Several months ago, forensic anthropologist Robert Mann discovered a strange message on his answering machine. It said something like, "Hello, I don't know how to tell you this, but my name is Emma, and I'm your sister."
Several months ago, forensic anthropologist Robert Mann discovered a strange message on his answering machine. It said something like, "Hello, I don't know how to tell you this, but my name is Emma, and I'm your sister."
Dr. Mann, the deputy scientific director of the federal Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, is used to mysteries. He's a medical detective who literally reads the bones of the dead. He has helped return names to unknown soldiers and helped identity the work of murderers.
Mann, 59, has written several books, including "Forensic Detective," which details some of the many cases he's helped solve over the years, but Mann has lived with a mystery of his own for decades.
"It's a lot to get used to," he said by phone from his office in Hawaii. "You go through your life thinking there's just you - then you find out you have nine brothers and sisters."
Robert Mann was born Robert Dean Churchwell in 1948. He was the sixth child of Mingo County coal miner William Churchwell and his wife, Alice.
In 1951, the Churchwells split. Alice took three of the couple's seven children, including 2-year-old Robert, and fled to Florida. The rest remained with relatives. She filed for divorce, then put the children up for adoption.
In 1952, Bill and Odell Mann adopted Robert, but they also divorced a few years later.
"I was really raised by my [adoptive] mother and by my grandparents," he said. "I didn't see my Dad much after my parents divorced when I was 5."
Mann said his adoptive mother was very loving and very hardworking. She owned a pizza parlor and worked nights. He grew up in the kitchen, where by example, his mother preached the values of hard work and a good education.
"But I wasn't all that good of a student," he said. "I dropped out of high school, got my GED and joined the Navy."
The Navy matured him, he says. When he got out in 1976, he decided to give school another try. He went to community college. He transferred to William and Mary and studied anthropology, which eventually led to forensics and a storied career solving crimes and identifying the missing. He has worked on cases involving serial killers and made 75 trips to Vietnam to identify the remains of U.S. servicemen.
He's had a good life, but has often wondered what became of the rest of his family. His memories were few. He once called a courthouse in West Virginia to get more information and was told he belonged to a big family, but he didn't learn much else.
In his book, "Forensic Detective," Mann included a short biographical chapter about how he got into forensic science. It briefly gave his birth name, his mother's name, the number of siblings he had and where he was adopted.
He put the chapter in the book hoping someone might see it and connect him with his family. He didn't have many expectations. More than 50 years had passed.
Months later, Denise Churchwell picked up his book in Florida while she was researching her family name. She wasn't related to Mann or the West Virginia Churchwells, but had been corresponding online with Emma Churchwell in Arkansas. Emma was Mann's older sister and one of the children who had been left behind after the family split.
"Denise was a really nice person," Emma said by phone from Arkansas. "She found Robert's name and got his phone number. She tracked it down, at least part way, I think, through Robert's book."
The number was eventually shared with everyone, and there have been a lot of calls back and forth since then, but Emma says she was the first one to call Robert.
"I just wanted to reach through the phone and hug him."
Through the phone calls, Mann not only found out his six brothers and sisters were still alive, but he also learned there were more half-siblings he knew nothing about. His mother had remarried, had other children and given at least one more up for adoption.
He also got some idea of how lucky he was to have been adopted into a good home. Neither of the other two children their mother had taken to Florida nor the four she left in West Virginia had fared as well.
An adoption for his older brother Claude and older sister Shirley failed. The pair went into foster care. For five years, they were moved from place to place, staying with one foster family for a few months before being shuttled on to the next.
Claude, now 62, is still bitter about what happened.
"I guess the state of Florida didn't want anyone to get attached," said Claude, who now lives in Charleston.
Several months ago, forensic anthropologist Robert Mann discovered a strange message on his answering machine. It said something like, "Hello, I don't know how to tell you this, but my name is Emma, and I'm your sister."
Dr. Mann, the deputy scientific director of the federal Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, is used to mysteries. He's a medical detective who literally reads the bones of the dead. He has helped return names to unknown soldiers and helped identity the work of murderers.
Mann, 59, has written several books, including "Forensic Detective," which details some of the many cases he's helped solve over the years, but Mann has lived with a mystery of his own for decades.
"It's a lot to get used to," he said by phone from his office in Hawaii. "You go through your life thinking there's just you - then you find out you have nine brothers and sisters."
Robert Mann was born Robert Dean Churchwell in 1948. He was the sixth child of Mingo County coal miner William Churchwell and his wife, Alice.
In 1951, the Churchwells split. Alice took three of the couple's seven children, including 2-year-old Robert, and fled to Florida. The rest remained with relatives. She filed for divorce, then put the children up for adoption.
In 1952, Bill and Odell Mann adopted Robert, but they also divorced a few years later.
"I was really raised by my [adoptive] mother and by my grandparents," he said. "I didn't see my Dad much after my parents divorced when I was 5."
Mann said his adoptive mother was very loving and very hardworking. She owned a pizza parlor and worked nights. He grew up in the kitchen, where by example, his mother preached the values of hard work and a good education.
"But I wasn't all that good of a student," he said. "I dropped out of high school, got my GED and joined the Navy."
The Navy matured him, he says. When he got out in 1976, he decided to give school another try. He went to community college. He transferred to William and Mary and studied anthropology, which eventually led to forensics and a storied career solving crimes and identifying the missing. He has worked on cases involving serial killers and made 75 trips to Vietnam to identify the remains of U.S. servicemen.
He's had a good life, but has often wondered what became of the rest of his family. His memories were few. He once called a courthouse in West Virginia to get more information and was told he belonged to a big family, but he didn't learn much else.
In his book, "Forensic Detective," Mann included a short biographical chapter about how he got into forensic science. It briefly gave his birth name, his mother's name, the number of siblings he had and where he was adopted.
He put the chapter in the book hoping someone might see it and connect him with his family. He didn't have many expectations. More than 50 years had passed.
Months later, Denise Churchwell picked up his book in Florida while she was researching her family name. She wasn't related to Mann or the West Virginia Churchwells, but had been corresponding online with Emma Churchwell in Arkansas. Emma was Mann's older sister and one of the children who had been left behind after the family split.
"Denise was a really nice person," Emma said by phone from Arkansas. "She found Robert's name and got his phone number. She tracked it down, at least part way, I think, through Robert's book."
The number was eventually shared with everyone, and there have been a lot of calls back and forth since then, but Emma says she was the first one to call Robert.
"I just wanted to reach through the phone and hug him."
Through the phone calls, Mann not only found out his six brothers and sisters were still alive, but he also learned there were more half-siblings he knew nothing about. His mother had remarried, had other children and given at least one more up for adoption.
He also got some idea of how lucky he was to have been adopted into a good home. Neither of the other two children their mother had taken to Florida nor the four she left in West Virginia had fared as well.
An adoption for his older brother Claude and older sister Shirley failed. The pair went into foster care. For five years, they were moved from place to place, staying with one foster family for a few months before being shuttled on to the next.
Claude, now 62, is still bitter about what happened.
"I guess the state of Florida didn't want anyone to get attached," said Claude, who now lives in Charleston.
Shirley, 61, of Arkansas, agrees.
"I wish we would've been adopted," she said by phone. "Maybe things would have turned out better for us."
In 1957, the two were sent to a home in North Carolina where they say they were abused and beaten. Claude, then 12, ran away, but was quickly caught.
"We told them about what happened," Shirley said, "but they got away with it. No charges. Nothing."
Authorities pulled the children from the home and sent them back to Florida. Their father was called and asked to take them home. Their father brought them back to West Virginia, but the reunion was short-lived. He deposited them with his aunt, who had earlier taken in Emma.
Emma had moved out years before. Not long after Claude and Shirley entered foster care, Emma, then 14, dropped out of school. She convinced her aunt to sign papers falsely claiming she was 16. She'd married and moved to Ohio.
Life back in West Virginia was hard and unhappy. They stayed with their aunt for only a few years. Claude dropped out of high school in the 10th grade. Shirley left school nearly at the same time, finishing her education in the eighth grade.
Most of the Churchwell children drifted into rough, sometimes desperate lives. They worked low-paying, low-skilled jobs and drifted from failed relationship to failed relationship. Claude wandered the country and was occasionally homeless before he was able to settle in Charleston, where he works at the First Presbyterian Church as a custodian and manages the food pantry at Covenant House.
Claude married, divorced and put two of his children up for adoption in the 1970s. Not long ago, he found his son, William, serving a prison sentence in Virginia.
"I'm still looking for my daughter," he said.
As adults, the Churchwells kept in loose contact with each other, but saw their parents infrequently. Their mother remarried Charles Calvert, started another family in Florida and didn't acknowledge the children from her earlier marriage for the rest of her life.
"The last time I saw her was at my grandmother's funeral," Claude said. "She didn't want anything to do with us."
Their father, they said, they saw, but he was distant. He seemed to want to forget he knew them, too.
Emma and Claude remember their father as a moody, violent man. He beat their mother. He beat all of them, but absolution for her leaving is elusive.
Finding Robert after 55 years has reopened some of those old wounds, but it's largely been a welcome surprise and not the only one. Denise Churchwell also discovered Kathleen Sargent, a half-sister living in Florida that none of the West Virginia Churchwells knew existed.
Sargent was put up for adoption in 1956 - four years after Robert was adopted. Sargent never guessed she was adopted until about six years ago. She overheard a strange conversation between relatives and confronted her godparents with her suspicions.
"I had a great childhood," she said by phone from Florida. "I had an awesome mother who loved me and encouraged me. I've had a great life, really."
The long-distance bills are climbing as everyone is trying to make up for lost time. Eventually, they want to gather everyone together and meet in West Virginia. Dr. Mann wants to see where he was born, but the brothers and sisters are taking it slowly.
"It's hard to say when it will happen," Claude said. "I don't think we want to go too long, but I don't think we're all quite ready."
"This is a big thing in my life," Mann said. "It's an amazing thing, but I really want things to take their natural course. I started off thinking I was alone and now I've got enough brothers and sisters to form a soccer team."
To contact staff writer Bill Lynch, use e-mail or call 348-5195.
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