It was a lovely spring day when electrician John Jenkins was hoisted up on the company crane to inspect a faulty electric box. And that’s about all he remembers, as it seemed moments later he was in a hospital bed. He had been electrocuted and as a result, plummeted to the ground. He’d been in the hospital for days in a coma and not expected to wake up.
A little background: John lives in Fredericksburg, Va. He’s happily married and has beautiful daughters. He’s had a great life so far, and outside of that accident, only one issue ever really plagued him. He didn’t remember his childhood.
He knew it was in Danville. He knew there was a foster home, but that’s about it. The entirety of his life from 0 to 18 was a mystery. To be fair, most of the time he didn’t mind. He couldn’t research it, because he didn’t know where to start. It was something he had accepted.
And then he was electrocuted and fell on his head. And it began to come back.
To describe John after this awakening is to imagine Tigger coming to life as a 60-year-old man. (Tigger of Winnie the Pooh) Every memory was a revelation (he had dated twins in high school!), and every single one was a rabbit hole to be investigated. He took an Ancestry test immediately. He needed to find cousins who remembered him.
To be clear, John knew who his mother was. And he thought he knew who his father was. He had his last name, after all. But Ancestry, and with the help of some new DNA cousins, he got a different name: John Hill Jordan. Now he had a new mystery, which is when he contacted DHS. He arranged a time to visit with his family, and spent an entire day with the staff digging through old records, yearbooks, and even crime scene photos. He drove to 639 Cabell Street, where he lived before the Faith Home. He read articles about his mom’s boyfriend, Floyd Tate, brother to Danville Register and Bee photographer John Tate. He poured through phone books, looking for foster parents and old friends. Last, but not least, he went to the Faith Home out on 29. He hadn’t remembered the name of the orphanage he had been placed in, but he remembered entering a circular driveway. Floyd took him right before Christmas; he remembered a decorated tree and the room it was in.
The detail of a circular driveway was all that was needed to identify his home from the early 60s. He walked back and forth in that driveway, swimming in memory. It was overwhelming.
It still is a mystery why John was put in the Faith Home. But that one detail, a circular driveway, was key. It led him to the ARC of Southside, the owner of the building, and to seeing his intake records for the first time.
These wonderful details that we remember—a favorite dress made from fabric from that store in Schoolfield, the meatloaf at Woolworth, the green door at Grandma’s house-these are the stories that make up one life. They are just as important as any job you’ve ever had. They tell the story of you.