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Show KATHLEEN NORMS Divorce Isn't Happiness Road keeper who would care for them. So Adele has them. The children at first welcomed their father when he came to see' them. But that is lessening. In the institution where their stepfather works they are absorbed. There are other children; community meals. They are not unhappy, Stephen tells me, although in one sense they have no father and no mother. For Adele, three weeks after her marriage, after the achievement achieve-ment of her dream and her dream man, was stricken with a disease that has baffled science. She is bedridden in the big institution. She'has books and callers and care, but she will never walk again. If it is merely a fixation it is a very real one, for she. makes desperate efforts to walk, without success. The children visit her. One wonders what goes on in their small minds about the whole thing. Stephen's heart is broken. Or rather it is stilled and sobered in a way that makes seeing him hard for those of us who love him. He is very quiet about it, but he cannot can-not understand what went wrong. Here was a lovely home with a man and a woman in it; a garden; here twice were those tremendous hours that usher in a new life, and twice the delight of bringing home a child to its new home. What happened? hap-pened? Aren't those things permanent, per-manent, fundamental? If they aren't, what is? OTEPHEN JACKSON is one more victim of the divorce scourge. He was married for six years. He loved his home, he dearly loved his . small son and daughter. He was a good provider, he didn't drink or gamble or look at other women. But Adele fell in love with another an-other man, and was crazy with love and passion and pain. Stephen, after months of resistance, agreed to get a divorce, surrendered his children, and has never had a happy hap-py hour since. Divorce brings more tragedies to American homes than infantile paralysis does. We should fight it with the same horror that we do the psysical disease. Wise mothers should warn their daughters of the dangers and symptoms that lead up to it; fathers should instruct their sons as to the best ways of avoiding it. . Nobody should ever lightly suggest it as a solution to marital troubles, for it never is. Divorce Must Be True, if a marriage is childless, and if circumstances are unusually serious, there must be divorces. But where there are 50 now, there should be only one. No money paid to psychiatrists in years to come will undo what your divorce does to the minds and souls of your children now. But to come back to Stephen Jackson. Here is a man I have known since he was a cheerful, sturdy little fellow of 10. He delivered de-livered papers in high school days, took a part-time job to pay. his ". . . with the usual white veil . . way through engineering school at college, and immediately upon graduation obtained a, good job. He has changed jobs twice in these 10 years, but always upward. He married a nice girl, with the usual white veil and the usual promises and Steve meant them. Little Georgia was born, to completely com-pletely captivate her father, and then a sturdy small edition of himself him-self in Steve junior. He loves them, he loved his home, he deeply loved Adele. But Adele, three years, ago, fell in love. The man is a vocational adviser in a large institution, it makes me wonder who advises him. For, from the moment he and Adele decided to shake off their respective respec-tive mates at any cost, they proceeded pro-ceeded to make everyone concerned con-cerned thoroughly miserable. Adele took her children and went to her mother's home. Her mother warned her that she couldn't stay, but at the same time she didn't turn out Adele, and she loved her grandchildren. She prayed and hoped that the situation would clear up. Everybody Miserable Philip, the vocational adviser, got his divorce with no trouble, and he and Adele went to Steve and begged him to relent. Stephen finally gave in, but he claimed the custody of his children. Adele agreed, perhaps because she knew what would happen. Stephen hasn't a relative in the world; the care of children of five and three simply isn't possible for him. As an engineer he comes and goes between the west coast cities; he couldn't be sure of getting a house- |