When the Bryan Wasn’t a Museum…It Was My Home

THE GALVESTON ORPHAN’S HOME

Texas Historical Commission, 1969

The Galveston Orphan’s Home, photographed in 1969. Courtesy of the Texas Historical Commission.

It was 1960, the world was changing, it was a leap year, John Kennedy was elected President, To kill a Mockingbird was published, the first successful human heart was transplanted and I was transplanted, too. I was taken from my parents and put in the Galveston Orphan’s Home for almost two years when I was six; it was the beginning of my inspiration for my debut novel, Orphan Girl. I was desperate to survive in a world I knew nothing about, where my imagination and writing lifted me then, all those years ago, and still comforts me now.

My book is a work of fiction, but I spent more than two years in the Galveston

Orphanage before I was adopted. It was established in 1895 and for a century was a haven for more than 6,500 children. Less than ten percent were adopted; my brother and I were adopted together to the same family. The building was damaged in the 1900 Storm, and all occupants were safe from harm’s way. Due to damage, the orphanage had fundraisers hosted by the likes of William Randolph Hearst in New York and attended by Mark Twain and many other philanthropists. In 1902 the orphanage was reopened and looks the way you see it today, having a Renaissance Revival style. In 1984, the orphanage was closed and sold as a private home for a time. After a decade, the property was bought by JP and Mary Jon Bryan, who restored not only the house, but the grounds. The Bryan Museum opened in 2015 to showcase the Bryan collection of Western Art Artifacts and by honoring the building’s history as The Galveston Orphanage, paying homage to all those children and their care providers that passed through its doors.

Texas Historical Marker for the Galveston Children’s Home.

Back in 1960, my very first glimpse of the Galveston Orphanage made me gasp. It was a sight for sore eyes, not only was it was imposing, but beautiful and amazing. I later learned that it had quite a storied past. In 1895 it was originally designed by renowned German architect Alfred Muller, displaying a Gothic Revival style, but was heavily damaged by the 1900 Storm that ravaged Galveston Island and killed 6,000 people, just five years after it was opened. George B. Stowe redesigned the structure; it reopened to much fanfare in 1902.

 I had come from unimaginable poverty, no running water or electricity, little food and a haphazard life with my parents, who were on the run. I stepped inside the orphanage and my life changed forever. I became what I am today because I landed there and was later adopted.

Living in the orphanage reminded me of a fairy tale where I became a princess because of its majestic size and grandeur, but then night came, and reality set in; our families weren’t there to comfort us, we might never see them again. I would hear other little girls whispering

goodnight, there were hugs and embraces as we gave each other solace during those long nights when we were first put there. In the dead of night, I heard crying, whimpering and sniffles. We were all missing our mamas. I became an orphan girl then, penning this poem sometime later:

To be an orphan is not to be without parents.

To be an orphan is to be without…

Someone to believe in.

Someone to love,

Someone to hold you close

When the dark night closes in.

Someone.

It’s another kindred spirit.

To be an orphan is fear.

To be an orphan is guilt.

To be an orphan is aloneness.

To be an orphan is isolation on a moonless night.

To be an orphan is stumbling.

To be an orphan is cold.

To be an orphan is all of us.

To be an orphan is none of us.

To be an orphan is one of us.

An orphan is me-

I’m alone.

Something that did help me was that each of us was given some responsibility; we all had

chores of some kind. It was not much, folding clothes, sweeping, dusting and the like. I was glad to do it, helping me to feel a bigger part of it all, a lock and key connecting us one to the other.

In retrospect, that time framed my life, and my thinking about myself, when gradually the pain of losing my parents eased, and hope crept into my heart, becoming a glimmer on the horizon. Now it took some time mind you. Healing can take a lifetime, as I’ve found out.

But as time marched on, the most odd feeling overtook, with an assignment to change my

station, living through my imagination, my belief that there was something inherently powerful, some great beauty, some far-off place that I could go when things got tough. My ferverent prayer was to be reunited with my family, but that did not happen. In actuality, my dreams would take me beyond reason, beyond time, further than I thought possible, another life awaiting, arms open wide, beyond anything I knew or ever hoped for. I was adopted. And oh the places I would go.

Fast forward ten years. Our adoptive family was growing up. With our remarkable

parents, we were able to pull it off. I wasn’t the orphan girl I used to be, I was eighteen and due to graduate from high school, applying for a scholarship that would pay for all four years of college to go to nursing school. I had to write an essay about my life and why I wanted to be a nurse.

Karen on her high school graduation day.

I laid on my bed thinking how I found my natural mother that had been shoved into a nail

in our shanty of a house by my drunk father. How she had a head laceration that bled and bled and I couldn’t stop it no matter what I did. I was only six, but when I was alone, I often thought about that last day I saw mama before we were put in the orphanage. How the ambulance crew applied pressure to her head wound but couldn’t stop the bleeding either. I wrote about how I felt helpless when the blood formed a halo around her head, I wrote about how she got sweaty and stopped talking. I wrote about how that day my mother got hurt and I had to go get help, I had to hurry. I had to run to the neighbor. I wrote about how I ran for years, away from it and towards it. Its ever-changing shadow following me always. I wrote about how that day changed my life forever. I wrote about how I wanted to be a nurse. How I wanted to stop running.

It was a full month before I found out that my dream came true. I got the scholarship,

graduating with honors, getting a job in the ER. Now I would know what to do when someone bled and bled.

Fast forward thirty-five years from when I was in the orphanage. My daughter called, she and her family wanted to take me to the Bryan Museum, to the Galveston Orphan’s Home where I was put at age six when I was taken from my parents. They were giving tours, did I want to go. My heart did a flip.

Karen Hand Allen standing at the Bryan Museum years later, reflecting on her time at the Galveston Children’s Home.

The grounds were more beautiful than I remembered, the orphanage sparkled, with its

vast rooms and polished floors, the modulated voice of our guide leading us through the western art artifacts. Then we got to the orphan home section, we entered where I slept, where I ate, where I cried myself to sleep, sometimes. It was a remarkable homage to care providers and children that were there. I remembered playing on those grounds, laughing and growing. Strangest thing happened, surreal in fact, as I walked, I let go. I felt lighter, some weight falling off. Turning, I walked down the stairs, sheading my childhood, I could finally stop running.

The Conservatory at the Bryan Museum.

To God, our maker of light, my parents, FJ and Irene Chance, and JP and Mary Jon Bryan of The Bryan Museum, and for

everyone in that orphanage that got me through, that got my brother and countless of thousands of children through, thank you, thank you, we were not alone. This is for you.

Note: All historical information in this post comes from The Bryan Museum’s timeline of the Galveston Orphans Home