20 More Surprising WWE Facts You Probably Didn't Know
18. Ric Flair Might Have Been Stolen As A Baby
Like many kids decades ago, Ric Flair was put up for adoption when he was born. Unlike many kids, his biological parents may not have known anything about it.
His adoption was arranged by the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, based in Memphis. At the time, the paperwork listed the Nature Baby as Fred Phillips, Fred Demaree or Fred Stewart, and his mother’s name as Olive Phillips, Demaree or Stewart. The father was a gentleman by the name of Luther Phillips, and that’s all Richard Fliehr ever found out about his birth parents.
Terrifyingly, however, the Tennessee Children’s Home Society was involved in stealing children from their natural parents, running a scam on destitute single mothers by promising that their children would be cared for until they were able to come for them, or even lying outright and telling them that their children were stillborn.
The Society would pocket money for finding children to be put up for adoption, paying off a huge network of people in power, including a judge, to falsify papers and child histories. It was in 1950 that the Society was finally investigated, and the practice stopped.
The names Ric Flair has for his natural parents may not be real, and there’s no way of knowing whether he was given up freely, or whether he - like thousands of other children - was stolen from his parents and sold on the black market.