Friday, January 23, 1987/The Battalion/Page 3
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Split family to reunite after 36 years
Texas man finds his ‘home’ at last
BEAUMONT (AP) — Some
years back, a wealthy couple
Jars
adopted 8-year-old Travis Persall
! Ji., and folks at the orphanage
near Corpus Christi where his
^^■ree older brothers remained
told them he’d never want for
anything.
mm Travis Persall Jr. became
' James Franklin Sanders when the
’ adoption went through 36 years
1 ago, and he remembers having
ls plenty of food, clothes and toys
fl^lhen lie was growing up in his
" ' adopted home in Aransas Pass.
ve TeaiB B u t the folks at the orphanage
■ere wrong. What Sanders
■anted most were the three
brothers he’d left behind at Boys
■ity, the brothers who’d been his
companions until the time of his
adoption.
I “I guess I’ve lived like a ghost
Bl these years, wondering if I had
a family anymore,” says the 48-
year-old Sanders of Mauriceville.
“1 just wanted to be with my
bi others, to know who I really
■as or that they even cared if I
■as alive.”
■ He didn’t know they’d been
looking for him, too.
■ Thinking his brothers might be
s< tere in Texas, Sanders
contacted the Beaumont Enter
prise.
I Ron Seabridge, a martial arts
instructor in Lumberton whose
file’s family he located several
years ago, read the Dec. 24 article
and called Sanders.
Sanders is flying to California
on Feb. 2 for his mother’s 74th
birthday.
“Sometimes I’d think I could
remember what my mother
and when it fits, the puzzle all
comes together.”
The critical piece in Sanders’
case was one Penny Wise in Com
merce, Calif. He got her name
from a woman in Cullman, Ala.,
whose memory had faded with
“Putting something like this together is like putting to
gether a jigsaw puzzle. There’s that one critical piece,
and when it fits, the puzzle all comes together.”
— Ron Seabridge
struckc
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looked like, but then I’d tell my
self it was just my imagination,”
Sanders says. “When I called her,
she called me by my nickname,
‘Dumplin.’ No one has called me
that for years.”
Sanders talked with his mother
on the telephone for the first time
earlier this month after Seabridge
found her in a small town south
of San Bernadino, Calif.
Armed with a pen, paper, road
atlas and telephone, he tracked
Sanders’ family from Corpus
Christi to Cullman, Ala., to Red
lands, Calif., in five hours’ time.
All he asked Sanders was the
price of the 30 or so phone calls.
“Putting something like this to
gether is like putting together a
jigsaw puzzle,” Seabridge says.
“There’s that one critical piece,
the years but who believed she
was Sanders’ aunt.
Wise, who is married to Sand
ers’ cousin Rayburn Wise, re
membered her husband telling
about the days when the Persall
boys stayed with him while their
father, now dead, was in the
army.
She remembered that Sanders’
older brother had hurt his hand
in an accident, she remembered
the nicknames, she remembered
the stories of standing in line for
the boys’ meat during World War
II rationing days.
“I asked her, ‘Is there any
other thing you can tell me about
the family?’ ” Seabridge says,
smiling. “She said, ‘Yeah, his
mother’s still alive.’ ”
From his mother and other
new-found relatives, Sanders
pieced together what had hap
pened. His mother and father di
vorced, and his mother, Charlotte
Persall, obtained legal custody of
the children, which also included
two sisters and a younger brother
Sanders never knew he had.
But Sanders’ father snatched
the boys, his mother told him,
and took them to Alabama, where
he worked in a shipyard until he
was drafted into the army.
He left his sons with their aunt,
Wise’s mother Elsie, but took
them after he was discharged
early because of medical prob
lems. Those problems also in
cluded drinking heavily, Rayburn
Wise says, and he believes Sand
ers’ father abandoned them after
he brought them to Texas.
Sanders, at that time about 6
years old, says he remembers
working in the fields for meals
and running from the law until
he and his brothers were caught
and sent to Boys City.
Then he was adopted, and he
believes his other brothers even
tually ran away from the orpha
nage.
Two of Sanders’ three brothers
are dead, and family members
are trying to contact the other
one where he lives in Washing
ton. They want him to be there
and finally see the brother for
whom he searched so long.
Committee suggests
Supreme Court rulings
caused crisis for Texas
AUSTIN (AP) — Limiting court
judgments and attorneys fees will
help Texas recover from a crisis in
liability insurance caused in part by
the Texas Supreme Court, a special
legislative committee said Thursday.
“We are convinced beyond a
shadow of a doubt that the crisis is
real,” Sen. Grant Jones, D-Temple,
and Rep. Mike Toomey, R-Houston,
co-chairmen of the Joint Committee
on Liability Insurance and Tort Law
said in a joint statement.
“It is causing tremendous harm to
business, health care, governmental
and charitable activities in Texas,”
they said.
The committee made a 245-page
report to the Legislature Thursday
after a year-long study.
The report was signed by eight of
the 10 committee members, and
Sen. Kent Caperton, D-Bryan, said a
minority report will be made later.
Jones and Toomey said they
found no single cause for the crisis
but that the problems uncovered in
the study must be attacked on three
fronts — tort law reform, insurance
law reform and stronger medical
discipline.
“The study produced conclusive
evidence that fundamental changes
in tort law over the past several
years, largely through decisions by
the Texas Supreme Court, have
eroded the ability of insurers to ac
curately predict the frequency and
magnitude of their losses,” the
statement said.
Toomey told reporters he felt the
time had come “to find out which
body makes law in Texas. People
must decide whether it’s the Legis
lature or five men on the Supreme
Court who make the laws.”
The majority report said damage
awards in personal injury suits
should be limited to $250,000 for
non-economic losses such as pain,
suffering and mental anguish.
It recommended no limit on mea
surable losses in personal injury law
suits, including medical bills and lost
wages.
The report urged that state law be
changed to limit punitive damages to
$100,000, or three times the actual
economic damage, whichever is
greater. The person filing the suit
would get 25 percent of punitive
damages, his attorney 25 percent
and the state 50 percent.
A plaintiffs attorney would be
able to charge a fee limited to 40
percent of the first $100,000, 33.9
percent of the second $200,000, 25
percent of the next $200,000 and 10
percent of any amount over
$500,000.
The majority report made 30 rec
ommendations for changes in state
tort laws.
K
\
SUMMER JOBS
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8:00 PM
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(501) 867-2071
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