[Indexed as: (Conley case), “8-Year Old Knew Pop Was Coming – She Baked a Cake,” syndicated (AP), San Antonio Express (Tx.), Jul. 26, 1953]

AMARILLO, July 25.—Lynette knew her daddy was coming, so she baked a cake.

The brown-haired 8-year-old had the cake waiting at home when Louis Bob Conley arrived Saturday from Massachusetts, where he spent 37 months in jail because he wouldn’t give up custody of her.

Lynette was waiting at the airport. She ran to the exit ladder as it was wheeled up to Conley’s airliner. He reached her in two bounds down the steps.

“Hello, baby,” the former Amarillo photographer said. He held Lynette in a long hug, then embraced his mother, Mrs. Mary Margaret Conley. She took care of the child while Conley was in jail.

Conley, 33, was ordered locked up when he refused to give custody of Lynette to her mother, as ordered in a Massachusetts divorce decree.

He was freed July 16 after agreed to let former wife have the little girl during July and August. He was to keep her during the school year.

But his mother went to Randall County court here and pointed out she had been given custody of Lynette while her son was in jail. She said she wouldn’t go along with the agreement, and Judge Ray Stephens upheld her.

A crowd of about 200 persons was waiting to see Conley and Lynette reunited. Friends in the crowd spoke and shook Conley’s hand as he walked into the terminal building.

The family rode to town with a newspaper photographer. They toured downtown Amarillo briefly, then went to Conley’s home in South Amarillo.

He picked up a handful of dirt from the front yard. “Boy, this Texas soil looks good to me,” he said.

And Lynette presented her daddy the cake.