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Cole Babies

Cole Babies are adoptees born in Miami, Florida, between 1927 and 1963, adopted through Katherine M. Cole, Ruby Sutera, or Ephrain Suarez (The Suarez Clinic).

Many Cole Babies who were illegally adopted are still searching for their birth parents. You may be their onle hope.

One such person is Bob Lightner. You can visit Bob's webpage at http://www.afn.org/~w4gj/

Read Bob's story and look at his pictures. Someone out there may be able to help him; it may be you.

When visiting Bob's page, please use your browser's back button to return to this page. Email may sent directly to Bob by clicking on his name.

You can visit the Cole Baby Registry at http://www.stormpages.com/colebabies/ColeReg2.htm

If you are a Cole Baby and would like a link to your webpage or email address on this page, please contact me at istgadoption@aol.com.

Transcribed from The Herald
Miami, FL
Staff Writer John Donnelly

Hunt For Mom Unveils a Dark Miami Secret

In a two-story clinic near Miami's western frontier, a woman gave birth to a girl on March 3, 1946. She called her Carole.

Then she handed the child to the doctor and left.

The doctor didn't record the mother's name. She didn't write the father's name. She didn't scribble the baby's birth height, weight, color of her hair or eyes.

Carole's history would have remained a mystery if not for a slip of the tongue from her dying adoptive mother.

In search for who she is, that child, Carole Landis Baker, now 47, has found out who the doctor was -- uncovering a dark secret in Miami's past.

Dr. Katherine Morris Cole falsified Carole Baker's birth certificate by listing her adoptive parents as her birth parents. Cole, who died in 1981, falsified perhaps hundreds of other certificates the same way, according to a relative and a fellow doctor.

Every year, from the 1930's to the late 1960's, Cole housed up to two dozen young, unwed pregnant women from Dade and Broward counties in two apartments on Southwest Eighth Street and nearby houses. She delivered their babies and found homes for the children, according to Cole relatives.

Word traveled all over the eastern United States that a doctor in Miami could cut throuh the red tape for adoptions and almost immediately find a child. And, the doctor could do it without anyone knowing, until now. Until Carole Baker began her search, which took her to court houses, records warehouses, a newspaper morgue, a cemetery, a prominent judge's chambers and, finally, to the doorstep of of one of Cole's children.

The search began in April 1989 at a family reunion in Chicago. Baker, then 43, was living in California. She was in her second marriage, had three grown children and had held a succession of jobs, including managing restaurants, bars and a video store. She was worried about her mother, Lee Landis, who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease, which leads to dementia. On April 3, before seeing her mother, Baker went for a drive with her older sister, Linda Landis Andrews.

Andrews had something to tell her. "A while back, mother told me 'I never had any childen in my life, and if you don't believe me [me] any doctor can examine me,'"

"What did she mean by that?" Baker asked.

I have a lot to tell you..., Andrews went on.

That must have been a real shock, Baker interrupted, to learn you've been adopted."

"Well, said Andrews, nearly driving off the road, "you are adopted too."

Over the next 24 hours, Andrews told her that Lee Landis had lashed out at Andrews for scheduling a CAT scan. "I took you in when nobody wanted you," Lee Landis screamed. "Your mother was a barfly."

Andrews, a former Chicago Tribune reporter and now a Univeristy of Illinois journalism professor, went to Chicago City Hall. [Name], a clerk searched adoption records on microfilm and began reading aloud the surnames of adoptive mother and the natural mother" ...Landis...Rotto..."

Andrews then opened a phone book and found her heritage. There was one Rotto, Uncle [name]. They met and he said her immediate family was dead. Her mother, father, two older sisters [was] Italian and Lithuanian, died handing over her mother's jewelry.

April 4, during the family reunion, Baker confronted Lee Landis. "Lee did not want to talk about it. She finally said yes, I was adopted," Baker said. "She said, 'Your name was Carole when I got you, and it doesn't make a difference now.'"

That was all Lee Landis would ever say. She died Nov. 10, 1991; Baker's adoptive father, Clyde, a quiet Camel-smoking electrician, had passed away when she was 15.

After the reunion, Baker let the news settle. That summer, she approachhed her extended family; they confirmed Lee Landis' story but knew no details. Her godmother knew Lee Landis wasn't pregnant when she and Clyde went to Miami in January, 1946, staying at the now-defunct Tamiami Trailer Park. And she knew that three months later, Lee Landis returned with a baby.

Search continues - Official documents yielded few leads

Baker sent to Florida for her birth certificate. It contained few clues:

The birthplace was Cole's office, 4725 SW Eighth St.; an "emergency" birth; time of birth 9:15 a.m.; mother entered the clinic at 9 a.m. The mother, Cole wrote, was Lee Landis.

Baker asked the state of Florida for her adoption papers. In adoptions, a judge seals the original birth certificate with the birth parents' names and issues an amended certificate listing the adoptive parents.

The clerk found no sealed records. He suggested looking into other states. Baker searched two possible places; Illinois, her adoptive mother's birthplace and where the family grew up, and Indiana, where her father was born. Again, clerks found nothing.

Over the next three years, Baker searched infrequently. She was busy with other things. One was a move to Tucker, Ga., an Atlanta suburb, for her husband Steven's job.

But on a trip to Orlanda early this year, the two drove on to Miami to see another adoptee -- Charlene Melanson of Hollywood, who had met Andrews in a search group in Chicago.

Baker and Melanson went to find Cole's clinic. It wasn't there. But they stumbled upon Joe Melfa, 79, working in the back of nearby Granada Pharmacy.

Melfa moved to Maimi in 1943. He said Cole sold her clinic in the 1970's to a developer who tore it down to build a small shopping center.

"She was in the baby-selling business," he said, "but she also delivered babies and performed abortions, too. She ran a clinic, with apartments upstairs. Some of these girls, she boarded. I had a grocery store at the time, Melfa's Grocery. Girls would come into my store crying after they came out of her place. Young girls, some of them who were pregnant before.

He knew nothing else. Melanson suggested another source -- Josette Marquess, the state's lone adult adoption services official in Tallahassee.

When Baker called, Marquess responded immediately: In the past two years, eight to 10 people had inquired about Cole adoptions -- the most questions about any physician or lawyer in Florida. In those cases, Marquess found documentation of natural parents. "Aparently, she did some legal ones, too."

She told Baker to look up articles on the Kefauver hearings in Miami on Nov. 14-15, 1955.

Doctor In Spotlight Kefauver hearings focus on baby-selling

"Miami, Sin City Paired As Baby Mart Centers," read the top-of-Page-1 headliine. Underneath it: "Woman Doctor Admits 32 Sales at Kefauver Probe."

There, front and center, was what newspaper editors call display art: a picture of Katherine Cole, her left pinky across her lips, a defiant look in her eyes.

The U. S. Senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency hearing, convened by Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, focused on baby-selling practices in Miami and in Augusta, Ga.; Wichita, Kan.; and the "sin city" of the headline, Phenix City, Ala.

Special counsel Ernest A. Mitler selected two naturopathis physicians as Miami's "evil baby brokers". They were Cole and Efrain Suarez. Naturopaths -- who believe that exercise and diet as opposed to drugs will cure many ailments -- were easy targets. Medical doctors were lobbying to take away their licenses because of different training and philosophy; a law eventually was passed allowing only existing naturopaths to practice. For many, delivering babies was the cornerstone of their practice.

Mitler enlisted the help of Miami Daily News reporter Jane Wood, mother of future Attorney General Janet Reno. Wood went undercover, posing as Mrs. Frederick Zimmerman of New York. Driving a borrowed Cadillac and wearing an enormous fake diamong ring, Mrs. Zimmerman told Cole she wanted to adopt.

Wood said Cole wanted a $500 down payment in cash.
"Would the final total charge be as much as $2,000 to $3,000?" Wood asked.
"Probably not," Wood quoted Cole as saying, "But would you quibble at such a price?"

At the time, the county welfare board supervised independent adoptions. Normal fee for placing a baby: $150, plus prenatal and medical expenses.

Cole wanted payment by check and cash. "The welfare board will think the check is all you paid me," the reporter quoted Cole

When Cole sat behind the giant microphone, she raised her baby-like voice and surprised the subcommittee. She liked Wood, she said, but knew immediately she was a "fraud. I never had anyone fling money around like that before."

Baker, who was now working full time on her search, became fascinated by the personal details of the doctor's life. At the time of the hearing, Cole was 59, mother of five, grandmother of [ ] and great-grandmother of four, practicing naturopat in Miami since 1927. The doctor estimated delivering 2,000 to 4,000 babies in her 28 years in practice.

She made enough money to own two Cadillacs. She employed two maids. She and her second husband Melvin, an accountant, lived in an apartment above the clinic; she rented two other rooms to expectant mothers.

From 1950 to 1955, Cole told the subcommittee, she placed 32 children for adoption, all within Florida. If anything, another person testified that day, those adoptions show Cole's kindness.

So said Ruby Sutera, a folk hero in Miami at the time for adopting six children. She and her husband Louis would be named in 1963 as Dade's "Family With the Biggest Heart."

Sutera referred unmarried women to Cole. "I only know that she's been very nice to the girls. She's the most reasonable person in town to get a baby through." She said Cole charged as little as $75 an adoption.

Wanted: More Details But few still alive who knew doctor

The Kefauver hearing was rich in material, but Baker needed more. Four months ago, her sister placed a classified ad in The Herald's Announcements section, asking for information about Baker's birth. Only one person responded, and she was no help.

Baker called The Herald to ask for all stories about Cole. Her friend Melanson called and asked to speak with a reporter.

This reporter unfolded the clippings on Cole -- neatly filed in a fat, yellow envelope.

Atop the stack was Cole's obit. She died April 29, 1981. In four paragraphs, the story listed the names of her children and reported she practiced for 51 years. It made no mention of her legal troubles.

Other articles did. From 1943 to 1967, police arrested her five times -- once for manslaughter, twice for attempted abortion, once for unlawful possession of barbiturates and once for failure to file a birth certificate. In the birth certificate case, Cole listed the adoptive parents as birth parents. She was cleared of all charges but one, attempted abortion, for which she spent less than a year in jail.

Baker decided it was time to find those who knew Cole. Many were dead: health investigators; policemen; friend Ruby Sutera; and reporter Jane Wood.

Wood's son, Bob Reno, a reporter at Newsday, remembered the case well. He suggested contacting Mitler, Kefauver's special counsel.

Mitler, who lives in Manhattan, now calls his investigation "superficial." He said he did not investigate the 32 adoptions but believed Cole handled hundreds of cases. "Miami was a hub for baby-selling. The culture at that time did not accept unwed mothers. The papers were full of ads to recuit these girls for their babies.

Mitler's other target, Dr. Suaraz, manages an outboard motor shop in Key Largo. Suarez said he arranged four to six legal adoptions through the courts; the Kefauver hearings made no findings against him. He and Cole were acquaintences. "She was a very fine person. She used to get a lot of women out of trouble."

Tears underline words at Broward reunion Mother meets only child after 55 years

For 12 days, Mary Knox and her husband Tom drove from Northern California to South Florida, 3202 miles to think about what she had done 55 years ago.

She had a teenage affair, got pregnant, gave birth, put her newborn girl up for adoption and hardened her heart with the thought she would never see her child.

But at the end of the long road last week, at a Pembroke Pines trailer park, there she was -- Kay Harrison Kramer, 55.
"Hi, Mom," Kay said.
"Hi, Sugar," Mary said.
They hugged -- Tom snapped their pictures -- sized each other up and sat down inside the Knoxes' Shasta trailer to tell the tale of their lives and of a Miami naturopathic healer who helped keep them apart all these years.

She was Dr. Katherine Cole, who systematically arranged hundreds of illegal adoptions in her half-century of practice in Miami, falsely writing on birth certificates the names of the adoptive parents as birth parents.

...Miami Herald's ongoing [story] on Cole led to last week's reunion of birth mother and daughter last month, in the state of Washington. The Herald reunited an adoptive mother and child after a 48-year separation.

...this reunion, don't expect a fairy tale. There is much happiness and love here, but there is pain too. In the coming together after so many years, what may be sweet to one is bitter-sweet to the other.

[Name], the mother is trying to believe it's happening, and then trying to explain her feelings to her daughter -- her only child. It doesn't seem like it's true. "...what we have here is 55 1/2 years of total denial," she said holding her daughter... "But there were very few times when you weren't in the back of my mind."

[Name], the child needs reassurance. For her, the reunion is further complicated because she is suffering because her prescribed treatment, Prozac, recently ran out. [ ] of thought you might get cold feet and turn around," she told her mother. [Her mother] wiped a tear from her eye, "No, no, if I had cold feet, I never would have left home."

When Mary King was 16, she left home in Miami because of the [conflicts] with her stepfather. She met a 23-year-old married man in Daytona Beach, became pregnant. She didn't tell her mother of the pregnancy -- "in those days, they wouldn't have tolerated it" and so she received help from the Salvation Army, which found an older couple in Miami to put her up. "They were my saviors," she said.

[Name] introduced me to Dr. Cole. It was a good thing for me. I couldn't keep the baby; I had no means of supporting it." In an ... apartment belonging to [Cole], Mary lived with three or four others who were unwed and pregnant.

She gave birth on Feb. 10, Dr. Cole whisked the baby into another room before she could see her. The next day, the doctor brought papers to sign and asked the father's name. "The [name] said something like I should never act in any way or tell anyone that I had a baby," she said. "It was short and simple and explicit." It was the last time I had anything to do with her.

Cole, who died in 1981, ran a thriving and lucrative naturopathic practice on SW Eighth Street, known simply as The Trail to those of her generation, delivering thousands and thousands of babies and performing hundreds of illegal abortions in the years before Roe vs Wade.

Called Granny Doc by nearly everyone, Cole was a beloved figure to many patients. But in hindsight, it seems miraculous she practiced for 51 years. Police arrested her at least seven times -- three times related to her sulduggery with her adoptions -- and she became a target [as a result of the Kefauver hearings] in Miami in 1955 on black-market baby selling.

From the Keys to New York City, people knew through word-of-mouth of Coles adoption arrangements. For a fee ranging from $25 to several thousand dollard, Cole would hand over a baby with the doctored birth certificates.

Lyle Harrison, a laundry man and his wife, Willie Lee, lived upstairs from Cole. They wanted a baby badly; Cole promisde to help.

On the morning of March 10, 1938, Cole asked them to pick up their child. When they arrived, Cole handed the girl over, saying she had been born 20 minutes earlier. She said the mother's name was Mary King, which was true, and that she was 14 and from Kentucky, which were false.

When the Harrisons took Kay home, Willie Lee's sister, Irene Jones of Miami, was shocked. You weren't even cleaned up good," Irene would tell Kay years later. That doctor should have gone to jail for what she did to you."

Within two weeks, the newborn was in Jackson Memorial Hospital with a serious eye problem. Medical doctors told the couple the delivering physician must have neglected to put silver nitrate in the infant's eyes; the drops prevent infection. They said the child most likely would be blind.

But after six weeks in the hospital, baby Kay's eyesight had returned. The arrangement with Cole, though, haunted the Harrisons; they wanted a legal adoption. For more than five years, Cole refused to turn over documents. For unknown reasons, she finally relented. When Kay was 6, a judge gave the Harrisons legal custody.

Just a few months later in 1944, Mary King met Tom Knox. After a seven-week romance, the two married in Hialeah. The next year, they moved to Idaho. Tom worked for the forest service; Mary worked as a telephone operator. Over the next 20 years, they lived in Idaho, New Mexico and South Florida, settling in California.

In Miami, meanwhile, Kay blossomed. She had a beautiful singing voice. At the age of 12, before 7,000 people in an auditorium on Key Biscayne, she won Dade's Most Talented Youth competition with a stunning rendition of the aria Il Bacio. Months later, she won the statewide contest.

She declined movie offers and trained under masters such as Arturo di Filippi, giving private recitals and performing in operas and musical comedies. Eventually, the demands drained her. At age 23 she married Al Kramer and left her music behind. The couple had two sons, Christopher and Matthew. But tragedy befell them. Her husband died in 1972 of a brain tumor.

Kay raised her children alone. Over the years her depression would often cripple her, forcing her into perilous emotional and financial straits. In recent times, the Prozac has kept her on keel, and she trains about two dozen singers in her North Miami Beach home.

Her adoptive mother died in 1966; her adoptive father died six years ao. After he passed away, she thought about finding her natural parents but never acted.

On June 6, Kay read the first Herald article about Dr. Cole and one of the Cole babies -- Carole Baker, the driven Georgia grocer who has gone to great lengths to learn of her heritage. A few days later, she called this reporter; she had a piece of information almost no other Cole baby has -- her mother's name, Mary King.

On Sunday, June 27, the Herald's second Cole story appeared with the names of seven more Cole babies. Kay's information was in the 59th paragraph.

On that Sunday, Betty Pass was in her Miami Springs home. She began reading the story on Cole. When she came to the 59th paragraph, she read the name Mary King. She got goose bumps. She read the paragraph twice. Three times. Betty closed her eyes. Mary King was her sister.

On that Sunday, Mary and Tom Knox were in the middle of a long vacation in New Mexico, Betty began calling daily. Almost two weeks later, the Knoxes returned home to Northern California -- for privacy reasons they asked that their hometown stay a secret -- and later that day called Betty.

Years earlier, Mary had told Betty and her two other sisters about giving birth to a baby girl at Dr. Cole's clinic in 1938. Now on the phone, Betty told Mary about The Herald's story on Dr. Cole, about all these Cole babies, about the Cole baby whose mother was Mary King.

Mary lost her breath. Her voice shook. Tears sprang forth. Betty read her part of the story and promised she would send it. Mary busied herself around the house, keeping the million thoughts in her mind to herself.

When the article arrived several days later, she showed it to Tom. He read it silently, showing little reaction. He had known about Mary's baby.
"If you want to contact her, fine," he told her. "If you don't, fine, too. It's strictly your choice."

Two weeks later, at Mary's request, Betty Pass contacted this reporter. She said Mary wanted more information about Kay. After several more telephone conversations, Betty provided Mary's phone number.

On July 29, Mary quietly related the circumstances in 1938. "I had no choice," she said. "I was very naive." At the end of the long conversations, she asked a reporter to break the news to her daughter.

"I think it would be nice to make a connection," she said. "And then, I guess, go on as usual. I never had any other children, you know."

On Aug. 1, this reported told Kay the news. She was stunned at first; after several minutes she broke down sobbing.
"Do you want to call her?"
"Can I?" asked Kay.
"Yes, of course."

She dialed the number. They introduced themselves to each other. "This is such a thrill," Kay said. "You have no idea how happy I am." Kay beamed. "I want to meet you so bad. I want to put my arms around you and hold you and tell you that I love you."

That was nearly three months ago. This reunion would take time. For several weeks, as they got to know each other long-distance, they talked about getting together. Kay wanted to do it immediately, but she had no money to travel to California. Mary and Tom were in no rush. "We just take our time doing things," Mary said.

In the meantime, Kay and Betty Pass, her newly found aunt, developed an overnight bond. "I'm thoroughly in love with her," Betty would say at one point.

In mid-August, Kay, Betty and this reporter went to lunch. Somehow, instinctly, they knew how to kid each other. They laughed the whole lunch. "It's like sitting next to Mary," Betty said. "Her arms are exactly the same. Her hands, too. The way she walks. There's no doubt she's my sister's daughter."

In fact, mother and daughter have many resemblances. They are both pack rats. Both are loners. Both have high insteps, benign cysts on the top of their heads.

As the weeks passed, and Mary and Tom prepared to drive cross-country, Mary began to tell her four siblings about Kay. Her brother, Laton Thompson of Ringgold, Ga., was shocked. He had never known anything. "You're probably a grandmother by now," he told her. "I have two grandsons," Mary said.

On Oct. 6, Mary and Tom left California in their mint 1977 Chevrolet Blazer pulling the Shasta trailer. They drove between 150 and 342 miles a day. Every so often, they stopped to leave messages on this reporter's phone -- from Williams, Ariz; east of McKinney, Texas; west of Vicksburg, Miss.; outside Milton, Fla.

Last Monday, Kay and Mary finally met. They were both a little reticent. Kay said she tried hard to hold her emotions back. Tuesday, Kay began to fall apart.

Then a remarkable thing happened. She got support immediately, from someone who knows what she is going through -- another Cole baby, Carole Baker. The two talked for more than an hour on the phone.

Kay told Carole that her mother had given one important piece of information -- the name of her father. Carole called another adoptee, Charlene Melanson of Hollywood, who within 24 hours provided Kay with the phone numbers of all the persons in the United States with her father's name. She also learned his Daytona Beach business is still operating. They are now trying to find him.

As for mother and child? Wednesday, they seemed so loving together. Mary was overjoyed at how close Kay and her sister, Betty, had become. Kay is back to taking Prozac. Today there is to be a big gathering of family.

Another or Mary's sisters, Ruth Albury of Nassau, is flying in. A former sister-in-law, Martha Harper, may come from Georgia. Kay's son, Christopher, flew in Friday night from Kuwait. Her sons' two girlfriends are due in from Sweden and Texas.

They will drink coffee, eat Betty's famous key lime pie, feel each other out. There is no rush.

I have other news articles to transcribe and I will include then as they are finished.


adopt_expReturn to The Adoption Experience Home Page


blackgrayA fee of as much as $10,000 and in many cases much less, would guarantee delivery of a baby. It didn't matter who you were; no background checks were made and records were often falisfied.


maternitySome maternity homes operated above board, giving good care to the mothers and placing their babies in good homes. Others were no more than extremely profitable baby brokers.


otrainsOver-crowding in orphanages in the east lead to the transport of hundreds of children to the midwest. Most never saw their parents again.


otnewsYou can read about these trains and the agencies who provided the young travelers who rode them, carrying few belongings and not knowing where they would end up.



regdayRegistration Day (Reg Day) happens once each year; it's purpose is to encourage and support. Any birth family member or adoptee can register at ISRR.net for free.


angelsThere are many search angels. Some work entirely for free, some work on a no find-no fee basis and others charge very reasonable rates. This page coming soon.


supportSearch and support groups exist all over the internet. Many such groups work certain state and others work nationwide. Some groups are more active than others. In this section, I'll provide links so you can join the groups which are best suited to your individual search; there is no fee.


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