May 10, 2024 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in a 30-year span, a family confronts its sins twice and tells a story of role reversal and forgiveness.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Hbib and this is our American Stories,
and you're listening to our Mother's Day special. Up next,
we have the story of a truly remarkable mom, Mary Sparks,
is told by her son Sparky. Here's Edie Han to
help tell the story.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Mary Sparks exhibited strength of conviction throughout her life, but
oddly enough, it all started with an affair, a stolen baby,
and her Catholic faith. Here's your son Sparky to recaunt
his mother's tale.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I guess the time to start this story is in
nineteen forty three, my mother fell in love with a
married man who was about to ship off to the war.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Mary couldn't bear the idea of losing her love, so
she attempted to join the Women's Army Corps, a wax
for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
And when she joined the Wax, she took her physical
and found out she was pregnant. My grandfather, great police gentleman.
He shipped her to Chicago to a home for unwed mothers,
where she worked like a dog for several months, and
(01:36):
then had my sister, My sister who always made fun
of me growing up and told me I was adopted.
My grandmother took the train from Tarahuade, Indiana to Chicago
to pick up my mother, who had just had this child.
(01:56):
And my mother had been very weak and very really
I think they abused her from the standpoint of making
her cook and clean for other people in this home.
So my mother and grandmother had put my sister up
for adoption, and the people were supposed to be there
(02:18):
that afternoon to pick up my sister.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
But on the way to the train station, neither could
shake the feeling that something just wasn't right.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
And my mother said, I can't give up this baby.
I just can't do it. And my grandmother said, well,
your father is not going to let us come home
with a baby. We have to give up this child.
And my mother said, do you want to give up
the child? And my grandmother said, no, I don't want to.
And my grandmother, who didn't speak English very well, Polish
(02:54):
was her first language, told the cab driver to turn around.
When they got to the train station, and they went back
to this home, walked in the door. The people who
were adopting my sister were there to pick her up,
and my mother just went in, grabbed my sister, and
(03:15):
she and my grandmother ran down the steps back into
the cab and fired off towards the train station. My grandmother,
as they were running out, grabbed all the paperwork she
could get a hold of with both hands and held
it in to her and then they sorted it out
on the train and destroyed it.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
But then they had Sparky's grandfather, Mary's father to deal with,
but that wouldn't be much of a problem.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
So then they got home to Tara Oat. My grandmama
just told him he was just going to get used
to it.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
A year or two later, a World War two prison
of war returned home to Indiana and began courting me.
But she felt like she had to hide her child
out of shame.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
There's several stories of her hiding my sister from him
when he would come pick her up for a date.
My grandmother and grandfather ran a boarding.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
House, and while that provided useful cover for a while,
it only had to fail once for the gig to
be up.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
After they got serious and they started dating, my dad
came in one day unannounced and there was my sister
in a playpen, and my dad said, who is this baby?
And my mother started crying and said, this is my child.
And my dad said, well, who's the father, and my
(04:50):
mother said he is gone away. My dad looked down
at her and said, well, this child needs a father,
so I guess we need to get married Mary, and
that's how he proposed a mom. My sister found out
(05:14):
all of this because this was a big secret in
our family. We didn't know this story until my sister,
when she was about twenty two, tried to get a
passport and she said, I was born in Terrehood, Indiana,
and they told her called her back the next day
and said, missus Bauer, you were born in Chicago. What
(05:38):
you were born at a home for unwooded mothers and
sister who had tormented me all my life telling me
I was adopted, you know, And then we started finding
out all this story. I always thought that my sister
was treated a little bit differently than the other kids,
(06:01):
and both all the brothers and sisters on the Spark
side of the family, eleven of them, and all the
brothers and sisters on the Cummings, which they had americanized
from Kamensky side of the family, kept this a secret
from all us kids growing up.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Nobody knew and nobody needed to know. His parents didn't
want any undue attention, and more than that, his father
wanted his sister sharing. They have a loving home, full
of love, conviction and.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Gref amazing love story. And again, share your stories with us.
Family stories, faith stories, any old kind of story that
has this kind of grit in love. It's real, folks,
and we only tell real life stories here. No daisies
(06:56):
and no rainbows. Life's tough, but how you deal with
these circums dances We can learn from stories like these.
Mary Sparks story continues after these messages. Lihabibe here the
(07:24):
host of All American Stories. Every day on this show,
we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories
from our big cities and small towns. But we truly
can't do the show without you. Our stories are free
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love what you hear, go to Alamerican stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
(07:46):
a lot. Go to Alamerican Stories dot com and give
(08:09):
And we're back with our Mother's Day special in the
story of Mary Sparks. When we last left off, Mary's
boyfriend just found out that her daughter born out of wedlock,
didn't have a father, and he proposed on the spot
and raised the daughter as his own. Now we bring
you the rest of Mary's story of faith and family,
told by her son Sparky. Here's Edie Hen to help out.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
The Sparks family had no shortage of children. Seven to
be exact, and as good Catholics, you'd expect that Mary
and Jessee did their best to raise their kids well,
with faith and family at the heart of all they did.
But in nineteen seventy three that all would be put
to the test.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
I was a student at the univers the Alabama. It
was on a Thursday morning in the spring. I get
a call from my mother and my mother said, I
need you home. And I said, well, okay, spring break
(09:26):
is in a couple of months and I'm planning on
coming home to the farm. And she said, no, I
need you home today. I said, what's going on? Is dad? Okay?
Your father's fine, and I need you home. And I said, Mama,
I've got a test tomorrow Friday. I said, I've got
(09:49):
a test. She said, tell your professor that you've got
a family emergency and you need to come home. I
need you to be with me for a few days.
Are you sick? No? And Dad's okay, yeah, Will I
tell him the emergency is I'm sure if you just
(10:10):
tell him there's a family emergency, he'll let you take
your test next week. I had the toughest professor on
just about on campus, teaching music history, doctor Nicolosi. I
knew I was dead that afternoon. Went to see him
(10:31):
and I said, I have a family emergency. I'll be
glad to take the test right now, but my mother
is asked for me to be home in Indiana and
I've got to leave. And he said, you just take
the test next week and don't worry about it. If
this is for your mother and it's a family emergency,
(10:53):
then you need to go. I was sure that that
man did not have a art up until that point,
but I became convinced that maybe he was okay, got
in my car, drove through the night. You know, I
was in shock the whole thing when I got in
the car. I mean, I was so relieved when I
(11:16):
got there to see all my brothers were okay, because
I knew something happened to somebody and she just wasn't
telling me. I mean, I was pretty sure I was
coming up there for a funeral of some kind.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
What a relief it was to find out that wasn't
the case. And yet there was still that burning question
that even Sparky's siblings were asking.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Why are you home? I said, I don't know. Mama
wants me home. What's going on? She said, well, Daddy,
the last two nights, Daddy slept in the barn. What
is going on? We don't know. So we had this
big breakfast. My mother had this huge plate of bacon
(12:02):
and eggs and ham, and she said, here, take this
out to the barn for your father. And I said,
why is he sleeping out in the barn? Are you
too getting divorced? She said, We're Catholic, we don't get divorced.
Take this out to your father. I said, okay, I'm
(12:22):
headed out to the barn. Hey, Daddy, he said, I
thought you might be coming home. I said, what's going on?
He said, I'm sure your mother will tell you when
she's ready for you to know.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Little did Sparky know that he wasn't just going to
find out what was going on, but also the depths
of his mother's convictions and the lens that she would
go to in order to follow through with them.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
So after breakfast and clean up, everybody's out doing their
chores and mother said, come with me. We've got to
go somewhere. We got in the car. I said, please
tell me what's going on. She said, your father's had
an affair with this young lady and he's gotten her pregnant.
(13:12):
I need to talk her into giving us this baby
so I can raise it right. So get in the car.
Let's go. She said, I just don't want you to
say anything. So we drove to this lady's house, young lady.
It was a small town. I knew her. And we
(13:36):
got to her house, her apartment, and she answered the doors.
She said, what do you want. My mother said, I'm
Mary Sparks. You've been having an affair with my husband.
I understand you're pregnant. She said, yes, I am, and
I want to talk to you. Please may we come in?
(13:57):
She said, this is my son's sparky. She said, I
know him. I said, well. We went in. We sat down,
and she said, so here's the deal. She said, I
will pay for all your expenses. She said, I'll give
you three thousand dollars today when the child is born.
(14:21):
I'll give you five thousand dollars. When the child is
born and you signed the paper for us to adopt him,
She said, how do you know it's going to be
a boy. And she said, we're sparks. Is that's all
we have. She said, I'll raise him right. If you
ever want to be in his life, you can be.
And she said, I know you probably don't feel too
(14:43):
good about what you've done, but I'm not worried about that.
She said, that's for God to decide judge, not me.
She said, will you pay my rent? She said yes,
I'll pay all your expenses. I'll pay your hospital bills.
I'll pay everything. And when the child is born and
we adopt and I know you're okay, then it ends
(15:07):
and we will take the child to raise and I
will raise it as my own child. She said, all right.
She said, have you got the money now? She said,
of course, I got it right here in my purse.
And I said, I've got the paperwork. We signed it,
we went by the attorney's office, had him notarize it.
(15:30):
That's the way my brother Jake came into the world.
He knew he was adopted from day one. All my
brothers did, but we also knew that we would treat
him just like any other brother, and we did.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Once again, the Sparks family, in the face of infidelity,
was given a gift and due to their faith, took
a child in and accepted it without question as their.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Years later, I went to play golf with my dad.
I said, I gotta ask you. Did you and mom
resume relations with each other? He said, of course, he said.
It took two or three months. But your mother was
tough as nails. But she always said that God would
(16:28):
judge me. It wasn't her place to judge me. And
we were married. I was her husband, she was my wife.
That's just the way it was. There was a moment
in time that I forgave your mother, and years later
(16:49):
she forgave me.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Thanks to Edie Hen for the work there, and thanks
for Sparky, what a remarkable story, and Mary Sparks, what
a remarkable woman. And great job on the production, Robbie,
just a beautiful job. And by the way, our lives
are all messy. But if this is any testimony to
what a true Christian walk looks like, this is it.
(17:15):
And it's forgiveness, folks, and it's hard to do. But
it's what obedient people of faith do. I'll raise him right.
Mary Sparks said to this poor young girl, by the way,
this is a different day. This is a different day.
And to do this kind of thing, and to not
worry about the social opprobrium, what people were gossiping about
(17:35):
or talking about, and the relationship got healed. The wife forgave,
he forgave himself, and of course their God well forgave
both of them. Mary Sparks's story another Mother's Day story.
Our Mother's Day Special continues here on our American Stories
This is Lee Hbib and this is our American Stories,
and you're listening to our Mother's Day special. Up next,
we have the story of a truly remarkable mom, Mary Sparks,
is told by her son Sparky. Here's Edie Han to
help tell the story.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Mary Sparks exhibited strength of conviction throughout her life, but
oddly enough, it all started with an affair, a stolen baby,
and her Catholic faith. Here's your son Sparky to recaunt
his mother's tale.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
I guess the time to start this story is in
nineteen forty three, my mother fell in love with a
married man who was about to ship off to the war.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Mary couldn't bear the idea of losing her love, so
she attempted to join the Women's Army Corps, a wax
for sure.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
And when she joined the Wax, she took her physical
and found out she was pregnant. My grandfather, great police gentleman.
He shipped her to Chicago to a home for unwed mothers,
where she worked like a dog for several months, and
(01:36):
then had my sister, My sister who always made fun
of me growing up and told me I was adopted.
My grandmother took the train from Tarahuade, Indiana to Chicago
to pick up my mother, who had just had this child.
(01:56):
And my mother had been very weak and very really
I think they abused her from the standpoint of making
her cook and clean for other people in this home.
So my mother and grandmother had put my sister up
for adoption, and the people were supposed to be there
(02:18):
that afternoon to pick up my sister.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
But on the way to the train station, neither could
shake the feeling that something just wasn't right.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
And my mother said, I can't give up this baby.
I just can't do it. And my grandmother said, well,
your father is not going to let us come home
with a baby. We have to give up this child.
And my mother said, do you want to give up
the child? And my grandmother said, no, I don't want to.
And my grandmother, who didn't speak English very well, Polish
(02:54):
was her first language, told the cab driver to turn around.
When they got to the train station, and they went back
to this home, walked in the door. The people who
were adopting my sister were there to pick her up,
and my mother just went in, grabbed my sister, and
(03:15):
she and my grandmother ran down the steps back into
the cab and fired off towards the train station. My grandmother,
as they were running out, grabbed all the paperwork she
could get a hold of with both hands and held
it in to her and then they sorted it out
on the train and destroyed it.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
But then they had Sparky's grandfather, Mary's father to deal with,
but that wouldn't be much of a problem.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
So then they got home to Tara Oat. My grandmama
just told him he was just going to get used
to it.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
A year or two later, a World War two prison
of war returned home to Indiana and began courting me.
But she felt like she had to hide her child
out of shame.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
There's several stories of her hiding my sister from him
when he would come pick her up for a date.
My grandmother and grandfather ran a boarding.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
House, and while that provided useful cover for a while,
it only had to fail once for the gig to
be up.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
After they got serious and they started dating, my dad
came in one day unannounced and there was my sister
in a playpen, and my dad said, who is this baby?
And my mother started crying and said, this is my child.
And my dad said, well, who's the father, and my
(04:50):
mother said he is gone away. My dad looked down
at her and said, well, this child needs a father,
so I guess we need to get married Mary, and
that's how he proposed a mom. My sister found out
(05:14):
all of this because this was a big secret in
our family. We didn't know this story until my sister,
when she was about twenty two, tried to get a
passport and she said, I was born in Terrehood, Indiana,
and they told her called her back the next day
and said, missus Bauer, you were born in Chicago. What
(05:38):
you were born at a home for unwooded mothers and
sister who had tormented me all my life telling me
I was adopted, you know, And then we started finding
out all this story. I always thought that my sister
was treated a little bit differently than the other kids,
(06:01):
and both all the brothers and sisters on the Spark
side of the family, eleven of them, and all the
brothers and sisters on the Cummings, which they had americanized
from Kamensky side of the family, kept this a secret
from all us kids growing up.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Nobody knew and nobody needed to know. His parents didn't
want any undue attention, and more than that, his father
wanted his sister sharing. They have a loving home, full
of love, conviction and.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Gref amazing love story. And again, share your stories with us.
Family stories, faith stories, any old kind of story that
has this kind of grit in love. It's real, folks,
and we only tell real life stories here. No daisies
(06:56):
and no rainbows. Life's tough, but how you deal with
these circums dances We can learn from stories like these.
Mary Sparks story continues after these messages. Lihabibe here the
(07:24):
host of All American Stories. Every day on this show,
we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories
from our big cities and small towns. But we truly
can't do the show without you. Our stories are free
to listen to, but they're not free to make. If
you love what you hear, go to Alamerican stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
(07:46):
a lot. Go to Alamerican Stories dot com and give
(08:09):
And we're back with our Mother's Day special in the
story of Mary Sparks. When we last left off, Mary's
boyfriend just found out that her daughter born out of wedlock,
didn't have a father, and he proposed on the spot
and raised the daughter as his own. Now we bring
you the rest of Mary's story of faith and family,
told by her son Sparky. Here's Edie Hen to help out.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
The Sparks family had no shortage of children. Seven to
be exact, and as good Catholics, you'd expect that Mary
and Jessee did their best to raise their kids well,
with faith and family at the heart of all they did.
But in nineteen seventy three that all would be put
to the test.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
I was a student at the univers the Alabama. It
was on a Thursday morning in the spring. I get
a call from my mother and my mother said, I
need you home. And I said, well, okay, spring break
(09:26):
is in a couple of months and I'm planning on
coming home to the farm. And she said, no, I
need you home today. I said, what's going on? Is dad? Okay?
Your father's fine, and I need you home. And I said, Mama,
I've got a test tomorrow Friday. I said, I've got
(09:49):
a test. She said, tell your professor that you've got
a family emergency and you need to come home. I
need you to be with me for a few days.
Are you sick? No? And Dad's okay, yeah, Will I
tell him the emergency is I'm sure if you just
(10:10):
tell him there's a family emergency, he'll let you take
your test next week. I had the toughest professor on
just about on campus, teaching music history, doctor Nicolosi. I
knew I was dead that afternoon. Went to see him
(10:31):
and I said, I have a family emergency. I'll be
glad to take the test right now, but my mother
is asked for me to be home in Indiana and
I've got to leave. And he said, you just take
the test next week and don't worry about it. If
this is for your mother and it's a family emergency,
(10:53):
then you need to go. I was sure that that
man did not have a art up until that point,
but I became convinced that maybe he was okay, got
in my car, drove through the night. You know, I
was in shock the whole thing when I got in
the car. I mean, I was so relieved when I
(11:16):
got there to see all my brothers were okay, because
I knew something happened to somebody and she just wasn't
telling me. I mean, I was pretty sure I was
coming up there for a funeral of some kind.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
What a relief it was to find out that wasn't
the case. And yet there was still that burning question
that even Sparky's siblings were asking.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Why are you home? I said, I don't know. Mama
wants me home. What's going on? She said, well, Daddy,
the last two nights, Daddy slept in the barn. What
is going on? We don't know. So we had this
big breakfast. My mother had this huge plate of bacon
(12:02):
and eggs and ham, and she said, here, take this
out to the barn for your father. And I said,
why is he sleeping out in the barn? Are you
too getting divorced? She said, We're Catholic, we don't get divorced.
Take this out to your father. I said, okay, I'm
(12:22):
headed out to the barn. Hey, Daddy, he said, I
thought you might be coming home. I said, what's going on?
He said, I'm sure your mother will tell you when
she's ready for you to know.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Little did Sparky know that he wasn't just going to
find out what was going on, but also the depths
of his mother's convictions and the lens that she would
go to in order to follow through with them.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
So after breakfast and clean up, everybody's out doing their
chores and mother said, come with me. We've got to
go somewhere. We got in the car. I said, please
tell me what's going on. She said, your father's had
an affair with this young lady and he's gotten her pregnant.
(13:12):
I need to talk her into giving us this baby
so I can raise it right. So get in the car.
Let's go. She said, I just don't want you to
say anything. So we drove to this lady's house, young lady.
It was a small town. I knew her. And we
(13:36):
got to her house, her apartment, and she answered the doors.
She said, what do you want. My mother said, I'm
Mary Sparks. You've been having an affair with my husband.
I understand you're pregnant. She said, yes, I am, and
I want to talk to you. Please may we come in?
(13:57):
She said, this is my son's sparky. She said, I
know him. I said, well. We went in. We sat down,
and she said, so here's the deal. She said, I
will pay for all your expenses. She said, I'll give
you three thousand dollars today when the child is born.
(14:21):
I'll give you five thousand dollars. When the child is
born and you signed the paper for us to adopt him,
She said, how do you know it's going to be
a boy. And she said, we're sparks. Is that's all
we have. She said, I'll raise him right. If you
ever want to be in his life, you can be.
And she said, I know you probably don't feel too
(14:43):
good about what you've done, but I'm not worried about that.
She said, that's for God to decide judge, not me.
She said, will you pay my rent? She said yes,
I'll pay all your expenses. I'll pay your hospital bills.
I'll pay everything. And when the child is born and
we adopt and I know you're okay, then it ends
(15:07):
and we will take the child to raise and I
will raise it as my own child. She said, all right.
She said, have you got the money now? She said,
of course, I got it right here in my purse.
And I said, I've got the paperwork. We signed it,
we went by the attorney's office, had him notarize it.
(15:30):
That's the way my brother Jake came into the world.
He knew he was adopted from day one. All my
brothers did, but we also knew that we would treat
him just like any other brother, and we did.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Once again, the Sparks family, in the face of infidelity,
was given a gift and due to their faith, took
a child in and accepted it without question as their.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Years later, I went to play golf with my dad.
I said, I gotta ask you. Did you and mom
resume relations with each other? He said, of course, he said.
It took two or three months. But your mother was
tough as nails. But she always said that God would
(16:28):
judge me. It wasn't her place to judge me. And
we were married. I was her husband, she was my wife.
That's just the way it was. There was a moment
in time that I forgave your mother, and years later
(16:49):
she forgave me.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Thanks to Edie Hen for the work there, and thanks
for Sparky, what a remarkable story, and Mary Sparks, what
a remarkable woman. And great job on the production, Robbie,
just a beautiful job. And by the way, our lives
are all messy. But if this is any testimony to
what a true Christian walk looks like, this is it.
(17:15):
And it's forgiveness, folks, and it's hard to do. But
it's what obedient people of faith do. I'll raise him right.
Mary Sparks said to this poor young girl, by the way,
this is a different day. This is a different day.
And to do this kind of thing, and to not
worry about the social opprobrium, what people were gossiping about
(17:35):
or talking about, and the relationship got healed. The wife forgave,
he forgave himself, and of course their God well forgave
both of them. Mary Sparks's story another Mother's Day story.
Our Mother's Day Special continues here on our American Stories
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