About a week ago, I picked up this voice mail:
“This is Ronald Vasquez. I was reading your article a month or so ago about the Las Casitas. My family grew up in the area. My grandfather was Henry Vasquez, and we lived on West Myrtle Place. My grandfather, well, my grandmother had gotten sick, and so my grandfather gave my dad’s two younger brothers away. It was sometime between 1948 and 1950. Their names were Jimmy and Jerry. The story is my grandpa took them to Rude Center and gave them away to a lady there. All of my dad’s side of the family is gone now. They wouldn’t talk about it, anyway, but now that they’re gone, I’m wondering if anyone would remember the two boys. I’m wondering if I can find my uncles.”
I know the moment I hear this message that I’m going to call Ron Vasquez back and I’m going to do so no matter how hesitant I am about casting this particular stone out into the water.
“You never know what the consequences might be,” I say when we meet.
I’m not telling him anything he hasn’t already considered. When his wife, Dolores, greets me at the door of their Westminster home, she says: “Ron never says anything.” Later, she explains. “He’s a private man. He keeps things, his feelings, to himself.”
Ron is 65 years old, modest and fastidious, with a hint of shyness about him. He was a Marine who served in Vietnam, and he retired from an elevator service and repair business. “I’ve thought and thought about this,” he tells me. “Would they even want to be found? I figure if they don’t, that’s their choice.”
“But if they wanted,” Dolores says, “we would claim them.”
It’s a story with the barest of bones. Henry Vasquez and Patrocina Tafoya had 10 children. Ron’s father, Benny, was the second-oldest, born in 1924. The twins, Jimmy and Jerry, were the youngest, born April 25, 1947. Patrocina grew ill, the family story goes, so Henry took the twins to Rude Center, the old Rude along Decatur, and gave them to a lady who worked there.
“And that’s really all I know. No one in the family talked about it, and you couldn’t really ask,” Ron says. “But every once in a while, someone would bring it up. I know my uncle Lawrence was always upset with my dad because he thought my dad should have taken the boys.”
“My mother-in-law used to say, ‘We couldn’t take them. I had a baby and had just had another,’ ” Dolores says.
Ron was born a year before his uncles. He used to stop and see his father on the way home from work every day. They’d have a beer and talk, but Ron never broached the subject with his dad. “Like I said, they never talked about it. I know my dad and my grandpa had a huge fight about it.”
“Have your brothers and sisters ever said to you, ‘Why don’t you just let this go?’ ” I ask him. He thinks for a second. “No,” he says. “I think they share my curiosity.”
Several years back, a cousin doing family research came up with records listing the children of Henry and Patrocina. Ron shows them to me. The word “adopted” is written after Jerry and Jimmy’s names. “I just heard they were given away. I don’t know,” Ron says. “Maybe someone who worked at Rude back then knows. It’s a shot in the dark. It’s, what would you say, wishful thinking. But, all these years, I’ve wondered where they are and what they might be doing and whether they look like my dad.”
Ron and Dolores put the word out on the extensive family network, hoping someone might find baby photos of the twins. No luck. But a cousin called and told them to check out the records at St. Cajetan’s Catholic Church. Dolores calls me from there Wednesday. The twins were baptized on Sept. 21, 1947, under the names “Gerray Antonio Vasquez” and “James Luis Tafoya.” In the background, I can hear Ron talking, explaining his search, a man on fire.
Tina Griego writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
