Radio-TV mirror (Jan-June 1953)

specialist told Roy and Dale kindly. "Sometimes love can do more than medicine." Robin's was all the love there was to give. Because she had to live in a whisper, removed from the commotion of everyday living, they fixed the guest house for all the needs of Robin and her nurse. As the months — and then two years — passed, the baby showed she wanted to become a part of the activity going on around her. She was aware of everything and so eager to take part. To talk and laugh and move around. Ever wishing some of their own strength could be hers, Dale and Roy watched with mixed emotions, knowing every move she made, every laugh, every clap of her hands was making the little heart pound harder — and taking her away from them. Yet they wanted Robin to be happy and to enjoy them — for as much time, or as little, as would be hers. "And she did enjoy being here with us. We know she did," they say slowly now. Hier death, however, when it came, was a great shock. For it was caused by complications other than her heart. "She was just sick four days — we didn't even know she was so ill — " they say slowly now. For Robin contracted mumps and, although the doctor gave her penicillin to ward off a second infection, brain fever followed. She had no strength to fight, and very quietly that Sunday — two weeks before Dale and Roy were to leave for the Madison Square Garden World's Rodeo — as quietly and softly as she had lived, little Robin went away. . . . "I'm so thankful we were home when it happened," Dale says now. "I don't think I would ever have gotten over it — " almost speaking to the picture as she talks. "Looking back, she was so tired there at the last. So very tired. Almost as though it was an effort to stay with us. We should have seen her slipping away from us. But then, you're never really prepared — "Roy was so wonderful during this whole bad time," Dale reminisces, going on softly. "He took care of everything. All my life I'll be grateful to him — for the way he helped me through it. . . . The first week, God must have sustained me. Then, all of a sudden, it was as though I'd had a heavy fever, too, and the anaesthetic wore off . . . and it was pretty bad. . . ." Gravely concerned about Dale, Roy kept urging, "Honey, why don't we adopt a little baby girl right now." But Dale couldn't bear the thought when he first mentioned it. "No baby can take Robin's place," she would say. Then, as she thought more about it, she suddenly remembered a pair of snapping black eyes in a laughing face she'd seen three months before, when she'd gone back to the adoption home in Dallas to prepare authorities there for a visit from Cheryl. Now twelve, Cheryl was full of the natural wonderment and doubts and fears of her own birth and background, and Roy and Dale felt these were questions the orphanage could better explain. Going through the home that day, she stopped by the crib of a little baby girl whose black eyes laughed back at her. "She was just two and a half months old then, but out of twenty-three babies she stood out like everything. Her eyes were so black, and she was so healthy — the healthiest baby I'd ever seen." When they said she was one-eighth Choctaw, Dale was reminded that Roy was onesixty-fourth Choctaw, too. "At the time, I remember thinking I hoped she would get a good home." Remembering the baby now, Dale felt a hunger to go back to the adoption home. _ "I was missing Robin so. I just wanted to ' Be close to some babies. Play with them. " Hold them." Roy was happy, when she suggested it. Going with the superintendent 102 through the home, the face of the one baby kept coming before her. "Is the baby with the Indian blood still here?" Dale asked. "Yes, indeed," the superintendent smiled. "She's had all her tests, and she's ready for adoption now." "They brought her out and I held her," Dale smiles, "and when they took her away — well, that was that. I told Roy I'd like to have her." As for him — Roy had fallen in love with her at first sight. "Look at those eyes!" he kept saying. And, "Got a lot of spizzerinctum, too." She was so strong and healthy — "and such a joy, bouncing around," Dale adds, remembering. "We'll call her 'Little Doe,'" Dale had smiled then, a bit dreamily. But, as she adds now laughingly, "I was really kidding about the name. However, Roy loved it, and he wouldn't hear of changing it." Although she reminded him, "When she grows up she may not like that 'Little' on her name." About this, her husband was very firm. " 'Little Doe' is an Indian name, and it sounds just right for her," her father-to-be insisted. But the baby was not yet theirs— "Little Doe" or no — and wheels must turn, red tape must be untangled, a fight must be made, and legislation amended, and the strict Texas laws about adopting babies and taking them out of the county was to be challenged, before Little Doe could be their own. In a letter, en route to New York, Dale made an impassioned plea to the authorities, stating all the reasons they felt they should have her. "Roy has the same strain of Indian blood," she reminded them. She herself came from Texas. In Dallas, the school authorities called a special meeting and went in fighting for them. It was strange how quickly it was all effected — almost as though with a helping hand too strong to be denied. Two days after Roy and Dale reached New York, high up in their rooms in the SherryNetherland Hotel the phone rang, with the welcome news that "Little Doe was ours." The school authorities told Dale, too, what to bring for her to wear, when they picked her up on the way home. "I didn't think I could face Robin's clothes," Dale says now — remembering. "But, when I thought more about it, I felt Robin would have wanted it that way. So I sent for some of her little things. It helped me to use them, after I got over the first hump, but the first one was hard — " Nor was it easy, facing an arena full of people every night, riding and smiling and bowing — "especially when we went around the ring and shook hands with the children . . . with the little girls. . . ." But it was rewarding to be able to make little children happy, to see their little faces light up, and as Dale says, "I was grateful that we could. And Roy — well, Roy was so wonderful through it all. . . ." It was during their Madison Square Garden engagement that Dale Evans wrote her book about Robin, Angel Unaware— of which she says now, "I had help — I know I did." Help that seemed destined not to desert them, for even as Trigger was making his final bow there — before leaving for one-nighters that would take them home to Hollywood — on a farm outside Covington, Kentucky, a little boy was being tucked into bed who soon would be going home with them. And their cup — truly, it would be running over. . . . "We'd been looking for a little boy for a year," they say now, still with a note of wonderment. "We wanted a little brother for Dusty, and we'd had our application in all around — but we hadn't been able to find one." But while they were making an appearance in Cincinnati, Ohio — suddenly, there he was. Roy received a wire from a woman in Kentucky, asking if they'd be interested in a little girl she had for adoption. Roy telephoned her immediately, and found she was a farm woman who was also raised in an orphanage and — vowing never to turn down a child who needed her help — she'd converted her own twenty-eight-acre farm near Covington, Kentucky, into a home for handicapped children. "Do you have a little boy for adoption?" asked Roy, almost holding his breath. "Yes," she said, "one." He invited the woman and her crippled daughter to come to the show that night — and bring the boy. "And there he was — the boy we'd been looking for — just like that." They were going on to Muncie, Indiana, the next day, and they had two hours' time to make up their minds — but who needed it? "We just fell in love with him on the spot." As for Sandy, he was thrilled deep down — down to his Kentucky accent. He knew them from watching their television shows, and he was a devout fan. "Hi, ya — Part-no," he said when he saw Roy. Cheryl, Linda and Dusty, meeting the plane, were a little stunned when they saw four of them emerge. It was Dusty's sixth birthday, and they'd hurried home for a family celebration. For all seven. "The kids knew about Little Doe — but Sandy was a big surprise. The pupils of Dusty's eyes were dilated twice their size, when he saw Sandy getting off the plane with his daddy," Dale laughs now. And he was almost overcome with happiness, when Roy told him he'd brought him a little brother for his birthday. He kept saying, "Oh, boy, Oh, boy!" all the way home. As for Little Doe, the children dubbed her "Dodie" on the spot — and, so nicknamed, she checked into the family reservation, and usually answers to "Dodie" now ... as much as a nine-months-older can. Sometimes Sandy's joy is almost too much for him. "I want to show I can do flip-flops," he says', and excitedly starts turning one somersault after another on the living-room rug, winding up with some broken-field running towards his father and "I like you, Daddy — " and hearing yet again, "I like you too, son," as Roy hugs him up tight. Now and then, as follows naturally, there's a tug of heart, too, as when her mother puts a little blue dress on Little Doe — which was once Robin's. And when they watch her playing with her feet and staring intently at the nursery figures painted on the crib— "They fascinate her . . . they did Robin, too. . . ." says Dale, with a sudden catch in her throat. Smiling down so life-like upon them, Robin seems always to be assuring them she's still with them. Still a living part of the daily scene. As indeed, inspirationally, she is. "That child helped us so much," her mother says softly, speaking again to the picture. "Robin did so much for my life — and Roy's, too. Helped us appreciate what's really important on this earth. And somehow she's taken the tinsel away from our lives. Those of us in the entertainment business inevitably pick up a little tinsel from time to time. But Robin's created a ministry for me ... of ministering to others. To other children less fortunate. And she did the same for Roy — " "God has really smiled on us," they say, obviously moved, as with hearts almost too full for words, Roy and Dale Rogers look around them lovingly at their happy brood, who seem as close as though they've been forever a family. And little Robin seems warmly near, too. As near as their own little "angel unaware." And she keeps smiling on all of them. . . .