Frank Pickle was a local author who also substituted at my high school, we became friends. After he moved to Florida I eventually lost contact. He is an excellent author; I have loved his books. This biography is proof that a person doesn't have to allow their family (or lack of) define who they are.

FROM AMAZON: He was just, "A Small Lump of Coal"
A bouncing baby-boy arrived on the Paoli, Indiana scene in1942. He bounced
from household to household and from mother, to grandmother, to aunt, to foster parents and back again until he was fourteen years old.
He bounced back and forth between Paoli and Bedford, Indiana and between Lakeland, Gainesville, and McIntosh, Florida. He never spent 36 consecutive months with any family from his birth to his marriage.
His grandparents claimed to have adopted him and his birth mother refered
to him as, "Her brother," as did his aunts and uncle, but he was never adopted.
He never met his real father. His first stepfather gave him his surname and
nothing else. His second stepfather was physically abusive when he was drinking and he seldom stopped drinking.
His mother birthed eleven children. He was the oldest. Four of his siblings
died before they were two-years-old, She gave five of them away before their fourth birthday. She raised the eleventh child. He knew the location of only one sibling for most of his life.
He quit school when he was sixteen, married when he was seventeen, and had
fathered five children before he was twenty-five.

Any Psychologist will tell you that he was destined to fail. BUT HE DIDN'T!

He is a loving husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather. Wherever he worked, he was a valued employee. He served as Parks and Recreations Manager, City Councilman and Mayor of the city where he lived after moving from Indiana to Florida. He owned and operated a successful General Contracting Company and he was actively involved in the organization of two successful churches.
Two major car wrecks, colon cancer, and a debilitating heart attack forced him
to take early retirement, but nothing could stop him from putting the family back
together that his mother and others tore apart. He has located and re-established a sibling relationship with all of his living brothers and sisters. ( )