1947-11-07 - "Baby Boy Case"

Oak Ridge Hospital circa 1945.
Photograph by Ed Westcott.

I was born at a very early age on November 7, 1947, in the maternity ward of the Oak Ridge Hospital, Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Oak Ridge is sometimes called the "Secret City". There are many reasons for this which I will tell you about in the future, when we are both older and wiser. For now though I just want to tell you about my birth. Not because it was so remarkable, but because it seems like a good place to begin. The stories I will tell you will not all be about me. But my story is the story I know best so we might as well start there.

1947 "film noir" movie poster.

Do you like detective stories? I do. One of my favorite movie genres as a boy were called "film noir". The leading male characters in  "film noir" were usually private eyes with tough cases to solve which they always managed to do by asking the right questions and a lot of good detective work. My birth took place many years ago and of course I don't remember much about it. In fact there are no living witnesses who we can question. But there are clues. Let's take a close look at the clues and see what we can learn.

Exhibit "A"

On the left is Exhibit "A", a Tennessee birth certificate. It is in fact my birth certificate. I know it looks small, but you can "click" it to see it larger. You can learn a lot from reading birth certificates. Let's take a closer look at mine to see what we can discover. It states that I was born on November 7, 1947. Hey, I already knew that but there it is in writing. It doesn't say what day of the week it was but with a little investigating we can quickly find that out. Turns out, I was born on a Friday. Oh boy, just in time for the weekend. I wonder what the weather was that day? With a little more sleuthing we learn that the high that day was 59 deg. and the low was 43 deg. with 0.30 inches of precipitation, which was three times the average amount precipitation for that time of the year. In other words, the day I came into the world was cool and damp.

"Baby Boy Case"

It was also dark. The lower right hand corner of the birth certificate says I was born at 12:40 AM. I don't know about you, but that must have been way past my bedtime. It looks like I came into the world sleepy, and between you and me I've been kind of sleepy ever since. I think my Mom was even more tired and sleepy. It says on the birth certificate that she had been in the hospital for 52 3/4 hours before I finally popped, slithered, or was just plain squeezed on out. I don't remember any of those details, probably because I was so sleepy. At any rate, Mom's labor apparently went on for more than two days. She must have been more than ready for that project to come to a conclusion. Did you see my name on the birth certificate? It says "Baby Boy Case"...BABY BOY CASE?! Huh? My Mom told me later that when I was born she and my father had not yet picked out a name for me. Can you believe that? I mean after all, they only had nine whole months to think about it! Talk about the mother of all  procrastinators. Have you ever tried to get a passport using a birth certificate that did not even have your real name on it? I mean, come on Mom!

Claudy, er, uh, I mean, "Claudia" F. Osborn.

But here I go talking about my Mom without properly introducing her to you. She taught me much better manners than that, so let's make things right. Her name was Claudia F. Osborn. Actually, it was Claudy F. Osborn but she hated the name "Claudy" and told everybody that her name was "Claudia". I know why, but I will save that story for another day. I'll also tell you what the "F." in her name stood for. She hated that name too. But I digress. Anyway, here she is in the photo on the right. This picture may have been taken in the very early stages of my mother's pregnancy...before I started to show up as a little round lump in her belly. As you can see, she was very pretty. You might even say she was beautiful. I always thought so and I know others did as well. She was also very young at the time this picture was made. As it states in the birth certificate, she was only 21 years old when I was born.

The photo was taken in the living room of a duplex at 205 Vermont Avenue, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That is where I lived for the first three years of my life. I don't remember much about those years so they must have been pretty uneventful...at least for me. Incredibly I do remember two things from those years which I will tell you about in a later post. I will also tell you more about my mom and dad. But you can already learn a few things about them by taking a close look at the birth certificate. Let's see how well you do. Here is a quiz:

1. What did the "F" in my mother's name stand for?
2. What color or race was she?
3. Where was she born?
4. What was her usual occupation?
5. How many months had my mom been pregnant when I was born?
6. What does the birth certificate say about my dad?

One more task for you...find "Vermont Ave., Oak Ridge, Tennessee" on a google map. Our duplex at 205 Vermont Ave is not there anymore. In fact almost all of the duplex apartments in that part of town are gone now. If you look closely at the picture of the hospital you can see that at one time there were them. Our duplex was right across the street from the present day Family Clinic of Oak Ridge and just a couple of blocks from the hospital. As you can see, I was born very close to my first home.

The music of the times

The world I was born into was filled with music, mostly flowing out of radios like the 1947 Bendix model 115 shown above.

You are listening to "Near You", a very popular song written and originally recorded by Francis Craig in 1947. The Andrews Sisters released this version on October 3, 1947 and it peaked the 1947 best seller charts at number four. I heard it many times as a child.

The Sound of Rain

For some reason or another, I have always enjoyed the sound of rain. Not the booming chaos of thunderstorms, mind you, nor the threatening roar of a torrential downpour, but the peaceful drumming of soft, steady rain.

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Oak Ridge Hospital circa 1945.

It is Wednesday, November 5, 1947. Dad holds an umbrella above Mom as the two of them carefully step off the front porch of Dad's apartment at 205 Vermont Avenue, splash across the front yard to the street, and pile into Dad's 1936 Oldsmobile coup. Usually, Dad would be well on his way to Y-12 at this hour, but today is different; they are on their way to the hospital instead. They live close by, an eight-minute walk at best, but it is raining, and they are in a hurry. Mom is in the beginning stages of giving birth to a baby. Dad steps on the gas, and they arrive at Oak Ridge Hospital in less than three minutes. 

At the hospital, they are asked a few questions as part of the admission process. The answers can be summed up in two sentences:

Mom is a 21-year-old married white woman from Sheffield, Alabama, whose maiden name is Claudia Felicia Osborn, whose occupation is "housewife," and who is about to deliver her first child at the end of a nine-month pregnancy.

The father of the yet-to-be-born child is Forrest Neil Case, her husband, a twenty-eight-year-old white man from Mansfield, Ohio, whose occupation is "chemist."

The paperwork done, Mom is admitted to the hospital shortly before 9:00 AM.  

I have no idea what happens during the next forty-eight plus hours. I only know that the rain continues all that day and into the night. By Thursday morning, the rains have subsided, and the day continues fair and cool. Friday, November 7, begins with grey skies and dark clouds rolling in from the Cumberland Plateau. By 12:40 AM, fifty-two hours and forty-five minutes after checking into the hospital, the first drops of rain begin pelting the roof of the hospital as Mom finally gives birth to her first child, a healthy baby boy.

After the birth, orderlies wheel Mom from the delivery room down the hall to a room she will share with another woman, a Cherokee from North Carolina, who has also given birth that day. Exhausted, Mom quickly falls asleep. Dad lingers a bit, looks at the baby through the nursery window, then returns home for a few hours. He had not noticed that the rains had come again and runs to the Olds to keep from getting soaked.

Wrapped in blankets, Mom's baby boy lies in the nursery asleep. He and the Cherokee child are the only newborns there. The falling rain drums steadily on the roof, walls, and windows of the hospital all afternoon and into the night, punctuated from time to time by the soft voices of the nurses and the occasional crying of the two newborns whose lives on this earth are just now beginning.

~~~

I had a childhood friend in Oak Ridge whose name was Rosalie. Her family lived in Woodland, a short distance from ours. We attended the same schools and rode the same buses. She was from the Qualla Boundary, Cherokee, North Carolina, and her family would often return there on weekends to visit kin. Someday I must ask her when and where was she born and does she enjoy the sound of rain. Not the booming chaos of thunderstorms, nor the threatening roar of a torrential downpour, but the peaceful drumming of soft, steady rain.