Hildy

Circuit Judge John Prunty of Miami last week announced his decision: six-year-old Hildy Ellis could remain with Mr. and Mrs. Melvin B. Ellis of Brookline, Mass., the Jewish couple who took her ten days after she was born out of wedlock to her Roman Catholic mother, Marjorie McCoy. Judge Prunty ruled that the Ellises were fit parents, approved their application to complete adoption procedures under Florida law. The decision ended six years of litigation and controversy: Hildy's mother had persuaded a Massachusetts court to order the Ellises to give Hildy up so that her mother could turn her over to a Catholic adoption agency. Rather than submit, Ellis abandoned his home and thriving dry-cleaning plant to smuggle Hildy to Florida.

Ellis, now a sportswear salesman, was in his car looking for a new house in Miami when he heard the news over the radio. "I pulled over to the curb and stopped the car and I couldn't help it--I started to cry," he said. "I would have cried longer, but I was in a no-parking zone."

Hildy's mother, now Mrs. Gerald R. Doherty with another child of her own, issued her own statement. "Some day [Hildy] will learn the facts about her mother's desire to protect her with the privacy that others are willing to destroy. Meanwhile ... I entrust her to the loving protection of God. The rest is in the hands of my attorneys."

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