Michelle (Rosie) Rapp

I go by Rosie Davis when I 'write' and also on Facebook. Of course it is truthfully only part of my name. I was born Michelle Rose Davis, and is written on my birth certificate.

There were 7 of us, me the oldest, and the youngest was born 10 years later. Three sisters and three brothers, all were my very favorite people in the world, I love them... through thick and thin, right or wrong... we are all of Mommy's blood. They had a different father than I did, but we were all a family of our own.

Their last name was Smith, and so it was the last name pinned on me when I went to school. We were the Smith kids on the block of Tanager Rd in Springfield. There were the Yates, Stoltz, Brown, Jennings, Mike Keyes, and Chris Nick and many other neighbors, but we were the Smith kids who learned to ride 2-wheeler bikes up and down the sidewalk. We ran screaming through the gutters on our street when it rainned, or chased each other with the sprinkler in our backyard. We did backbends, cartwheels and jumprope in the front yard and hop-scotch on the sidewalk. We walked to school, and I think I did measure it a little over a mile (on Maps) from Tanager Rd to Kenwood Elemetary. I don't think we even knew we were poor, maybe even considered trash-poor.

Poor, yes... their Dad decided that he was not capable of having this large family anymore, that he was no able to support our home. Things were not right, he beat our Mommy. He hit my sister Linda... his first-born, he was not a good father to her.

My brain has a block on it for a lot of things... things he did to me, lovingly... were so unhealthy, and I DIDN'T know. And so as the years went on, my mind just blocked stuff out again and again, and he called Children's Services in Clark County to come take us away from them because he could no longer take care of us. Mommy worked at Frishes Big Boy, but she didn't make enough to take care of us. What money he made... I believe a lot of it went to gambling and drinking, and toward being with a 17 year old girl he had in the car in front of our house.

The day we were placed in Clark County Children's Home was quite chilly... not icy cold, I don't think we really knew what was going on, but we did know that part of us were missing. My heart ached for all of us to be with Mommy.