She gave him life, then gave him up

LANCASTER, PA - Violet Trimble Webb knows she doesn’t have much time left to make things right with the son she never knew.

Webb, a 75-year-old former Pequea resident, suffers from diabetes and kidney failure. In 1955, she and her former husband, Samuel Leonard Trimble, gave up their third son for adoption. It was not an easy decision.

"I didn’t want to give him up," Webb said Sunday afternoon while seated in her wheelchair at Conestoga View nursing home. "I’ve always been keeping my eyes open for him."

Now, before it’s too late, Webb wants to meet the son she named Steven Alan Trimble, who would be 47 today, to tell him she has never stopped loving him. She also wants to ask for forgiveness and tell him why he was given away just hours after his birth.

The couple’s second son, Gerald Trimble, knows the story, although he learned it only 10 years ago.

Now 52 and a Defense Department worker in Florida, Trimble said he remembers watching his father suffer through intense depression as he tried to deal with the cerebral palsy that crippled the couple’s first son, Samuel Jr.

"When Sammy was being born, the midwife kept trying to push him back in, and she must have broken his spine," Trimble said. "She kept saying Mom couldn’t have the baby until the doctor got there. It was state law or something. Three times she pushed his head back in. It tore Mom all up."

Mentally, his older brother remains "as sharp as a whip," Trimble said. "His will has always been real strong."

Times were tough for the young family after Trimble was born, he said. They lived with his grandparents, who were losing their Quarryville-area farm.

"Then, when Dad got laid off, they couldn’t afford to keep Sammy at home anymore," Trimble said. "They sent him to a home that everybody said was great. I was only 4 at the time, but I remember pictures and crying and sadness."

Trimble never doubted his father’s love for Sammy, who was unable to walk.

"Prior to him being sent there, my dad used to tie Sammy’s legs and his legs together with rubber bands to try and get him to walk," Trimble said. "Dad loved him very much."

Then news broke in local papers about alleged abuses at Sammy’s nursing home. The Trimbles rushed to rescue their son.

"When my parents went down and got him, he looked like somebody out of a Nazi concentration camp," Trimble said. "He was just flesh and bone. They had almost killed him there. Dad was totally devastated. After he saw how bad Sammy’s condition was, Dad just deteriorated after that. It was sad."

Trimble said he doesn’t remember his mother’s third pregnancy, but he does remember his father’s deep depression around that time.

When Steven Alan Trimble was born on May 20, 1955, he was quickly put up for adoption. His parents kept the adoption secret from their other children for 38 years.

By the time their fourth child, Donna, was born, "Dad had come around," Trimble said. "He was doing real well with work, and everything was looking up. But right after she was born, we had another bad winter. Not too long after that, we were sent to live with relatives in Columbia."

Now 46, Donna Mohler is a window trimmer and sales associate at Park City Center. She is candid about her father’s reluctance to keep her after she was born.

"Because of all the issues with the cerebral palsy, Dad didn’t want another child," Mohler said. "When I was born, he tried to get my aunts to adopt me. It is a terrible thing to know about your father, but it’s true."

But Webb said she fought to keep her daughter with the family.

"She was my little girl," Webb said. "My little country girl."

Despite wanting to give her up, Trimble said his father loved Mohler.

"She made up for what he lost with Sammy, but, by then, it was too late for Steven," Trimble said. "It wasn’t an easy decision on his part, but he thought it was the right thing to do for her."

The children didn’t learn they had another brother until 1992, well after their father’s death in the early 1980s.

"After Hurricane Andrew hit (in Florida), my family and I came up (to Lancaster) and stayed with my mom and stepfather," Trimble said. "That’s when I found out."

A brittle, yellow birth certificate confirmed the truth, he said.

"I was kind of shocked," Trimble said. "And then you come down with an empty feeling. All of a sudden you realize there’s somebody out there who’s related to you and you don’t even know them. Then you start wondering. Maybe he and I ran into each other and didn’t even know we were brothers. Fate has a way of playing with your mind."

Trimble said that after learning he had a brother who was given up for adoption, he did what he could to find him.

"He’s probably got a different last name now. Being adopted, it probably would have changed," he said. "But (the state) wouldn’t give any information one way or the other. I kind of think Mom was told he was adopted and then she found out later that he was put in foster care and that made her mad. Years later she found that out."

For Webb, the desire to meet her son, and perhaps his children, has been overwhelming.

"I know he has black curly hair," she said with confidence. "And I feel like there is at least one grandchild."

Trimble said he hopes his brother is "a decent guy," but he said he wouldn’t know what to say to him if they ever met.

"I haven’t got a clue," he said. "That would be a very touching, possibly uncomfortable, then again, maybe totally rewarding situation to deal with."

Trimble found 24 Internet hits with the name Steven Alan Trimble. He hasn’t tried to contact any of them.

"What if he was adopted and he doesn’t even know it? Now I’m going to go out there after all these years and ruin that?" he said. "I don’t think so. It’s kind of selfish is the way I look at it."

More than anything, Trimble wants his mother to have closure before she dies.

"I think Mom knows she’s getting close," Trimble said. "And this is real important to her so she can leave this world with some peace of mind and all the loose ends tied up."