In spring 1954, Judith Ann Hiller, a bright, promising 20-year-old senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was terrified.
She had grown up in a working-class, largely Jewish neighborhood on Milwaukee’s west side, where families valued academic achievement and wanted a better life for their children. At Madison, she was an active and popular student.
But some two months shy of graduation, Judy learned she was pregnant.
A baby meant shame, disgrace, expulsion from the university. It would shatter her dreams, and the dreams Sarah and Abe Hiller had for the third of their four daughters. Marriage was out of the question; she barely knew the father.
Judy said nothing to anyone but her parents and one close friend. She pushed through to graduation, then quickly moved to the farmlands of central Washington to stay with relatives.
During the summer, she lied to their neighbors in the tiny community of Ephrata, claiming to be the wife of a deployed soldier. She wore a fake gold wedding ring. It was arranged that she would deliver her baby in Seattle, some 200 miles away. The infant would be placed immediately with a Jewish couple through a private adoption service.