The Case of a Long-Gone Husband : A Determined, Abandoned Wife Wins Her Day in Court

It was the kind of story they write weepy country songs about.

Not the kind of thing to happen to a young housewife and mother, from a nice Catholic family, living in the suburbs of Washington.

But in the hot, sticky summer of 1968, Pat Gibson, the mother of a 1- and a 3-year-old, four months’ pregnant with a third, watched as her husband of three years packed his bags in their apartment in Annandale, Va., and silently walked out the door.

Even more silently, he would vanish from her life.

A Dramatic Story

Today, 20 years later, it is the kind of story they write books and make TV movies about.

That same woman, who had gone on welfare to help raise her three children after her husband’s disappearing act, would go on to college, earn an MBA and land a job as an accountant at the Internal Revenue Service.

What’s more, she would find the husband who left her--almost 17 years after he did--and her three grown daughters would meet the father they never knew.

She would sue him for unpaid child support, $50 a week for the last 16-plus years, representing herself in court when her debts became too great to hire an attorney. And after years of legal battles that aren’t over yet, she would win.

Soon the story of the abandoned wife, her daughters Christine, now 22, Andrea, 21 and Marcia, 20--recounted in a recently published book, “Runaway Father,” by Richard Rashke--is to be a TV movie, produced by and starring Donna Mills.

And the real-life protagonist--remarried to lawyer Eugene Bennett in 1972 and later divorced--has become a sort of hero to women’s groups, such as the National Organization for Women, which recently sponsored a book party for her in Washington.

But she thinks of her story as one that speaks to children’s, more than women’s, issues.

Her greatest fear, all through the years, was that somehow she still loved him.

“I used to have a dream that if he came back in the house I didn’t know whether I wanted to welcome him back with open arms or do something horrible to him,” says Pat Bennett today.

Certainly after he left her in August, 1968, she wouldn’t have hesitated taking him back. “I was still madly in love with him when he walked out. Wanted him back. Would have taken him back.”

Aside from feeling ashamed that her husband had walked out on her, she says she had no sense of herself without him.

Met at a Party

They had met at a party when Pat was 17, a senior at an all-girl Catholic high school in northern Virginia, and completely inexperienced with dating or men. Oscar David Gibson, who declined to be interviewed for this story, was 19, tall, good-looking, on his way to the Marines and, most of all, Bennett says, “nice to me.”

Two years later, Pat left Immaculata College in Washington to marry David. The couple lived in Camp Lejeune, N.C., and later, after he left the service, in Miami and Annandale, Va. She says after their second year of marriage, her husband started staying out all night occasionally.

The last time, he came home just after 7 in the morning. As he showered and dressed, Pat says she found a motel receipt in his jacket pocket and she angrily asked him about it. He gave no explanation. By 7:30 a.m., he was out the door. He returned that evening, emptied his closet and drawers, just as he would their meager checking account, and was gone.

It never occurred to her that David wouldn’t come back, but eventually she went to Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court to seek child support. The court ordered that her husband pay $50 a week, but the payments never came. The court could not serve him a subpoena--the court, like the young wife, could not find Oscar David Gibson.

Reported Missing

He was reported as a missing person and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

The Gibsons’ third child was born in January--Pat’s joy now tinged by ever greater feelings of loneliness and abandonment--and soon after, she went on welfare. Eager to make it on her own, she won approval from the welfare board to attend college and before her graduation in 1971 got a job at the IRS paying $7,000 a year. After several promotions, she was off welfare.

In 1972, she divorced David Gibson in absentia and married IRS attorney Eugene Bennett. Although that marriage dissolved 10 years later, the two are still friends. She says now that she probably married the second time for the wrong reason--simply to provide a father for her children.

In 1984, after Virginia had declared David Gibson legally dead at the request of his foster parents, Bennett asked the Social Security Administration to declare him dead as well so her children could collect survivors’ benefits.

Request Denied

But in an appeal of their denial of her request, she found in her former husband’s Social Security file a copy of a marriage certificate. She tracked down the woman and found out that Parker had been in the insurance business. Bennett then called every state licensing office until she hit Florida, where, in Tampa, a James C. Parker was registered, home address and all.

“When I found him there was a sense of panic on my part,” she says. “Now I know where he is. I couldn’t go back to not knowing.”

She filed a petition for criminal desertion and nonsupport in Fairfax County. But when the Virginia commonwealth’s attorney refused to sign extradition papers, she decided to pursue her ex-husband, now married again and with a young son, in Florida.

In January 1985, James C. Parker was arrested.

She saw him, after nearly two decades, at the Pasco County Detention Center on Jan. 14, 1985. Handcuffed, he was separated from his first wife by only a small window.

“He looked straight into my eyes, for two seconds, and then he lowered his head,” Bennett recalls. “And I knew right then that I didn’t feel anything for him, that I didn’t care and I was rather indifferent. . . . And I felt so good.

“I was standing there and it was like, ‘I know who you are. I know where you are. You walked out on me and the children and we’re here and we’re going to face it.’ ”

All she wanted was for him to start paying child support for the three girls, she says. But when he refused, and when he refused to see his daughters while he was in jail, “something in me wouldn’t let him do that to my daughters.”

Case Dismissed

Although a judge dismissed the case after Parker had spent two days in jail, Bennett kept fighting. After more legal battles in Florida and Virginia, she appealed her case to the 2nd District Court of Appeals in Florida--and won the chance for a new hearing.

Unable to afford a lawyer, she represented herself at the December, 1987, hearing at the Pasco County court. There, for three hours, she cross-examined her former husband. It was the first time they had been face to face since that evening in 1968.

“I was so worried about making mistakes in the courtroom, I was so concerned about that part of it that all the emotional things I would have felt I didn’t even have the chance to think about them,” she says now.

She won on all counts that day. The judge ordered Parker to pay a total of $148,536--back child support plus his ex-wife’s investigative costs and interest--in weekly $100 installments.

He is appealing to the Florida Supreme Court, where a decision is expected soon.

The Bennett daughters did finally meet their father during court hearings in Florida. In January, 1987, Marcia and Andrea found him sitting in the law library of the courthouse. Marcia, the youngest, slipped him a poem she had written and he asked the two girls to sit down. They talked. Christine, who had been sick and stayed in the hotel room, would meet him almost a year later.

“It helped us a lot,” Christine says of the meetings. “Even though we weren’t impressed a lot, when we met him, we found out who he was and what he was. It took the burden off us. We realized it was him--he couldn’t face responsibility. It wasn’t us.”