Where’S My Tiffany?

By Hilary R. Sessions

While out exercising the afternoon of February 9, 1989, college student Tiffany Sessions disappeared. Her mother, Hilary, frantically tried to find her, but after twenty years, Tiffany is still missing.

Wheres My Tiffany? is a heartrending glimpse into one mothers struggles to deal with the emotions, hardships, and grief over the loss of her daughter. With intimate detail, Sessions reveals how the case unraveled, from the first moments of Tiffanys disappearance through the agonizing search for clues, and finally, to the eventual realization that Tiffany might not come back safely.

But Sessions also focuses on how she turned her tragedy into a personal victory by never giving up hope. Instead of losing to the darkness of despair, Sessions sought to help other families of missing children and became a teacher, childrens advocate, and legislative shepherd. She also explores the deeply personal spiritual journey she underwent during the twenty-year saga, one that made her a stronger, more courageous person.

Brutally honest and deeply moving, Wheres My Tiffany? offers a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the incredible void left by a missing child. Yet it is also a story of hope and comfort for others facing this devastating challenge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450286169

Hilary R. Sessions

Hilary Sessions has been the executive director of Child Protection Education of America since 2004. Her daughter, Tiffany, disappeared in 1989. Sessions lives in Valrico, Florida, with her pets.

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Copyright © 2011 by Hilary R. Sessions

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ISBN: 978-1-4502-8615-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-8616-9 (ebook)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-8617-6 (dj)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011900431

iUniverse rev. date: 2/09/2011

Contents

P

reface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1

Tiffany: The Early Years

Chapter 2

Tiffany: Just Before Abduction and Abduction

Chapter 3

The First Few Weeks after Tiffy’s Disappearance

Chapter 4

Four Months to One Year into the Investigation

Chapter 5

Investigation: Years Two through Five

Chapter 6

Investigation: Years Six through Fifteen

Chapter 7

Investigation: Years Sixteen to the Present

Chapter 8

My Personal Perspective of Tiff’s Case

Chapter 9

Background of Missing Children … HELP Center

Chapter 10

Missing Children—What Can You Do?

Appendix

References

To Mom and Dad, may you never forget my Tiffany

and

To all the volunteers and police officers who for over two decades have searched tirelessly for any evidence of my Tiffy and all other missing children nationwide. To all the missing children non-profits who worked outside the box to help all families of missing children both over and under the age of eighteen. Also thank you to the scientists who discovered new forensic tools to identify unidentified human remains, and to President Bush for recognizing the agonizing dilemma of left-behind families searching for their missing loved ones and signing the Presidential DNA Initiative to help identify the remains and bring our long-lost loved ones home. Thank you for establishing NamUs so I don’t have to actually identify human remains myself.

Preface

Where’s My Tiffany? is the culmination of more than two decades of first-hand experience with my only child’s disappearance on February 9, 1989. Tiffany has still not been found as of the publication of this book. In the beginning and still now, there is always hope that Tiffany will be returned safely. I have to keep the hope alive because that is what allows me to get up every morning and continue to work on Tiff’s case.

I started writing thoughts that were whirling around in my brain during the early days of Tiff’s disappearance. Sometimes I got up in the middle of the night because I couldn’t sleep and went to the computer to put my thoughts down on a floppy disk. Sometimes I wrote on a pad of paper, which I later transcribed on the computer. Writing helped me clear my mind of all kinds of ominous thoughts and to refocus on the task at hand. Nowhere in my thought process was the notion that this case would go on for more than twenty years! Children are supposed to be returned to their parents within a few hours or a week or less. Right? Many are; some are found many months and sometimes years later—but some are never found. The ones found more than three hours after their abduction are true miracles because statistics are against them.

Every day I hope I will receive the call that Tiff is safe. Sometimes the feelings of total despair are followed almost immediately by the euphoria of hope with a new lead, or a call, or a feeling that she’s just around the corner. Hope has allowed me to continue the search for more than two decades. All I want is to have closure—one way or the other—of what happened to my only child. In a missing child case, there are only the two extremes of black and white, dead or alive. There are no shades of grey. Living in the not knowing stage is the most difficult—you cannot be happy that your child is alive (because you don’t know), and you cannot complete the grieving process with a funeral (because you don’t know). It is like being in what I describe as purgatory, which is a state of punishment. I’m not sure what I have done wrong; but I know having a missing child is certainly a punishment that no parent should ever have to suffer and which sometimes can last decades or the remainder of your life.

I wrote this book to describe some of the behind-the-scenes activities that people might not ordinarily see. If you are a family member of a missing child; you might be very familiar with the emotions, feelings, and actions. If you are not; it is my hope that you will never have to endure any of these emotions or join our family of missing children parents.

Keeping your senses about you after your child is missing takes concentration. What you took for granted before the incident becomes stuff that you actively need to concentrate on to get through your day. For example, eating, bathing, working, paying bills, driving, talking, coping with other family members, to name a few. Your minute-by-minute world has just been put on a huge roller coaster with all the super-high ups and deep-depression downs, sharp turns, and fast stops of that type of ride.

Living life after Tiff’s disappearance is no longer as fun as it used to be. Every day is hard work that requires my total concentration and organization. Before Tiff’s disappearance, I had one job. I got up and went to work every day. After Tiff’s disappearance, I had two jobs—the regular job to support us that I had before and my new job—to find Tiff. The number of hours in a day is the same; I just had to figure out how I was going to fit the second job into the same amount of time that I had before. Something suffers, and for many people it’s the relaxation time they had before the incident, and in some cases, the emotional strain is too much and the regular job suffers or your personal health and/or relationships suffer. Some parents are not able to return to their regular jobs and that causes a rift in the family and financial woes. All the quiet time is gone! If you do something for yourself, you feel guilty because you feel like you are abandoning your missing child and you should be working on the case. It took me six years of non-stop work on Tiff’s case to take my first vacation after she disappeared. I didn’t feel that I should reward myself with a vacation because she wasn’t home yet and I had feelings of abandonment and guilt regarding my child’s case while I was away.

How did I continue my life without my most precious possession, my Tiffany? One minute at a time, one hour at a time, one day at a time, one week at a time, one month at a time, one year at a time, and now one decade at a time. You have to actively concentrate on each effort in the beginning. Otherwise, evil will win, and you cannot let that happen. It would be very easy to allow evil to pervade your life, to change your perspective and become combative and angry. You must remain positive about your child’s case, for yourself and everyone involved. If you do not remain positive, your negativism will permeate everything and everybody around you and people will pull away, creating isolation and ostracism.

I had to learn patience and perseverance. The patience was with myself, the investigators, my work, my friends, the press, and the world. I’ve adopted the attitude, If it is meant to be; it will be. That attitude has taken a lot of time to accept; but it also keeps me from being disappointed (and ultimately depressed) if something doesn’t happen as I envisioned it would. It keeps me on the glass half-full side versus the glass half-empty side, which is emotionally much more positive and emotionally better for me. My perseverance continued each day, getting up knowing that I had to do something on Tiffy’s case or for other missing children. Those individual days now total more than twenty years. Perhaps my perseverance also stems from my parents teaching me that I had to complete any project I started.

I want people to see what happens to a normal family when a tragedy of this magnitude occurs. In many cases, the family members are polarized by their beliefs and cannot tolerate the views of other family members. Many times the polarity causes divorce, estrangement, or ultimately death by disease or even suicide. Some of each of the above happened in my own family. The bonds of blood or marriage are sometimes too weak to hold a family together in the face of such an overwhelming tragedy.

In my darkest and brightest moments, I remind myself that I must be the one who gives testimony to my daughter’s existence. I am her voice. I want everyone to know who she was, what she means to me, and that in life and the missing time/possible death, her story is one that we should all remember and learn from. I want people to know her as more than a two-dimensional photo on a missing-person flyer, a recurring news story or a case file. Tiffany was my baby, a unique, living person who was taken from me without any known reason or explanation. In that fate, however, she has transcended; she is anyone’s child, she is everyone’s child, and for that reason I’ve chosen to share her with you.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my dad, Geoffrey Roberts, for being there for the last three years of his life. During this time I had to put the book on hold because being with him was more important than anything else, as I never knew whether he would be there the next day. Even though he has passed on, I hope he is looking down on me and is happy that I finished one of the projects, the book, which I was working on while he was alive. I knew the book had to be written, but being with him was so important to me.

How do I say thanks to my ex-husband, Doug Brown, for being there for me in the beginning? I know he never signed up for a missing child in our marriage vows. No one ever does. I truly understand his frustrations with me, law enforcement, and the system. I know he made a lot of sacrifices for me and Tiff. I am grateful for everything he did to ease my inconsolable pain and for all the shovels of dirt he removed searching for evidence on Tiff. I’m grateful to him for being there for me when I didn’t believe that I could go on another minute. I’m grateful for his wonderful hugs and kisses and words of encouragement before I had to do a press conference. My thanks for everything he ever did for me during our relationship and marriage. I truly regret ignoring my marriage bond until it was too late to repair.

I would like to acknowledge my sister Dorie Karl Faulkner for all the emotional support during the last thirty-five years since our college days at the University of Miami, for all the help she has given me with my animals in the past two decades. She has always been there when I needed her the most. I hope that I have been able to at least return some of the favors she has done for me.

I would also like to acknowledge my other steadfast sister Ivana DiNova. Ivana has been one of the rocks upon which I was able to stabilize my life immediately after Tiff disappeared. She brought me under her wing and nurtured me like a good Italian mom does. She educated me about the missing children issue and told me how she and her mother-in-law Betty DiNova developed a program of public awareness about missing children with the formation of the Dorothy DeeDee Scofield Awareness Program, which she started in her kitchen in Brandon, Florida, in 1976. Because the Dorothy DeeDee Scofield Awareness Program was started here in Brandon, I personally felt that Brandon had to be the location for the missing children’s organization, Child Protection Education of America. I could not have completed this book without her and her family—Tony, Vince, Joe, and Nicco, and of course all the daughters-in-law and grandchildren. I am grateful that she welcomed me into her family from the first day and for always being willing to go shopping to get me up emotionally and running again.

I would also like to acknowledge all my staff at Child Protection Education of America who have always stood beside and behind me in this project. My thanks go to Denise, Tami, Barb, Bill, and Wendy; and the board of directors, Jody, Debbie, Grace, and KC. I know they did not believe I would ever finish the book, but I have.

Marilyn McConnell, my former next-door neighbor, adopted me as her godmother after her natural mother, Lora, passed away of cancer. I also adopted her as my surrogate daughter after Tiff disappeared and Doug and I separated. We talked with each other many times a day and shared girl stuff like a mother and daughter. I thank Marilyn, for urging me to attend the Landmark Forum, which gave me the opportunity to take my life back and not be a victim for the rest of my life. I thank her for allowing me to practice my mothering skills on her too!

I would like to acknowledge Jim Housley, for understanding all the hours and nights I was writing this book. I’m grateful for his willingness to take some of the photographs that appear on the cover and inside of this book. I know it is difficult to be patient; and I appreciate his patience.

My thanks also go to Dot Brown, my ex-mother-in-law, for being so compassionate when my own family left shortly after Tiff disappeared, and for being there for eight years after Tiffy disappeared and before my divorce from her son, Doug.

Thanks to all the law enforcement officers that I have had contact with during the past two decades. Special thanks to former Deputy Stephanie Violette, Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office; Majors George McNamara and Sophie Teague, Tampa Police Department; Fernando Fernandez, Miami Police Department; Angel (bloodhound handler), Miami-Dade School District Police Department; Luis Ledbetter (bloodhound handler), Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office; Jon Burcham, Polk County Sheriff’s Office; Special Agent Al Danna and Special Agent in Charge Wayne Ivey, Florida Department of Law Enforcement; and Commissioner Gerald Bailey and Assistant Commissioner Mark Zadra and Director of Criminal Justice Informational Services, and Donna Uzzell, Director of the Missing Persons Clearinghouse, Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

A deeply personal thanks to Special Agent Larry Ruby of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who served as my lifeline for whatever information was shareable from Alachua County from the second year after Tiffany’s disappearance in 1989 until the end of June 2010, when he retired. I could not have survived without his patient and compassionate concern for my Tiffy and me. Thanks for thinking outside of the box!

Many thanks must go to my special dentist, Dr. Bruce Waterman in Brandon, Florida, who patiently and generously made at least thirty-eight copies of Tiff’s X-rays and dental charts for the FBI, FDLE, and Alachua County Sheriff’s Office. Most importantly he recognized the importance of his records to the case. He also submitted the request to the ADA (American Dental Association) to have a chip glued to a child’s molar when they were young for identification. Thanks, Bruce, for always being there for my Tiffy.

A very special thanks to my bloodhound breeder, Pam Andrews of Lake Butler Bloodhound Breeders. Pam bred, assisted all the moms delivering the pups, raised all the pups to eight weeks, weaned them, and delivered thirty-eight velvety-eared little bundles of wiggling, big feet and ears, and a moist wrinkly-nosed bloodhound to me at CPEA. CPEA purchased the pups and then donated them to law enforcement officers across the United States to be trained to scent discriminate and search for missing children and adults and bank robbers. Pam, your mom’s ashes are on their way from Alaska in August 2010 on her around-the-world tour thanks to the help of my friend Carl Calhoun.

Many thanks to all the marketing companies and Mike Putnam, John Carty, and Larry Tannenbaum who helped raise the funds for CPEA to operate nationally. CPEA could not have otherwise been the presence we were, helping so many families, law enforcement agencies, and communities to be more aware of their own safety.

Thank you, Carl Calhoun, formerly of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the International Division, for allowing me to experience a very special reunification in 2007. With this reunification, I actually experienced all the emotions of another parent reunited with her missing child and vicariously put myself in the mom’s shoes when she experienced it firsthand. You gave me a gift that can never be taken away. Thank you for allowing me and CPEA to help you make another family whole again!

A very special thank you goes to Grace, who has special feelings, for allowing me to communicate with my Tiffy again. Although I would prefer to give her a big hug, I truly appreciate all the time, effort, and insight you have given me and shared with me about my Tiffy. I truly feel blessed.

Thank you, God, for standing by me when I didn’t think I could take another step and when I wanted to end my search permanently. Thank you for giving me the strength to continue my life’s work for my Tiffy, all missing children, missing children issues and education, and allowing me to be a small part in making it better for future generations of America’s children.

Introduction

Where’s My Tiffany? began as a tribute to my only child Tiffany and to enumerate some of the work that parents can and might do in order to try and recover their own missing child. Little did I know that it would become a cathartic experience to write this book and the processes that I went through to complete the book. I relived each and every experience in the book to try and give you an insight into some of the aspects of a missing child’s case from the mom’s perspective. It was not my intention to document each days activities; but to give you an idea of the enormity of the case. After all the thoughts were on paper, I was able to analyze exactly what was happening currently, and what had happened over the course of more than two decades since Tiffy was taken. I started the book early in the process; but at that point it was only a news story, and I had only experienced the initial shock of a missing child. I hope when you finish the book, you will have a better understanding of the loss of my child or anyone’s missing child and the different emotional stages that you progress through. I’m not a clinical psychologist or a professional, only a mom who experienced all these emotions herself.

When a child, like my Tiffy, has been missing for any amount of time, a parent experiences a grieving process. Sometimes, if a child is only missing for a short time, the process is cut short and the parents barely starts it; the process is compressed into an hour, a day, or a week. As the time of a child’s disappearance is expanded, the grieving process begins to enter a more profound and lingering state. It wasn’t until I actually put my thoughts on paper that I understood that grieving is a process, and that the various stages of grieving are not sequential. There are very fuzzy and in some cases indeterminate demarcation lines which form between the different stages. Let me state very clearly here that this is my story of how I progressed through the different stages, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that any other parent with a missing child must go through his or her grieving process at the same pace or in the same manner that I did. This was the right speed for me to travel down the grief road; but another person’s might be a little faster or slower. Whatever time frame a person is in on the grief road is the right time, because it is his or her grief. It will take as long as it takes for each of us.

As I write this introduction, I am coming up on Tiff’s fortieth birthday. I never thought in my wildest dreams that she wouldn’t be here with me by this time. I always dreamed of having grandchildren. I know it will be a difficult time, but I also know that I have to brace myself to get through the day on my terms. I believe that I will probably spend a lot of time in Tiffy’s bedroom, just because I feel closer to her there. There won’t be a celebration like there would normally be for her birthday. Some birthdays and date-missing days are more difficult to tolerate than others. Some are excruciating and gallons of tears are shed; some don’t seem any different than any other day. There is no telling what the mind has in store for you for each day until that day actually arrives. Tiff’s third anniversary was extremely difficult for me.

I remember my ex-husband Doug used to tell me that he didn’t know which day was going to be an eggshell day. That is a day in which he would have to be super-aware of my emotions because they were right on the surface, and anything could set off a crying spell and a trip to Tiff’s room for many hours for solace.

I encourage any parent or family member of a parent with a missing child to read this book; not to follow it as a handbook, but to help understand that this grief is an on-going process that doesn’t stop even after, or whether, the child is returned. The grief and the anticipation of another event continues for a lifetime.

For the past two decades, every day when I awaken, I always hope that that day would be the day I find a resolution to my Tiff’s disappearance. Today is no different.

Chapter 1

Tiffany: The Early Years

Since her birth, my daughter Tiffany was always the most important person in my life. I valued her above all things and put my responsibility for her happiness and safety before any other duty, desire, or relationship. I’m not suggesting that I was the perfect parent, but I know that my love for her was and still is absolute, and the certainty of that truth has allowed me to go on living in her absence.

Like all children, Tiffany was and remains irreplaceable. No soul on earth could ever fill her void. No photograph, record, or memory could adequately define who she was and who she might have been. While the course of my life might have brought me another child, whom I’m sure I would have loved just as deeply; the loss of my Tiffany could never be assuaged by anyone or anything. During the two decades since her disappearance and presumed murder, I’ve thought several times about joining her. In the few times that I contemplated suicide however, two thoughts have always prevailed and brought me back from that precipice: If I give in to my loss, who will remember and look for my missing daughter? Why should the perpetrator have a second victim?

Aside from several baby teeth and a molar that I withheld from early investigators and will not relinquish to anyone (except Larry Ruby of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, who I’ll describe later in the book), there is little tangible evidence that Tiffany ever existed. I relinquished some of her baby teeth, which contained microscopic samples of Tiff’s blood with the hope that her blood type could be determined. The molar is the only intact tooth that could possibly be used to extract Tiff’s DNA for comparison to any unidentified bodies located throughout the United States.

Of course, there are photographs, papers with Tiffy’s handwriting, pictures she drew, clothing, jewelry, and all manner of personal items that I’ve kept, but these are mere artifacts—things I’ve retained for my own comfort and sanity that will ultimately lose their meaning once I’m gone.

As for memories … well, I’d like to believe that her memory will be perpetuated by those whose lives she was a part of, but I can’t count on that. Aside from me, those who were (or should have been) closest to Tiffany have departed in one way or another, and some seemed ready to forget about her within months of her disappearance. Others, such as her friends, classmates, and her high school sweetheart, Rand, have moved on with their lives. I don’t begrudge them that necessity. Although I believe they loved and cared for her, I suspect that time wore away the importance of Tiffany’s memory for most of them, perhaps reducing it to an occasional haunting reminder of how life can change in an instant.

To know Tiff, you have to know a little about me and my own family. We were the primary influence throughout 99 percent of her childhood. The relationship that she and I built together was, to me, much more than one of simply mother and daughter.

I was the eldest of four children. Two younger siblings were sisters, Patricia and Nancy, who were sixteen months and five years younger than me, respectively. My last sibling was my little brother Geoffrey, born fifteen years after me. We grew up an affluent New England family and enjoyed the privileges that such a life entails. I attended private schools, summered on Cape Cod, and was a sailor, an ice-skater, downhill skier, and a horseback rider at an early age. Later I learned to fly a plane.

During all Christmas holidays when we were in the United States, all the immediate family (including my mother’s parents and my father’s mother and godmother Vivian) congregated at my parents’ house. I never knew my paternal grandfather, William John Roberts, because he passed away before I was born. My paternal grandmother died in 1953 after a long illness with cancer. My godmother, Vivian, was an unmarried school art teacher and artist who knitted each family member a hand-made sweater in a different solid color each year. I didn’t appreciate what she did each year for us until many years later. I still have a few of those sweaters in my dresser drawers, even after all these years.

My dad was a consulting engineer by profession and worked at Arthur D. Little (ADL) Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1954. ADL had the contract with the U.S. government for the Point Four Program. The main purpose of the program was to go into undeveloped countries like Iraq to help the country’s government. In the case of Iraq, the goal was to help King Hussein (no relation to Saddam Hussein), decide which businesses to develop and which to discontinue in order to advance the country to the next century. Anyone scheduled to travel to Iraq or work on or lead the Point Four Program in Iraq had to complete an extensive background check by the Iraqi government. During that check the Iraqis discovered a Jewish grandmother ten generations back in his lineage. He was refused entry into the country just months before his departure. Dad was tapped to take his place and given only three months to prepare for the trip. Since Dad was scheduled to be in Iraq for a year; he was allowed to include his entire family.

I was eight years old at this time. To travel to the Middle East, we had to have twenty-eight different inoculations required by the Departments of State and Health to travel to the Middle East, including typhus, typhoid, yellow fever, tetanus, and several others. We left in late 1954 and flew on a Constellation airplane to Gander Airport, Shannon, London, Rome, Beirut, and finally on a DC-3 to Baghdad. We lived for three months in the Zia Hotel on Rashid Street, the main street of Baghdad. The hotel’s rear was on the fast-flowing Tigris River. Later that spring Mom and Dad rented a house from the French Consulate. It was surrounded by a protective wall in the Masbah Section of Baghdad. For further protection, there was a guard who spent the night in the front yard with a rifle at the ready. Sometimes we saw caravans of camels walk down the street past our house, on their way to or from the desert-crossing to Jordan.

While we lived in Baghdad from 1954 to 1955, we travelled throughout Iraq from Kirkuk and Mosel in the north to Basrah and Babylon, as well as to the ancient city of Ur in the south. Using Baghdad as our hub, we also travelled throughout the rest of the Middle East. We visited Damascus, Syria; Beirut, Lebanon; Jerusalem and the Dead Sea in Jordan; and in Egypt we went to Cairo, Luxor, and the Aswan High Dam, which was under construction at the time. We visited the pyramids and the Valley of the Kings; Alexandria; Libya; and Istanbul, Turkey. We returned to the United States in the late fall of 1955 after the Russian tanks rumbled down Rashid Street, and all Americans were asked to leave the country.

Our first two years back from Iraq were fairly unremarkable as we all adjusted to life back in America. It was nice to have a refrigerator and not an icebox (which required daily ice block infusions), a flush toilet rather than a Turkish toilet (which is a hole in the ground); grocery stores instead of open air markets with sides of beef, lamb, and chicken hanging in the open area with lots of flies, and people who spoke English instead of Arabic, Farsi, and all the other languages of the countries we visited. The smells were a lot better too—no more did we smell stale urine, the decomposition of dead animals, and cars and trucks spewing huge plumes of blue smoke from their tailpipes. Over fifty years later, I still appreciate the basic comforts of home that everyone else takes for granted.

Upon our return, we settled into our routines of ice-skating, horseback riding, sailing, tennis, and doing other individual sports. Every year when our family was in the United States, each family member skated in the Ice Chips, the annual skating extravaganza at the Boston Garden hosted by the Skating Club of Boston. One year I was a red robin, another year a little Dutch girl, and another year a Victorian lady in the Ice Chips show. I wanted to be more than a participant in a group number so I learned many different jumps. In 1957, after lots of tries, I finally succeeded in completing an axle, which is one and a half revolutions in the air, and landing it safely. I was celebrating after the success when I fell down and broke my right leg in five places. Dr. Albright (the father of Olympic gold medal ice skating champion Tenley Albright) actually made a splint with pillows and other skaters’ leather belts to stabilize my leg which kept my break from becoming a compound one with the bones coming through the skin. They collected ice from the kitchen at the rink before my parents arrived to take me in the middle of a blizzard to Children’s Hospital in Boston to have it set. I was in a cast for six months and on crutches for another three because my leg had atrophied so much. The doctors all said I would never walk again because of the severity of the break. My tibia, the main weight-bearing bone, was in five pieces and broken from my knee to my ankle. My mother made sure that my rehabilitation was extensive and that I did the work every day so I wouldn’t be a burden to her for life.

The following spring (1958), Dad started a two-year sabbatical. By then my leg was almost back to normal, except being able to forecast major storms three days before they arrived because of the atmospheric pressure changes. Before the summer began my parents took my sisters and me out of school and our family, including our airedale named Rags, cruised on our forty-two-foot Pacemaker boat named Loweswater. The boat was the namesake of the ship that my great-grandfather was born on in the middle of the China Sea. We took the inter-coastal route from Boston to Key West, up the west coast of Florida to Sarasota, and then back through Lake Okeechobee to the Bahamas for three months of skin diving in the azure blue waters of its many islands.

After returning from the Bahamas in September 1958, we visited with our grandparents in New Jersey for a week before sailing on the Holland American Line’s ship the Nieuw Amsterdam to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to pick up our red and white VW Microbus. After we picked up the bus at the ship dock, we loaded it with our suitcases (and the dog!) and drove across northern Europe until early November. We went to Amsterdam and toured the Netherlands, attended the World’s Fair in Brussels, went to Luxemburg, back to Germany and the Oktoberfests, visited the castles along the Rhine River and finally ended in Geneva, Switzerland. We arrived in time to attend school at the École International for several weeks before Christmas vacation. While at the École, we doubled all vacations and visited all the continental European countries, including Belgium, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Italy, Monaco, England, Wales, Lichtenstein, Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Crete, Turkey and Algeria, and Morocco. Rags, the dog, could not go into Denmark because there was a sixty-day quarantine, so we did not visit Denmark on this trip. We had already been there on the last one. We avoided the Communist countries of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Albania, and East Germany because we couldn’t have free access. By the time we returned to the United States in 1960, we had visited over forty countries between the two overseas trips. Dad always wanted his girls to have the grand tour of Europe.

When we returned to the United States we moved— in the middle of a snowstorm—into our first summer home on Cape Cod, at Three Long Beach Road in Centerville. Shortly after we arrived on the Cape, my little brother Geoffrey was born March 3, 1960. With his arrival, my dad said we needed a bigger house and he bought the twenty-nine room, nine bathroom, three-story English Tudor summer cottage with an elevator and full wine-cellar at 87 Main Street, Osterville, Massachusetts. We moved in during the late spring of that year.

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Waterview of summerhouse on Cape Cod

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Landview of summerhouse on Cape Cod

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Barn that was part of the summerhouse on Cape Cod

Of course, the thought never occurred to me as a child (or even as an adolescent), that my life was different from that of anyone else my age. During the summer, I sailed Wianno Senior sailboats (a gaff rigged sailboat with a jib and spinnaker designed for racing on Nantucket Sound), with my dad’s best friend, Uncle Bob Lenk. Every weekend we raced the Seniors, sometimes within our own club, sometimes between clubs, and once during the racing season at the Edgartown Regatta—a race that included all the clubs on the Cape and its islands (Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket). In the interclub races we often raced against the Hyannisport Yacht Club and President Kennedy. I remember one race where Uncle Bob lodged a protest against the President because the President intentionally rammed Uncle Bob’s boat even though Uncle Bob had the right of way at the time. In addition to racing the Wianno Senior sailboats with Uncle Bob, during the week I raced my own Beetle Cat and sailfish boats and won numerous championships in both classes.

I assumed that everyone in the early sixties spent their summers sailing and racing on the waters off Hyannisport and Wianno against John Kennedy, the President of the United States. In the winter we downhill skied in the Alps when we lived in Europe or at Sun Valley in Idaho or the New England slopes when back in the United States. Surely all girls took horseback riding lessons and showed horses! At that age, I assumed everyone else was doing the same things I was doing.

Surely everyone was friends and skated with two Olympic gold-medalist figure skaters, (Doctor) Tenley Albright and Dick Button, at the Skating Club of Boston. (In fact, my first experience of the death of someone close to me arose out of my hobby of skating.) Many of my skating friends, members of the United States World Figure Skating Team in 1961, were killed near Brussels when their plane crashed. The plane was on its way to Prague for the World Figure Skating competition. Some of the people that I skated with regularly were Bradley Lord, Greg Kelley, Laurence Owen, Maribel Y. Owen, Dudley Richards, and Maribel V. Owen, who were all killed in the crash.

I remember my mother taking me to the rink after the accident. No one was skating, the ice had been cleaned, all the lights were off except the natural light in the Quonset hut building that housed the Skating Club of Boston on Soldiers Field Road in Brighton, Massachusetts, and there was a cloud hovering about shoulder height over the entire rink. It was eerie. Everyone spoke in hushed tones and moved very slowly. Many tears were shed for the loss of the majority of the United States Figure Skating team. It took many years to build a new team.

My formal debutante party in Boston was scheduled for Thanksgiving weekend in 1963; but was postponed because of the assassination of President Kennedy. It was re-scheduled for January 1964. I was listed in Byrd’s Registry. My parents were listed in the Social Register, and frequently entertained guests at our stately summer home during the summers from 1960–72.

Part of being a debutante in Boston included joining the Junior League of Boston and volunteering my time for various league sponsored and personal projects. My parents always taught me to give back to society some of the things that I had been given. I volunteered at Massachusetts General Hospital in the rehabilitation of the amputee ward for forty hours a year and also at the Bargain Box, which was a fundraising, high-end used clothing store run by the Junior League of Boston in their office building at 117 Newbury Street, Boston, Massachusetts. I also volunteered for their annual fundraising decorator show house for the six weeks that it was open to the public.

While this was certainly an exciting time in my childhood, the chauffeured cars, private guards (wherever we went in the Middle East), and other such amenities never really struck me as unusual, since we had been taught to be vigilant about abduction in any foreign country. We felt we were much safer at home in the United States.

Despite my being accustomed to such a lifestyle, I didn’t place much importance on material possessions, nor do I remember feeling superior to anyone because of the opportunities afforded to me. For that, I give credit to my father. Unlike my mother, who was always more concerned with keeping up appearances and maintaining the trappings of social status, Dad had a much deeper appreciation for what truly mattered in life, and that attitude fostered a special bond between us.

An engineer by passion as much as profession, Dad was a true do-it-yourselfer and loved to build, tinker, and experiment in his spare time. I remember spending hours with him, first in the basement of our house in Belmont, and later in his various barns at the house in Osterville and High Pastures with all his tools. One year we made wooden soldiers on the lathe in the basement, and I painted them red, white, and black. Another year we made a puppet playhouse with curtains sewn by my mother and watercolor backdrops painted by my godmother Vivian.

Later in his barn at High Pastures farm, we built my dining room table together out of two-inch by six-inch by sixty-inch South American walnut boards.

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High Pastures farm in Boxborough, Massachusetts

How I marveled at his knowledge, skill, and patience with me when the sanding primer and urethane final coat reacted and bubbled the finish. With Dad’s patience we overcame the bubbling and finished it. The table is in my dining room today. For Dad, what mattered most was the time he spent with his family, the inner qualities of the people he associated with, and his deep appreciation of the horses and family pets that he cared for so tenderly.

We were always a close family. My parents instilled in me the idea that blood is thicker than water, and that we must stick together and take care of each other—no matter what. As the eldest, I fell into a sort of leadership role with my younger siblings. I drove them to activities (tennis, sailing, and swimming) during the summer, once I learned to drive our 1921 Model T Ford with the spark arrester and accelerator on the column, and forward, reverse, and brake as pedals on the floor. We had an electric starter installed on the floor so that we didn’t have to use the crank handle (which hung on the front of the engine in its leather pouch for emergencies).

I upheld other duties and responsibilities that I think galvanized our relationship. We certainly had disagreements, but I don’t remember any sort of animosity among us. In truth, I never could have imagined in my youth and early adulthood how fragile the bonds between me, my brother, and my two sisters would ultimately prove to be.

After high school, I dated several young men during the summers on the Cape. They lived in Oyster Harbors in their summerhouses, and I lived in Osterville, just the next town over. One was Jimmy Mills, who actually was my escort to my debutant ball. One day I was at his house when President Kennedy on the presidential yacht, HoneyFitz, tied up to Jimmy’s dock and sent his secret service men to the house to escort Jimmy to the boat. Jimmy said he didn’t want to see the president, so we hid behind the sofas in the living room until they were gone. Jimmy also took me on one of his flying lessons at the Hyannis airport. I flew in the back seat of the Cessna four-seater and I was hooked. The other young man was Doug Henderson. During my second year at the University of Miami, Florida, I had a visit from Doug because he lived in Boca Raton with his family during the winter. Doug’s dad was one of the two men who started and ran Avon Products. Doug’s dad also started the St. Andrews School for Boys for Doug to attend. Doug introduced me to Patrick Sessions, one of his classmates at the St. Andrews School. Patrick was an ambitious, fun-loving, athletic, risk-taking, spoiled, self-centered, arrogant redhead from south Florida who felt he was above the law.

The son of a local bank executive, Patrick was five feet ten, and weighed about 175. With green eyes, he was dashing, independent, and motivated, qualities that appealed to me on every level. Our relationship developed in tune with the late 1960s and at age twenty-one, I learned that I was pregnant. Being of an older generation and conscious of family reputation, my parents were not exactly pleased with the news.

My mother was particularly unhappy when she said to me, We need to have the problem taken care of.

But, Mom, what do you mean by ‘taken care of’?

I think that we need to take a discreet trip to a clinic in Sweden and ‘it’ will be gone.

But, Mom, I want this baby!

Why? she retorted.

Because I do, I replied.

My dad stepped between us and said, How shall we resolve this problem?

Mom’s biggest concern was with our family reputation. I didn’t want to terminate my pregnancy, and Dad just wanted to solve the problem amicably. This was typical of my family dynamics.

Finally, after several hours of discussion back and forth with no compromise on either Mom’s side or mine; Dad said that the only solution was for me to get married.

Dad made an offer. He said, I’ll give you the twenty-five thousand dollars I plan to spend on the wedding, and you can elope. That will help the family reputation issue and get you out of the area during your pregnancy. You can have the baby away from the spotlight.

I don’t want to elope, I want a proper wedding.

But, dear, you know that would be a bad idea, chimed in my mother.

But, Dad, I want a wedding here in the house, I retorted.

After much more discussion, both my parents agreed to have a small, formal wedding at the seaside home in Osterville in the early spring of 1968. We had five hundred of our closest family friends attend. Fifty of the guests spent the weekend at our seaside home. Everyone slept on a bed, couch, window seat, or in a six-foot claw-footed bathtub. I really wanted a wedding, and Dad gave me one.

The day after our wedding, Patrick and I flew to Miami and settled into our new life together. Patrick was working on completing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Miami. His father had promised to pay for his tuition, but shortly after we were married that changed, and paying for education became my responsibility. At this time, I had only one semester to finish my own degree; but paid for Patrick’s tuition instead. While I’m sure the marriage helped to assuage my mother’s embarrassment about my condition, some time passed before I felt that she really wanted to be a grandmother to her first grandchild, my Tiffy.

I finally gave birth to a nine-and-one-half-pound, twenty-one inch bouncing girl that October 29, 1968, after thirty-six hours of labor. I narrowed my choice of names to Kimberly and Tiffany before she was born. To the dismay of my mother, I chose Tiffany (which apparently wasn’t suitable for a future Junior League member in those days). No matter, I loved the name, although for the rest of her life I seldom used it to address her. Tiff, Tiffy, Tiffer, or Peanut came more naturally to me.

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Four generations: (left to right) me, my mother, Tiffany, and my grandmother (my mother’s mother)

The first year turned out to be difficult for Tiff and me; although I never lost sight of how important she was to me and how determined I was to make her happy. In all honesty, she was like the North Star to me, making it possible to navigate through the betrayal and infidelity of my husband and other disappointments that would confront me too soon after my marriage and Tiff’s birth. Although our relationship was always firmly set on the foundation of mother and daughter, she would, over the next twenty years, become my best friend and most constant companion.

Very soon after Patrick and I were married, the fact that our relationship was not meant to last was made painfully obvious to me. Quite simply, Patrick wasn’t committed to the relationship, and the environment of our household was unhealthy for both our baby and me. Patrick seemed to be a very different person from the one I’d fallen in love with a couple of years earlier. He was clearly not in love with me, and his interest in being a father to Tiffy seemed marginal, at best. Patrick’s short temper, philandering, and physically and mentally abusive behavior were unacceptable to me. I left the house we rented shortly before Tiff’s birth and moved into a motel.

I filed for divorce after fewer than twelve months of marriage. The divorce was complete in mid-June 1969, only fifteen months after we were married, and Tiff and I moved back to the security of my family in Massachusetts at the English Tudor house.

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Tiffany and Hilary with our car

I had to support my Tiff and found a job within a few days at the Cape Cod Bank and Trust which was within eye-sight of the Hyannis airport and I could see all the planes landing and taking off. This was the same airport that I flew out of with Jimmy Mills on all his flying lessons. My job consisted of opening new accounts and being the private secretary to Joe Gargan, Teddy Kennedy’s cousin. I went to work for Joe the week before the fourth of July weekend. Uncle Bob asked me to crew on his Wianno Senior boat at the Edgartown Regatta on Martha’s Vineyard, which was the first weekend of my new job. I refused because I wanted to spend time with Tiff. That was the weekend that Teddy Kennedy drove off Dykes Bridge on Saturday night.

The following Monday, I took about twenty calls from the senator’s office for Joe. Joe told me he didn’t want to be Teddy’s fall guy for the death of Mary Joe Kopekne. It was an exciting time to be that close to a major news story even if I only answered the phone. Was this a premonition of what was to come?

The rest of the summer, I worked at the bank and volunteered my time at the Cape Cod Hospital in the pediatric ward for my Junior League membership requirement and took care of my Tiff.

Labor Day marks the end of summer on the Cape; it shuts down. Tiff and I moved into an apartment in the town of Acton, Massachusetts, about thirty miles west of Boston, where we lived until 1972. Though life had not gone as I’d planned so far, things at that time weren’t bad. I worked for Atkins & Merrill, a local engineering firm, as the secretary for the vice president of the Engineering Model and Mock-up Division.

I still had a little more than one semester