. As Dow reached for a sack of candy tied to a limb of the Christmas tree, he caused a candle on the tree to ignite the dry, brittle cedar.

Gene Bolding, 81, is one of three survivors of the fire still living. He said he remembers that as his older brother and others tried to put out the fire, they knocked over the tree, which in turn knocked over a kerosene lamp, which exploded. At that point, Bolding said, a farmer escorted him and Edward outside. But Edward had left his new spider on the desk and dashed back in for it. He never came out.

Braun was with her mother, who dropped her during the rush for the door. "Mama started out with me," she said. "I got knocked down from her, and couldn't get up. I was crawling out, going one way, toward the door. I remember the screaming above me. It was the teacher, and she was going the other way."

The teacher, Florence Terry Hill, died that night. Braun became famous as the little girl who dragged her doll to safety. But two of her brothers died in the fire. Gene Bolding lost his brothers Dow and Edward and his sister Maggie. But it was the story of Mary Edens that most intrigued those who know about the fire.

Mary, who was 3, was with her aunt, Alice Noah. Noah escaped, but died several days later from smoke inhalation. Before she died, however, she told Mary's parents that she had carried Mary to safety and handed her to someone. In the years that followed, Lewis and Ethel Edens nurtured the hope that Mary was alive.

In January 1957, a man in California began writing to a fellow Lion's Club member in Hobart. Elmont Place had seen a story about Mary, and thought a friend of his might be the missing child. After many letters, telephone calls, and a blood test, most were convinced that Grace Reynolds of Barstow, Calif, was the Edens' long-lost daughter.

Reynolds and her newly adopted infant son arrived in Hobart on Feb. 9, 1957, to a great welcome. News of the reunion made papers from California to North Dakota to Michigan. Reynolds and the Edens appeared on Art Linkletter's "House Party" television program.

Back in California, however, someone who claimed to be a sister of Reynolds telephoned a reporter at the Stockton (Calif.) Record. Dorothy Link had seen an Associated Press photo of Reynolds with her newfound parents and told the reporter she was an impostor.

The reporter sent a telegram to the Hobart Democrat-Chief, which began its own investigation. By May, the Stockton reporter had a notarized statement from Goldie More saying that she was Reynolds's birth mother. (Reynolds was Grace's married name, and she was separated from her husband when she went to Hobart.) When the reporter confronted Reynolds and asked whether she persisted in her claim, she said she was not claiming anything yet and that she was going to hire an attorney. At that point, Ransom Hancock, owner of the Democrat-Chief, took his evidence to Lewis Edens. Joe Hancock, 70, who now owns who now owns the newspaper, remembers the day well. "Dad took all this information, met with Lewis at his house, maybe in the yard," Hancock said. "Dad was really shook up having to tell him, and Lewis went through the trauma of finding out" Then Edens asked his friend for a consideration, a favor that has kept the full story about Reynolds out of the newspaper until this week.

Lewis Edens said to Ransom Hancock: “Look, my wife believes this girl, she believes she's found her daughter.” He asked that the story be withheld until his wife's death. Hancock, the editor, agreed. "Dad said, 'I just can't run that' And he didn't" Joe Hancock said.

The story remained a secret until yesterday. The Democrat-Chief published it simultaneously with the Daily Oklahoman. Hancock shared the long-secret letters and telegrams with a reporter for that paper. "We decided that now is the time to tell it" Hancock said. "Some of the people here through the years have questioned Grace's story and are suspicious of it. It's time to get that missing-baby deal put to rest; it's over. Now everybody will know for sure."

Hancock said he believes his father's decision reflects a sense of humanity and compassion that has been lost in modern journalism. "I know good and well he was right, and I don't know if I would have had the wisdom to do that" Hancock said.

"I hope we don't get away from having some feeling for the survivors," he said. "Mr. Edens knew she was a hoax. Mrs. Edens believed the story and accepted her for her daughter. I'm sure that gave her a peace that she never would have gotten."

Reynolds lived with members of the Edens family for a couple of years, then moved to Idaho and later West Yellowstone Park, where she ran a series of restaurants. Lewis Edens died in 1978 at 81, and Ethel Edens died in 1984 at 88, never learning of the secret.

Reynolds eventually remarried and today is named Mary Edens Grossnickle. Now 78 and living in northeastern Colorado, she still says she is Mary Edens and isn't bothered by the doubters. "I really don't care what they think," she said. "It just bounces off of me.” Of the notarized statement by More, Grossnickle wasn't surprised she signed it. "She was scared," Grossnickle said. "If she wasn't my birth mother, then she was a kidnapper."

Etta Henderson, who lives in Oklahoma City, is one of the Edens' daughters. Like everyone else, she believed they had found their sister in 1957. But she learned about the suppressed newspaper story sometime in the 1970s. Grossnickle's son, Lee, still contacts Henderson occasionally, and still calls her aunt.

That's fine with her; she likes Lee. She has no illusions, however, about Grossnickle. "My daddy figured it out real quick, but we did not want to hurt our mother," said Henderson, 76. "I am not saying she is an impostor. I wouldn't. But I am saying she is not my sister."

Mary Grossnickle died in 2008, insisting to the last that she was Mary Edens.  A DNA test would have resolved the dispute over her identity, but as far as I know that was never done. I suppose it suited everyone involved to let sleeping genes lie.