Fight for Hildy

In every city and town in Massachusetts last week, police searched for a blue-eyed, four-year-old girl whose name and face were familiar to newspaper readers across the U.S. Everyone knew that the youngster was safe, but no one could say that she had not been harmed. Hildy McCoy, born out of wedlock to a Roman Catholic mother, was the innocent victim of a bitter and poignant custody case. To avoid giving her up, her Jewish foster parents had hidden her in defiance of Massachusetts law.

Hildy was born in a Boston hospital in 1951 to Marjorie McCoy, a pretty, 21-year-old nursing student from Marblehead, Mass. Ten days after birth, she was taken by a childless Jewish couple, Mr. and Mrs. Melvin Ellis of Brookline, Mass., who paid Marjorie's doctor and hospital bills and gave her $150 for incidental expenses. According to the doctor who arranged the adoption, Marjorie McCoy was told that the Ellises were Jewish.

Is It Legal? Three weeks later, as she was about to sign a second set of papers, Marjorie declared that she had just discovered that the Ellises were Jewish, shortly afterwards demanded the return of the child so that she could be brought up a Catholic. Since Massachusetts law provides that "when practicable," an adopted child shall be given "only to persons of the same religious faith as ... its mother," a state welfare agent called on the Ellises and warned them that the court would probably turn down their adoption petition.

The Ellises disregarded the warning, adjusted their lives to their new responsibilities ("I can't tell you how nice it is," Mrs. Ellis told a friend, "not to be able to go out except on Saturday nights like other parents"), gave the child solicitous attention in their comfortable suburban home. When the courts ruled against their adoption petition in 1953 and ordered Hildy returned to her mother, Hildy knew no other parents than the Ellises.

As the case dragged on for the next two years, Marjorie McCoy (who had since married and had another child) revealed that she wanted Hildy back only so that she could turn her over to the Catholic Charitable Bureau for adoption by a Catholic family. The Ellises refused to give up Hildy unless her mother would rear her herself, offered to bring her up as a Catholic if they could keep her. When the court refused their plea and issued an order for their arrest, they fled with Hildy.

Is It Christian? Last week, with his wife and Hildy still in hiding, Melvin Ellis, owner of a Boston dry-cleaning firm, returned to Brookline. "I'm not a willing hero or martyr," he told reporters, "but I'll do anything to help the child. I am prepared to go to jail, if necessary, [in] protest against [this] law and its administration." The court granted the Ellises a temporary reprieve from a contempt charge, ordered them to appear in court July 18. Meanwhile police continued their search for Hildy.

In predominantly Catholic Boston, as elsewhere, religious lines were disregarded in sharp, emotional discussions of the case. The Pilot, official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston, backed the 1950 law, pointed out that both Mr. and Mrs. Ellis had previously been divorced, accused them of "crass and contrived emotionalism." Obviously, the affair had been poorly handled by both sides. But even those who felt that the Massachusetts law was a good one winced at its application. Said Gloucester District Judge Edward Morley, a Catholic, in a letter to the Pilot: "The essential problem at this . . . time is 'What is the best thing for this little four-year-old girl?' Certainly she is not responsible for her plight. Is it a Christian thing to destroy the love and affection which have grown up between the child and the only ones she has known as father and mother?"

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