GRAMPIAN – Vanessa Baker does not believe in coincidences. What she does believe in is Gods ability to answer prayers.
From the time she was a child she never felt as if she fit in with her family. Her mother and stepfather, who she believed to be her biological father, were not always able to spend time with her due to work, which left her grandparents to raise her. It wasn’t until she was eight-years old that she learned her “dad” wasn’t really her “dad”. While looking at pictures she came across a photo of her mother and biological father on their wedding day. Her father was only 18-years old when the picture was taken. Baker said this picture was the first time she laid eyes on her dad but she never attempted to contact him until 2009. Baker said she would think about her dad intermittently, perhaps on Father’s Day, and wonder what he looked like or what he was like. When the internet became available she would type his name in a search engine two or three times a year just to see if anything would come up. It never did. She found a teacher in high school who knew her mother and father. When she asked him about her dad he told her he might be in California.
She never actively pursued searching for him until 2009 because she felt she wouldn’t have been emotionally able to accept him into her life and because she was worried about the reaction she would get from her mother. She began asking herself if it would be possible to find someone she never met on Facebook. On June 18, 2009, after a long day of nursing training in Pittsburgh, she drove back to her home in Grampian, where she lives with her husband, David, a pastor, and their two boys, Daniel and Nathan. When she got home she decided to type in her father’s middle, Hayward, and last name, Johnson. Previous attempts to find him by his first name failed, since his name is William, and as Baker put it, “there are a gazillion in the world.” The middle and last name resulted in a profile that Baker felt could be an older version of the picture she looked at as a kid. She sent the man a message and then went to bed. She was still waking for middle of the night feedings for her son, so when she woke at 3:45 a.m. she checked Facebook to see if she received a response and in her inbox was a message from Hayward Johnson. He told Baker that if she had aunts, grandparents, and uncles named x,y, and z then he was her father. He also told her she had a half-brother.
“I became my father’s daughter and my brother’s sister in one moment,” said Baker. “It was awesome, absolutely awesome. I didn’t sleep for three days and I cried for three days because it was a specific answer to a specific prayer.” Baker said her father created the Facebook profile on June 17, one day before she sent the message. “I knew right then and there that it was God because I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Johnson had also attempted to find his daughter. He put ads in the newspaper but was looking for a “Vanessa Maria” and she is “Vanessa Julia.” Baker said the timing just wasn’t right. Over a two month period Baker and Johnson spoke everyday and often they spoke multiple times a day. Baker said after finding her father she experienced an internal sense of calm and peace that she never felt before. She had always felt like she was searching for something and now that feeling was replaced by calm. Baker said that each person tends to identify more with one parent and she never felt that connection before she met her father.
Her father came to stay with her family in August. What was supposed to be a week-long visit turned into a month-long visit due to car trouble. It was during this time that Johnson showed his daughter how to build a webpage. Baker said she had a lot of fun doing it and really felt cared for by her father. Johnson went back to Georgia in September.
It wasn’t until January 2010 that Baker thought that she might want to pursue web design further, not just for personal use, but to create a business out of it. She began to explore education opportunities on the internet and found an on-line program through Ashworth University in Georgia. She did not want to burden her family with loans so told the admissions representatives that she would not be able to pursue the degree without scholarships and grants. They advised her to Google scholarship opportunities. In her search, she came across Project Working Moms. Baker filled out the application and wrote an essay about her dad, their journey back to one another, and her interest in pursuing an online degree in web design to honor what he had taught her.
A week after submitting her essay she was contacted by the Tyra Banks Show. She was sent a small video camera which she was to use around the house and then send back to the show. She was then flown to New York City to tape a show, which she was told was to award a scholarship to one recipient. She was put up in a hotel, 10 blocks from Times Square, given a meal stipend, and picked up from the airport. She met the two other girls who were “competing” for the scholarship, Jamie and Celeste, whom Baker said all became “fast friends.” Jamie, the wife of a Marine and mother of four children, was interested in pursuing a degree in accounting. Celeste, a flight attendant, wanted to get a degree in journalism so that she could be a good role model for her kids.
The day of the taping, the girls were made to turn in their cell phones and cameras so that no pictures or video could be taken and they had their hair and make-up done before their segment. The producers wanted to make sure that each of the women hit their talking points and so they gave them paragraphs to “memorize” which made Baker really nervous. Once they went on stage they saw that Banks was already seated and a woman from Project Working Moms, also sitting there. Baker said she gave Banks a little wave and said, “Hi Tyra”, to which Tyra replied, “Hi.” The three women held hands as they waited to be told whose essay impressed the panel the most. It turned out that all three women were going to receive scholarships. After the taping of the show they were taken to eat and then had to stay an extra night due to a snow storm.
Baker came back to Grampian on a Thursday and started classes the very next day. Baker signed statements of non-disclosure which restricted what she could share with the media until it’s airing, which was April 23. Baker is finding the courses to be challenging. She said it reminds her of nursing school when you were faced with the unknown. Unlike nursing school though, she now has the expertise of her father to guide her. Baker recently moved her father, who is terminal with Lymphoma, into her home. She said she had to take a little break from school in order to get his room ready and get him settled in.
Today, father and daughter are playing catch-up. He now helps her with her homework which is something they missed out on in her earlier years of schooling. He also read her a story, one of his own, until she fell asleep. Baker said that she is still grieving somewhat for the things they never experienced. When she sees pictures of her dad and half-brother, Adair, together she is a little jealous because there are not pictures of them when she was little.
Baker said she wants to use her skills in web design to create a site for the church to which her husband is the pastor of and another site for her pet-sitting business. Above all though, she wishes to keep her father’s story alive by maintaining his website. For her father’s perspective of the story go to www.haywardjohnson.com and look under photo essay. To see the site that Baker created with the guiding hand of her father go to www.vanessajbaker.com and click on “my dad”.