Fanny was born in 1910, in Vermillion, Minnesota, the fifth of eight children. Her mother, a school teacher, passed away when Fanny was fourteen years old. A home-girl (in the former meaning of that term) she had two sons – the first she had placed for adoption when she was 25 – before marrying at the age of 36, to a man with whom she had a third son. She died in 1979, in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, at the age of 69, and was buried in her hometown. She was never reunited with her first child.
Mason was born in 1913, in Hastings, Minnesota. He fathered a child that was born in 1935 before marrying another woman the following year, and together they had three children. A career in the Minnesota state house was brought short by his alcoholism, and he pursued a life in teaching and high school administration. He died in 1999, in Bellingham, Washington, at the age of 86. There is no evidence to suggest he was ever aware of the existence of his first child.
Lucille was born in 1904, in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1932, at the age of 28, she married Leif. They suffered two miscarriages and a stillbirth before adopting sons from the Willows Maternity Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri in 1935, and again in 1938. A registered nurse, she was employed by the Maternal Health Association, the forerunner of today’s Planned Parenthood of Greater Cleveland. She died in 1982, in Bay Village, Ohio, at the age of 78.
Leif was born in 1904 in Fevik, Norway, immigrating to the United States in 1927, and receiving American citizenship in 1931. He married Lucille in 1932 in Lakewood, Ohio and they adopted two sons. As a younger man he was a merchant seaman, later a member of the IBM Division of Cleveland Trust Bank. He died in 2005, in St. Petersburg, Florida, at the age of 101.
Mathilda was born in 1935, and brought up in Lakewood, Ohio. She married Charles in 1959, with whom she raised three boys in Bay Village, engaged in a traditional, suburban lifestyle as housewife and mother, supporting school organizations and a local food pantry. Following the death of her husband, she resumed a relationship with Archie, her high school sweetheart. Archie was holding her hand when she died in 2020, at the age of 84.
Charles was born at the Willows Maternity Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri in 1935. His adoptive parents raised him (largely) in Lakewood, Ohio. Graduating from Miami University, he was employed by Cleveland Trust/Ameritrust before forced retirement at the age of 53. He married Mathilda in 1959, and they raised three sons in Bay Village, Ohio. He died in 2016 in Lakewood at the age of 80, never having shown any outward interest in his biological heritage.
Aubrey was born in 1970 in Athens, Ohio, to a teenage mother, who raised her as a single mom after Aubrey’s biological father left when she was four, before her mother remarried in 1980. She graduated from high school a year early, moving first to Atlanta, and then to New York City before she turned 18. She moved to Cleveland in 1995, where she established herself as a writer and editor, a high school teacher and bookseller. With Steven she bore three children, the first stillborn.
Steven was born in 1968, in Cleveland, Ohio and raised in the suburb of Bay Village. Shortly after graduating from college he entered into a brief, two-year marriage. He married Aubrey in 1999, with whom he had three children, the first stillborn. He has been an underground theater artist, an arts educator, marketing director, actor, director and playwright. Since 1991 he has lived in Cleveland Heights, the city of great writers.
BorderLight Theater Festival presents The Right Room, a new play by David Hansen and directed by Jasmine Renee, July 16 - 19, 2025.
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