Her daughter, Sharron Wilson Jackson, recalled a time when her mother was separated from her sister. She was raised in West Baltimore, moving between different relatives’ houses. “They said it was because of how I raised her that she was so good with that youngster,” Wilson recalled.Ī woman who made a life out of her talent for mothering grew up without one herself her own mother died of diphtheria when Wilson was 5. The zookeepers believed it was Wilson’s influence at work. There, she encountered another motherless gorilla and quickly began to nurture her - astonishing, because Sylvia herself had never given birth. When Sylvia grew too big for the zoo’s facilities, she was moved to the Cleveland City Zoo.