adminThe Rhodesia Herald,
May 25, 1967
JOHANNESBURG. – A woman who spent almost all of her free time in the past nine months searching for her six-year-old son was reunited with him last night.
She had known that her son Ernie, abandoned in a Johannesburg bar by his father, was in the care of the Social Welfare Department here.
Mrs A Olivier sobbed as she held his hand in the home of his foster parents, Mr and Mrs G van der Merwe.
She had been from town-to-town looking for every young child she saw, in search of her boy.
Her husband left her a year ago and while Ernie was visiting relatives in Johannesburg the father took Ernie away from them.
Ernie was found abandoned in a Johannesburg bar after patrons were asked by a man to look after him. The man did not return.
Mrs Oliver was brought to Pretoria from Boksburg by an old friend who saw a newspaper report about Ernie and told her that he was going to give her a surprise.
“The feeling inside me when I saw Ernie again was indescribable. I wanted to cry and laugh and cry at the same time,” she said.
Ernie’s story has prompted a 17-year-old Johannesburg girl to start a search for her father who she has not seen for 13 years.
Ms M. Cass, who works as a hairdresser, remembers her father as a tall man with dark hair, according to our correspondent. She was left at an orphanage at the age of four after her mother died.
Her father’s name is Donald Cass and he worked at the Johannesburg General Hospital as a porter in 1954.
LESSONS FOR TODAY
Losing a child can be a very stressful experience especially for a parent or parents. It is a situation that can be draining psychologically and can result in serious consequences such as depression.
These days, there are a lot of adverts of missing persons in newspapers, radio, posters on the streets. It is essential that parents and guardians are more diligent when looking after their kids especially in view of increasing numbers of child-trafficking and things like ritual murders. In the US in 2020 alone, the number of missing children was 365 348.
Parents need to be responsible especially when they are with their children and among strangers. The father in the story took his six-year-old son to a bar and left him with total strangers, which was very dangerous.
Online Reporter