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Vanished Without a Trace

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(page 8 of 9)

Eventually, the Newtons considered the fact that soon Kurt would be school age and somewhere he had to go to school. After six months of nightly correspondence, they had compiled a list of every superintendent in every school district in the United States. "I couldn't believe how many schools there are," Ron said. Tables were set up in the firehouse, and again friends pitched in. They worked state by state, sending a letter asking that the picture be posted for two years, and including five posters to the superintendents. It took six months of nightly gatherings to finish, and then they began anew with Canada. Two years after Kurt pedaled away, their incredible campaign was over. They had spent well over $5,000 on mailing costs alone; by the end only a stack of one thousand posters remained in their basement. "When the last envelope went, we had the feeling we'd done everything we could," Ron said. "Then all we could do was wait."

Letters came back from everywhere, filled with sympathy and prayers, and many enclosed photographs of children in local schools. "We got some awful close resemblances back," Ron said, and police in far distant places checked them out. Time passed. and the Newtons realized that soon a picture of Kurt at four would mean little to a teacher meeting him at six or seven. "Sometimes I think, if Kurt walked by me, would I know him?' admitted Jill. "It's a weird, panicky feeling." They were left with the hope that Kurt would tell a teacher that he used to live in Maine and he used to have a sister named Kimberly and that one day he was taken away.

Four years after Kurt's disappearance, a visitor to the Newtons would be struck by how normally they are living with this most abnormal of burdens. Jill has opened a beauty shop downstairs in their home, and has a growing number of customers. Ron works fourteen-hour days for the highway department, and on weekends putters around in his shop, planning improvements to their home. Kimberly is a bright, winsome girl of ten, who swings from the weeping willow in the yard, loves baseball, and complains that her mother doesn't allow her to ride her bicycle in the street like her friends do. "Ron's constantly telling me I've got to let her do more," Jill said.

There are changes, of course. They have sold their tent trailer and no longer go camping. There is laughter in the house, and there was a trip to Disneyland, but Kurt is always on the edge of things. "Kurt's name is always around our household," Jill says. "We say things like, 'Kurt had a pair of pants like that,' or 'Wouldn't Kurt have liked that.' A boy moved next door after Kurt was lost, and he kept asking Kimberly, 'Well, who is this Kurt? And where is he?

"People who don't know me say how many children do I have, and I say two, a ten year old and an eight year old, and I don't think about it because I will go on expecting that someday he'll walk through that door, even at fifty years old -- until somebody proves to me that I'm wrong.

' I think your mind has to rest. Now we can take a big gulp and say, 'Okay, now we're going to forget about it for a while and have a good time.' It's never ever forgotten, really. I know it's there, and I know I'll come back to it, but I've learned to glide around it. To keep on going."

On Sundays there are picnics outside, or at the lakeside cabin two miles from their home. "We were extremely close before," Jill says, "and we're closer now. Ron was quiet before, and he's quieter now. It's still hard for the two of us to talk about it a lot. It's like we're careful not to rile too much up. We've accepted and are coping with the way things are. But isn't it incredible that after all that's happened during these four years we don't know any more than we did when we first missed him?"

 I became interested in this case, last year, after reading, "The Day Kurt Newton Disappeared" in an old 1979 Yankee Magazine and did an internet search to see if this case had been solved.  
 I had hoped that Kurt had been found safe and returned to his family. 
 Having come across the old magazine again while cleaning, I once again did another search to see if anything new had come to light concerning this child's case.
 I wonder if anyone might have done a computer aging on Kurt, updating his appearance to what would be his current adult age and distributing it or perhaps publishing it in the newspaper where he grew up.  I suppose I like to believe in miracles, even at this late date.  Perhaps he would see the picture, read the story, and be reunited with his family.  Such stories have happened before.
Kurt's story still haunts my heart when I read it and see his photo.  I hope that he is alive, mentally and emotionally well and that God guides him back to where he belongs.