In Search of Helen from Two Locks
Sid's search for his mother ended with his passing on September 15, 2024. He was 81.
Helen in Clear Spring
This is a painting of Helen Starliper by Rebecca Loya. It's created from an old photograph of Helen taken somewhere around 1940, maybe 10 years before she was driven to a state hospital just outside Sykesville, Maryland, in the backseat of a sheriff's car, never to see her home again.
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The picture was taken in Clear Spring, Maryland, a town of 350, or so. In the picture Helen is actually leaning down and smiling at one of her children.​
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Growing up in tiny Clear Spring, Maryland, Sid Starliper didn't think about his mother much. She left in a sheriff's car in 1950, and he never saw her again.​
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Except once, and that was at her funeral.
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She was born in 1913. She grew up at the edge of the C&O Canal in a beautiful place called Two Locks. Her name was Helen Small, until she married Whitey Starliper -- a boxer, a butcher, a beer drinker -- and became Helen Starliper.
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She had seven children, and at some point, before she had her seventh, a girl named Patsy, strange things started happening. With her body. Her mind. And in 1950, at the age of 36, she was committed to Springfield Hospital near Sykesville, Maryland.
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In 2016, Sid suddenly realized it was time to find his mother, time to solve the mystery of how and why she disappeared from his life.
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This is the story of Sid's search, of his mother's struggle with a rare, unknown brain disease, and the return of that disease in modern times in Sid's sister, Patsy.
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It's a story of love and family, of disease and determination, and a son's wrenching and relentless search for a forgotten mother.
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