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Who Was Dr. Hicks
To listen to some of the long-time residents of the small mining town of McCaysville, Georgia, Thomas Jugarthy Hicks appeared to be a kind and caring doctor with a charming personality. With a medium build and reddish hair, he has been described as a happy-go-lucky man. He was a man who shared fresh eggs and vegetables from his farm and he was more willing to treat the poor than other doctors.
He was known to house pregnant women if they had no place to stay, providing a room for them at his farm, in the New York Hotel in Copperhill, Tennessee, or in his apartments in the telephone company building.
He donated a Wurlitzer to the First Baptist Church on Toccoa Street where he was an active member and in attendance on Sunday morning. On Monday morning, just two doors down from the church, Hicks performed abortions in his small community clinic. Daughters of wealthy families were flown in when they found themselves "in trouble." They were driven to the clinic by a chauffeur.
Local historian, Grace Postelle, speaks of Hicks as a "leading citizen" and a man who was ahead of his time. According to Postelle, his business was permitted after a number of prominent girls had been sent to Knoxville for illegal abortions only to return in coffins.
No Stranger to Legal Entanglements
In 1964, it's believed that a number of doctors, who were making much less money than Hicks, orchestrated his arrest. He agreed to surrender his Georgia medical license and the charges against him were dropped. He continued his practice for an indeterminate amount of time.
This was not the first time Hicks had trouble with the law. At one time, Hicks was employed by the Tennessee Copper Company. He treated miners for lung disease and due to his apparent love of money, we submitted more claims than there were miners. He lost his Tennessee medical license after selling narcotics to an undercover agent.
He served time in prison and upon his release, he relocated his office about three blocks from his Tennessee home, in the state of Georgia, where he continued to "practice medicine" performing abortions and selling babies.
It will help you to understand that McCaysville is a small town which sits essentially in the two states. It's been said that a couple can walk down he aisle of St. Catherine of Laboure in Tennessee but will be in Georgia when they say their vows at the altar.
Locals Recall The Man and The Doctor
Doris Abernathy, local historian with her sister, Postelle, wasn't surprised that Hicks aborted babies and yet spared others for adoption. "He's a very complex person; he was really a double person," she said. She adds "who of us is all good or all bad?"
This writer aware of the depth of truth there is to Abernathy's comment. She is speaking of the same man who removed a watch from the arm of a dying man (hence his nickname "Bulova"), the same man who once sold a broken stove to a man by baking a load of bread in another stove, placing it in the broken one and adivsing the man not to touch the stove as it might be hot and the same man who had a number of mistresses to whom he would "farm out" pregnant women who had no place to stay during the last two months of their pregnancies.
Marlene Matham Hardiman rented an apartment from Hicks. She recalls that "Dr. Hicks would send a cab; babies were taken away in planes. We didn't know if this was true. We heard an awful lot of things." She is honest in saying she didn't like Hick but also notes that "he didn't perform any service that anyone didn't request." Marlene Hardiman concludes by asking, "After all these years, why fool with it?" Well, she's not a Hicks Baby so I guess she doesn't understand.
Folks in the town either loved or hated Hicks. "There are no neutral feelings about him; it's either acid or alkaline. You're on one end or the other," according to William Wright who grew up next door to the Hicks Farm.
Flint Davis, who ran the Tasty Freeze, recalls,"we'd have out-of-town people looking for Dr. Hicks at night or on weekends. I don't know for sure why they had come, but I assumed." Others recall limousines parked in the alley behind Hicks' clinic; they remember hearing about women flying into the airstrip at Ducktown and stewardessses driving up from Atlanta.
What everyone in this small town, at the southern end of the Appalachian Trail, knew and few spoke of was that if you had the money and you knew the number to call, you could buy a baby. You might have to wait a few weeks, you wouldn't be guaranteed of the child's gender and you'd need to be prepared to make the trip at the drop of a hat.
Who Sought Out Hicks?
One such woman was Delores Hammond, a frightened young woman of 21 years from Chattanooga. She was separated from her husband, who didn't want any children, and unemployed. During the last two months of her pregnancy, Delores lived in a small room behind the local beauty parlor which was managed by one of Hicks' mistresses, Vera. Delores worked in the beauty parlor and stated that Hicks often came over to have lunch in Vera's apartment. She knows her baby was born alive, she heard its cry but never saw it. She was told by Vera that a couple drove off with her baby boy in a big Cadillac.
Hicks was well known in Atlanta and Chattanooga for his discrete services, so well known that reference to his clinic was made by Anne Rivers Siddon in her book Peachtree Road. She never knew the name of the doctor but speaks of "girls from very substantial, fine old Southern families who knew that their boyfriends would know how to contact the doctor. According to Siddons, "We were all working downtown. You'd be instructed to go early in the morning to a downtown street corner and a limosine would pick you up."
Edna McPherson, an Ohio resident, purchased three babies; the last being the most expensive as it was a preemie that needed extra care. She knew each time she got the call, she and her husband had one day to get there or a new call, to the next person of the list, would be made.
The McPhersons made the return trip to Akron, Ohio, with baited breath, fearful they would be stopped by the highway patrol and knowing the birth certificate for the infant they had in the car, wouldn't arrive for a few weeks. It would be falsified and bear their own names as birth parents.
It is believed that of the dozens of babies Hicks sold, 49 of them were taken to Summit County, Ohio. Forty-seven of those babies were bought by fathers employed by the Akron Tire Company; the other two being purchased by a physician in Cuyahoga Falls. All of the babies arrived with birth certificates which listed the adoptive parents as the birth parents. They all paid up to $1,000 per baby with the guarantee that this was a baby which no one could trace back to its mother. The sale of the Summit County babies was arranged by a West Akron Goodrich employee who bought four babies for herself.
Jane Blasio's Story
One of the Hicks Babies sold to an Akron couple was Jane Blasio. Her parents told her that she was adopted the day after a relative slipped and called her a black market baby. The Goodrich employee, named only as Ruth, may be the only person who could help Jane and at the time she was unwilling to talk about it. How unfortunate Ruth's position is for adoptees like Jane.
When she was contacted at her Fairlawn home, Ruth did not deny her involvement. She was born near McCaysville, her family knew Hicks and she spread the word of Hicks baby market around Akron. All she would say is "It's something in the past. It was too long ago...something that I've completely forgotten and put out of my mind."
Jane's need to find the truth took her to the small town in Georgia where Hicks ran his clinic and sold his babies. She is left with a sense of being "chattel," being "sold." Before his death, Jane's father told her what he could remember about the experience. Jane was not the first baby they bought. Her sister, Michelle Renee, was purchased in 1969 for $800. He said they never met the woman who gave birth, but he did catch a glimpse of her long red hair.
Michelle recalls her dad tellling her how Hicks treated the mother who had supposedly just given birth. "They put her in a hospital bed, put a gown on her, then called Dad in. When he came in, she was bottle feeding me."
When Jane arrived 3 1/2 years later, the clinic was rundown and filthy. Jane was passed out the back door, in drive-through window pick-up fashion, with nothing but a diaper on her tiny bottom.
The empty clinic remains, perhaps has been torn down by this writing. Dr. Hicks died of leukemia at the age of 83 years in {year}, his two sons are deceased and his daughter-in-law, Sallie Hicks, claims to have known nothing about the doctor's practice.
There is one person who is willing to help Jane and other Hicks Babies, that being Probate Judge Linda Davis, who happens to be an Akron native and oversees birth records in Fannin County, Georgia.
Judge Davis found it odd that many birth records listed Akron as the "usual residence of the mother" until Jane came to her looking for a birth certificate. The judge now refers all Hicks Babies seeking information to Jane, who has found a family in several other Hicks Babies all of whom are seeking to find their biological parents or at the least, find family medical information.
Judge Davis Makes A Connection
It was Judge Davis who connected Jane with another Hicks Baby, Melinda Elkins. Melinda was purchased from the Hicks clinic by a couple from Barberton, Ohio.
Being adopted never bothered Melinda until she married and became pregnant. It was then that she felt she had to know her medical background. "When you go to fill out medical forms, I have no family history...I write 'I don't know. I'm adopted.'"
After being diagnosed with breast cancer, her mother tried to offer her some consolation. "There are no records. There's nothing you can find. It's something you have to live with," she said.
Then a stranger called; a man from Georgia said he purchased a doctor's home and found some medical records in the basement. After giving Melinda a woman's name and describing the woman as having red hair, green eyes and being 33 years of age, he promised to send Melinda the file he claimed to have found. It never arrived.
The pieces of this puzzle didn't fit together. Melinda wasn't able to find a woman by the name she was given. The caller had said he found Melinda by checking the Motor Vehicles Bureau but Melinda's drivers license is under her married name and her phone number is unlisted.
Then another call came. This time a woman called Melinda at her new unlisted number; she was sobbing "Oh, my God, we found you. I have some bad news." The woman went on to say their brother had been killed in an auto accident and they wanted Melinda to come for the funeral. She said she knew Melinda had been contacted two years ago and that they had been waiting for her to call them.
The funeral was to be held on Saturday at 3 p.m. Melinda and the woman agreed to meet at a McCaysville gas station at 1 p.m. As planned, Melinda and her husband stopped at the court house to get a copy of her birth certificate. There she found out she wasn't the only Hicks Baby from Akron. Judge Davis called Jane Blasio and she and Melinda exchanged information. The judge however, was not at ease about Melinda meeting a total stranger at the gas station. She asked a deputy sheriff to position himself near the meeting place and to watch for the purple van that was supposed to pick up Melinda.
Melinda was dressed for a funeral yet hoping for a reunion. She waited for at least half an hour and then cried when she had to admit no one was coming. Checking all funeral homes in a five county area, no one had been killed in an auto accident. The number she was given was no good. I can't help but think I would have checked out some of these things before making the trip, that Melinda is a far more trusting person than I, but no harm came to her and she found a new friend in Jane Blasio.
When Jane and Melinda met, following the trip to Georgia, both were shocked. Melinda, it turns out, looks just like Jane's sister, Michelle. Their meeting produced "oh my Gods" and "wows." They are nearly a mirror image, sharing the same red hair, blue eyes, thin lips, bump on the end of the nose and even the same laugh. They also shared so many personality traits it was uncanny.
As of this writing, I do not know the results of any DNA testing they may have done but they already had felt and looked like sisters. Still, in defense of Dr. Hicks, Melinda's mother says, "He gave you to me, and I cannot condemn him for that."
Balancing the knowledge that she was sold with the knowledge that she was so very much wanted by the parents who purchased her, is a difficult task of the heart. There is a void in Melinda's life that she may never be able to fill.
The woman who looks so much like her, Michelle, a year older, doesn't hold a grudge against Dr. Hicks. She always felt special, knowing that she was chosen. After her adoptive parents died she felt like she didn't belong anywhere. She had nothing from her birth and "the family I borrowed was gone," she said.
A birth registry has been created by Jane Blasio with the help of Judge Linda Davis. Judge Davis, Fannin County courthouse, has taken every call since the public has been made more aware of the illegal adoptions orchestrated by Dr. Hicks. They are hopeful that more women will come forward, that some birth records may still be found and that the chance of intermarriage (which Judge Davis fears may have already happened) will be prevented.
REGISTRY:
Jane Blasio has set up a registry for people adopted out of the Hicks Community Clinic in McCaysville, Georgia. Please send your name, address, phone number and a general description of the circumstances surrounding your birth and adoption, as you know them, to:
Hicks Clinic Babies
P.O. Box 134
Green, Ohio 44232All information submitted by birth parents and adoptees will be held confidential.
Sources:
Akron Beacon-Journal
Black-market Babies Search for Their Past
1997Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Town's Secret - 'Hicks Babies' Find Answers
1997The Florida Times-Union
Adoptees Visit Site of Baby-Selling Clinic
1997The Oak Ridger
Adoptee Starts New Registry for Hicks Babies
1998The Seattle Times
Black-market Babies Search for Their Past
1999USA Today
Baby-Dealer's Legacy Dr. Hicks' Babies May Number 200
Georgia Reunion Brings Together Children Sold in Adoption Business
1997
Return to The Adoption Experience Home Page
A 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.
Some 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.
Over-crowding in orphanages in the east lead to the transport of hundreds of children to the midwest. Most never saw their parents again.
You 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.
Registration 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.
There 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.
Search 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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A Copy Of An Original Manifests Bearing Your Ancestor's Name Is A Lasting Piece Of History
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Get started with the following databases: Canadian Census Records
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helpful and inexpensive as well.
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Important News from the Captain
I want to tell everyone about a new
and FREE genealogy social network that is available to all of you. You can send messages to
genealogists in more than 20 countries, find genealogists who read and speak other languages
and ask a genealogist in over 1600 cities to do a look-up for you.
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