Growing up With Adam Walsh
On Tuesday, December 16, 2008, after nearly three decades, the unsolved murder of Adam Walsh was finally closed. Unfortunately, the person responsible for Adam’s fate died in prison 10 years ago on unrelated charges. I was struck silent by the televised news report—choking back tears. While I was relieved, I turned within myself to think about why this was hitting me so close to home. When John and Revé Walsh appeared the next morning on NBC’s “The Today Show,” my daughter saw me crying and asked who Adam Walsh was. Then it all came down on me at once—sending me into a whirlwind of memories and sadness. I explained that in 1981, a 6-year-old little boy was abducted from a Sears department store while he was shopping with his mother. Several weeks later his severed head was found in a canal over 100 miles away from where he was last seen—his body was never found and the case had gone unsolved. Neither she nor my husband understood my emotional reaction, though, since there are thousands of kids that get abducted and murdered every year—so why was I crying about this little boy who died 27 years ago?
Adam was only a few years younger than I was, but at the age of 10 when this happened, I learned just how lucky I was. Like Adam, I too had been abducted when I was five years old—in broad daylight—when I was playing outside our apartment building where my mother was ironing out on the balcony. The phone rang and in the few seconds it took to step inside the door to reach the phone, I was gone. While not sharing the details of my own ordeal, I will say that fortunately for my parents, I was returned a short time later, unharmed and honestly oblivious to the many horrific “what ifs.” I was able to show the police and my parents exactly where I’d been, what we’d done, and give a pretty detailed description of my abductor and his vehicle. Unfortunately, the canvassing did not yield an arrest and he was never found.
When Adam’s story was turned into a television movie a couple of years after his death, I learned more of the details about his abduction and murder, as I vividly remember watching the movie with my mother. It was the first time I ever really heard of the awful things that can happen to children when they go missing. I remember thinking how much John Walsh must have loved his son. Instead of burying his pain and grief, he, along with his wife, used it as a driving force to bring to light the thousands upon thousands of families who were going through the same horrible experiences of not knowing where their children were. He quickly became an advocate for these missing children and their families by lobbying Congress to pass the Missing Children Act of 1982 which led to the creation of the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database. He didn’t just stop there either. He then challenged them to pass the Missing Children's Assistance Act of 1984 which established the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He later went on to become the host of the popular “America’s Most Wanted” show on the Fox network. My father was a pretty devoted viewer back in the 80s & 90s, and each week I would see John Walsh and think about his loss and wonder how he must still be feeling on the inside--not knowing who murdered his son. I’d think of Adam on those days and pray I’d never know that kind of pain.
When I became a mother, my awareness was instinctively on high-alert when it came to my daughter’s safety. But as most parents do, I got my scare of a lifetime. When she was about 2 years old, we made a 5-minute trip into a department store to exchange an outfit for her and I didn’t feel like dragging her heavy stroller out of the car for such a quick errand. Inside the store, she was at my feet, playing in the center of the circular clothing rack that I was looking through for her size…and in less than five seconds, she was gone. It was the most terrifying 2 minutes of my life—but she’d wandered about 15 feet away to the restroom entrances to try and use the water fountain, as that was always a stop we made when visiting that store. I thought of Adam that day…and thanked God that my baby was safe.
I became vigilant not only about my own child’s safety, but about the children of complete strangers I’d come across in my daily travels too. I’d roll down my window at stop lights and fuss at parents for not having their kids properly restrained in seatbelts or car seats. I angrily stopped the mother who was parked beside me and had left her infant in the minivan while grocery shopping “because she was sleeping.” I’d get the attention of inattentive parents whose child was standing up in the seat of the shopping cart or who were wandering away in the store unnoticed. I was a one-woman safety patrol—and I didn’t care what people thought of it. I was doing my part to help make sure that those children were safe, even if their own parents were too stupid to do it themselves.
Before Adam’s murder, you couldn’t enter missing children information into FBI’s computer system. There were no pictures on milk cartons. There were no posters inside post offices or Wal-Mart stores or included in mass mailings that were delivered to 82 million U.S. homes per week as there have been for the last 23 years. Families of missing children were often required to wait 48 hours before police took the calls seriously. There truly was a silver lining in the dark clouds of the Walsh family’s loss.
It took me a couple of days of really thinking about Adam’s murder and the legacy he left in his father’s hands to fully grasp the impact his short life had on my own. In a way, Adam has always been a part of my life. He was a part of my childhood, my adolescent years, and my venture into parenthood. I cried tears of relief that the Walshes might finally have closure; tears of pride in what their loss inspired in others and in myself; tears of anger that they never got to look into the face of the animal who took their son from them; and finally tears for all the “Adams” of this world and their parents…who weren’t as fortunate as I was.
Goodbye, sweet Adam. May you truly now rest in peace.
