Mother, children reunited after nearly 30 years

WASILLA — Sister Mary Hugh McGowen was a child of 11 or 12 when she lost her mother, and a woman of 50 when she got her back.

“When I heard I was going to be adopted, I was so angry,” she said. “I wasn’t an orphan.”

There were a lot of difficult birthdays, holidays — days — for her family between 1951 and 1980. But in the end, mother and daughter say, they wouldn’t change a thing.

To see Alaska

June McWilliams turned 20 the summer she met Grady Robinette while working for the Harder family on their ranch outside of Bellingham, Wash. He hired on in June and asked her to marry him in August.

“And I thought it was a great idea,” June said.

The two were married in Sedro Wooley, Wash., Aug. 21, 1937.

He worked until they had enough money to go see his parents in Willis, Texas.

“The only way we could go was by thumb,” June said Saturday from her apartment in Alder View in Wasilla.

So in the summer of 1937, the newlyweds took the first steps on what would prove to be a decade of steady travel and a lifetime of adventures.

“The people were wonderful,” June said. “Nowadays, you’d be afraid to try it even.”

After visiting family in Texas for a while, the pair hitched back to Bellingham, where Grady landed a job cooking on a fish tender headed for Alaska.

June stayed behind with her mother until Grady sent money for passage by a Canadian steamship called the Princess Nora, arriving in Ketchikan in January 1938.

The Robinettes’ first daughter, Phoebe, was born at the end of that year in Juneau on Dec. 29, 1938. Three years later, daughter Abigail was born in Kodiak, and three years later son Dallas joined the family in Nome.

Put up for adoption

For the next decade, the Robinette family traveled from place to place, job to job, adventure to adventure while seeing Alaska.

“We traveled a lot,” June said. “He was a wander. He traveled and we followed.”

But their lives changed when the family of five left Alaska, bound for Washington and Texas to introduce the children to their extended families.

They traveled by thumb, bus, train and foot, June said.

“From Washington, we went traveling again with the whole family,” she wrote in her book “My Life in Alaska — So Far,” published in 2008. “The years between the Alaska story and the homestead were filled with times of travel and adventures and tragedy.”

They made money along the way by performing as Vaudevillians at Elks Clubs, Eagles Clubs and other fraternities, she wrote.

“Sometimes we left the children at charity places while we combed the area for performance dates.”

When Grady and June Robinette could no longer make it work financially, they headed to Nebraska to the home of Grady’s sister and her husband. But they were building a new home and couldn’t afford to help them get back to Alaska where “we knew we could survive,” she wrote.

The couple placed their three children in a Catholic children’s home while they worked in Omaha restaurants and tried to get back on their feet financially.

“We took too long and the judge from the Catholic charities said they weren’t moving fast enough and they would be put up for adoption,” June said Saturday.

Far away from Alaska where they had made friends and connections, she said they were furious — but helpless to change the judge’s ruling.

“There was nothing we could do,” she said. “I was so mad.”

Mary, Jacquline and Michael McGowen

Phoebe, Abigail and Dallas Robinette were 13, 10 and 7 in 1951, when Tony and Lucille McGowen adopted them.

“That’s why she’s a Robinette and I’m a McGowen,” said Sister Mary Hugh McGowen.

And that’s also how Phoebe became known as Mary, Abigail as Jacquline Ann and Dallas as Michael Thomas.

Mary lived with the McGowens for six years after she was adopted. But after high school, she told them she wanted to become a nun. They agreed, but asked that she wait a year to be certain of her choice.

During that year, the McGowen family had visited a couple of orders before visiting the Sisters of Sacred Heart Monastery in Yankton, S.D.

“When I walked up the stairs I knew it was where I was supposed to be,” Sister Mary Hugh said.

She lived there for 36 years before transferring her vows to the Sisters of St. Joseph Missouri of Carondelet.

“My community has commissioned me to family care,” said Sister Mary Hugh McGowen, 73. To that end, she arrived in Alaska to care for her mother on Oct. 6, 2004.

“It has been a real blessing,” June said.

Further, the mother and daughter insist the whole experience was a blessing.

“My brother, sister, mother and I wouldn’t change anything,” Sister Mary Hugh said. “It was hard, but you learn from it.”

Jacquline Ann McGowen married John Asmussen and the couple has four adult children. She retired from a career in nursing and lives near Sioux City, Iowa.

Michael Thomas McGowen married Jeanne and they also have four children. He retired from a career as a police officer and lives in Missouri Valley, Iowa.

“I’m grateful to the McGowen’s that they took good care of us,” said Sister Mary Hugh.

June said it is a blessing all three children were adopted into the same home.

“They had a good, steady life from then on,” she said.

Together again

Michael was a police detective in 1980 when he asked his sisters if they’d mind if he looked for their folks. They said it was OK, but to keep them posted so they could tell the McGowens if anything came of it.

The break came when detective McGowen located his father’s oldest sister, Fannie D. Pringle, who had his mother’s phone number in Alaska.

Although Michael asked his aunt to let him make contact with his mother when he was ready, Aunt Fannie couldn’t wait.

“You could have heard me bawling for a mile,” June said of Fannie’s phone call.

“I had never felt so poor in my whole life as when they were taken from us. Now I was rich with family and love,” she wrote in her book.

When the children were taken, the Robinettes traveled back to Alaska and eventually homestead near Wasilla.

After Grady’s death from a massive heart attack in 1964, June got a job working for the Division of Motor Vehicles. She retired from there in 1978, two years before her Mothers Day’s changed forever.

Contact managing editor Heather A. Resz at heather.resz@frontiersman.com or 352-2268.