Darlene Gilleland, right, and Rita Marshall visit the abandoned baby they found in 1972. The Washington Post
Rita Marshall had just unlocked her car when she noticed a shopping cart resting against the front fender. Inside was a brown paper bag - and it was moving.
“I didn’t know what to think,” Marshall said.
Marshall, then 20, had just seen an evening film with a friend and co-worker, Darlene Gilleland, 23, at Westgate Shopping Centre in Fairview Park, Ohio. It was August 20, 1972.
Marshall couldn’t make out what was inside the bag. She stepped closer and bent down.
“That’s when I saw the baby’s face,” Marshall said. “I was shocked.”
She called over Gilleland, who was equally stunned to see a newborn baby. The child was wearing a yellow onesie and was wrapped in a blue blanket.
“She was swaddled really tight,” Gilleland recalled.
“She was perfect, lying there as calm as can be,” Marshall said.
Marshall stayed with the baby while Gilleland sprinted back to the theatre to call police. Within minutes, five patrol cars arrived.
Officers peppered the women with questions, then they rode in the back of a patrol car to the hospital with the baby.
“She got examined there,” Gilleland said. “She was beautiful and healthy.”
Doctors told them the baby was about two or three hours old when she was left in the shopping cart. Gilleland and Marshall both believed the baby’s mother had spotted them and thought they were a safe pair with whom to leave the child.
“I think we were being watched. They were looking for the right people,” Marshall said, noting that there were two apartment buildings behind the parking lot and that perhaps the mother was observing from there.
“It was just the right time and the right place,” Gilleland said.
From the hospital, the women went to a police station to file a report. The following day, they returned to the hospital to visit the baby, who was temporarily named Jeanne Westgate - Jeanne after one of the nurses who looked after her, and Westgate after the mall.
“We got to say goodbye,” Gilleland said, adding that they were told the baby would be taken to social services and eventually adopted.
They said they called the next day to find out what happened to the child but were given no information.
As the women moved through life, they never forgot about the baby girl, both said.
“I thought about her a lot. I was always wondering how she wound up and if she was okay,” said Marshall, who saved all the newspaper articles written about the unexpected discovery.
“That’s been one of the biggest moments of my life,” Gilleland said. “She was always in the back of my mind.”
Still, they never expected to meet her again.
After more than five decades, though, they did.
The baby - whose name is now Pearl Marshall - was adopted by a Cleveland couple. By coincidence, she shares a last name with Rita Marshall.
Both Pearl Marshall and her younger brother were adopted. She said their parents were always open about their adoption.
“From the very beginning, it’s been a part of who I am,” Pearl Marshall said. Her story was first reported by News 5 Cleveland.
She grew up in Rockville, Maryland, where she attended Magruder High School. She loved arts and crafts and enjoyed family trips and holidays with extended relatives.
“I was certainly cared for,” she said.
Although she felt loved by her adoptive parents, Pearl Marshall said, she was curious about where she came from. She couldn’t find any information, as her adoption records were sealed.
“Lots of adopted friends would have fact sheets on their parents … There was nothing on me,” she said. “It didn’t even occur to me to search because there was no place to start.”
At times, it pained her.
“Everybody seemed attached to this big, beautiful family tree of humanity,” Pearl Marshall said. “They knew exactly where they were, and I was just kind of floating off disconnected on my own.”
She became a music teacher at Green Acres School in North Bethesda, Maryland, before moving to Los Angeles and later Berea, Kentucky.
She married Jack Marshall, who was also adopted. About 10 years ago, Ohio unsealed adoption records, including hers.
Pearl Marshall’s birth certificate did not have the names of her mother or father. Her name on the certificate was “Jeanne Westgate” and the place of birth was “Westgate Shopping Centre”.
Years earlier, when she was in university, her mother had mentioned there was an abandoned baby at that mall and that she had a hunch it might have been Pearl.
Since her birth certificate confirmed it, Pearl Marshall and her husband started looking for old newspaper articles about it.
Pearl Marshall contacted the Fairview Park Police Department in 2023, asking whether they had information on the case. They did not.
But they passed along her request to Chris Gerrett, a local volunteer historical researcher.
“I just started to pursue it,” Gerrett said, explaining that she was hoping to track down the two women who found Pearl Marshall as a newborn, which proved challenging.
“People change their names; they may change them more than once or no longer live in the area.”
Gerrett combed through school, property, death, marriage, birth and criminal records.
“You’ve got to flip all the pages in all the different records,” she said.
Soon Gerrett had a lead. She found Gilleland’s adult son and called him. When she mentioned the abandoned baby in 1972, he knew exactly what she was talking about. She was then able to track down Rita Marshall.
“That was a thrill,” Gerrett said. “It’s the hunt that is fun.”
Both women could recount the evening with complete clarity. The only detail they had forgotten was what movie they had seen.
Gerrett told Pearl Marshall that she had found the two women and that she wanted to arrange a time for them all to meet.
“I was very excited,” Pearl Marshall said.
It took nearly two years to plan a reunion as Pearl Marshall was in the midst of moving with her husband from Berea to Salem, Virginia, where she now works at a public school and local church.
She travelled to meet the women in August at Fairview Park City Hall.
Both Rita Marshall and Gilleland live in northeast Ohio. They were in touch but had not seen each other since Gilleland’s husband’s funeral 18 years ago.
As Pearl Marshall walked into the room, the women immediately teared up.
“We were all crying and hugging tightly,” Gilleland said. “It’s a miracle.”
“Our baby came home,” Rita Marshall said. “That’s how it felt.”
Pearl Marshall said she didn’t expect to get emotional.
“They were so welcoming and bringing up the story and what it meant to them,” Pearl Marshall said. “I wouldn’t have known any of this.”
The women chatted for hours, looking at photos and sharing stories about their lives. They also went to the parking lot where Pearl Marshall was found.
Rita Marshall and Gilleland both reinforced to Pearl Marshall that they believe her mother loved her.
“Because of the way she was dressed and taken care of so perfectly, she had to have had so much love for her and she was concerned,” Rita Marshall said.
Pearl Marshall said she has no resentment toward her birth mother.
“Every time I think about it, I cry for her and how scared and desperate she must have been,” she said.
“This was 1972. This was before safe surrender, before you could leave a baby at a hospital or fire department with no questions.”
Pearl Marshall connected with her birth father through a genealogy site about two years ago, and she has developed a relationship with him and her half-sister, who is also a music teacher.
Before they got in touch, she said, her father did not know she existed.
“They were warm and welcoming with open arms,” Pearl Marshall said, noting that her adoptive parents support her efforts to learn more about her roots. “I couldn’t have asked for a better experience.”
She still does not know the name of her birth mother.
“I’d love to meet her if she’s still alive and if she wants to meet me,” Pearl Marshall said.
In the meantime, she said, meeting the women who found her as a newborn has given her clarity about her origin story and helped her feel more connected.
“Learning about people like Darlene and Rita, who thought about me every day - that made me realise that we are all a part of the family of humans,” Pearl Marshall said. “It is hopeful.”
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