By ali4050284 
A phone call changed the lives of two people who had never planned to adopt a child. In May 1964, a newborn girl arrived at a Los Angeles hospital with the temporary name “Baby Girl Darlington”. Within a day, she was welcomed into the home of Paul Gilbert and Barbara Crane-Gilbert, a couple whose lives were already filled with entertainment, ambition and unexpected turns. She grew up knowing she was adopted, but the explanation she received about her birth parents was not entirely accurate — and years later, while reflecting on her childhood and the family that raised her, she began uncovering details that changed her understanding of her own story.
Her adoptive parents had been told that her biological mother was a celebrated ballet dancer and her biological father was a famous comedian who had left the country after falling in love. Barbara recalled receiving a phone call about a baby who needed a home, and contacted Paul, who was in New York performing on The Ed Sullivan Show. Barbara had pursued acting after moving from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Their daughter eventually found fame as Laura Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie, which ran from 1974 to 1983, and earned recognition for playing Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker.
Yet behind her success, Melissa faced personal challenges, including misophonia — and at age 45 she discovered something that changed how she understood her own family history: Paul had died by suicide rather than from a stroke, as she had been told during childhood. It was one of the details she uncovered while reflecting on the family that raised her, and it reshaped the story she had grown up believing about her father.
Today, Melissa has built a quieter life with her husband, actor and director Timothy Busfield, on a 15-acre property in the Catskill Mountains that she purchased for just $60,000. On the property sits a farmhouse with four bedrooms and two bathrooms that “doesn’t look like much” and “hasn’t been touched in 40 years”. The home is walled with windows and surrounded by gardens and a stream, restoration is still ongoing, and they also built a barn on the property — creating the home they had envisioned, a place that offers warmth, charm and authenticity, and a sense of safety from the external forces that life has thrown at them.