This story is taken from “Orphan Train Riders: Their Own Stories,” Volume 6
In the year of 1900 Bishop Thomas Bonacum, who was the first Bishop and spiritual leader of the diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, traveled by horse and buggy seeking homes for the orphans from the New York City Foundling Home. These children would be coming on “Mercy Trains.” This was before Bishop Bonacum founded and built St. Thomas Orphanage in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Bishop Bonacum went to Exeter, Nebraska, to visit the pastor, Father Walter McDonald, in St. Stephen parish. He asked Father to announce at the Sunday masses that the “Mercy Train” would be coming through Exeter on its way to Denver, Colorado. He said that any parents who wanted to adopt a child should inform the pastor and he would contact the Sisters at the Foundling Home in New York and give the names of the adoptive parents.
As the train sped across the country, it carried children whose clothes were labeled with a pice of linen. These labels had been prepared by the Sisters at the home. The name of the child, the name of the prospective foster parents, and the date of birth of the child were written on these labels. They were sewn inside their traveling clothes.
In the year 1901, a train load of fifty girls came from New York on the Burlington Railroad to Denver, Colorado. They were accompanied by two Sisters, nurses, and an agent. This time the labels were sewed on the inside of the hem of their dresses.
The foster parents had been notified that their child would arrive on September 4, 1901. Duplicate identification cards had been sent to them so that they could identify their child.
As a result of Bishop Bonacum’s visit to the pastor of St. Stephen’s Church at Exeter, Nebraska, the train stopped there. A Sister of Charity gently helped two of the girls, Thelma Bernhardt and Victoria Geiger, down the steps. Because the two girls were crying and trying to follow her, she turned and immediately went back into the car.
The girls were soon in the arms of their adoptive parents. The new parents then compared their card with the labels on the girls’ dresses.
Bernhardt lived in the home of Peter and Elizabeth Michael and their son Henry. Thelma’s ambition to become a teacher was apparent at an early age. She was four years old when she came to live with her new parents. Playing school was one of her favorite games. When playing by herself, she used corn cobs for her pupils.
She started school at the age of five and spent many years of diligent study and still had the desire to become a teacher. While in high school she started to work her way through school. Her evenings and Saturdays were spent as a waitress at a hotel in Exeter. This enabled her to earn the tuition money to attend Normal Training School. After graduating from school she was prepared to teach in the rural schools in Nebraska.
While teaching in York County, Nebraska, she met John Lief, whom she married in 1923. The young couple rented a farm from the Michaely family, her adoptive parents. To their union were born six children, three boys and three girls. Later they moved to a farm near her parents. Thelma and her husband were delighted to be near her parents so that they could help them.
After her father died, and many years later when her mother was too feeble to care for herself, Thelma, with the consent of her own family, asked her adopted mother to come and live with them. In this way, Thelma was able to care for her mother until the mother died.
Besides helping her husband and six children, Mrs. Lief always found time to serve her church and her community throughout the depression years and through the drought years of the 1930’s and through the tornado in 1957. Thelma, the mother of two Korean War veterans, served the American Legion Auxiliary in many capacities, including as local and county president.
Thelma Lief was always partial to the needle, embroidering, and was also a master of quilting, crocheting and knitting. Hers was a life well spent for God, her family, relatives, benefactors, and for her country.
Stricken with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, she died and passed to her eternal reward in 1976.
