Author: feigelgoremckenzie

I’ll start with a description of the incident that led to my memory changing from whatever it had been before (I’m trying to avoid the term “normal”) to what it suddenly became. “Photographic” is the closest term I can think of, but it’s not that I can look at a document or room full of people and remember every detail. It’s that what I remember is often in overwhelming detail,

This vivid memory recall isn’t something I’ve lived with for all of my life. In fact, it only happened after I’d suffered a concussion in the mid-1980s. I was clowning around at the offices of Shirwin-James Advertising in the Auckland CBD where I held the post of “creative director.” I was telling some sort of story or joke which I thought would be made funnier if I suddenly jumped towards the ceiling. Only I was in the doorway for the double doors into the reception area and ploughed head first into the heavy timber lintel.

According to what I was told later, my workmates were in the process of phoning for an ambulance when I regained consciousness. Apparently, when I realized what was going on I did the macho thing of being so embarrassed by my jackass act that I let myself be helped up, steadied myself on the reception desk and insisted that the media buyer, Bruce Ritchie, put down the phone because I was perfectly OK.

Unless there was an urgent deadline or a client meeting I was pretty much on my own when it came to hours (sometimes those hours would mean I had to stay at a hotel or motel in town and work through the night until an urgent deadline was met) so there was no problem with me leaving early. By the time I’d hit the busy city street outside for my walk down to the ferry across to Waiheke Island where my wife and I lived it appears that I’d totally forgotten about the incident. But I do remember that I had a blinding headache and wondered why.

When I say I suffered a concussion I should really say that everyone who was close to me suffered it as well. The next several weeks were dreadful. I’d break into tears for no apparent reason and explode into anger the same way. My wife was at a complete loss to understand my sudden and unpredictable mood swings. Finally, she convinced me to go see our GP and one thing became immediately apparent. My normally average blood pressure had skyrocketed. Our GP couldn’t find any obvious physical reasons so she started asking me about all of my recent symptoms including descriptions of my mood swings. Towards the end she asked me if I’d had any “knocks to the head” in the past month. Any head injuries? And at that moment I remembered my head knock as suddenly as I’d forgotten it. I broke down in tears … and relief. I wasn’t losing my mind after all.

Our GP prescribed some initial BP medication warning that it might take some time and experimentation to find the right one and right dose for managing the hypertension. She also warned that there was nothing she could give me to help with the concussion except her advice to get a lot of rest, limit my alcohol intake and not to get stressed out as my mood swings, headaches and tension would heal in time. Time and rest. Rest and time.

She was right, of course. It did take time and resting did help. But there was another major change I didn’t discuss with the doctor or anyone else until years later. I suddenly had almost total recall of whole chunks of my life up till then. I could remember entire conversations. I could remember smells and tastes and the sensations of wind, water and temperatures. I could remember the feeling of paddling for a wave and the torque of a good cutback. And most startling of all I could also relive emotions.

Since then I’ve shared a number of the memories that involve surfing on my Surfwriter.net website (linked in the menu). And while a lot of my life has revolved around surfing, the rest of it hasn’t and it’s those memories, journeys and adventures I want to share on this site. Particularly the journey that has led me to discovering my biological family and the ancestors who make that family, my family, so special.

Sudden Insight © Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All Rights Reserved

Please allow me to introduce myself.

Before my court issued adoption papers were processed and the court order sealed the name assigned to me was “Baby Hansen.” By the end of the proceedings it was changed to “Paul Edmond Hansen.” Paul and Edmond remain a mystery, but Hansen was the name of my birth mother’s husband, Melvyn Everett Hansen. It’s now clear they were still married when I was conceived. However, the DNA test I took in 2020 confirms that he was not my father.

My official adoptive name is Robert Richardson Feigel. Robert appeared to have been my adoptive mother’s choice and the Richardson was both my adoptive parents’ fathers’ middle names and could be the last thing they ever agreed on.

That’s the name that appears on my official birth certificate but it’s only been recently that I’ve been able to discover that, like my official name, the date of my birth had been altered – possibly because I was either born at midnight or just moments after. So someone decided to flip a coin. I’ve also discovered that I wasn’t born in Deaconess Hospital in Evansville, Indiana as I’d been told, but in the “Christian Home” which, as far as I’ve been able to find, was a privately endowed institution for unwed mothers and no longer exists.

There are portions of my birth record that have been written over and changed. For example, the place where my father’s name is supposed to be.

Since a great deal of effort went into concealing the circumstances of my birth and I’ve since learned that my biological father was never informed of it I have come to accept that being of mixed race and my father not being my mother’s husband was not something that would make a mixed-race bastard an attractive prospect for adoption in 1941. Then I don’t know what part my birthmother’s relationship with her husband played in her decision to go out of her way to hide my birth. Perhaps he knew and that’s why they later divorced.

While they were still married he had enlisted in the Army Air Force in April 1942 (or just over 4 months after I was born) and for unexplained reasons had listed a boyhood friend as his next-of-kin rather than my birthmother. And he enlisted in Boise, Idaho, rather than Point Girardeau, MO, where he and my birthmother had lived.

It appears that I was conceived in Port Girardeau while my birthfather was investigating a suspicious arson claim for his law firm. Ironically, Cape Girardeau is also where his grandfather was born: Charles W. Kal-We Bluejacket, who was the last hereditary chief of the once thriving Shawnee tribe that occupied the Ohio Valley before being dispossessed. Coincidentally, Cape Girardeau is right across the Mississippi River from the Shawnee National Park in Indiana.

My birthfather was born in the Indian Territory in what would become the Blue Jacket reservation in Craig Country, Oklahoma and is buried there along with many members of my paternal family. He was of Scottish/Shawnee ancestry and a descendant of Jacobite Scots who escaped the highlands and landed in the “Carolina Borders” after the Battle of Culloden. On his Shawnee side he was a direct lineal descendant of the last paramount war chief of the Shawnee tribe, Waweyapiersenwaw Bluejacket. The Mackenzie and the Shawnee – two tribes that had been deprived of their homelands and cultures. Two tribes of warriors.

As none of my previous names reflect my true ancestry I can’t help but wonder what name I should choose for myself if I ever decide to change my adopted name.

Introductions © Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All Rights Reserved