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Tiffany discovered when he -rived had far greater consequences on his father and aunt when they arrived by train in Opelousas in 1907.
"Here's what we believe happened.
"There was more than one family of Dupres who had come to the depot to adopt children and there was more than one boy named George on the train.
"One of the Dupre families had requested a brother and sister, and they were supposed to receive my father and aunt.
"The people here only spoke French and the children arriving only spoke English.
"My father was only three when he and his sister arrived by train in Opelousas.
"The officials gave one of the Dupre families my aunt and another little boy named George. My aunt was five and old enough to know that they had made a mistake.
"She kept telling them, 'You have the wrong
they gave me an opportunity to go t high school," he said.
McDermott even went to LSU for two years, studying journalism, but dropped out because his family couldn't afford the tuition during the Depression.
He went to work at the Port Allen Observer, doing a variety of jobs for the newspaper, including editor. When his parents died, he took over his father's water-well drilling business until he was hired by the Commissioner of Agriculture to promote the state's agricultural products in north Louisiana.
McDermott lived in Monroe where he won numerous civic awards, including 1965 Outstanding Citizen of Monroe. He continued to wonder about his natural parents. The Foundling Hospital told him only that his mother's name was Annie Kelly. One day though, McDermott received a phone call that began, "Hello. I'm Vincent Kelly Tyrell. I think I might
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"It was a sensitive thing for him," said Bernard of her father, who was born Wilfred Joseph Coles.
OTHSA, founded in 1986 by Mary Ellen Johnson in Springdale, Ark., has helped push for the release of previously sealed information so that orphan train riders and their descendants can attempt to discover their heritage.
In an interview with the Riverside Reader in 2005, Johnson said she was working on a history boot for Washington County Arkansas when she firs! learned about the orphar trains.
"I was stunned," she said.
Since 1986, Johnson ha; written five books on the
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