What A Long Way....

When I resumed my research into the Marian Baker murder several years ago I did what most people do when they want to go back and start at the beginning. I "Googled".
I "Googled" all of the names of the people involved. I searched for pictures, websites, directory listings. There was virtually nothing.
I guess it would seem silly to some, but I did have a sense of sadness seeing that on the world wide web there wasn't a reference to a young woman who had lived and died all those years ago.
In the age of information technology, there was nothing on the web to even acknowledge that she had existed.
I think it spurned a fear in me that if someone didn't record the story, and the nuances to the whole story, especially the little-known facets of each personality, it would be gone forever.
I remember being so frustrated that work and family obligations prevented me from having the time to travel to Perry County to search for Marian's grave. I wanted to see it, get a picture of her headstone and that of her dear Aunt and Uncle, the O'Donels. I wanted to have a few moments with Marian.
An "angel" from Perry County, whom I have never met, learned of my desire for the pictures.
In the rain, she travelled to the correct cemetery (it could have taken me many more hours to locate the correct cemetery and then locate the graves), and she took the pictures for me and sent them to me. That may seem like not too much of a big deal to some. To me? You've got to be kidding me! A total stranger took her time, on a nasty rainy day to traipse through a cemetery to get some shots of gravesites of people that I have been learning about for years!
I will forever be in her debt. She didn't do it as part of a cemetery research or cataloging project.
She did it for me. And I owe her.
So imagine my reaction a few days ago when I did a Google image search for Marian Louise Baker....
The photos of the headstones were the first to appear.
I sat staring at the monitor for a few minutes, thinking about how far this story has really come in the last several years. It was a sobering moment for sure.
If I never finish all of my research, if I am never able to take one more step forward, I know that this story has begun to breath on it's own.
Marian and what little of her story I've known exists in the world wide web.
Her final resting place has been located and marked on the world wide web.
Because it's important.
Because Marian matters.

Every story has a 'back story'.
The horrific murder and the ensuing trial blare out as the main story here. They always have.
But the 'back story' here is what is most important.
As I have done research over the years, it's not the forensics that have fascinated me or held my attention. It's not the facts of the brutal attack or the testimony of the Medical Examiner that had produced a stirring in my gut and in my heart.
Years ago I found myself foregoing sleep to spend hours on Ancestry and other genealogical sites researching Marian's family. And as I uncovered little facts or more questions, the stirring grew.
I want to know why Marian was given to her maternal aunt and uncle to live.
I want to know why Marian and her little brother Ross were separated and not living with their Mom.
I want to find out if the feelings I've carried for Mrs. Bruce Britcher are justified.
I'm a Mom.
I cannot imagine not living with my children.
I cannot imagine allowing someone else to adopt one of them.
I don't have the facts about those things so I may be judging prematurely.
I am looking at it from a child's eyes. No one loves a child like its Mom.
Every day that I would awaken, living somewhere else, and my Mom would be alive, I'd feel something about not being with her. That may be just my own idiosyncratic reaction.
I am looking at it as a Mom.
I can't imagine having two precious children not living with me.
And if times were tough and I couldn't feed them, you can bet that the separation would be as temporary as God permitted. I'd scrape and crawl to feed my children and care for them.
It would break my heart to later have additional children that lived with me, knowing that I had two precious souls that I no longer hugged on a daily basis.
I have much to learn about the early lives. And I promise that if I find out there were extremely good reasons why the little Baker children were given away, I will be genuinely sorry for the judgement I've made based on limited knowledge.

Marian's story has begun breathing on it's own.
Other people have been paying attention and have graciously shared some of what they know.
There is at least one other person who I am in contact with who shares exactly my feelings as to why this story can't fade away.
We want to make sure no one ever forgets.
Younger generations aren't always as interested in "old news" as we middle aged folks are :)
But there will come a day when they just might be.
And trust me, my children, especially my 24 year old daughter, knows as much about Marian Baker and the case as I do. She has heard every last detail, every new fact I find, every new memory shared with me by others. I swear she is an old soul in a young body :)

It's clear now that "the project" is huge.
And there are many, many facets to it.
The murder is one facet. Ed Gibbs and his life and story and pathology are one.
Marian's life and that of her family are a story of their own.
The effect and impact of her death are a story as well.
One on hand, the story is a true crime retelling.
On the other, there's a love story.
How ironic.
That amidst the horror, the sickness and the pain, there is a love story to be told.

I suspected that that was the case when I read Ross Dalton Baker Smith's obituary.....
He has a granddaughter. And her name is Marian Louise :)

He lived a life of honor and goodness. And never forgot his sister. Because he loved her.