This is your life
April
19, 1957
Los Angeles
Your name is Jay. You are 55. You grew up in the San Fernando
Valley--15224 Willard Way in Van Nuys, to be specific.
You were adopted at birth by a couple named Strickland: Jane and her husband, Edward, a fourth-grade teacher at the Isabelle Buckley School, 4477 Woodman Ave., in Van Nuys. There were other children in the home: Danny, who would be 61 now; Cynthia, 58; and Celeste, 52.
As far as your foster parents were concerned, you were an exceptionally bright youngster. "I defy anyone to find a smarter little boy than this one," your father, Edward, said. "He's really adopting us," your mother said.
There's one other thing we know: You were a little harder to place than other foster children because one of your biological parents was white and the other was Chinese.
The rest is guesswork, because I can't seem to find any trace of you. So I'm left to wonder what it was like for you growing up in the 1950s. Was it the standard baby boomer childhood with a coonskin cap, a hula hoop and trips to Disneyland? How was high school? Did you get drafted and go to Vietnam or have a student deferment? And how about a family?
Maybe someone reading knows the rest of the story. I'd like to know what became of that bright 5-year-old named Jay.
