Finding Family

by Richard Hill

  We saw my parents a lot over the next couple of years and they proved to be excellent grandparents. Jenny adored her “Nana” and “Grampy” and they adored her.

  Since his heart attack, Dad had lived with the possibility of sudden death. Enjoying each day to the fullest, he was mentally prepared to die. Therefore, it was a cruel turn of events when he suffered a massive stroke in February 1977. Instead of providing the quick death he had anticipated, the stroke left one side of his body paralyzed.

  Not quite seventy-one years old, Dad would spend the rest of his life bedridden. After some time in the Ionia Hospital, he transferred to Kent Community Hospital in Grand Rapids, a long-term care facility. I got in the habit of visiting him during my lunch hour several times a week. I would bring my brown bag lunch and we would talk about family, friends, weather, my work, and more.

  Knowing that her husband was never coming home, Mom sold their home and moved into a senior citizen apartment in Ionia. She drove to Grand Rapids for regular visits with Dad. But she saw him at different times than I did to give Dad more visits. We almost never saw him at the same time.

  Dad had been quite active in retirement. He loved to fish and would tie his own flies and mend fly rods for friends. A longtime member of the Elks Club, he enjoyed playing cards and pool with his pals. Late in life, he took up coin collecting, met often with other collectors, and traveled around the state to coin shows.

  In the moment of that stroke, all of his hobbies were gone.

  Dad also had been an avid reader. But the stroke damaged his vision to the point where he could not read, even with glasses. We bought him a thirteen-inch color TV that fit on his bed tray. But he still had a lot of time to just lie there and think.

  In his solitary reflections, he must have agonized about the lifelong secrecy surrounding his only child. At some point, he reached a decision on what he had to do.

  3

  ANOTHER SHOE DROPS

  During one of my lunchtime visits in January 1978, Dad suddenly brought up the subject of my adoption. He said something no one else had figured out or at least dared to say:

  “By now, you must know you’re adopted.”

  I was almost thirty-two years old and had not thought about my adoption for many years. So his statement caught me by surprise. I just smiled and acknowledged that I had known for a long time. He didn’t ask how I knew or when I found out. So I just listened to what he wanted to say.

  I already knew I had been born at St. Lawrence Hospital in Lansing. My parents had lived in Lansing because Dad worked at the Oldsmobile Forge Plant as a tool and die maker. Mom, a licensed cosmetologist, ran a beauty shop.

  Originally from Ionia, they returned to their hometown when I was still a baby. They once told me Lansing was too big a city for raising a child. So for all the years I could remember, Dad commuted seventy miles a day driving to and from the Olds plant on the west side of Lansing.

  My out-of-town birth must have made it easier to pass me off as their biological child. Close friends and family would know the truth. But it would have been easy to fool casual acquaintances.

  Knowing what little I did about adoption, I assumed some social agency had placed me anonymously. I never dreamed my adoptive parents would know anything about my biological mother. I could not have been more wrong.

  On this day when Dad broke his silence, he shocked me first by telling me that he and Mom had met my biological mother. He described her as a “cute little Irish girl” whose name was Jackie. She was young, under twenty-one, and from the Detroit area.

  Her family knew Mildred, nicknamed Mickey, and Wayne Woods, a Lansing couple who were close friends of my parents. Wayne, in fact, had worked with Dad at Oldsmobile.

  Then Dad surprised me with even more details: Jackie had actually lived with him and my mother in their Lansing apartment for the final months of her pregnancy. After my birth in May 1946, my new parents brought me directly home from the hospital and Jackie returned to Detroit.

  Dad made a point to mention that he paid the hospital bill for my delivery. I think he was proud of taking responsibility for me from day one.

  This revelation was another shock. I had known unwed mothers from my high school who quietly left town before their pregnancies showed. But it never occurred to me that a young woman could live with the same people who were going to adopt her child. That seemed to violate the whole secrecy thing that I had assumed was always part of the adoption process.

  Ironically, I thought, the openness of my pre-birth arrangements may have created the need for secrecy after my birth. Unlike most adoptive parents, mine could not claim ignorance about my birth mother. They would not want to lie to me. Yet they would not want me tracking her down, either.

  They were probably right. If I had had this information earlier, I would have pressured Wayne and Mickey for answers. But by the time Dad revealed their role, those two links to my birth mother were deceased.

  I asked Dad if he ever heard anything more about Jackie in the years after my birth. He then told me that she had died in a car accident not long after my birth, but he couldn’t remember exactly when or where.

  Now that Dad had finally talked to me about my adoption, I could see the relief in his eyes and hear it in his voice. Carrying around that big secret for decades must have been an enormous burden.

  My mother, of course, had no idea that Dad and I were having this conversation. She still believed the family secret was safe.

  I guessed that Dad wanted to get the whole thing off his chest before he went to meet his maker. And I was happy for both of us. But he wasn’t done. He had one more surprise to lay on me.

  Since the stroke had also affected Dad’s brain, there were days when I wasn’t the only one in his room who was “out to lunch.” But on the day of this conversation, Dad was clear and lucid as he gave me the rest of the story.

  “When you were born, Jackie was divorced. She already had a son from her marriage. So you have a brother.”

  I was sure the nurses outside Dad’s room must have heard the noise my jaw made as it hit the floor. I had been raised an only child and except for my whimsical fantasy about Cher, I never expected to have any siblings.

  That part of the story blew away more preconceived ideas about adoption. I assumed all unwed mothers were school-age girls too young to get married. Many would marry later and have other children with their husbands. Somehow, in a way I couldn’t quite grasp, my biological mother had managed to accomplish the whole feat backwards.

  Dad went on to say that I deserved to know about my brother. I agreed and thanked him for sharing that information. Yet this revelation wasn’t just about sharing. In all his lonely hours of contemplation, he had settled on a far bigger purpose than merely telling me the facts. I will never forget his next words:

  “I think you should find your brother.”

  4

  NO TIME. NO WAY.

  When I got home that night, I told Pat about my conversation with Dad. She was intrigued and asked me how I felt knowing some details about my biological family. I joked that it ruined my fantasies. Clearly, the cast of characters in my adoption story did not include Clark Gable or Cher.

  Seriously, though, it did feel good to have some answers. I never dreamed I would get any answers at all, let alone the surprising details that Dad had shared with me.

  The idea of having a brother was exciting. Being an only child can be lonely, especially when your father isn’t around much.

  Dad worked the 3:30 to midnight shift with an hour’s commute before and after. On weekdays, he was asleep when I got up and he would leave for work before I returned from school. That left Mom and me alone five nights a week and I wasted a lot of evenings just watching TV.

  If I had grown up with a brother, I thought, we could have played catch, just hung out, or created a little mischief.

  This, of course, was a fantasy. You can’t turn back time. Even if I found my brother next week, m
y childhood was gone and so was his. Our relationship would have to be as adults with families, jobs, and responsibilities.

  For the first time, I felt a little anger. My parents knew my birth mother and, with their silence, kept me from meeting her. They also knew I had a brother and—until Dad spilled the beans—kept me from knowing he even existed.

  Now it was too late to meet my birth mother. She was dead. And with Wayne and Mickey Woods also deceased, it might be too late to connect the dots to my brother.

  But maybe all was not lost.

  I knew Wayne and Mickey had a daughter, Carol, who was a year ahead of me in school. But she grew up in Lansing and I had not seen her since high school. By now, she would probably be married and no longer known as Carol Woods. Plus, Carol was a baby herself when I was born. Would she know anything about someone named Jackie from Detroit who died while Carol was a child?

  I guessed there could be other ways to track down Jackie’s family. But no matter which path I took, a search would require a lot of my time. And in 1978, free time was in short supply.

  My job with Lear-Siegler had required extensive travel. And all that time away from home made me realize the importance of family and how much I missed mine.

  So nine months earlier I had left Lear-Siegler for a job with its advertising agency, Alexander Marketing Services, a small, local company specializing in industrial and technical clients. It was a job that made better use of my talents, paid better, and most importantly, required almost no overnight travel.

  When Dad gave me the tantalizing clues about my biological family, I was still trying to learn the ad agency business and the products and markets of the clients I supported. That left precious little time to begin a search for my biological roots.

  Then there was the not-so-little issue of Pat’s pregnancy. By the time of Dad’s revelation, she was seven months along and had already gained more weight than she had when Jenny was born. A recent ultrasound explained the weight gain. We were going to have twins in March.

  Twice more during our lunchtime talks, Dad asked me if I had found my brother. Each time I explained that it would be a difficult search with Wayne and Mickey gone and I was currently too busy to tackle it. He seemed to understand.

  Meanwhile, I continued to massage Dad’s story in my mind. I was pleased that my adoptive parents had been part of my life from the very beginning. Avoiding foster care or time in an orphanage probably explained why I had bonded so well with my new family.

  I was also fortunate that Jackie had been under my adoptive mother’s supervision for much of her pregnancy. The fact that Mom would not have allowed an underage girl to smoke or drink alcohol on her watch may have saved me from some horrible birth defect.

  In February, a year after his stroke, Dad’s health insurance benefits ran out. The only remaining option for a bedridden stroke patient was a nursing home. To make it easier for Mom to visit him, we chose the one in Ionia.

  In March, our boy-girl twins were born as scheduled. Wanting to avoid twin-like monikers, we named them Mark and Catherine. Naturally, a lot of sleepless nights followed, and since Pat’s mother and stepfather were living in Florida, my mother was the only grandparent available to help with the new babies. We could not have survived without her.

  We wanted Dad to see his new grandchildren. But the nursing home would not allow them inside. Fortunately, it was a one-story building. So once the weather got better, Pat held the twins in the yard outside Dad’s room while I pointed him toward the window. He had seen pictures. But seeing them in person—even through a window—was better.

  Mark and Catherine would never get to know their grandfather. Dad promptly got pneumonia and his doctor had him moved to the Ionia Hospital. The prognosis was grim. Mom stayed with him all day and I took over in the evenings.

  It was May 1978. Mom and I agreed that after fifteen months of a bedridden, paralyzed existence, it was time to let him go. The hospital staff understood and posted a “Do Not Resuscitate” sign on his door.

  On that last evening, Dad could not talk or open his eyes. So I don’t know if he heard me. But I held his hand and thanked him for being a good father. A little while later, he simply stopped breathing. I kissed him good-bye and notified the nurse.

  I was thankful that Dad had chosen to reveal the family secret before he died. But Mom did not know about Dad’s revelation and I had still not pursued the clues he gave me.

  This time it wasn’t a focus on my future that kept me from exploring my past. With two new babies and a new career, it was the unrelenting demands of the present.

  5

  LIGHTING THE FIRE

  By the fall of 1981, the twins were three years old and Jenny was eight. The hectic years of double feedings, double diapering, and double everything had passed. But all the distractions had snuffed out my desire to search for my biological family. Something had to light a fire in me.

  It was Pat’s cousin, Pam, who provided the spark.

  I did not know Pam well. She was living in California and I’d only met her a couple times. But a personal mission brought her to our home that fall. As a young woman, Pam had gotten pregnant and given up her baby for adoption. An agency in Grand Rapids had placed her son with his adoptive parents and the boy was about to turn eighteen.

  Unable to have other children, Pam longed to meet the boy she gave away. She was in town to search for him.

  After Pam told us her adoption story, Pat told her mine. When Pam learned I had a brother and some clues about my birth mother, she practically screamed at me.

  “You’ve got to find him!”

  Pat agreed with her and the two of them would not relent until I agreed to start my search.

  I knew that Michigan, like most states, had a policy of sealing adoption records. Even as an adult, an adoptee may not see the most fundamental records of his existence.

  Pam explained that the sealed files are kept by the probate court in the county where the adoption took place, in my case Ingham County. The court will, if requested, provide adoptees with what they call non-identifying information.

  On November 12, 1981, nearly four years after Dad’s revelations, I took the first step of my search. Following Pam’s suggestion, I wrote to the Ingham County Probate Court to request my non-identifying information.

  I also placed an order with the state health department for my birth certificate. I did not expect them to send me the real one. But I was curious to see what I would get.

  Pam also told me about a group called the Adoption Identity Movement (AIM) that met monthly in a suburban library. I marked the next AIM meeting date on my calendar.

  Secretly, I wondered if I would regret starting this search. The phrase “opening a can of worms” would surely apply here. Where would this lead? Would there be a happy ending? Or a sad one?

  Two factors gave me the courage to proceed. First, my science education taught me to seek the truth, whatever it was. And second, I knew I was both adaptable and resilient. I had already survived dramatic career changes, cross-country moves, the arrival of twins, and the loss of my father. So I felt confident that I could handle a simple search into my background.

  Wondering what I could do before the AIM meeting, I decided to discreetly contact some people who had to know about my adoption.

  Discretion was required because of my mother. She still had not opened the subject and apparently intended to take the secret to her grave.

  If she knew I was searching for my biological family, I was certain she would jump to the conclusion that I didn’t love her. That wasn’t true, of course. I was not looking to replace the family that loved and raised me. I was just looking for information.

  Still, not wanting to cause her any pain, I asked each contact not to mention my inquiry.

  I began by dropping in on my cousin, Jim, who lived in Ionia. Twenty-three years older than I was, Jim joined the Navy before I was born and served in World War II. His kids were about my age and h
e was like a favorite uncle.

  Jim and his wife, Donna, were happy to help. They had met my birth mother, Jackie, when she lived in the Lansing apartment with my soon-to-be adoptive parents. Donna remembered that my mother had put Jackie to work washing hair in her beauty shop.

  Jim remembered Jackie as short, attractive, and under twenty-one. My mother told them later that Jackie had died. The accident occurred not long after I was born—maybe a year. Neither had heard anything specific about my biological father. Yet they somehow got the impression he was a “professional man.”

  When I got home, I called my Aunt Irene in Lansing. She knew about Jackie but had not met her in person. If Jackie had died in an accident, she did not remember hearing about it.

  Irene did confirm that my adoption was indeed a closely guarded secret. She remembered my grandmother burning papers and letters relating to it.

  These early, cooperative responses got me excited. If I just contacted the right people, maybe I could solve this mystery quickly.

  My next thought was to call Dr. Campbell, the one who had accidentally revealed my adoption seventeen years earlier. Perhaps there was additional information in my medical file.

  By this time, the doctor had retired to Arizona. But I knew his son from high school and got the phone number from him. Dr. Campbell did remember me. In fact, he joked that he would never forget the unique incident that took place in his office.

  The doctor had no first-hand information about my birth mother. But he had heard a rumor not long after our talk. He promised to check with the source and call me back. After a short wait, my phone rang and Dr. Campbell relayed the following story:

  My father was a doctor in Lansing, a prominent specialist who looked a lot like me. The doctor was married and my mother had been a nurse or a student nurse when she got pregnant. At the time Dr. Campbell heard the rumor, my mother was supposedly some kind of professor or instructor at Michigan State.