Jody Hulse; Book Told of Odyssey to Find Natural Parents

Jody Hulse, object of a frantic odyssey two decades ago to find her natural parents and save her life, has died in Palm Springs.

Her husband, Jerry, whose best-selling book on that journey was reprinted worldwide and made into a TV movie, said his wife of more than 50 years was 69 and died of the complications of diabetes.

In 1974 Jerry Hulse--a retired travel editor of The Times--was told by a medical team that it was imperative that his wife’s birth parents be located so they could provide a complete family medical history.

Without it they were afraid to operate and remove the arterial blockage at the base of her brain that was threatening her life. She was given only days to live without the operation.

The Hulses knew only that Jody had been born in Ft. Wayne, Ind., and adopted there by a couple who never told her she was not their natural daughter.

(When she was 16, a girlfriend had told Jody when she was adopted but the daughter never let her adopted parents know and they died without her telling them.)

Hulse was advised to call the court in charge of adoptions in Ft. Wayne and to fly there to pore over dusty documents although he did not know his wife’s natural parent’s surname.

Told of the urgency of the matter, a judge in the adoption court also was studying microfilm and he managed to come up with the last name--Cunningham.

Although Jody Hulse’s birth certificate bore only the name of the adoptive parents, there was a mysterious number at the bottom of the document that the court was able to trace to the biological mother, a “Mary Cunningham.”

Hulse found nine Cunninghams in a nearby town’s phone directory and on the fifth call found a man who remembered a Mary Cunningham, who had since married a man named Nelson.

Hulse next found a Mary Nelson in the phone book and drove unannounced to her home.

At first she denied any knowledge of having borne Jody but within hours admitted that she was only 16 when she became pregnant and her family was too poor to care for the child.

She also told of suffering the same dizzy spells that had plagued Jody Hulse and gave Jerry Hulse a list of her medications.

From those, doctors were able to complete their diagnosis and proceed with the surgery that gave Jody Hulse an additional 21 years of life.

After Hulse’s touching description of his emotional journey was printed in The Times, McGraw-Hill asked for a book that was published in 1977 as “Jody.” It was reprinted in softcover, excerpted in the Reader’s Digest and serialized in publications worldwide.

In 1993, CBS brought it to television as “A Family of Strangers,” starring Melissa Gilbert as Jody.

Besides her husband, Mrs. Hulse is survived by sons Richard and Bo and two grandchildren. A memorial service is scheduled next Sunday at First Christian Church of North Hollywood at a time not yet determined.