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Ronald N Hatch
President and Co-Founder of Eagledancer Family Services, Inc.
I was born May 2, 1946 in Sacramento, California, to alcoholic parents. I was the seventh of eight children. I am a Native American of the Miwok Tribe which is located in Yosemite and the Sacramento Valley Area in California.
For much of my young life, I was homeless. I lived with my Mother, brothers and sisters down by the Sacramento River. My Mother would often walk 10 miles with her small children to the pig farm, because the owners would let her search through the bags of food scraps to find some bread that was not moldy for her little family to eat.
I remember being left with my brothers and sisters in the car all night in front of the bar while my parents went in to drink. I remember being really scared when drunks would come over by the car to throw up. Many times when I was a child, my parents left us at the all-night movies or at other people’s homes. We didn’t know when or if our parents would ever come back to pick us up. Most of the time they did, but sometimes they didn’t and then we would end up in shelter homes until they decided to come and get us.
By the time I was three years old, my Dad had long since left home. Life was hard. My Mom thought we would be better off if the state stepped in and took us away, so she finally gave up and took us to my Great Grandma’s place. She left us there and disappeared. Great Grandma’s one room home was a cleaned out chicken coop with cardboard on the walls, a double bed, a wood stove, and a table. Behind the wood stove and underneath the bed were the cardboard boxes that we kids slept in.
