2 who grew up in orphanage reunited after 65 years

By Kelcy Dolan
Posted 7/12/16

It was all by chance that a co-worker at Kent Hospital would mention the name James L. Allen Tetreault to assistant Chaplin John Gilbane Baker. Baker knew the name sounded familiar and came to …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

E-mail
Password
Log in

2 who grew up in orphanage reunited after 65 years

Posted

It was all by chance that a co-worker at Kent Hospital would mention the name James L. Allen Tetreault to assistant Chaplin John Gilbane Baker. Baker knew the name sounded familiar and came to realize the last time he had heard it was almost 65 years ago at St. Aloysius Orphanage as a young boy.

Baker sent along his contact information to Tetreault and the two finally were able to meet again at Brewed Awakenings at the end of June. Now both 76, the two were able to reminisce about their childhoods at the orphanage and discuss where life had taken them since.

Tetreault and Baker had both been born into the system, sent to St. Vincent de Paul’s Infant Asylum at only a couple weeks old, in August 1939 and March 1940 respectively. Both were transferred to St. Aloysius when they were 5 and 6 and grew up with one another till they left the orphanage just after their 14th birthdays.

Tetreault remembered he was brought to speak with Father Guertin and his social worker, a “Ms. Bruno,” just before he turned 14, where they told him he was aging out of the system, and they had been able to contact his biological mother.

“I didn’t really know what they meant. I wasn’t prepared for this idea of having a biological mother,” Tetreault said.

Tetreault would only stay with his mother for several months before moving in with his older sister Anna Shipley until he was married.

When Baker left St. Aloysius, he also went to live with his biological mother. Although he was a bit confused, Baker said he was happy to learn he had a family. His mother’s husband, Robert Baker, and their children welcomed Baker into their home.

“I was glad to know I did have a mother and a family. It was a shock and came all of a sudden, but I loved my mother and all my brothers and sisters. The circumstances couldn’t be helped or fixed. I always focused on the now, rather than the past and I lived with them for many years,” Baker said.

Neither Baker nor Tetreault, who both reside in Warwick now, know anything of their biological fathers, something both wish they had an opportunity to know, if they have more family out there.

Growing up it was very hard to learn anything about themselves as their paperwork, birth certificates and medical records were “locked and sealed” as property of Catholic Social Services for Diocese of Providence.

“We had no right to them,” Baker said.

In speaking with one another last month, Tetreault and Baker found that they ended up growing up in similar neighborhoods in East Providence after leaving St. Aloysius. They had grown up in the orphanage together, being in the same age groups and Tetreault said, “At the orphanage everyone is your friend. Once we started talking I could see him as a kid again, picture him there in the orphanage.”

“I was so happy he remembered me,” Baker said.

After the orphanage, although growing up in the same neighborhood, life took the two friends don’t different paths. Tetreault would go on to become an operations manager in costume jewelry manufacturing companies for more than 50 years, the last of which was Scorpio Ltd before retiring. He would get married and have one daughter, Kathleen Nichols.

“I never really had a family life growing up, but now with my daughter I know what it’s like.”

After high school Baker would go on to receive a business administration degree from Bryant College, then joined the Air Force in 1966, where he was trained as a medical administration specialist as well as in chapel management. He would continue serving until 1974. Baker went back to school receiving a degree in the humanities from Providence College. He joined the Rhode Island National Guard, where his first assignment was to shovel snow at the Roger Williams Hospital in 1978. There he continued with chapel management school. He was selected to take part in the inaugural class of a new deacon school in Providence. Although he would be removed from his studies for a deployment to Iraq activated by the senior George Bush, he would be ordained in October of 1994. Baker married, and has been with his wife, Marion, for the last 34 years. He is an assistant Chaplin at Kent Hospital and runs a nursing home ministry as well.

Tetreault said growing up in an orphanage isolates one from the rest of the world.

“It doesn’t always prepare you for the real world,” he said. “I felt for a long time I didn’t know anything that I was gullible, naïve and shy. It took me years to get over that, to understand there was an entire universe outside of the orphanage. Born and raised in the system you don’t know anything else.”

Baker said children are definitely “sheltered” in the orphanage that made aging out difficult, but with nuns as substitute mother, hundreds of other kids to play with, and sports fields “we had it all going for us.”

Tetreault said, “People always say it must have been terrible growing up in an orphanage, and that used to get me really upset, because for me, I though it was a good life. I had no choice in is and it was all I knew, it was my life and I liked it.”

Both said they were happy at St. Aloysius, especially when you hear “horror stories” of the treatment in other orphanages. Baker and Tetreault agreed that that was never their experience, that they have fond memories of their time there and the people that cared for them.

The two hope to keep in contact now that they have been reunited and continue to share stories with one another of their time together.

Comments

1 comment on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here

  • richardcorrente

    Kelcy Dolan, you did it again!

    Another feel-good human interest story!

    Great job!

    Richard Corrente

    Endorsed Democrat for Mayor

    Wednesday, July 13, 2016 Report this