Mystery of Lancaster baby solved 64 years later

For years, Dennis found the story too far-fetched. He also never expected to learn the identity of his biological mother or the story leading up to his being left in an Ohio phone booth. But he did, and he is to meet his biological mother later this month for the first time.

At first, Lancaster police weren’t sure whether the baby was a kidnapping victim or had been left by a passing motorist. Police settled on the latter when there was no subsequent report of an infant being abducted. Still, they never found the baby’s parents.

The Lancaster EagleGazette published several articles about the discovery, the first one stating “the baby was lively, but very cold, and a full milk bottle was found beside the infant. The bottle was also cold. The baby’s physical condition appeared to be good.”

Dozens of people expressed interest in either fostering or adopting the baby. Dennis was placed in a foster home and later adopted by the Dennis family in February 1955. They moved to Arizona, where he has lived since.

“When I was 18 or 19, I went to Lancaster to kind of get a look at it,” Dennis said, adding that at the time, there wasn’t much to find.

Recently, his two daughters, ages 18 and 14, got him The Jan. 16, 1954, front page of the Lancaster Eagle-Gazette reports the baby’s discovery.

an Ancestry.com DNA test that determines ethnicity and can find genetic relatives. The results were returned in January, followed by a message from a man also using Ancestry.com who is a genetic match to Dennis. This man, he learned, is his first cousin.

“He said, ‘I think I know who your mother is. We’ve heard throughout our lives that there’s a baby that we’re related to that was left in a telephone booth,’” Dennis recalled.

Dennis’ cousin connected him to Dennis’ half sister, who lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Growing up, she, too, had heard the story.

“This deep, dark secret of my biological mother, the

kids had heard about this, but they weren’t sure if it’s true or not,” he said.

To check the story, his sister got a DNA test, confirming the match.

From there, Dennis’ sister contacted their mother, who also lives in Baltimore.

“The mother has finally said she wants to meet with me,” Dennis said. “Slowly week by week, she said: ‘I kind of remember.’”

He was told that his mother was 18 and was coerced to give the baby up by his father, who told her he would marry her if they left the baby. The family of three was traveling through Ohio from Kentucky — where Dennis had been born in a hospital — on their way back to Maryland when the father left him in the Lancaster phone booth. After that, the father disappeared.

Dennis has no further history of him. His mother, now in her 80s, married someone else and has two daughters.

Dennis said he has had a good life. He was in the Peace Corps, traveled extensively and married Maria, his wife of 22 years, and they have the two daughters. Dennis recently retired as a chiropractor.

Later this month, he is to travel to Maryland to meet his mother and half sister.

“It’s interesting. It’s not like earth-shattering or anything like that,” Dennis said. “My true parents, of course, were my adoptive parents. It would be almost impossible for me to think otherwise.”

Although Dennis would like to know more about his first few months of life, he said he won’t press his mother for details.

“I’d like to know my actual birth date but, according to my sister, the mother said she doesn’t remember,” he said. “I’m not going to make a real big deal about this. I’ll just take whatever she gives me and leave it at that. I mean you can’t hassle an 85-year-old woman. So whatever she feels comfortable saying to me, I’ll take. It’s more than I had before.”