Jim Pfeifer and Stina Brown

[00:00] JIM PFEIFER: I'm Jim Pfeifer I'm recording from Little Rock, Arkansas and work as an architect here in Little Rock. And I grew up here. And I'd like to turn this over to Stina McMullen Brown who is my, my second closest relative in the world. My first cousin. Oh. Besides my daughter in white. So Stina you want to introduce yourself?

[00:37] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Okay. Thank you, Jim. I'm Stina McMullen Brown and I'm a cousin to Jim Pfeifer and he found my mother Shirley, Shirley Stein McMullen. And that's how we met. Hey. So. And I'm retired and a grandmother of 15. So I'll turn this back over for Jim. Do you want to tell us?

[01:10] JIM PFEIFER: Yeah, yeah. Thank you for joining me, Stina I, I thought of this because of the relationship that we have. You see, you know, as you remember, we did not know each other until a couple of years ago. And I guess maybe I should start with kind of my growing up. I grew up in this town of Little Rock. My great grandparents came here as German immigrants before the Civil War and that's on my dad's side. And I have a lot of them stayed and their Pfeiffers just all over this town still to this day, cousin after cousin on my dad's side. But I never had grandparents or any cousins or relatives on my mother's side. And I. When I was about eight, my mother and dad drove me to New Orleans for Thanksgiving. And while we were there they took me into this large brick building. It was kind of foreboding and it was on St. Charles Avenue and, and it was an orphanage. And my mother explained that she had grown up there and I'm sorry, I'm a little emotional.

[02:56] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: It's a great story. That's an experience there.

[03:00] JIM PFEIFER: Right, right. And so she explained to me that she had grown up there but she was happy about it. The orphanage was. This was in the mid 20th century and the orphanage was closing because after World War II the whole deal of orphans changed to a different kind of a system. They didn't have these large orphanages. But she had grown up at the. It was called the Jewish Children's Home. It was one of several around the country and it was apparently really well run. She was really proud of having gone, of having grown up there.

[03:48] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: She.

[03:51] JIM PFEIFER: Attended a school at a still going on private school named Isadore Newman with Archie Manning's family's Still goes there. It's just a really good school. And the people in New Orleans really treated her, you Know really beautifully. But then she started to explain that she had been left as a baby on a. On a. On a doorstep in Little Rock at a big. At a large house on one of the main early historic avenues in Little Rock. And this was during World War I, and Little Rock was kind of a center of soldier training. There's a place called Camp pike out in north Little Rock. And there were thousands of troops here coming through. And it was also an epicenter for the first. Well, the last pandemic, the Spanish flu. Camp pike was overrun with this flu because people coming in from all parts of the country. So this is a particularly stressful time. All young people and older, too, to a certain extent, were affected by these two things that were going on in the city. And one morning during this period, the owner of this large house went out and found a basket with a baby tucked inside. And he looked for someone and he found nobody. He. He didn't know how it had arrived there. And so they had friends who were wanting to have children but couldn't. And the social services and the state agreed that this couple could adopt this little baby. And this was my mother, the little baby. And so things went on okay for about a decade. She was raised by this couple. They were middle class. They were a Jewish family, a Jewish couple. And she went to the religious school here in the Reformed temple in Little Rock. And then her mother died suddenly when she was a tenor, you know, a preteen. And the husband, the father did not. Was not able, for whatever reason, to take care of the child. And so nor were any other people in the city. And so the rabbi took my mother and took her on a train to New Orleans and left her at the orphanage. So the good part of the story is that again, she loved. She loved the home. She called the home. And so she graduated from Newman High School and she chose to come back to Little Rock where she met my father and they got married. They had a wonderful 50, some 60 years together. And she. I would question her from time to time about who are my grandparents, who are your parents? And she said that, you know, that she would have liked to have found them, but that she was happy. And she went on to. I wanted to mention her name was Janet Pfeifer And she went on to do volunteer work most of her life. My father had an occupation that was able to support the family. And my mother worked in for causes that related to youth home and suspected child abuse type agencies and different volunteer Girl Scouts and things to help young people and so she lived a happy life. And then. And of course I did a little searching but found nothing. And then of course the DNA science came suddenly became available to people like us. And my wife and daughter about three years ago gave me a DNA test from. I actually took it in two different. From two different companies and they sent me 1600 relatives in order of how closely related that we were and with. And I looked at the top 10 and five of them I'd known all my life were my father's relatives. And the others, I had no idea who they were. And Stina one of them was your daughter Lindsay.

[09:52] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Yes. And he sent me a message which I replied to, but he never received it. It was sort of an odd thing. But anyway. Then you finished telling the story of finding us?

[10:09] JIM PFEIFER: No.

[10:09] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Well, and then you, you contacted my sister in law, Robin, because my brother Mark and his wife Robin, one of their children, Matthew McMullen was on the search. And so between my brother's son and my daughter, then you contacted Robin and then you'd sent an email and she sent it to me and then it was a beautiful email. And then.

[10:48] JIM PFEIFER: Your mother was of course living at the time. Yes. And we. She so kindly consented to taking a DNA test. She was 87 and she took a DNA test and the results came back. Her name was Shirley Stein McMullen. The DNA test came back and.

[11:16] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: She.

[11:16] JIM PFEIFER: Was my closest relative in the world.

[11:20] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: It was amazing.

[11:22] JIM PFEIFER: And then we matched the pictures of our mothers and they looked like twins.

[11:28] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: I'm looking, I'm trying to find that right now. I wish I had looked for it sooner, but yes, they definitely.

[11:37] JIM PFEIFER: How did they look? How did. Can you describe how they looked alike?

[11:42] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: They. Everything was the same. They dressed alike. Both the photos that we found, they had on pearls, they both had their collars turned up with white shirt. And the only difference is that your mother's nose is more like my aunt, you know, or their other sister. But everything else about her was very Shirley. I mean they had so much, so much in common. And we shut places.

[12:19] JIM PFEIFER: They grew up so differently.

[12:21] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Yes. Oh, absolutely. We're the country mice and choose the city.

[12:27] JIM PFEIFER: Yeah. My mother, you know, grew up right in the center of New Orleans and then she moved to Little Rock, which is kind of the big city of Arkansas. Yes. And Stina grew up. You were. Tell, tell, tell about where you grew up.

[12:43] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Well, I grew up at Hazen des Arc, that area farmer's daughter. And then Joe and I discovered not too long ago that one summer my mother sent us to Little Rock to the Anthony School. And little did we know Jim also had gone to the Anthony School.

[13:06] JIM PFEIFER: And this was back when the Anthony School, it was the only kindergarten maybe in. At least in central Arkansas, but maybe in the whole state. And my mom drove me there. We lived 10 minutes from there. And steine, your mother drove you every day. And you were probably, what was it, about a two hour.

[13:34] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: It's an hour.

[13:35] JIM PFEIFER: It's like hour, two hour round trip. And they were taking us to the same school. That was crazy.

[13:44] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Well, we went in the summer and I think he went okay. Yeah, but still when. That was another interesting connection that we did. Our mothers did so many things that were alike and we probably bumped, you know, bumped or they probably bumped into each other and never knew it.

[14:09] JIM PFEIFER: They liked. Didn't you tell me they liked the same cosmetics and. Oh yes, the same perf, you know, types, stuff like that. And they dressed like they shopped at the same department stores in downtown Little Rock. And they lived just 45 minutes away from each other. So. But I guess some. The really. The beautiful part of the story, Stina is that you have welcome me into your family. And I'm so grateful about that. I've got 75 new cousins.

[14:51] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Yeah, we don't have children. We have litters. His side has. Your side has one child at a time. So yes, we're very grateful that you found us. And you know, I really believe you gave an extra kick to mama's step and she enjoyed your visits and the connection and it just helped lengthen her life. I always believed that because she enjoyed you so much and she loved her hat.

[15:31] JIM PFEIFER: Yeah. The hat says Stein Pfeifer Stein was. Was your mother's maiden name.

[15:43] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Yes, Right.

[15:44] JIM PFEIFER: Yeah. Which. Yeah, so.

[15:47] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: And it was during the war and. But we don't know. We would have loved your mama and you know, she would have. We would have probably shell shocked her with all of the cousins and the hugging and singing and things that we did. But I think that they. She would have been well loved.

[16:10] JIM PFEIFER: Well, thank you. And when we left, when my wife and my daughter come. When the three. When we left your Thanksgiving dinner a year ago, my wife said they are such nice people but totally different than the Pfeiffers. I mean she's looking at this from the outside and your entertainment that that day was. I know in the invitation to your Thanksgiving party it said to bring your own ammo because we're going to have skeet shooting, you know, as the entertainment. And I mean the fifers barely know how to which end of a gun, you know, to shoot.

[17:00] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: You know, so anyway, they hunt ducks, they hurt. They, you know, deer, you name it. Elk, you, pheasant, dove, whatever. So there's always a skeet shoot. And it's forever because that's just part of it. And the kids running around on, you know, gators and golf carts and playing football, and we didn't. Did we have the hayride that year? I don't know if we had.

[17:34] JIM PFEIFER: I might have missed it. I don't know.

[17:36] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Well, usually did on Wednesday nights, but, yes, it was. Yes. I'm sure that it was a. A shock because everybody's, you know, running wide open. I'm so y'all came.

[17:57] JIM PFEIFER: Well, it's really been a wonderful pleasure for me to know your fine family, and I'm so grateful for it, Stina And, you know, I guess pretty much that's the story that I wanted to tell that's so meaningful. It really. Except for the birth of my daughter and my wedding, I think it's probably the happiest thing that's ever happened to me. Thank you.

[18:34] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Oh, well, thank you. It's great. I mean, it was. Is just such a blessing and such a fantastic story and what you've done for your mother and she left a great legacy for your daddy and for you and for Robin and Jay. You know, there's such a beautiful legacy. And then you have endeavored, even consistently, even when you graduated from high school, you said that you started trying to trace your mother's relatives. And then now, even after she's passed away, you found her relatives. And, you know, that's such a great tribute to what you did for your family and for your wife and your child. And, you know, Jane has plenty of family, and, you know, I know she's up north, but she's, you know, she's just a beautiful girl. And when we're around you, we feel the connection. I mean, you know, you just have such a kind heart, and you're so humble and just. I mean, just sweet and, you know, we've totally enjoyed it and hope y'all aren't. We didn't scare you away after Thanksgiving?

[20:04] JIM PFEIFER: No, unfortunately, a pandemic scared me away, but hopefully there'll be many more Thanksgivings that I can. In other times, we can get together. I look forward to that.

[20:18] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Absolutely. We really want to not let that go. It's so important, you know, I mean, I just. Every time I'm around you, I just. You make me smile, and, you know, because your voice sounds like my Cousins on the Stein side. And, you know, there's so much similarities there that we don't even realize.

[20:41] JIM PFEIFER: Well, that was one thing, Stina that was very unusual when I believe I gave you a video tape of my mother being interviewed. She was on the board of the children's charity that was set up after the orphanage closed, and they used an endowment, and so they interviewed her about her experience in the home. And I remember giving you that, a copy of that interview, and you were playing it at your home on the tv, and your daughter came in the house, if I recall correctly, and she said what they called your mother Gran. She said, what's. What's Gran doing on the. On the tv.

[21:52] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Yes. And she's like your grand's vest.

[21:55] JIM PFEIFER: Yeah. That's Grant's voice.

[21:57] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Yeah.

[21:57] JIM PFEIFER: You know, and she looked around.

[21:59] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Yeah. And then she saw your mama, and.

[22:00] JIM PFEIFER: She was like, who is that?

[22:03] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: She looks like Gran. I said, that's because it's her sister.

[22:10] JIM PFEIFER: So.

[22:11] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Yeah. So I was still trying to find those photos. I would love to be able to hold this, you know, to show that similarity. I really should have found that, but. Oh, but, yeah, we really enjoyed, you know, getting to know you and. And having a new cousin, so I thank you for that.

[22:40] JIM PFEIFER: Well, I thank you also for this interview and for allowing us to share our story.

[22:54] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: We'll keep them. We'll keep them. Their legacy needs to be known.

[23:00] JIM PFEIFER: Absolutely. We didn't talk enough about your mom. I mean, your mom, Shirley, she grew up on a farm and milk and cows, and she was beauty queen of Desark, and she worked in a bank and raised five children and had 75 descendants. And, I mean, she was hilarious. She had wonderful spirit. She was like the Pied Piper. People would just pour into her house. And she welcomed me and sat in her dining room many times, quite a few times, just enjoying her company. And so we didn't talk nearly enough about your mom.

[24:03] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Well, this all began with your search. And, you know, so we found it. And mama was the sweetest, kindest. You know, she never cared how many kids were at the house. The doors are always open. People were always playing basketball in the driveway. It was. You know, why have five when you can have 20? I mean, you're. There's going to be a mess, so it might as well just clean up one time after everybody. But, you know, she was. She was good. And I just think that it would have been very nice if they had gotten to meet and. But. Oh, I'm. I'm sure they are celebrating in heaven. They may not know each other's name, but, but I know that they, they'll hang out, you know, And I, I would just love to see our, all of our children all stay connected. That's the hardest thing to do as we get older and children are busier and, and, but I pray that will happen. And I'm. Yeah, so we have more holidays, but we'll just still have to have cousin days. So is there any, can you remember.

[25:44] JIM PFEIFER: Anything else that, I mean, not. Oh, we could, you know, talk on forever, but. And I hope we will. But I, you know, I feel like we've told our story.

[25:56] STINA MCMULLEN BROWN: Okay. I do, too. I do, too. So thank you. I'm so proud that you found for joining me so that the story could be told. It.