Orphaned man recalls the hardship of his youth

The Howland man, one of 10 siblings, lost both parents when he was a child.
By TIM YOVICH
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
HOWLAND -- When Fred Cross drives past Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital, a mix of inner emotion churns, some of caring warmth, others of abandonment.
It's not medical care the 78-year-old Cross recollects, but having spent seven years at the Trumbull County Children's Home. The home once stood on the hospital grounds but has long since become an emotionless parking lot.
"At that time, things were tough," Cross recalled as he sat with his wife, Violet, at the dining room table of their Kenyon Drive home.
It was 1935 when Frederick and Ida Mae Cross were living in Masury with their 10 children -- five boys and five girls.
It was the era of economic depression. His father would either walk or hitchhike from Masury to Republic Steel Corp. near Warren, hoping just to work a turn to help feed his large family.
That year, the Cross children's mother died.
"My dad just knew he couldn't take care of all of us, so some of use went to the children's home," Cross recollected. He was only 7.
Cross and a brother, Frank, and twin sisters, Myrtle and Margaret, were sent to the orphanage. His oldest brother, Ford, went to live at the YMCA in Warren, and another brother, Dan, went to work in Sharon, Pa.
Virginia first went to work in the household of a Vienna family and then for other families in Fowler and Howland. Ida Mae, Betty and Jack were sent to their grandparents' Warren home on North Park Avenue.
Boys at the home were generally sent out as farm hands. The girls were sent to do house work. They weren't paid -- other than room and board.
A year later in 1936, his father was struck and killed by a train at West Market Street and Highland Avenue in Warren.
Cross knew he was alone, except for his siblings.
Life at children's home
The orphanage was divided into four sections for younger and older girls and younger and older boys. There were about 80 children living in the mansionlike brick structure.
The building had hot running water, indoor toilets, and the kids got three meals a day. "A lot of people didn't have that in the '30s," he pointed out.
"You weren't babied," Cross recalled. A punishment could include going without a meal or two.
The children worked in the kitchen, cleaned toilets, scrubbed floors, washed windows, mowed grass, trimmed hedges and labored in the large garden and fruit orchard.
His fondest memories at the orphanage were of Christmas. The children were allowed to order one gift that cost no more than $2.98 out of a catalogue.
At Christmas, Halsey W. Taylor, whose drinking fountains were eventually distributed worldwide, played Santa.
The orphans made friends with the neighborhood kids and played football with them. Cross became a Boy Scout.
But there was heartbreaking sadness.
Cross vividly recollects one particular visitor's day when people arrived in the morning to pick up children and take them out for the day. Cross was supposed to be picked up by a couple, so he stood waiting at the living room front window for them to arrive.
"I waited and waited. It was 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and all the other kids were coming back," he recalled sadly.
As it turned out, none of the Cross kids was adopted.
Adoptions weren't always about a loving couple looking for a child. "People wanted a boy big enough to shovel manure," he said. "They were adopted by farmers."
Making his way
In 1942, Cross went to Kinsman to work on the farm of Shirley Queale. In addition to food and a place to stay, he was paid 50 cents weekly.
By the time he was about 13 or 14 years old, Cross had worked at six farms in northern Trumbull County and had attended school in Vernon, Bristol, Kinsman and Bloomfield.
"I lost connection with the home," Cross said of a very low point in his life. "They didn't know where I was. I felt kind of abandoned."
Not graduating from high school, Cross said, was the biggest mistake he ever made. He often reflects that life might have been easier if he'd had an education.
Cross left the farm life in 1945 at the end of World War II and went to work making stainless steel barrels in Niles at age 17.
Not interested in inside factory work, Cross decided to learn the plastering trade. He started his own plastering company in 1951, a trade he practiced until 1977, seven years after the home closed. He continues to install the occasional door or window.
Cross married Violet in 1949 after meeting her square dancing at Pointview in Canfield. They had five children -- sons Tim and Fred, who remain in the construction and remodeling business, and three daughters, Chris, Debbie and June.
Cross has a sister, Virginia Smith, who lives in Vienna. They are all that remain of the 10 orphans.
yovich@vindy.com