Thousands of people bid farewell to The Great Danbury State Fair, in Connecticut, almost thirty years ago, in 1981 to be exact, making way for a huge shopping mall that was built on the site of the fairgrounds.
While many may have fond memories of the yearly event, I’m unable to share in that sentimentality.
Why?
Well, before I begin, let me state that my friend, and fellow blogger, from Narragansett No. 7, wrote a haunting post recently entitled “Nightmares” where she related a dream she had about losing one of her children in a Wal-Mart.
It caused me to think back to a distressing, real-life, situation I experienced years ago and I commented on her blog, along with others who shared similar stories. No. 7 later encouraged me to write about this horror that parents most fear.
Let me take you back…
It was Sunday, October 4, 1981, our eleventh wedding anniversary, as we headed to this last Danbury Fair which was ending its run after 112 years of being a yearly event. Our own family of five along with my mother, an uncle and his wife looked forward to all that the festivities offered; so did thousands of others as the place was uncomfortably mobbed with fairgoers who pushed and shoved their way through the crowd.
At the time, our son John had just turned three and wasn’t content with being pushed in a stroller, he insisted on being carried on my hubby’s shoulders. Allowing him to walk in the mob of humanity wasn’t possible, or safe, even our two older girls had difficulty navigating through all the human congestion.
One section of the fair was “New Amsterdam” which was a Dutch village and it featured a petting zoo full of baby goats and sheep; it was completely fenced, with one secured gate, so the animals or little visitors, looking to pet them, couldn’t escape. Our son was all excited and asked to be put in with the animals; my husband obliged and lifted Junior over the white fencing, placing him in the yard next to a little sheep. I stood on the opposite side of the petting area and started taking photos, stopping for just a moment to quickly change lenses. As I resumed shooting and focused on where my subject matter had been standing, he was no longer there, or anywhere, in the barnyard.
In the blink of an eye, our son was gone!
I yelled across to my husband who had his back turned, talking with my uncle, as he leaned against the fence, facing the street light in the photograph above. Both men looked around and immediately started making their way through the crowd, calling our son’s name. My mother and aunt took hold of our two daughters and went one way while the rest of us fled like madmen in the opposite direction.
The worst part of that moment still resonates in my mind as we were unable to find just one security person or police officer, all of which had been seen everywhere at the fair when we entered. As we ran and screamed for our son, not one other living soul, in seeing our overwhelming panic, offered to help us find John.
Exits to various parking lots snaked off around the fairgrounds and I was doing a fair amount of crowd battering as I ran and pushed people out of my way, still holding my camera by its long lens. I was half-crying as I tried to scream through a now hoarse voice. Call it a mother’s intuitive feeling, if you will, thoughts kept flashing through my mind that told me someone was running away with our son. Finally reaching an exit, I looked over and there was John, sitting on the shoulders of a burly-looking, dark haired man who was dressed in jeans and a red plaid flannel shirt. Walking next to him was an equally husky, frumpy looking woman with long brown hair, wearing a long grey skirt and black jacket. In a flash I let out a scream that made some people stop in their tracks but not the couple carrying our son; they hurriedly picked up their pace and kept heading towards the parking area.
I give you my weapons of choice….
Able to run faster than they could walk, I caught up with them and demanded that they stop, ready to bash them with my camera if they moved one more step. The trashy woman started yelling at me as I grabbed my son away from the man she was with; trust me, I was so ready to inflict serious Nikon damage to one of them even while holding onto my son with a death grip. They suddenly started to move quickly into the parking lot and, as they did so, the man yelled back, “You should have watched him better”, disappearing just as my husband and uncle caught up with me. Both men ran into the parking area in an attempt to see the couple get into a car but the sinister looking duo had already vanished.
We promptly gathered everyone and headed out of the fair, finding a Connecticut State Trooper on the way; we shared what had happened with him only to be met with, “Well folks, in a crowd like this, these things happen. If you can’t give me more than a description, like a license plate, there’s nothing I can do.” and he patted our son John on the head. Anticipating a meltdown, my husband grabbed me before I ended up being taken away in handcuffs; the next day, I filed a complaint with the state police about the complete lack of consideration shown by that moron of a cop. In return, we received a letter of apology from his superiors along with a state police window decal.
Fair exchange for an attempted kidnapping and callous police attitude, wouldn’t you say?
It’s so difficult for me to crack jokes about this even though my cynicism pops-up now and then; that day was an absolute horror and I fully understand the sheer terror someone feels when their child goes missing. Your stomach drops and as the panic overtakes, it’s difficult to breathe; your mind screams with thoughts that paralyze. I recall all that still.
The two people who grabbed our son must have been following us for some time through the fair that day. Given the fact that our little boy wasn’t crying and happily sitting on the shoulders of a stranger meant the abduction plan was fairly well thought out; they made the child comfortable after they took him from the barnyard, being careful not to scare him. Had they carried John in any other way, it might have called attention to their intended crime; for those twenty minutes, they were just one more family at the fair. The most horrific part is that those two individuals weren’t looking to find the parents of the child they held; only one goal was on their mind, to steal him from our lives forever.
At the time, our son John told us only that “the man picked me up”, beyond that, he remembers nothing else and is forever insulated from the trauma of that day. This awful memory of having a child almost kidnapped is something that no one should have to endure.
For me, it has been impossible to ever forget.
