GATESVILLE — Like everyone else, Gatesville resident Ann Ciarico has been faced with some hard decisions during her life, but perhaps the hardest one came when she was only 19 years old.
Born in Germany, her father served six years in the U.S. Army and got out when Ann was three years old. She grew up in Waukegan, Illinois, graduated high school in 1975, joined the U.S. Army in 1983, came to central Texas and Fort Hood (now Fort Cavazos), met and married a fellow soldier, left the military after three years, got divorced in 2000, moved back to Illinois, then returned to Texas seven years later to care for her dying ex-husband when he was diagnosed with cancer.
A lot of ups and downs, but perhaps her biggest challenge came early on when Ann found out she was going to be a teenage mom and eventually decided the best thing for her baby was to be adopted by a family that could provide better for him.
“I got pregnant when I was 19,” Ann said. “The father was 26 and married but separated from his wife. Well, that separation wasn’t a relationship separation, it was a geographical separation. He lived in Minnesota, and he was very nice to me when I first met him, but then I got pregnant, and he didn’t want anything to do with that.
“I didn’t have any support from my parents at all. They pretty much disowned me. I had no emotional or financial support from my family or the biological father. I was freaking out – 19 years old and having to deal with all this myself.
“It was tough. I really wanted to keep him, but I just couldn’t.”
Giving up the baby was emotionally devastating, and after a time, Ann accepted a friend’s offer to move out to San Diego, California, but good jobs were hard to find and the cost of living was high, so she decided to join the Army.
“I’m still kind of in a daze at that point, just trying to figure out my life and what I’m going to do next,” she said. “I actually went back to the hospital in Waukegan where I had the baby and they hired me to work full-time. I got an apartment right behind the hospital, so I could walk back and forth to work.
“I was there for a couple of years – probably about three years – and I got tired of living in Waukegan. I wanted to broaden my horizons, so that’s when I decided to move to San Diego. I had a friend living there and she invited me to come out there and stay with her. So in ’81, I moved out there and worked different jobs as a bartender, got an apartment – still didn’t have a car – but I decided I just wasn’t really going anywhere. I wasn’t really accomplishing anything. That’s when I decided to join the Army.”
After basic training and AIT, Ann reported to Fort Hood (now Fort Cavazos), which was her one and only duty station. She repaired power generators and met her future husband one day while working in the motor pool. She and retired Staff Sgt. Gerald Wayne “Jerry” Spicer served in the same company and were married from 1988 to 2000. He died in 2020 at age 63.
It was while she was heading back to her native Illinois after the divorce that Ann suddenly heard from her long-lost son, Stephen.
“In 2011, the Illinois courts decided to open up the sealed records of birth parents and adopted children,” Ann said. “This was a revelation to me. The adoption agency that I went through, I could submit letters and they would forward them to my child. I didn’t do that because I thought once he found out I had given him up for adoption … it was a complete fear of rejection. I look back now and that was so stupid.
“So when this happened – I found out about it through a friend who had given her child up for adoption – you had to fill out this application and this time, I included a letter to my son. A very heartfelt letter to let him know that I didn’t want to give him up, but I had no choice.
“So I submitted everything and I waited. Two years went by. It was 2013 and I heard nothing. I was so depressed.
“Then, I was in route to the Chicago area – I had been driving two days – and I had one more travel day left to get to my sister’s. I get this phone call right before I go to bed that night, and it was just a flood of emotion.
“He read my letter, found out my contact information, and immediately looked me up on Facebook. He told me he showed his adoptive mother the letter. She was very skeptical, and probably felt threatened by me. But she loved the letter, and all of her misgivings about it subsided.
“That was in June 2013. He lives in Michigan, and he told me that he and his girlfriend at the time were making a trip to see me in July in Rolling Meadows, a suburb of Chicago. My sister was ready with the camera, and he pulls up and gets out of the car. We just folded into each other’s arms.
“It was the most surrealistic moment of my life. There he was – this beautiful child of mine.
“There were no words, at first. We just hugged, and I can’t even tell you for how long. I invited him in with his girlfriend and her son. We all sat down and caught up for 36 years (that we missed). They stayed a few hours – it was so hard to say goodbye; I wanted him to stay – and from then on, we started visiting back and forth. He turned 47 in January, and he said he was inspired to go back to school after he found me. Now, he’s a psychiatrist.”
Four years after reuniting with her son, Ann became a grandma and now she is the proud author of five books available on Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. All her books are fiction, and she is planning on getting to work on number six.
“Three are children’s books, that I wrote and illustrated,” Ann said. “The fourth one is an adult coloring book, which means it is more detailed for adults. Then I wrote a (sci-fi) novel called ‘The Theorem.’ Basically, it’s the story of a high school math teacher who goes on a yacht trip with his wife and inadvertently skirts the Bermuda Triangle backwards, which catapults him into a parallel negative world.”
For more information on Ann and her books, go to: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id100063867611413.
