‘I kicked my way out’

Jessica Diehl didn’t know how she would react when she walked into the field.

It’s not much of a field. Actually, it’s a mostly forgotten strip of land between a couple of housing developments in Rockdale.

It was the second time she had been there, but the first time she would walk in.

Sometime before June 1, 1981, Diehl—then a newborn and unnamed—was abandoned there.

Her trip back this month produced an avalanche of information, some of it shocking.

“I learned that I was placed inside a paper bag, wrapped in a towel and there was dried blood on me,” she said.

“I kicked myself out of that paper bag and started squalling. Someone heard me and that’s why I’m here today,” she added.

There’s no manual, not even on the Internet, for how to act in that kind of “homecoming.”

STORY—Her journey back to Rockdale actually did begin on the Internet.

Diehl, a resident of Charlotte, North Carolina, had only been told the barest circumstances of her beginnings after being in a loving foster home for years.

So she went searching online for any information about a baby being left in a field in Rockdale in 1981. That led her to find the Reporter’s photo of the baby, a nurse and a policeman (page 8A). It was taken by then Reporter Publisher-Editor Bill Cooke.

Cooke was identified in a photo caption credit line.

Diehl did some searching and found Cooke’s Reporter online address. She sent him this email:

“I was interested to see if you had done an article on an abandoned baby back in 1981, June 4th. I see your name at the bottom of it I was just curious if you were still with the Rock-dale Reporter. Thank you, Jessica.”

Cooke is mostly retired but his office email was being checked by current Editor Mike Brown, who replied to Diehl.

That led to a Reporter story earlier in July, lots of new information for Diehl and her two-day visit to Rockdale. It answered some questions, but left many more unanswered.

“So much has happened as a result of that story,” she said.

‘DUSTY’—Diehl now believes she knows who her mother is—The Reporter, of course, won’t reveal that name or any others connected with this story—and has gotten to visit members on both sides of that family, including a grandmother and an aunt.

There were also some “Twilight Zone” moments in her Rockdale visit. “One person to whom I am related walked in and it was the face I’d been looking at in my mirror. It was me!” she said.

In some of the most touching moments, she was reunited with a state case worker who was a part of her story and a member of the Cameron family which first adopted her.

“I’m so proud of myself for kicking my way out of that paper bag. I think I was as strong then as I am today.”
—Jessica Diehl

“They had named me ‘Dusty’,” she said. “That was pretty appropriate, considering how I was found. It was really emotional. They felt like they had found someone they’d lost, but still considered a family member.”

“In a way, I feel like I got the first year of my life back,” Diehl said.

That kind of experience, and many more, don’t happen without emotion.

There were a couple of tears along the way but nobody spends a couple of hours with Diehl—who was accompanied to Rockdale by her husband, Phil—without the adjective “brave” coming to mind.

“I’m not looking to blame anyone,” she said. “There is so much more I have to find out. In many ways I left Rockdale with more questions than answers.”

“So many of the people I met here, that are a part of my story, have been welcoming,” she said.

Her story is still a work in progress, however.

“But I’m coming back to Rockdale,” she said. “There are lots of people I still want to meet.”

And she’s learned something basic.

“I’m so proud of myself for kicking my way out of that paper bag,” she said. “I think I was as strong then as I am today.”

A family member is starting a GoFundMe effort to assist Diehl in her efforts, including travel expenses.

Anyone interested in donating can look up the “Jessica Diehl” in North Carolina on Facebook and take it from there.

THE ‘STORY’—On that warm morning in June, 1981, Floyd James, a resident of the 1200 block of Highland Avenue was working in the garden behind his house when he heard something he described to The Reporter as “sounding like a goat bleating.”

He went into the field behind his house and found a baby.

James ran to alert his next-door neighbor, Rock-dale Police Sgt. Jim Mortimer. The baby was rushed to Richards Memorial Hospital, just a few blocks away.

The infant spent nine days in the hospital and was found to be “okay, except for a bad sunburn and insect bites.”

“To this day I am unable to wear makeup,” Diehl said. “I’ve been told so many layers of skin burned off while I was there in the sun.”

She was placed in a couple of foster homes and passed around some Polaroid photos that depict a happy, smiling baby.

She was eventually adopted permanently and grew up in a number of locations around the country.

But there was always a nagging something in the background.

“There were obvious differences between myself and my family in appearance,” she said. “I’m blonde and my brothers are not. I didn’t look like anyone in my family.”

She started in with the “was I adopted?” questions. At age 15 she got a family member to tell her the rest of the story.

“It was such a shock,” Diehl said. “I found out not only was I adopted, I had been left in a field as a newborn.”

It affected her.

If any records shedding more light on her birth existed they were lost when the family home burned to the ground.

She went on and lived her life, has a son and daughter, but could never stop thinking about a certain field in Rockdale, one which played a big part in her history.

Then came an Internet search, an e-mail to The Reporter and one hot afternoon in August she found herself standing at the end of a dead end street in Rock-dale preparing to walk into that very field.

Her husband and a photographer accompanied her.

FLOWER—It was hot. The Texas summer sun was beating down, probably not too different from that fateful day 38 years ago.

Mostly weeds. What was green and moist in the spring was now dry and yellow and crunched underfoot, punctuated by a few lost-looking wildflowers on foreboding plants.

Diehl, whose normally upbeat disposition had come to the front throughout all the morning’s conversations, fell silent.

This place was about her, after all. It holds no particular meaning for anyone else.

Her eyes held a certain glaze, a look of “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be feeling, but I’m feeling it, whatever it is.”

There wasn’t much conversation. The event, after all, happened a long time ago.

Three deer—ironically, a doe and two fawns—scampered across and bolted into the brush on the north end.

Diehl walked through the arid vegetation, silently, as her mind conjured up pictures of....what?

It’s not hard to guess.

Finally there was nothing to do but leave, for the second time in her life.

On the way out, her husband reached down and plucked a tiny wildflower from its host plant.

“We’ll press this,” he said.

She nodded. They got into a car and were driven away.

It’s only a field in a small town in Texas. But Jessica Diehl will always remember it.

She can never forget it.