From left: Carolyn Best, Katherine Broadway, Geraldine “Bits” Best, Bob Best, and Van on summer vacation at Myrtle Beach in 1948.
Van and his friends William Lohmus and Bill Bixby in an ROTC photo in their high school yearbook.
The house at 514 Noe Street in San Francisco, where my father grew up.
Judy Chandler as a teenager, at about the time she met Van.
Van and Judy’s apartment in New Orleans when I was born.
The first in a series of articles by San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery, mocking my father.
Van holds up one of his swords in another Chronicle article by Paul Avery.
Paul Avery reports the end of the “Ice Cream Romance.”
My baby picture, taken at Southern Baptist Hospital, February 12, 1963.
The apartment building at 736 North Boulevard in Baton Rouge where my father abandoned me.
The stairwell on which I was found.
My baby picture, as it appeared in the Morning Advocate.
A report in the local newspaper of the wreck that took the life of Sheryl Lynn Stewart.
“How old are you, young lady?” the minister asked.
“Nineteen,” the fourteen-year-old informed him, just as Van had instructed her.
The Reverend Edward Fliger did not question her again. She looked old enough, and he had no reason to be suspicious.
In St. Paul’s United Methodist Church on January 5, 1962, my underage mother and my father said their vows.
“Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?” the reverend said.
“I do,” Van said, holding Judy’s hand tightly.
“Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?”
“I do,” Judy said, taking a deep breath and smiling up at Van.
“By the power vested in me by the state of Nevada, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss your bride.”
Van pulled Judy into his arms.
With their arms still wrapped around each other, they left the church, anticipation growing as Van hailed a taxi.
Van and Judy spent that night consummating their marriage – the twenty-seven-year-old man initiating his innocent teen bride in the art of lovemaking.
They spent the next day in Reno – Judy enjoying her newfound freedom, and Van enjoying Judy – before flying back to San Francisco to face the music. Judy was very relieved when she called her mother to tell her she was married. Verda, for some reason, seemed unusually understanding.
The couple moved into an apartment on Clay Street, excited about the prospect of sharing their lives together, but on January 9, Judy awoke with severe stomach pains. Unsure what to do, Van called her mother.
“Call an ambulance,” Verda said furiously, hurriedly jotting down the address of the apartment. As soon as she hung up the phone, Verda dialed the number for the San Francisco Police Department, to file a complaint against the man who had married her underage daughter.
“You could get into a lot of trouble for being with a minor,” an officer warned Van after Judy was settled into the back of the ambulance. “Her mother has filed a complaint against you.”
“We’re married,” Van informed him before climbing into the ambulance. “We’ve got to go. Can’t you see she’s sick?”
The officer let him go.
While Judy was having her appendix removed, Van moved to 765 Haight Street, hoping Verda wouldn’t be able to find him there. Verda kept a watchful eye on Judy while she was in the hospital, and as soon as her daughter recovered she had her placed in the Youth Guidance Center – a section of the Juvenile Justice Center on Woodside Avenue – hoping to teach her wayward daughter a lesson.
“Mother, you can’t do this. I love him!” Judy wailed when she was given the privilege of a phone call. “He’s my husband.”
“He is not your husband. He’s a child molester,” her mother countered.
On Valentine’s Day, Verda had the marriage annulled.
Van was furious, but Verda had the law on her side.
Judy was desolate. She curled up in a ball on her bed and cried hysterically, like only heartbroken teenage girls can cry.
A week later, an unsuspecting Van was arrested for the rape of a female under the age of eighteen.
He soon posted bail, packed a bag, and took off for Mexico City, determined to make some quick cash. He was successful this time, and when he returned to San Francisco, he snuck into the Youth Guidance Center to visit Judy. She giggled as he told her his plan.
“I can do it,” she assured him.
On the evening of April 28, 1962, Judy tied her bedsheets into a makeshift rope, climbed out of her upstairs room, and shimmied down to the ledge below. Van was waiting to catch her when she jumped the remaining few feet. Together the couple fled undetected into the gathering darkness.
“Where are we going?” Judy asked, once they were settled in Van’s car.
“To the airport to catch a plane to Chicago,” Van said, taking her hand in his. “My father’s a minister in Indiana. I’m going to ask him to meet us there to marry us.”
Judy giggled. “My mother is going to be so mad.”
“We’re not going to worry about that. You’re mine, and I’m not going to let her take you away from me.”
My mother snuggled closer to the man she was about to marry for the second time.
When they reached Chicago, Van called his father, but Gertrude had beaten him to the punch, informing Earl on the telephone that Van had been arrested for marrying the fourteen-year-old and warning him that they had