By Scott L. Miley, Herald Bulletin Associate Features Editor
ANDERSON — Melvin Hazelwood and his brother by birth, Carl Manger, were chatting on a recent December night with their wives about their newfound relationships.
As young boys, Hazelwood, now 68, and Manger, 65, were sent with three other brothers to the Indiana Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home in Knightstown.
The boys and five sisters had been forcibly removed from their southern Indiana home in 1947 after their parents were declared in neglect.
The girls and two boys would be adopted to separate families. The others were reared at the home.
Over the ensuing 50 years, Melvin Hazelwood managed to track down all siblings except brothers Carl and George and sister Mary Lou.
By chance last spring, Melvin found that Carl (now Carl Manger) had been raised in Madison County and was living in Chesterfield. A nephew of Melvin’s noticed Carl’s resemblance while at a convenience store and got the men together. Melvin and Carl had since become close friends.
Their story was told in the local Madison magazine; an online version was published at www.heraldbulletin.com. Melvin’s phone number — (765) 649-4544 — was published in case George or Mary Lou might see it
On the night of Dec. 7, as the Hazelwoods and Mangers chatted around the kitchen table, the phone rang inside Melvin’s south side Anderson home.
Melvin’s wife, Karen, picked up the receiver, reluctantly, since she didn’t recognize the phone number on the caller ID screen.
“Of course, I said, ‘Hello,” recalled Karen.
A man’s voice followed.
“He said, ‘Is this the Melvin Hazelwood residence?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ There was a long pause. And he said, ‘I’m George ... but I go by a different name now’.”
She added, “It about floored me.”
A Ford in the family
Over the years, Dan Ford would occasionally type his birth name, George Hazelwood, into Internet search engines.
The hunt never yielded what he hoped, that he would find brothers he had not seen in 50 years.
Years earlier, he tried unsuccessfully to find the Hazelwood family farm near Austin, Ind., based on information from his adoptive parents.
Then in 1989, after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, he searched the name of the ship’s captain, Joseph Hazelwood, to see if there were any relatives listed. He found none.
Ford was adopted at the age of 7 from the Knightstown home in 1953. His new parents were George and Genevieve Ford, of New Harmony in southwest Indiana.
Left behind at Knightstown were four brothers including Melvin and Carl.
“I didn’t know he was leaving,” recalled Melvin.
But even today, 56 years later, the image of leaving brother Carl is still fresh in Dan Ford’s mind: “He and I were teeter-tottering while they were inside, I guess, finishing all the paperwork and then when I got in the car, I said goodbye to him.
“He was the last face I remember at Knightstown. We were driving away and both of us were crying.”
As his parents drove from Knightstown, mother Genevieve Ford told young George that she already had one George Ford in the family. From that point on, the newly-adopted boy would be known as Dan. They kept George as his middle name.
Today, Dan George Ford, 63, is a counselor for a health maintenance organization in Tulsa, Okla. He is the married father of two grown children.
On Dec. 7, he once again logged onto his computer and typed in “George Hazelwood.”
The search hit a new result: The Herald Bulletin article in which Melvin was looking for long-lost brother George.
The article sparked deep feelings.
Ford said, “There was sadness. There was fear. I remember being scared and being exuberant, angry, frustrated. You name the emotion and it was probably there.”
He paused, then called Melvin in Anderson.
It was 9:45 p.m. on Dec. 7 when Karen Hazelwood answered the phone.
More than four
Nine days later, on Dec. 16, Dan George Ford and his wife sat with Melvin Hazelwood, Carl Manger, their wives, and niece and nephew, Brad and Cyndi Scott at the Perkins restaurant on Scatterfield Road.
The three men looked like brothers with the same balding hair patterns and high foreheads. Melvin and Carl wear black Nike athletic shoes with Velcro laces; George (he was willing to be called George) admitted to having a similar pair, though made by New Balance. George and Carl were adopted sons of lumber company owners. And all of them had broken bones at some point in their lives.
Perhaps oddest, Carl, while living in Chesterfield, and George, living in New Harmony, attended the Boy Scout Golden Jamboree in 1960. They both claim to have been just a few feet from a car carrying President Dwight Eisenhower as he passed through the Colorado campgrounds. They also attended the same functions there, though they had no idea the other was nearby.
So, as they met in December, a hug was long overdue.
When George first approached Melvin, he stuck out his hand.
“He wanted to shake my hand but I wouldn’t let him. I hugged him,” said Melvin.
Said George, “I’m glad of that. I felt much more comfortable by doing that.”
As it turns out, Dan Ford has a larger family than he envisioned. His now-deceased birth parents, General Sherman and Cordelia Hazelwood, produced 15 children including four more boys after their first children were taken by welfare.
At their Anderson meeting, Melvin Hazelwood brought an aged photograph.
George said, “Melvin showed me a picture of my mother and father that I’d never seen, that I never knew. It was very emotional when I saw that.”
The five Hazelwood girls were all adopted. One, an infant called Mary Lou, was pulled from Melvin’s arms by welfare workers at the family’s home. She is the only one left to find.
If Melvin Hazelwood can find brother Carl living in the same county and brother George some 680 miles away, there is hope, they say, of locating Mary Lou.
Adds Carl, “Now if we can just find Mary Lou, we’ll have the whole family together.”
