The Daily News Of The Virgin Islands

Advice to the Lovelorn

By Beatrice Fairfax
(Authority on Problems of Love and Marriage)

Dear Beatrice Fairfax:

I'm the father of four lovely children, three girls, 12, 9, and 5 and a 10-year-old boy. For the last 15 months they've been in a Home, because their mother left us and we don't know where she is and I don't have anyone to help me with them as I have no brothers and sisters.

My wife left because she doesn't know what kind of a man she wants and was always running around with other men.

She had had a child out of wedlock before I met her and I am the only father this child knows. Her real father is dead.

I have raised her and love her very much.

A few months after she left, she wanted to come back and I took her back and we moved to a new place to start all over. But six months later she started to run around again, so this time I left her, but went to see the children every week and got them anything they needed.

Then I found out that their mother wasn't taking care of them the way she should and that they were always in the hands of baby-sitters.

When I spoke to her about this she said for me mind my own business.

The one day in the summer I took the children to the shore for two days and when I got back she had moved out. I had to put them in a Home, but I cried so it seemed best at that time to put them in a Home, but I cried when I had to leave them there.

It was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life.

So here is what I'd like to ask you. When school closes this year I want to have the children with me in a home of my own. I'm tired of living by myself, I want my children more than anything in the world, but in order to have them with me what I need most is a housekeeper, somebody who loves children and would like to be part of a home and family.

How do you get a person like this? I can't pay but forty dollars a month, but will make a fine home for somebody. Can you help me? I won't need the housekeeper until May.

Mr. M.

Dear Mr. M.:

You've certainly been a wonderful father to these children and I think that both for their sake as well as your own it would be a very fine thing if you could all be together.

And a bit hard, person to take over the management of the home and care of the children, I feel sure that since you have so much time before she'll be needed, you'll eventually be able to find her.

What you really need is to take this problem to the right person to work on it with you, so I suggest that you take it up with the head of the Home where your children are now and let that person advise and guide you. I'm sure with the experience and understanding such a person has plus knowing the children and yourself well, she or he as the case may be is in the best possible position to give you just the help you need.

Will you do this and then let me know how things go? I'm very much interested in your problem and want to give you all the help I possibly can.

You are a very fine man who has shouldered tremendous responsibilities bravely and lovingly and I admire and respect you greatly for what you have done and what you want to do.

So hold on to that splendid courage and one way or another, with proper help things will work out for you.

And be sure to let me hear from you again.