Dorothea Helena Gray was born January 9th, 1929 in Redlands, California, a city located in San Bernardino County.

Her parents were Trudy May Yates and Jesse James Gray, both of whom were alcoholics, both of them were extremely abusive to her.

As Dorothea was often left to fend for herself and often left hungry.

They earned Aminio living as cotton pickers up until the time her father died when she was four of tuberculosis.

And then only two years after that,

her mother died in a motorcycle accident.

After which, she was sent to live in an orphanage,

where she stayed until some relatives from the city of Fresno, California, brought her to live with them.

However, when she got older, this would not be the story she would tell of her childhood, she told anyone who asked that she was born

and raised with a number of siblings in Mexico.

In 1945 when Dorothea was only 16 years old, she got married for the first time to a World War II soldier, Fred Macfowl.

He had just come back to California after his deployment in the Pacific

theater of the war. Dorothea actually gave birth to two children, one in

1946 and one in 1948, both girls, but she did not keep them.

She put one of them up for adoption and the other was sent to be raised by relatives

that she had in Sacramento.

Shortly after giving birth in 1948, she... that she became pregnant for a third time but this pregnancy was lost

due to a miscarriage. Later on that same year her husband decided that he no longer wanted to be in this relationship

with Dorothea any longer, and he left.

But again, just like her childhood an upbringing, Dorothea would make up a different story to explain

away the embarrassment and humiliation she had felt having been left by her husband.

She told people that a first husband suffered a massive heart attack just days after they were married

...