Perez returned from work to find an empty house.Treasuring a penciled note read so many times it softened to cloth over 52 years, Frank Ramos Perez of Stockton never lost hope it would someday help to reunite him with his three children.
Born in 1913 in the Philippines, Perez followed a cousin to California to further his education at 16. Ten years later, he was well-established in his career as a journalist in Los Angeles, chronicling the Filipino experience in America.
In 1939, he met vivacious Mary Jane Ridler; who had moved to Los Angeles from New York with her mother. The couple wed, in spite of the state's Anti-Miscegenation Act of 1930 that prohibited racially mixed marriages.
Perez held down two jobs in addition to freelance writing to support his rapidly increasing family. But, after four years and three children, the marriage ended tragically.
Perez returned from work to find an empty house.
"I remember when they left. I came home and I had no more children," Perez, 84, said, his voice catching.
All that was left was the penciled note: "Frank, Sorry I had to do things this way, but . . . I know you will get over it . . . there isn't much to say except it didn't work. By the time you read this I will be on the train so you don't have to try to look for me. I'll take good care of the kids. I'm taking them back to my home and race. Good-by, Jay."
Perez thought perhaps his wife was on her way back to New York, but heard rumors she was headed to Mexico. He gave up both his job at an aircraft manufacturing plant and at a nightclub and began a frenzied, but fruitless three-month search that took him from Mexico to Chicago. There, he ran out of funds and had to seek help from relatives to return home.
In 1944, with no family or work, he moved to Stockton at the behest of some friends who were starting a Filipino newspapaer in English. In time, he married again.
Two generations later, in the spring of 1955, Perez's granddaughter-in-law located him through a computer search.
Perez returned from work to find an empty house.In February of that year, his children . . . Randy, Susan and James . . . had gotten together to celebrate the wedding of James' daughter. They lamented the fact that they had children and grandchildren who did not know their roots.
THE SEARCH
Randy's daughter-in-law, Julie McVey Perez, herself adopted as a child, had successfully located her own birth parents. Her mother was delighted to find her, but her father rejected her.
Knowing the emotional risks involved but wanting to help her father-in-law, McVey pursued Perez, knowing only his name and that he possibly lived in Northern California.
She selected Stockton at random, pulled up a half-dozen Frank Perezes and called the first one.
In three questions, Julie knew she'd found the right Frank Ramos Perez.
"Oh, my gosh, somebody's looking for you," she remembers remarking. "I'll call you back."
A flurry of calls united the family, at least in spirit, that first night.
When they finally met in Stockton in the spring of 1995, the note proved to be the evidence Perez needed to convince Randy, Susan and James, all adults in their 50s, that not only was he their father, but also he had not abandoned them.
After 52 years, the proof was overwhelming.
"He pulled out this letter and it was my mom's handwriting," said James, owner of a Web-page design company in Woodland Hills. "It did bring me a shock."
THE FLIGHT
To this day, mystery surrounds Mary Jane Ridler Perez's flight. Was the beautiful blonde pressured by prejudice? Was she lured by an opportunity for fame in Mexican movies? Was the younger boy, James, perhaps not Perez's child, causing her to flee the consequences?
The Perez children believe there is some truth in all of the above.
From Los Angeles, Mary Jane took the children to Mexico and raised them under her stage name, Clark. She starred in a couple of Mexican films, but her movie career was short-lived. Next, she became a partner in a nightclub and made enough money to have her children cared for by hired help.
When the children were teenagers, she moved them to Texas to establish their American citizenship and gave them her maiden name, Ridler. Movies and nightclubs behind her and still a single mother, she worked in automotive sales administration in Texas to support the family.
After a year, she finally returned the family to Los Angeles.
When Randy, the older son who is now a Simi Valley resident and consultant with Pacific Bell, enlisted in the armed forces, he discovered his father's name - Frank Ramos Perez - on his birth certificate. From Clark to Ridler to Perez, the name changes added information.
Throughout their lives, however, their mother steeled herself against their questions.
"I wasn't really sure what to believe. Mom said (our father) was dead. I didn't know whether it was true or not," said Susan Perez Buddles, who lives in New York, where she, her husband and one of her three children are law enforcement officers. "She had left him for reasons she never gave. One time, she said the times were bad and prejudice was bad, but I never understood really or asked questions."
Now, the 76-year-old Mary Jane lives in a board-and-care home in New York, where Susan looks in on her. A stroke has taken her speech, further entrenching her secrets.
When she learned that her children had finally found their father, "she just shrugged her shoulders," Susan said.
In an ironic twist, Perez also has suffered a stroke, rendering speech difficult. Tears quickly well in his eyes as he struggles with words.
A NEW LIFE
Perez's move to Stockton in 1944 offered him a new start in life. While the pay for his newspaper writing was minimal, there was also farm work and the support system of Filipino families - including that of Stockton native Leatrice Bantillo.
Bantillo's mother adored Frank and frequently invited him to their home. "Letty," only 14 at the time, saw him as a charismatic man-about-town who could travel with ease between the fields and the newspaper office.
After posting required newspapaer notices, Perez was granted a divorce from Mary Jane. In 1947, he became a citizen and gradually adjusted to the possibility of a new life. In 1951, he marred Letty, and they had three sons: Gary, Ron and Dean.
Perez supported this new family as a civilian supply officer with the U.S. Army, working 21 years at Fort Mason and the Presidio until his retirement to Stockton in 1973. At the same time, he continued to write for Filipino publications.
From 1973 to 1991, he was editor of The Philippines Press USA in Salinas, and since 1992 he has been a columnist and newsman for Stockton's Philippine Review.
Twice in his newspapaer career, Perez has been honored by Philippine presidents: by Ferdinand Marcos in 1980 for "outstanding journalism" and by Corazon Aquino in 1987 for "bravery in journalism."
Throughout their married life, Letty remained compassionate about her husband's loss and encouraged him periodically to try again to find his first children.
"He would always cry watching television specials about families being reunited," she said. "He thought that because she was Caucasian, maybe the children didn't know they were Filipinos. He would say, 'Maybe I would intrude upon their lives. So they have to find me.'"
Recounting the evening of the first phone call, Letty said, "When I came home from choir practice, he was on the phone and he looked like he was in shock. He said, `Thank you my son, Randy. Goodbye.' Then he broke down sobbing."
LINKS FORGED
Randy Perez recalls that first conversation with his father.
As soon as the old man's voice mentioned "Susie and Jimmie and Mary Ridler, I knew he was the right person," Randy said. "I had a cold sweat. I didn't know what to say. I knew he was my dad, but I was scared."
After he hung up, Randy was consumed by conflicting worries. Since they had made connection, would his father think he wanted something from him? And what kind of man was Frank Ramos Perez?
In his many years with Pacific Bell, Randy had looked in various directories for his father. "There were hundreds of Frank Perezes in each city," Randy said. "I picked at random and made calls, but never found him."
After Randy talked with his father, he called his siblings. Within a week, Randy and his family made the trip to Stockton. Susan and James followed two weeks later, just as nervous and afraid of the possible outcomes.
"If it was going to be a bad experience, I was going to turn around and come back," Randy said. "When I saw him, it was like a big cloud that just disappeared. I just held him and held him."
If there was any doubt in Randy's mind that Perez was indeed his father, there is none now.
At a subsequent gathering, Frank and Letty Perez joined their newfound family in Los Angeles. It was also the occasion of a grandson's wedding anniversary.
The old man led the singing and finished with a flourish of, "Cha, cha, cha!" The assembled guests, friends of Randy's for some 20 years, fell silent. "It was eerie," Randy said. "That's how I always end songs, and here my dad did it, too."
During her first phone conversation, Susan was awash in feelings.
"First, I had a wave of disbelief, then sadness," she said. "I was sorry I had missed so much and he missed so much."
Growing up, Susan said, "We had no family life, no grandparents, no cousins, no others to share things with. But this was the life she (her mother) chose, and what I have with my children and grandchildren is something she doesn't have."
In a letter to the children following their visits, Perez applauded their lives, their spouses and their beautiful children, eager to meld his two separate families and unify his life.
But while Randy and Susan readily accept Perez as their father, James remains uncertain.
The differences in their skin color always has made him wonder if his mother had had an affair that prompted her leaving. He sent his mother a Christmas card asking her to write him once and for all with the answer to his birth question. She replied with silence.
When James met Frank, the first thing he said was, "Are you my father?"
"I brought you and your mother home from the hospital," Frank told him, "and I cared for you, fed you, changed your diapers. As far as I'm concerned, I had three children."
But niggling doubt remains. "I would love to know, but then it also scares me," James said. "If my suspicions were right, then who is my biological father? Where is he? And the search would start again."
In the 1960s, James promoted music and worked with big-name rock bands. Negotiating over the phone, people misunderstood his name to be Paris.
He started doing business as "James Paris" because, he said, "I'd get a paycheck as `Paris'. If someone miswrote your check in those days, you had to get a new check cut. So my bank advised me to do a DBA (doing business as, a legal declaration)."
Fate continues, however, to work James over. After he'd met Frank, he was driving along a Los Angeles boulevard and sighted a double movie marquee.
"We found him at exactly the same time that the movies came out," James said. And there it was: "The Perez Family" side by side with "Forget Paris."
"Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful,
and endures through every circumstance.
Love will last forever . . ."
I Corinthians 13:7