Ok, after several hours of pulling my hair out and searching the web, I finally found instructions on how to modify the login page and it gave me the reference of
https://example.com/wp-login.php
I was able to go there, enter my user name and password and then when I went to my /wp-admin, it populated so that I could access my admin area and restore my login widget to the footer.
Sometimes the school of hard knocks is the greatest teacher… ??