Diamond Mike Watson's Blog, page 7
December 28, 2019
My Name is Michael
In 1982 I devoted all my free time in my music studio after long days of selling diamonds in Kentucky. I was sure it was done before, but I wanted to record my voice and play it backwards.
I decided on saying, ‘My name is Michael.’ I spoke each word slowly and clearly into the microphone. Then I removed the heavy reel of magnetic tape, spun it around backwards and rethreaded the tape. (This was a cumbersome job in those days.)
I clicked the play button and waited. From the depths of outer space, my voice appeared from the speakers. For sure it was me, but a “reverse” me from another world. If one could spell it, it would sound something like, ‘LakYOM zay me-an hay-om.’
I carefully listened to the eerie recording over and over and tried to replicate my backwards voice including the misplaced accents.
LakYOM zay me-an hay-om.
LakYOM zay me-an hay-om.
Still living at home, I did a quick turn to make sure my parents were not close by to see my bizarre behavior.
I pressed record and spoke clearly into the microphone.
LakYOM zay me-an hay-om.
I reflipped the reel, carefully re-threaded the tape and clicked the play button.
If you would like to hear this 38-year-old recording please go to my song page link:
https://diamondmikewatson.bandcamp.com/album/forgotten-songs
December 4, 2019
Concrete Gray Steps
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This is my childhood home in New Albany, Indiana. In the summertime the hot sun would blaze behind the house where I would sit on concrete steps and squint into the sky. Gray paint would always flake off the steps like dried flower petals. As golden rays soaked into my bare chest I would try to understand the universe and the stars and God.
Mom’s singsong voice would briefly interrupt my deep thought as she beckoned me for dinner.
I was convinced the sky was endless. To explain I would suggest the entire universe was contained in a huge box. If this was so, something would have to lie outside this box. Perhaps a bigger box? Although mom didn’t always agree I felt my theory was sound.
The stars were small and twinkly. That’s what mom said. I loved mom.
But where did God fit into life’s puzzle?
Today I live thousands of miles away. I now have another set of gray steps in which I still sit and ponder. I still squint as I peer into the sky. But I think I have a deeper understanding of the cosmos.
At least I have never had to look for God, for she has always been there whenever I’ve opened my eyes.
——
As long as I live so will the love of my adoptive parents live within me.
September 13, 2019
Sharing the Same Experience – Part Four
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At my meditation class my dear instructor always begins by drawing a large circle to illustrate there is a universal “real” world that is considered truth. I suppose I am a difficult student because I can’t yet wrap my mind around that concept.
I chose these images at random. If I asked you to look at each picture and describe what you see and feel I am certain everyone would give a different answer.
Therefore, is there really a single truth, or is truth something unique to every person?
Sorry I posed a question that will prevent many of you from getting to sleep tonight.
I answer this question in my book, Tales of Imagination. On Amazon.
September 7, 2019
He found his birth family 35 years later. Then he helped them find a ‘vanished’ sister.
Arika Herron, Indianapolis Star Published 5:14 p.m. ET Aug. 24, 2019.
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Everyone in “Diamond” Mike Watson’s life told him he should give up. The baby in the 60-year-old photograph was probably dead. And if she wasn’t, they said, she may not want to be found.
It wasn’t out of callousness or apathy. The opposite was true, really. But his wife and friends — even the women who’d spent years combing the internet for clues about what happened to little baby Deborah Kay — had come to the conclusion that whatever answers lay hidden in decades of rumor and mystery were unhappy ones.
“I told him last year, ‘You have to stop. You have to let her go,’” said his wife, Carmen Watson.
The California jeweler, though, wasn’t ready to give up. He had to know what happened to the baby in the photograph, an older sister he never knew he had.
“The moral of the story is, ‘never give up,’” Watson said while standing on the front porch of that sister’s house on Saturday morning. “I really believe that. It might take a year. In my case, it took 25 years.
“But I mean, that’s my sister.”
A Missing Sister
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This is the last-known picture taken of Deborah Kay, now Debbie Phillips, while sitting on her birth mother’s lap. Debbie is about six months old in this photo. (Photo: Photo provided by the family)
Watson, 61, was adopted as an infant in Indianapolis in 1958. Raised by Martha and Stoy Watson in New Albany, Indiana, he had a happy childhood. But that didn’t stop him from wondering about his birth mother.
At the age of 17, he began looking for her with very little to go on — just her name, her age when he was born, 22, the hospital he was born at and an address listed on hospital paperwork.
It wasn’t until 1994 that Watson finally found his birth family: younger half-siblings, Ken Snyder and Susie Robinson, aunts and uncles and grandparents. His birth mother, Betty Price, had died 13 years earlier at the age of 47.
A reunion with that family — the day Watson says he “unlocked the secret of how I arrived on planet Earth” — is when he first saw the photograph of his mother, young and beautiful, with a round, smiling baby on her lap.
“And I said, ‘Who’s that?’” Watson remembers. “And they said, ‘Well, that would be your sister.’”
His other sister.
It was when he asked where she was that Watson remembers the room getting quiet.
The baby was Deborah Kay. She would be his sister, two years older.
She would be — if anyone knew where she was.
She ‘Vanished’
Family lore said the baby had been taken by a social worker or left with a babysitter. There’d never been a police report made for the missing child. There was no death certificate or adoption records.
“She vanished,” Watson said. “Nobody knows.”
So he set out to find the missing piece of the family he’d only just found.
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Left to right, four of the “Fabulous Five,” genealogical researchers, Cori Baker, Judy Moore Hill, Linda Sulek, Tina French, and Lori Van Every (not shown), in Muncie Ind., on Saturday, Aug. 24, 2019. “Diamond” Mike Watson, who’s in the diamond business, was adopted as an infant. He was able to find his family in 1994, but one sister was not accounted for. After twenty-five years, he was able to reunite with her thanks to five female genealogical researchers “The Fabulous Five” and a facebook page, “Find Deborah Kay.” (Photo: Michelle Pemberton/IndyStar)
He wrote books about it. He posted online. Tina French read a story about a missing Indianapolis baby and offered to help since she lived just outside the city. Eventually they created a Facebook group called “Find Deborah Kay.”
Before they found Debbie, though, they found Judy Hill, Cori Baker, Linda Sulek and Lori Van Every, amateur genealogy sleuths who offered the skills they’d honed over years of researching their own families.
“We looked through high school yearbooks, social media, archived newspaper articles,” said Sulek, whose husband calls her Laptop Linda, “anything we could think of.”
“We all searched for years,” Baker said.
“We contacted every Deborah Kay,” French said.
On the Brink of Giving Up
That was about the point they started telling Watson that maybe he should think about letting Deborah Kay go.
“We had turned over every leaf,” Hill said. “At that point the only way we were going to find her was either if she DNA tested or one of her children DNA tested.”
Watson had submitted his own DNA test years earlier, and Hill was managing his online ancestry account. Each day she’d log on to see if he had any new matches.
And one day, there she was.
Debbie Phillips.
“I called Cori, and we got on a three-way call with Mike,” she said. “We were literally screaming.”
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Debbie Phillips, center, hugs Tina French, center left, of “The Fabulous Five” genealogical researchers, as family members like to call the women who helped the siblings find each other, during the siblings first group gathering at Phillip’s home in Muncie Ind., on Saturday, Aug. 24, 2019. “Diamond” Mike Watson, right, who’s in the diamond business, was adopted as an infant. He was able to find his family in 1994, but one sister was not accounted for. After twenty five years, he was able to reunite with her thanks to five female genealogical researchers, DNA, and a facebook page, “Find Deborah Kay.” (Photo: Michelle Pemberton/IndyStar)
Meeting Deborah Kay
Deborah Kay Price had, in fact, been raised by an older couple that started out as her babysitters. She says the man she came to know as “Pa” picked her up from her mother’s house once to find her in a diaper that hadn’t been changed in days.
There was a dispute over unpaid babysitting money. Not wanting or not being able to pay it, Betty Price never came looking for her oldest daughter. She goes by her married name, Debbie Phillips, now.
Phillips said she thinks she was around a year old when she went to live with Johnnie and Laura Gore, Mama and Pa, permanently. The family eventually moved to Kentucky, where she was raised.
“They were good,” Phillips said. “I couldn’t have asked for better parents.”
She found out in the third grade that they weren’t her biological parents but didn’t know much more. Phillips said she’d wondered about her family over the years, but she never was able to find anything out.
Debbie Phillips’ brother spent years searching for her and his siblings. Now, thanks to DNA and volunteer researchers, she can share her story. Michelle Pemberton, michelle.pemberton@indystar.com
Phillips’ husband, Eugene, died last year. She has two adult children.
Were there other family members out there, though? At the encouragement of friends, she took a DNA test earlier this year.
“If she didn’t do the DNA (test), we probably would have buried her,” Carmen Watson said. “She’d be gone.”
That 25-year search ended Saturday on the front porch of Phillips’ Muncie home when Mike Watson finally had a chance to meet his older sister in person.
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Brothers and sisters left to right, Ken Snyder, Susie Robinson, Debbie Phillips, and “Diamond” Mike Watson are all reunited at the same time in Muncie Ind., on Saturday, Aug. 24, 2019. “Diamond” Mike Watson, who’s in the diamond business, was adopted as an infant. He was able to find his family in 1994, but one sister was not accounted for. After twenty five years, he was able to reunite with her thanks to five female genealogical researchers and a facebook page, “Find Deborah Kay.” (Photo: Michelle Pemberton/IndyStar)
All four siblings have been in touch since May, and Phillips and Robinson, who still lives in Indianapolis, have met previously. But Saturday was the first time they’d all gotten together.
Snyder, who’d flown up from his home in Florida, arrived last. When Phillips got her arms around him, it seemed like she might never let go.
“That’s my baby brother,” she said. “God. I’ve got a baby brother. “I just can’t believe I’ve got siblings.”
Call IndyStar education reporter Arika Herron at 317-201-5620 or email her at Arika.Herron@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter: @ArikaHerron.
August 11, 2019
Dear birthmother
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Dear birthmother,
I never had the chance to meet you. If I did, I would have thanked you for giving my sister and I what you could not offer, which was the chance to live in a loving home and being able to experience the fullness and richness of life.
I know you made difficult decisions. You weighed your options, and you made choices for which we are grateful.
When I was born I had to reserve the designation of mother to another. But I know you were my mother for nine months. I like to think you took good care of me during that time. I cannot imagine a harsher sentence than to hand over one’s child.
My sister Debbie is also grateful that you relinquished her to her babysitters, for she told me they became her wonderful adoptive parents.
From your painful decisions, you shaped us into who we are. You can now rest without worry. After 62 years, brother and sister are now together. Thank you for giving us life.
May 26, 2019
The Invisible Pine Tree
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The first photo shows a handsome 35-year old pine in the center. It gave wonderful shade with a cool breeze below. It is one of the many trees I visit every day when I go to my office at Brookhollow Park in Santa Ana, California. I saw a hummingbird swarm high in its branches. Probably there was a nest.
Perhaps the shade was too much. Maybe the hummingbirds were chattering too loudly. Did it’s roots cause a crack in the sidewalk? Was the owner mad because a pinecone fell on the roof?
An orange ribbon was tied around the trunk to “mark it’s removal.” A makeshift spreadsheet was mailed to me showing a rating of each trees health, proximity to each building, and amount of debris. I never saw an environmental impact report.
I can hear the sparkling pond with a waterfall gurgling nearby. Hundreds of species of wildlife including squirrels, ducks, turtles and an occasional blue heron declare this ecological oasis as their home.
The second photo shows the absence of this tree. For whatever reason, the management chopped it down along with 28 other mature, healthy trees. If another pine is planted, I must wait 35 more years to experience its full glory. I will be 96.
If I squint my eyes I can at least pretend to see the silhouette of my old friend. Today I am sad. I am going to be standing here for a long time.
May 5, 2019
I Found My Sister
Many of you know I have been searching for my baby sister, Deborah Kay Price, who vanished shortly after the first photo was taken in 1956.
The universe has proven once again that all things, when asked with sincerity and conviction, will eventually be revealed.
I finally found my beautiful sister.
I spoke with her and she is alive and well and has been blessed with a wonderful family. She is now 63 and lives in Indiana.
This would have never happened if I didn’t have Facebook friends, like you, that included some of the most talented genealogical searchers in the nation.
They worked tirelessly without pay or reward.
They left no stone unturned.
They analyzed every clue.
They asked sharp questions.
They were warriors of the truth.
They NEVER GAVE UP.
As I slowly recover from the shock of finding the sister I didn’t even know I had, I can now be find peace, as when one is comforted reading the final chapter of a classic novel.
What did I learn from these 25 years of searching? -with perseverance and belief we are all invincible. We can all have a Herculean power that cannot be conquered. And if it was Sampson’s hair that gave him his strength, it is each of you who have been our hair.
I’m not going anywhere soon, and Debbie and I will share our adventures with you. Although we are now in our sixties, this is only the beginning of our lives. It is time to compare our stories of love and the lessons we have learned. It is time to fill in the missing blanks of how we each originated in this world.
Thanks to all of you who have contributed to this search that many thought was impossible. Thank you also to the 350+ members of the Facebook group- Find Deborah Kay.
I especially thank these miraculous women from across the nation who (while we were sleeping soundly in our beds) scoured the Internet, compared notes, and created a friendship and synergy that I have never before witnessed. I dubbed them the Fabulous Five:
Cori Baker
Linda Borneman
Tina French
Judy Hill
Lori Van Every
Please share this as a message of inspiration to other adoptees or missing persons who are searching for that fundamental gift we are all entitled to- our roots.
April 2, 2019
A Beautiful Experience
The following testimonial is from Heidi Tecklenburg, a winning mom from the 2019 Why Mom Deserves a Diamond contest. Thank you Heidi, for sharing your experience.
Rewind to May 2012, when I was 45 years old, I never imagined that I would ever have a child call me MOM other than my 4-legged fur babies. I was selfish, career oriented, anything I wanted I just made happen or bought for myself, and I was “living the life” with my Babe. I was simply NOT MOM material.
Then tragedy struck! My sister, Rebecca, passed away just a few days before her 32nd birthday. Enter 3-year-old Bella into our home and changing my life as I knew it – forever. There is no book on how to be an instant parent, or any parent for that matter. No idea what I was doing, but how hard could it be? Use common sense, I guess… And a little guidance from up above.
Fast forward to March 2019. Bella, now 10, comes home from school a couple of weeks ago and shows me that she won a contest at school. She explained that her teacher invited the kids in the class to write something about their Moms in 22 words or less and entered them all in the 27th annual “Why Mom Deserves a Diamond” contest.
Guess what happens next… Yep! She wins a genuine, unmounted garnet to be presented to me! I asked her what she wrote and she told me she couldn’t tell me. She said she would read it to me at the jewelry store and that I was going to cry.
Last night – Bella, being, from what I’ve heard, the “typical” tween, starts mouthing off, stomping her feet, flapping her arms around, and flailing on the ground like it’s the end of HER world, when I asked her to clean her closet. What does that non-existent parenting book tell me to do? Take away her cell phone, her chrome book and both kindles! And I’m thinking to myself… she won a contest for me? And I picture my sister looking down at us and laughing her ass off.
Today – Enter Diamond Mike. We walk into the Gallery of Diamonds Jewelers; Bella proudly carrying her award certificate in hand. Mike Watson, as kind as anyone you’d ever want to meet, explains the concept behind this contest that he founded in 1993 in honor of his adoptive mother and birth mother, to allow kids to express their appreciation for their own mothers or women of influence. He then allows Bella to choose from a pile of garnets the perfect stone for me. Then he hands her contest entry to her for her to read to me. Yes, I cried. And I realized I must be doing something right… Oh, I’m still a little selfish, but oh how I love this kid who all consumes my life!
What am I going to do with an unmounted garnet, you ask? Well, Bella decided I should have a ring. Not a necklace; a ring! And I’ll be damned if she didn’t choose exactly what I would have chosen for myself. (With a little help from my sister, I think.)
This program made her feel so important and me so special! Our trip to Diamond Mike’s was perfect! Just perfect! We also found out that Bella and Mike had much more than adoption in common!
Thank you, Mike, for this wonderful gift you give to our kids. – Written by Heidi Tecklenburg. 
January 15, 2019
The Profound Tweet
I am still moved by a tweet from President Tump after the nation began to experience its longest government shutdown in history. It came at a time the President had retreated into the almost vacant west wing of the White House, void of the chatter of aides and interns.
In fact, because the tweet is so shockingly different than almost any other tweet he has made, I’m not convinced he is the author. Perhaps an intern helped him and he dictated the use of capital letters. Nevertheless, coming from a man who is always prepared to attack his perceived enemies, these contrasting words show a deeper, poetic nature that are hypnotic.
I’m sure he must have spent silent time peering from the window at the vast cold, white blanket before him. I’m sure he paced the floors, confused why a nation seemed less impressed with his promise to erect a southern border wall.
Perhaps compromise entered his mind. Perhaps half a wall was better than no wall. But the crowd cheered Build a Wall! When he said Mexico would pay for it they cheered louder. The excitement of the crowds became so intoxicating that the wall and Mexico became the signature crescendo of each rally. I can understand his pressure of giving his supporters what they wanted. Hence, the wall gradually became wider, taller, and stronger. It became the climax of every speech. Perhaps unintentionally, Trump and The Wall became synonymous.
Peering through the frosted glass of the Oval Office I wonder if President Trump, for the first time in his life, was confused why he could no longer manifest his reality simply from the depths of his thoughts. Were the results of the special counsel investigation on his mind? Did he realize the walls of the White House were finally crumbling from the scandals of his administration, impropriety, business, campaign, and relations with a hostile foreign power? Was he thinking about the possible excruciating details, to the dismay of his supporters, how he may have been one of the most incompetent presidents in the nation’s history?
Of all the statements Trump is credited for, perhaps this one will be the one that will be recorded in the annals of history for its depth and calmness, and showing us a President’s real time discovery that the meaning of our lives are much deeper than the concept of them and us, you and me, or winning and losing.
“Wish I could share with everyone the beauty and majesty of being in the White House and looking outside at the snow filled lawns and Rose Garden. Really is something – SPECIAL COUNTRY, SPECIAL PLACE!”
Twitter. 1/13/19.
January 14, 2019
The Most Beautiful Tweet
I am still moved by a tweet from President Tump after the nation began to experience its longest government shutdown in history. It came at a time the President had retreated into the almost vacant west wing of the White House, void of the chatter of aides and interns.
In fact, because the tweet is so shockingly different than almost any other tweet he has made, I’m not convinced he is the author. Perhaps an intern helped him and he dictated the use of capital letters. Nevertheless, coming from a man who is always prepared to attack his perceived enemies, these contrasting words show a deeper, poetic nature that are hypnotic.
I’m sure he must have spent silent time peering from the window at the vast cold, white blanket before him. I’m sure he paced the floors, confused why a nation seemed less impressed with his promise to erect a southern border wall.
Perhaps compromise entered his mind. Perhaps half a wall was better than no wall. But the crowd cheered Build a Wall! When he said Mexico would pay for it they cheered louder. The excitement of the crowds became so intoxicating that the wall and Mexico became the signature crescendo of each rally. I can understand his pressure of giving his supporters what they wanted. Hence, the wall gradually became wider, taller, and stronger. It became the climax of every speech. Perhaps unintentionally, Trump and The Wall became synonymous.
Peering through the frosted glass of the Oval Office I wonder if President Trump, for the first time in his life, was confused why he could no longer manifest his reality simply from the depths of his thoughts. Were the results of the special counsel investigation on his mind? Did he realize the walls of the White House were finally crumbling from the scandals of his administration, impropriety, business, campaign, and relations with a hostile foreign power? Was he thinking about the possible excruciating details, to the dismay of his supporters, how he may have been one of the most incompetent presidents in the nation’s history?
Of all the statements Trump is credited for, perhaps this one will be the one that will be recorded in the annals of history for its depth and calmness, and showing us a President’s real time discovery that the meaning of our lives are much deeper than the concept of them and us, you and me, or winning and losing.
“Wish I could share with everyone the beauty and majesty of being in the White House and looking outside at the snow filled lawns and Rose Garden. Really is something – SPECIAL COUNTRY, SPECIAL PLACE!”
Twitter. 1/13/19.
