SHARON – Family histories are inherently complicated, but few more so than Ian Gill’s. On the snowy afternoon of Sunday, April 19, the Manila, Philippines-based writer brought that dramatic lineage from —the subject of his 2024 book “Searching for Billie” —from the bygone days of early 20th century China into the warm interior of the Hotchkiss Library.
Over the course of an hour, Gill demonstrated to an eager audience of 20 that with a little digging – or rather several decades of it, in his case – the stories of our mothers, fathers and the ancestors before them can reveal startling truths about ourselves.
“You were two sons rolled into one,” Gill told the audience his mother, the Billie of his book’s title, had said to him long ago. “I didn’t know what that meant, and it took me 40 years to figure that out,” he recalled.
The story revolves primarily around Billie Newman, an orphaned child raised by a Chinese-born white British father and Chinese mother who showed up in a basket one day at the couple’s doorstep. Billie went on to work for influential magazine T’ien Hsia Monthly, then as a wartime radio broadcaster, then for top government advisors, and ultimately ran the Secretariat of the United Nations Disarmament Conference until her retirement, for which she was awarded a Member of the British Empire award. This was all despite pressures from the Sino-Japanese War, family tragedy, single motherhood and racism, Gill emphasized.
But the history also carries with it Gill’s own journey of self-discovery, which began with his first visit to Hong Kong with his mother in 1975, when he was a 29-year-old journalist based in New Zealand. That trip, he recalled during a cozy reception for the event hosted by his friend and Sharon local Bill Cowie Sunday evening, “lifted the curtain” not only on his mother’s vast life story, but on the “vanished” China of yesteryear and, crucially, on himself.
“Her story is my story,” he said, “including finding my father at the end – the other half of the genetic jigsaw.”
Billie, pictured right with young Ian Gill, became close with influential journalist and writer Emily Hahn, left, when she worked for T'ien Hsia Monthly in the 1930s and reunited after the war.Photo provided by Gill Archives
The centerpiece of Gill’s book, and of Sunday’s presentation, is the tragic drowning of Billie’s first son, Brian, and subsequent conception of Ian himself, all of which took place during four brutal years living in an internment camp while Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese between 1941 and 1945.
Brian’s father, an Irishman serving in the British Army, had since left the picture, and Billie spent her years on the internment camp as a single mother.
Gill told the audience that conditions were dismal, with up to 50 people sharing just a few rooms. “The worst thing though were the rations,” he said. “Hunger was a constant problem.”
After Brian’s death, a “cynical journalist,” per Gill’s description, named George Giffen comforted Billie, and eventually she became pregnant again. “Their relations had deepened,” Gill put it wryly.
Gill recounted that his mother revealed an illuminating memory of the grief period to him when he was well into adulthood: “All I could think of was to replace my loss.” Thus, Ian became the two sons rolled into one.
At the end of the war, Giffen returned to a previous marriage in Canada, and Gill would not see him until he was 40 years old, having tracked him down to a remote island in British Columbia. Despite the circumstances, Gill said he and his father grew close for the remainder of Giffen’s life.
Back at Cowie’s home high in the Sharon hills, Gill said that he and his old university friend – the two had met in England over 60 years ago – only realized the previous evening that both had met their dads as adults. Cowie reunited with his father at 21 after not seeing him since early childhood.
“Two boys, him and me, looking for our fathers” was how this story of faraway countries and timelines connects to Sharon, Gill said, since Cowie was the reason he had come to Sharon to tell his story.
Aside from his immediate family, Gill’s research reveals fascinating tales from other pockets of his ancestry, such as his great-grandmother who hailed from a country parish in western England and eventually became a hotelier in a Chinese resort town, and her son, Billie’s adopted father, who developed postal routes in remote parts of China and broke social customs by marrying a Chinese woman. He eventually left her, and the family, for an affair with a Russian woman stuck in China following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
The rest of the details are in the book, Gill said with a smile.
“Searching for Billie: A journalist’s quest to understand his mother’s past leads him to discover a vanished China,” was published by Hong Kong English-language company Blacksmith Books and is distributed in the U.S. by Simon & Schuster. It’s available for purchase online via Amazon and other retailers.
The Berkshire Resilience Brass Band brought lively brass and jazz-inspired music to the lawn at the David M. Hunt Library on Friday evening, July 24.
Audience members became part of the performance as well. During one number, the horn players switched to percussion, while a basket of rattles and other handheld instruments was available for audience members to play along. Sadeh and O’Dea encouraged several young children to shake along with the music.
The audience continued to grow throughout the evening, including a family who stopped after hearing the music while driving by.
Although the band’s performances sound spontaneous, they begin with a shared musical framework.
“We start with a tune or arrangement,” Rogers said. “Then we do or don’t follow it.”
Rogers estimated that any given performance is at least half improvisation.
It’s not left entirely to chance. O’Dea said the group rehearses once a week, on Sundays.
Patrick L. Sullivan
Deanna Hearn opened Lucky Orphans in 2003.
Growing up in the Bronx, Hearn was captivated whenever she saw horses. Her grandfather, a Korean War veteran, had cared for military horses during the war. After returning home, he struggled with addiction, and the invisible wounds of military service. Through every difficult chapter of his life, however, one thing consistently brought him peace.
“Horses bring peace,” he told his granddaughter.
When Hearn was 11, after years apart, Hearn and her grandfather began spending weekends riding together. Less than a year later, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Before he died, he asked family members to help buy Hearn’s first horse — a stubborn paint horse that bit, kicked and frequently threw her off. She wanted to sell him. Her father refused.
“Every life has value,” he told her.
Looking back, Hearn says that lesson became the foundation of everything she would later build.
What began as a boarding stable in 2003 took a different direction after the Dutchess County SPCA asked Hearn to care for horses seized in cruelty cases. She soon realized that although Dutchess County had one of New York’s largest horse populations, there was no dedicated nonprofit equipped to care for neglected and abused horses. Lucky Orphans officially became a nonprofit in 2008.
Some of the more than 40 horses at Lucky OrphansProvided
Today, Hearn is quick to point out that Lucky Orphans is not simply a rescue.
“We’re a sanctuary,” she said.
Many of the more than 40 horses living there arrive with broken bones, chronic illnesses, heart conditions, missing eyes or other injuries that make them unsuitable for riding or adoption. Rather than rehabilitating and rehoming them, Lucky Orphans makes a lifetime commitment to every horse.
In 2013, Hearn became certified in equine-assisted psychotherapy, combining her lifelong relationship with horses and the lessons she learned from her grandfather to create programs for veterans, trauma survivors, children and families facing emotional challenges. The transformations she witnesses continue to surprise her. She recalls one woman who arrived convinced she would not fit in with a group of strangers. During the session, a horse quietly chose to follow her without a rope or commands. For the first time in years, the woman said she felt truly seen.
Another memory has stayed with Hearn ever since. A teenager in a juvenile probation program, wearing an ankle monitor and struggling with anger, entered a round pen with a horse. As his frustration grew, the horse moved farther away. When he finally calmed himself, the horse walked directly toward him and rested its head against his chest.
“I told him, ‘If you can control your energy, you can control the world around you,’” Hearn said.
Stories like these sustain her through the difficult realities of running a nonprofit. Operating the sanctuary costs roughly $52,000 each month, and Hearn lives on the property, where the work never truly ends. Veterinary bills, staffing, fundraising and the daily care of dozens of horses are constant concerns. Then someone returns years later and tells her that the horses changed their child’s life.
“That’s why I keep going,” she said.
Looking ahead, Hearn hopes more people discover what makes Lucky Orphans unique. The organization is expanding its community programming with educational visits, yoga sessions, horse encounters, volunteer opportunities and family events designed to reconnect people with horses and with one another.
Her vision is simple: to create a place where people slow down, reconnect and remember something modern life often makes us forget. If horses could speak, Hearn believes they would offer just one piece of advice.
“They’d tell us to slow down,” she said.
After spending an afternoon at Lucky Orphans, it’s hard to disagree.
For more information or to plan a visit, go to luckyorphans.org
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