Stanley Cornell, who was born in 1920, 28 years after Emily in Elmira, New York, was
also not a true orphan, though he too would ultimately ride the train to a new home. Stanley's
father, a World War I veteran, had health problems associated with his wartime mustard
gas exposure. After his wife died of tuberculosis in 1924, Floyd Cornell was unable to properly
care for Stanley, Stanley's younger brother Victor and sister Elouise. Stanley was a few
months shy of his fifth birthday when his mother, Lottie, died. He still remembers how
she cried out for her children near the end.
Stanley Cornell: “My mom was in her room crying and hollering and wanting, Stan, Vic,
please come see me and crying night and day practically. We put this -- the window was
up so high up, down below it was not. I got the wagon up there and then there was an orange
crate that I set inside of the wagon so I could climb up to the window and get in the
window because the door was locked to her room. “
He believes his relatives may have tried to keep him away from his mother because tuberculosis
is contagious. As a young boy, however, he didn't understand.
Cornell: “I crawled up in there and up inside the window and I helped my brother up then
and then we both went over to her bed and she held her hand and was crying and I don't
remember what she had to say because I was too young I think and also she was crying
so, but I think what she told us, she knew she was dying.”
After his mother died, he sometimes felt like no one was looking after them, especially
as his father tried to work while struggling with his own health problems.
Cornell: “Two ladies came out in a big limousine, it looked like it and we didn't have a car,
of course, but it looked like a big limousine. And they come in and talked to dad and then
they talked to us and asked us if we were happy and I can remember saying, not really,
no, not really. I didn't want to complain but that was true because we weren't too happy.”
The boys were taken by the Children's Aid Society, while an aunt took in their younger
sister, then a toddler. At the orphanage, children were separated by gender. Even on
the playground, a tall brick wall separated the boys from the girls.
Cornell: “My brother and I was separated when we were in there for those six months.
But in between the houses they had about 15 feet of chicken wire so that we can get together.
And every day at noon, Vic would come to his side, I'd meet him down front and we'd talk
through the fence. “
The children were given sparse and simple meals, milk, bread or soup. Occasionally they
were given a piece of fruit.
Cornell: “Then they'd come by before we finished and leave an apple or a banana or
an orange, you know, for each one of us. And if you went outside, out of the building,
out in the yard, the bullies would take it away from you. It was not a very pleasant
place to be at times. However, it was a place we stayed warm at night and had a change of
clothes and things like that.”
Before Stanley and Vic Cornell ended up with the Lutie, Texas farm family that would end
up providing them a wonderfully happy childhood, they were sent away from a half dozen other
households.
“We lived in six different homes that rejected us after the first month or two or three months,
sent us back because they didn’t want to keep us. I don’t know what the reason was.
I was too young to know, whether we couldn't get along with our baby sister or brother
or was mean to them or I don't know what.”
Stanley Cornell, now a Colorado resident, counts himself and his brother Vic, now living
in Idaho, among those who were snatched from poverty and woe. The man who would raise the
two boys as his own had never planned to take in a child from the orphan train that arrived
in the Texas panhandle town of Wellington one December night in 1926. It was a neighbor
who suggested it.
Cornell: “He was in town that day, bought a new Model T and needed flaps on his windows
on his car so the farmer that rode in with him says, Mr. Deger, you've got two girls,
10 and 13, you have always wanted boys, at least a boy. Yeah, I'd like to have a boy.
So, he said, let's stop by.
The children from the train were lined up and the agent traveling with the children
encouraged the farmer to take both boys, as Vic clung to his big brother's hand and cried.
They only had each other and had already been to six other homes where it hadn't worked
out. J.L. Deger agreed to take both. His wife, waiting at home with the girls, had no idea
her husband had even stopped to see the children from the train.”
Cornell: “Mom was wanting, she liked to sew but she was always, she wanted a Singer
sewing machine is what she wanted. And she thought that was the day that he was going
to get one for her. Well, he drives up and goes in the house and he says, mom, you and
the girls go out there and get the groceries out of the back seat. And it's still snowing
and blowing, you know, so they go out there and when one of the girls opened the door
they see the movement of the blankets and some voices and they jump back and one of
them squealed. It scared them. And finally one of them pulled the blanket off and there
was these two white-headed kids eating candy. They picked us up and carried us in the house
just like we were worth a million dollars. Boy, they gave us a good home. That was home.
“
Years later after serving in World War II, Stanley would reunite with his birth father.
His sister had found her brother several years earlier. Stanley let his birth father know
that his childhood had turned out wonderfully. They kept in touch over the years but he always
saw his adoptive parents as his real parents.