In Search of My Missing Grandmother

 If you have information, please contact Penny at pjsdesk@hotmail.com.

For those of you who don't want to read the long history below, here is some basic information about my grandmother who has been missing for 37 years:

Maiden name: Shirley Elizabeth Frew
Married names: Hansen (husband's name Robert), Stevens (husband's name Clarence), & the last known married name was Tolman (not sure of the spelling - could be Tollman, Toleman, or some other spelling)
Born: December 18, 1921
Place: Laurin, Montana
Mother: Hannah Elizabeth Clapp
Father: William Rose Frew

Physical characteristics:

5'2" tall
105 lbs.
Eyes: blue
Hair: gray or graying (at birth -- dark brown)
Caucasian
False teeth
Deep scar on one shin
Possible appendectomy and hysterectomy
Long slender nose
Small boned
Dental and medical records unknown
Fingerprints taken: Possibly in Seattle and maybe LA
No tattoos

Known addresses:

1965

117 Gurley #25
Downey, CA 90241

1967

Steve and Shirley Stevens (Clarence went by Steve)
7022 A East Compton
Paramount, CA 90723

1969

Pacific View #26 (this was a hotel)
21 Locust
Long Beach, CA 90802

Last time anyone heard from her: October 1969 - She talked to her daughter, was drunk, and said she was going with her new boyfriend to a state that started with an M for a visit. The last time she talked to her mother, she asked for money to see a doctor because she thought she was dying of cirrhosis of the liver.

To answer a common question: Yes, we have her SS#, but I won't be posting it here for obvious reasons. It was found on a medical invoice and we're assuming it is correct. It is not found in the Social Security Death Index. Either her death wasn't reported to them due to being unidentified, or she is still alive. 85 years would be a remarkable amount of time to live for an alcoholic who smoked, but I guess stranger things have happened. My mom was convinced though that she would never be able to bring herself to end contact with her family.

This is the most recent picture of my maternal grandmother, Shirley Elizabeth Frew. She was born on December 18, 1921 in Laurin, Montana to Hannah Elizabeth Clapp (maiden name) and William Rose Frew. I don't know that much about her - her likes and dislikes, what her childhood was like, and I never had a chance to ask her those things because I never met her. She disappeared 37 years ago this month.

When I was a little girl, my first memory of learning about my grandma was at my Aunt Carol's house. She kept a picture of her on a desk in one of her rooms - the one shown above. She looked like a movie star to me and I felt very proud to be related to someone so beautiful. I never imagined that her story would be one of the saddest I would ever hear. My mom shared her story with me little by little as I grew up and I understood early on that she had ups and downs as a result of being raised in the most neglectful way and losing her mom. Despite everything she has been through, she is an amazingly positive, fun woman and a wonderful mother. I blew off any of her grouchy moments as something to be expected from someone who had been through so much, and those were pretty rare, plus they were always followed by the most sincere, loving apology. And being a mother of three boys, I know now how frustrating children can be! :-D

My grandma and grandpa and my oldest aunt when she was still an only child

My mom had happy memories too and remembers the days before her mother started drinking heavily. She says she was a lot of fun and made her laugh a lot. When she caught my mom stealing candy from the store, she did what any good parent would do and made her take it back and apologize for what she did wrong. According to her, it was my grandpa who had trouble with alcohol first and she thinks his experiences in the war had something to do with that. He was shell shocked. Eventually my grandma followed along until they were both neglectful alcoholics.

One night Shirley gathered up all five children and took them to another state. I don't know what happened between them that led to this, but I know at one point he was driving drunk with her in the passenger seat and they got in an accident. She got a horrible gash in her shin and her teeth knocked out. My mom thought for years that her teeth were pulled out due to gum disease, but she was recently told that it was from the accident. She said the kids used to crack-up whenever her false teeth would fall out. She had those by the time she was 30. Anyway, I'm sure there are plenty of things that happened between her and my grandpa that their kids would never and shouldn't know about. When my grandpa discovered they were all gone, he drank himself almost to death and ended up in a mental hospital.

Eventually, my grandpa ended up in a nursing home in Bellevue, Washington where we would go to visit him, usually on special occassions. I never felt like I knew him at all. He seemed like a kind man, offering me his handkerchief when I had the sniffles, making pleasant conversation, and happily posing for pictures. We pretty much had the same conversation repeatedly during our visits because his mind was gone. "Nice day, isn't it?" "Uh huh." "Today's Easter!" "Yep." 5 minutes later, "Nice day, isn't it?" "Yes ..." "Today's Easter!" I remember how he would raise his eyebrows whenever he would talk. I don't think I appreciated at the time how cute that was.

Before we would leave, my mom would ask the traditional, "What do you want for (fill in the holiday)?" question. "Uhhhhhh ... Money!" His eyes would light up under his raised eyebrows as he thought once again that he would be able to outsmart her. Every time she would ask, "What are you going to buy with it?" "Uhhhh ... Cigarettes!" "Ok, Dad. I'll buy you cigarettes." That was always an interesting sight watching my mom buy him a carton of cigarettes at the Commissary to keep him from drinking. Everyone did their best to keep money out of his hands to prevent him from getting drunk, so it was quite the shock when we got the news that he had had a grand mal seizure and went into a coma from his alcohol consumption. We didn't know how he pulled that off until a nurse contacted my mom. She was very sad and asked when the funeral would be, but we didn't have an actual funeral. She thought he was a very sweet old man and she said she found out how he got so drunk. He had been going for walks to the nearest bar with no money and when the bartender said he couldn't give it to him for free, my grandpa would turn around and mope towards the exit, hanging his head. He won the guy's heart and he started giving him free drinks from then on. I guess he sounds like a nice guy, but he made it possible for my grandpa to drink himself to death, so I don't appreciate that so much.

So my grandma became a single mom of five kids. I don't know how she supported them. My mom doesn't even recall owning any toys. For some reason, her mom started leaving them completely unsupervised for months at a time and the kids never knew when or if she was coming back. My mom doesn't know how they survived, how they ate, or met any of their other needs, but eventually my grandma left for good when my mom was 12 and they all went into foster homes, being split up in the process. What a tragedy that they didn't even have each other. During that time, my mom heard absolutely nothing from her mother, but found out years later that she would call her mom to check on the kids. I asked my mom, "Did she ever explain herself? Did she say why she left?" She answered, "She decided it was better for the kids to have no mother than a bad mother." I don't know how their lives would be different today if she stayed with them, but I'm sure they would've preferred to have her around.

When my mom was 17 and about to graduate from high school, she finally got a letter from my grandma. Shirley found out my mom was living quite close to her in California and she wanted to visit her. My mom's foster family had moved there and got permission to take her with them. She has been trying to remember why it took her so long to meet with her, but remembers a time she went there for dinner. Her mom ended up not being there and she cooked dinner for her mom's new husband, Clarence Eugene Stevens - nicknamed Steve. Her mom sent another letter saying she thought she would've heard from her by then and my mom wonders if she was punishing her, but she doesn't recall being angry towards her. Sadly, she learned this week that her three sisters received letters from their mom all those years while they were in foster care. I guess that time was too painful to talk about, so I was very surprised to learn that my mom and her brother had no idea anyone was hearing anything from her. My aunt's foster family even took her down to California for a visit. During my search for my grandma, it became necessary to ask my mom questions again and I never thought it would lead to her receiving such a blow after all these years. I didn't want her to get her hopes up - I just wanted to find her mother without saying a word to her, but there was too much information I needed.

That's my grandma on the very right. She made it to my mom's bridal shower. That must've been a really happy day for all of them.

After their initial contact, my mom continued to receive some very nice letters from her mother and I consider those such a treasure. As we searched for information, I suddenly realized I had never seen my grandmother's handwriting or even had those letters read to me. I always thought that she disappeared before my brother was born, but here she was writing about how she wanted to meet him when he was about two months old. That was March 1969 - the last letter my mom ever received from her. She was living at a hotel in Long Beach while looking for a new apartment and said she had started working graveyard at the Greyhound Post House. Being clueless as to what a post house was, I looked it up and it was a cafeteria at Greyhound depots. It was such a joy to learn something about her! I never knew her, but I love her. My love for her grows when I learn something new about her, especially when I read the sweet things she wrote to my mom.

At times when I was a teenager, I felt pretty angry about her abandoning my mom and her siblings. One day I was visiting my mom when my first son was little and she said, "I wish my mom were here to see him. I think she would really enjoy this." I thought, "Who? What?" I must've looked pretty surprised. There was no bitterness or anger from her and I wasn't quite sure if I heard her right. She said, "I think you really would've liked my mother." That was an eye opening experience for me. My mom who had been so neglected still had love for her mother and I have since learned to love her too. She just saw her as being sick and the alcohol made her into someone else.

Later on in 1969, my grandmother called her mom who we called "Nonny" and asked for money to see a doctor because she thought she was dying of cirrhosis of the liver. I thought for a long time that that was her last conversation with anyone in the family, but my aunt told my mom this last week that she was the last one to talk to her. Nonny didn't give her any money, so I thought maybe she was mad or that she was very ill and did in fact pass away. During her last conversation with my aunt, she was drunk, said she had a new boyfriend, and that he was taking her for a visit to a state that started with an M. My aunt is pretty sure it wasn't Montana. Her husband Clarence had died of emphysema not too long before that and then she married a man with the last name Tolman (we're unsure of the spelling) in Washington State. I'm assuming she divorced Tolman before she got her new boyfriend and I'll be checking into that soon. Who knows if she really took that trip and if she did, who knows if she came back?

After no contact for a long while, everyone must've thought she was being her usual flaky self, but then it became long enough that her family started searching for her. My mom contacted the Salvation Army, used the Social Security letter forwarding service (they couldn't find a current address for her), and they all tried a number of things for years. My mom even received an unhelpful yet sympathetic response from Dear Abby. It wasn't until 1979 or 1980 that my aunt filed a missing person's report at the police station in Provo, Utah. This should've been passed on to the authorities in California, but after speaking to a detective there, they have no record of that report. She said the record is supposed to remain there until the person is found. Either it was mishandled or they found her and no one bothered to tell our family.

Eventually, they gave up on finding her. They figured she just passed away and no one was able to identify her. It was too emotionally draining to search for her anymore. They tried a detective, they tried 1-800-USSEARCH or something similar to it, and when I was little, I remember we were visiting some people who my mom thought knew her mother. It turned out they didn't know her and I still remember how upset she was. We walked down the hallway as she cried and my dad tried to console her. I can't imagine having to deal with that kind of disappointment over and over again.

When my grandpa finally passed away after being in his alcohol induced coma for a week, my mom and her siblings had a memorial service for both of their parents, which they had privately by a tree in the Yakima, Washington area. That was the closest thing they were going to get to closure and they seemed to make their peace with it. I, however; did not. It seemed impossible to me for anyone to find her, but it still bothered me. I think everyone is entitled to know if their mother is alive or not, what happened to her, where she was, and when she passed away. Years later after the invention of the Internet, the wheels in my head started turning (slowly) and I began to wonder if that might enable us to find my grandmother. I sat on that idea for a while, then advancements in DNA happened and I would have passing thoughts about how that might give us hope again.

Years later when I finally got a computer with Internet, I started toying with the idea of finding her, but I was afraid to get my hopes up. I located contact info for a coroner in LA County and he did a search based on her description. Nothing. Dang it. I started to search for more ideas, but life got busy and I was fed up with my dial-up modem. I put the idea aside for a while until last month when I had a dream. In my dream, I found my grandmother alive not too far from where I live and I was trying to talk her into coming to see my mom. She didn't want to because she was too ashamed, but I convinced her that my mom wouldn't be mad - she just wanted to see her and know her again. Just when we were pulling up in front of her house, I woke up. That was a disappointment because I was really looking forward to the happy reunion. As I woke up halfway, I realized I had a big smile on my face just as my husband was leaning over to kiss me goodbye before he left for work. I woke up thinking, "I can't believe my grandma is still alive!" As I became less groggy, I realized that that is highly unlikely, but the strong impression remained with me that I needed to find her and that I shouldn't give up for any reason. My grandmother's children are getting older and I have this sense of urgency - I just have to find her before any of them pass away not knowing what happened to her. I believe they will know her in Heaven, but I still feel it is so important to find out what happened to her in this life.

So far, I have spoken with several detectives and coroners, I am writing to various TV shows in hopes of gaining some publicity in case anyone out there knows anything, I wrote to Greyhound to ask if they might have any employment records on her, and I am about to try the Social Security letter forwarding service again. I have also started the gruesome task of going through Jane Doe files in various places. It is a very sad thing and I have to take breaks and lift my spirits again. It is upsetting to see so many people who were never identified either because no one missed them or the ones who missed them didn't know where to look. I'm beginning to think that my grandmother didn't end up in California after all and that may be what has prevented anyone from finding her. Back then, they didn't have the technology we do now, enabling people to coordinate information.

And now it just occured to me that if I started a blog about my grandmother, someone out there might stumble upon it and know something about her. Even if they knew something that didn't lead to discovering where she is, I would be blessed to have the opportunity to know more about her.

And Grandma, if you are out there miraculously, come home. If not, please be my angel and help me find you. I love you.

Love,
Sarah (just one of your many grandchildren who would love to know you)