A Mother’s Day Denied for 48 Years : Family: A phone call restores a loving bond far stronger than the hateful act that shattered it.

Chuck Volanti remembers his mother sitting on his bed and teaching him to whistle. He remembers how safe he felt in her arms one day when a playground swing cut his finger and she carried him to the doctor.

Then his memory goes blank.

When Chuck was 6, his mother went away. His father told him she had taken ill and died, and for 48 years he had no reason to doubt it.

On Jan. 17, he got a call from a nursing home in Ohio. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” the woman said, “but we have your mother here.”

“Sure, you do,” Chuck replied.

Four months later, Chuck still finds it hard to believe. He has a real live mother, a newfound clan of relatives--and a stack of documents exposing a dark secret his father carried to the grave.

In October, 1946, Sam Volanti had his 25-year-old wife, Mary, committed to a mental hospital; the next year, he married another woman. Despite evidence that she didn’t belong there, Mary remained institutionalized until 1974, when she was transferred to a nursing home.

Last week, just in time for Mother’s Day, Chuck flew his 74-year-old mom from Ohio to a nursing home three miles from his house near Olympia.

He’s angry at his father, who died in 1991. He’s sad about the lost years. But, above all, Chuck Volanti is determined to make the rest of his mother’s life as full of love as the last half-century was empty.

“I had a life,” he said. “She had none.”

*

The deck was stacked against Mary Volanti from the beginning.

She was the third of four children in a poor, abusive family in Cleveland. Her mother died when she was 9; her father drank heavily and beat the kids, says Mary’s sister, Irene Skrdla.

Perhaps Mary thought she had found an escape when she moved in, at 17, with Sam Volanti, a 25-year-old barber. She gave birth to Chuck the next year.

Sam would hit Mary, and Mary would fight back, Irene says. In 1945, Sam filed for divorce, accusing Mary of cruelty and being overprotective of 5-year-old Chuck. Mary filed her own papers, accusing Sam of womanizing and leaving home for extended periods.

The divorce was not granted, and the next year, Sam filed new papers asking that Mary be committed. Two doctors signed an affidavit saying Mary showed signs of schizophrenia; court records suggest the doctors based their diagnosis largely on Sam’s description of Mary’s behavior.

In his ruling, the judge said he had reservations about the doctors’ testimony but nonetheless ordered Mary committed to the Cleveland State Hospital.

Chuck recalls sitting in his mother’s lap for a long time one day, then watching as she was driven away.

“That was the last time I ever saw her,” he said. “Some time later, my dad said she was dead, she died in the hospital--and that was it.”

Irene Skrdla was living in Florida at the time. When she returned to Ohio a few years later, she was appalled to learn what had happened to her sister. Mary may have been battered and depressed, Irene says, but she wasn’t insane.

But she felt powerless to intervene. “I didn’t have enough money for an attorney and couldn’t fight it,” she said.

She did visit once a month or so, and watched Mary’s condition deteriorate.

“If you were sent there and stayed there two days, you’d be nuts too,” she said. “She wasn’t crazy. But after a while, I think she just gave up.”

When Irene moved back to Florida, Mary had no visitors for years.

In 1974, the mental hospital closed and Mary, then 52, was transferred to a nursing home in Sandusky, Ohio. The document authorizing her transfer said simply, “Condition: Improved.”

By then, Irene was back in Ohio and would take her sister on weekly outings. They were bright spots in an otherwise bleak existence.

“We went into a Howard Johnson’s one time,” Irene said. “I got her a banana split. She looked at me and said, ‘This is the best place there is, isn’t it?’ ”

In 1993 Mary was moved again, to the Edison Health Care Center in Milan, a small town 50 miles west of Cleveland. By then, she’d had a stroke. Her right side was paralyzed and she could barely speak.

Irene, with health problems of her own, lost contact with Mary.

That’s when Carolyn Walton, the nursing home’s activities director, noticed Mary and wondered why she never had visitors. Walton liked Mary--sad and lonely, but feisty, too.

“She was a tough bird,” Walton said. “She had stamina. I love the ones who are like that. They let us know, ‘I’m still alive and I’m still worth listening to.’ That was the case with Mary. There was something in her eyes that let you know there’s a lot more inside than met the eye.”

In Mary’s records, Walton noticed a reference to a son. When she asked about him, Mary said his name was Charles. She even knew his birthday.

With the help of a co-worker who researches genealogy, Walton located a computer disk with nationwide phone listings. They found three Charles Volantis. None was the right one, but the third happened to be Chuck’s cousin, also named Charles.

He told Walton that Chuck lived in Olympia. When Walton tried directory assistance and was told the number was unlisted, she persuaded the operator to leave a message for Chuck to call her.

A few hours later, he did.

A few days later, he was still in a daze, walking around the house and saying, “I have a mommy. I have a mommy.”

*

In 1946, after his mother was committed, Chuck went to live with his paternal grandparents. They were poor, in their 70s, spoke only Italian, and had already reared seven children.

He saw his father once or twice a month, when Sam came by to pay for Chuck’s keep. He’d often slip Chuck a quarter while he was there. It is Chuck’s fondest memory of his father, which isn’t saying much.

“When I’d see my dad, I’d say, ‘Here comes two bits,’ ” Chuck said. “We really didn’t have a lot of a relationship.”

As he got older, Chuck would occasionally ask his father where his mother was buried. The answer was always the same: It happened a long time ago, and the hospital took care of it. End of discussion.

Other relatives who knew the family secret kept silent in deference to Sam. Mary’s side of the family lost contact with Chuck after his mother was committed.

“Sam was in control,” Irene said. “We were told to keep away.”

At age 14, Chuck moved in with his father and stepmother, Millie. Chuck says he felt like “excess baggage.” Millie made clear her dislike for him, and he rarely saw his father except on Sundays, when Sam and Millie would sit with a bottle of liquor and drink until it was gone.

After high school, he joined the Air Force and went to Alaska, where he married. He and his wife had two boys of their own, returning to Ohio for six years before moving to western Washington in 1970. They divorced, and Chuck married his current wife, Judy, in 1986.

They live outside Olympia in a comfortable two-story home on 1 1/2 acres, with rhododendrons and fruit trees in the yard. Chuck, silver-haired at 55, is a mid-level manager with the state Department of Employment Security. Judy is a seamstress.

Carolyn Walton calls them “two of the nicest people you’ll ever meet” and believes there’s more to this mother-son reunion than luck.

“I still contend God would not have brought us so far not to have it turn out the way it did,” she said.

*

After Walton’s Jan. 17 phone call, Chuck said, “The initial reaction was to grab my bag and go (see her) on the next plane. But when Carolyn mentioned her birthday was March 9, that stuck in my mind. I wanted it to be a day of some significance to her.”

He called each week instead. A nurse would wheel Mary into the office, where she would listen to Chuck over the speakerphone. He told her he was coming. He told her he loved her.

Chuck and Judy flew to Ohio for Mary’s birthday. The first thing he said to his mother was: “I’m a little taller than the last time you saw me.”

They stayed a week, playing bingo with Mary, wheeling her around the nursing home and visiting relatives Chuck never knew he had--Irene, Mary’s brother Bob, and several cousins.

The change in Mary was dramatic, Walton said. “She used to be really unhappy. She didn’t smile very much, and she had a lot of mood swings. Since Chuck is back in her life, she’s a lot happier.”

When Chuck left, Mary fell into a slump, cursing and throwing things. Chuck wasn’t much better, breaking down in tears as he left the nursing home.

“This lady had been abandoned all her life, and I felt like I was doing it again,” he said.

Last Sunday, when he returned, Mary’s eyes “lit up like a Christmas tree,” Irene said.

The last week has been filled with firsts for Mary--her first airplane ride, her first sight of a grandson she never knew she had, her first real assurance that she won’t be abandoned again.

Tuesday, as Chuck helped her get settled into her room, Mary never took her eyes off her son.

He wants to give his mother things she’s not had for 48 years--a drive to the beach, a trip to the mall, a Mother’s Day dinner at home with family.

“You really can’t make up for lost time,” he said. “With whatever years she has left, all I can hope is that Judy and I can give her some of the life experiences she never had.”

Tuesday night, as Chuck tucked Mary into bed, he gave her a kiss and said a few simple words that neither son nor mother would have imagined possible four months ago.

“Good night, Mom,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And Mary smiled.