Feb 12, 2006 - 02:05:47 CST
Bismarck Tribune
By KAREN HERZOGBy KAREN HERZOG
Mary Beck's first child, Frieda, was born in 1914. Her last child, also a girl, was born in Minot May 27, 1933. In between, she bore three other daughters and three sons.
Mary Beck died in early June 1933 of uremic poisoning and other complications from that final childbirth. Frieda wanted to take the baby home, but Mary said no - she knew her other children couldn't take care of a newborn and themselves as well. So she asked the doctor to find a good, loving home for this baby.
The children's father and mother had divorced before the birth, and Mary Dockter had taken back her maiden name, Beck. Around this time, the children's father moved out of state with another woman, leaving the first seven children, the youngest 4 years old, to be cared for by Frieda, 19, and Alfred, 17.
Mary Beck was buried in the Velva cemetery. It was 1933, during the Great Depression. Very few people had anything, said her son, Walter J. Dockter, 80, a longtime Bismarck resident now living in Walnut Creek, Calif.
"We were dirt, dirt, dirt poor," he said. "How we made it, I don't know."
"One thing I'm grateful for, we learned to work together and help each other."
Dockter, only 8 when his mother died, said he just learned recently that his older siblings remember seeing that baby girl.
"They didn't talk about it," he said. "They wanted to spare us the pain. All of us were concentrating on trying to survive."
In July, when Velva celebrated its centennial, Wallace Dockter and his younger brother, Lloyd, of Brush Prairie, Wash., who was 4 when their mother died, came to North Dakota for the celebration.
It was there that Wallace Dockter broached the subject that was on his mind.
"If I can just find our sister, I can go in peace," he said. Lloyd Dockter said it had been on his mind, too.
"We realized that time was not on our side," Wallace said. With the siblings in their 70s, 80s and 90s, "we were concerned that we might lose any one of us" at any time, he said.
So on July 17, the family petitioned the district court in Minot for information about that baby girl born in 1933, whom none of them had seen in 72 years.
"I tried to couch my words that, if she wasn't interested, at least she would let us know. Everything was "please,'" Wallace said. "We wanted to respect her privacy."
With the help of Julie Hoffman, state adoption services administrator in Bismarck, and Bismarck attorney Sarah Vogel, Wallace Dockter and the others found the names of their little sister's adoptive parents, Walter and Evelyn Eklund. Through the Social Security death index, they found obituaries for both; among the survivors, a daughter named Patricia Essen of Powers Lake.
Wallace Dockter made his first call from California to the Essens in Powers Lake about noon Pacific time on Nov. 17, four months to the day since the first petition to the court, he remembers.
No answer.
A couple of hours later, he called again. Still no answer except the machine.
So he left a message:"I'm Wallace J. Dockter. I'm doing genealogy work, and maybe Pat Essen can help me."
The third time he called, it was suppertime in North Dakota.
This time Ken Essen picked up the phone. Wallace Dockter delivered his message again.
Pat was not at home, Ken said. He told him to call back about 10 o'clock.
At 10, Wallace Dockter dialed the phone for the fourth time, with his wife, Grace, sitting beside him.
Learning about adoption
Pat Eklund Essen was 13 when her parents told her she was adopted.
She'd had no inkling. Shocked, numb, "Inever said anything for a week," she said. Finally, she thought, "they've been my mom and dad all these years; they're still my mom and dad."
In the years afterward, she did wonder about her biological family, because she knew there were siblings. She tried searching for the family but didn't know her biological father's last name.
Finding his sister
At 10 p.m. Nov. 17, Wallace dialed Powers Lake for the fourth time. This time, Pat answered.
He said, "I'm looking for a lost sister."
Pat said immediately, "My mother was Mary Beck."
Wallace said, 'My mother's name was Mary Beck.'
"I have two mechanical heart valves, so my health was a little questionable," he said with a small laugh. "I was shaking."
"I said, 'You're my sister,' and she said, 'You're my brother.' We talked and started crying and talked and cried some more. We ended up talking for an hour and a half.
"It was such a tremendous, tremendous experience.
"Like a dream, but there she was."
"When I received the phone call, I was elated. I was in shock," Pat said.
"Icouldn't hardly believe it. But it was absolutely wonderful."
Meeting a brother
Six of Pat's seven siblings live on the West Coast, in Washington, Oregon and California. Only her brother Alfred lives in North Dakota, at Granville.
So he was the first one she met in person. They arranged a dinner together in Minot.
Alfred's health didn't permit him to travel to Washington State in January for Pat's reunion with her other siblings, but as he said to Pat, "At least I was the first one to hold you in my arms."
A reunion
At the reunion, Pat's brothers and sisters welcomed her with open arms.
"I couldn't have asked for a better family, and that's not taking away from the family Ihad," she said. Her adoptive brother, Dalhart Eklund, who lives in California, had called Wallace immediately after the first contact to arrange a get-together between their two families.
At the reunion, Pat said, "every time I turned around, someone said, 'I love you.' They treated me like a queen."
They told her that this was a missing link finally replaced in their lives.
Even resemblances that were looked for came as a surprise.
"Frieda, while eating one day, looked up and grabbed her chest," Pat said. "I asked, 'Are you all right?'
"She said, "When Ilooked at you, I saw mother.
"You look so much like mother."
Another reunion
Since the connection was made, the phone lines have been hot with all the siblings calling each other, Pat said.
The three brothers and Pat, along with nieces and nephews, will get together again this spring in North Dakota to celebrate Alfred's 90th birthday, which is March 30.
"Our three girls will get to meet them," Pat said. "That's absolutely a joy."
A happy ending
Mary Beck must have been a strong person, Pat said, to have known she was dying and yet to take care to make arrangements for her baby's future in a good and loving home.
"It had to take a lot of courage for mother," Wallace said. "I very much remember the last time we saw her," he said. "The younger ones had been asking, 'Where's momma?' So someone took us up to Minot to see mother. I remember that we took turns kneeling by the bed.
"I remember that I had, like all kids, done something naughty, before this. Mother said to me, 'Wally, be a good boy.' That has stayed with me all my life. When I'm doing something I'm not proud of, I think of mother saying, 'Be a good boy.'"
Seventy-two years later, Mary Beck's children are all together again.
"It would have been wonderful if it had been sooner,"Pat said. "But I'm just so thankful that it happened at all."
(Reach Karen Herzog at 250-8267 or karen.herzog@; bismarcktribune.com.)
Maranda H. wrote on Nov 23, 2006 10:18 PM:
one reader wrote on Aug 29, 2006 12:17 PM:
Comments are reviewed for taste, tone and language before posting.
Some comments may be used in the Tribune's print edition.
We value and respect your privacy, but The Bismarck Tribune might
disclose certain information to governmental entities if served with subpoena.