Daddy Joe...35º

In yesterdays story, I made the statement that, "Joe was our rock, we adored him and his love for us knew no bounds."...Blanche divorced her first husband, Dwayne Fields, when both Loraine and Barbara were very young...She kept in contact with Dwaynes' (nickname Bus) parents and a grandmother called "Grandma Dine."...Packages arrived for several year on Birthdays and Christmas for the girls, and after the boys were born, there were also small gifts for them...There was no monthly child support checks, no visits, virtually no contact with their birth father.

I  often heard it said that two little girls stole Joe's heart before he fell in love with their mother...He, from the beginning was their "Daddy Joe."..He was never their step dad even though it would be many years before they were legally adopted...They started school as Loraine and Barbara Ashton and carried the Ashton name until they were married...Joe loved little children and babies, one image that never leaves me is him, holding a baby in his big hands, looking down into that baby face and saying "God loves your little heart."...We grew up as a family, no step dad, no half sisters, just family.

Many years later, Loraine and Barbara married with families, "Bus" contacted them and they welcomed him into their homes...It was a brief relationship,  and just a few years later, the long awaited adoption took place in Valley County, Idaho...When Joe was asked why it took so long, his answer was, "I guess we never had the money to to it legally and it never mattered, they were always my girls."...Hugs To All...OWAV:)