Finding Family

by Richard Hill

  The missed opportunity of this chance encounter was now alarmingly obvious. What if her boyfriend’s father was a brother of mine?

  Since the boyfriend’s family wasn’t Polish, I did not bother to get the girl’s name, her boyfriend’s name, the family’s nationality, or even a city within the vast region around Detroit.

  That particular cookie store was no longer in business. What’s more, Pat and I could not even agree on the year of that strange encounter.

  I began to curse that “official” file in Lansing. Just like my two birth certificates, it was fraught with false information.

  In all my years of searching for my birth families, the summer of 1990 was certainly the lowest point so far. The elimination of Conrad combined with the haunting memory of “Cookie Girl” left me dazed and a little depressed.

  For the first time, I questioned if I should continue my search. Maybe I was not meant to know my birth father. Maybe fate was protecting me from something I was ill equipped to handle.

  I felt drained and for the next several months I wallowed in that kind of negative thinking, turning my attention to family and work.

  In October, I emerged from my funk when Jeanette suggested I write the Ingham County Probate Court to request a copy of my complete adoption file.

  It was worth a shot, I reasoned. After years of back-and-forth correspondence, the judge and I were practically pen pals.

  In my letter, I argued that keeping the file from me was no longer protecting anyone’s privacy, since I knew the names of both “parents” named in the file.

  Furthermore, my DNA paternity test with Conrad proved that half of the court’s information was wrong. It gave me some small amount of satisfaction to tell him that and enclose a copy of the DNA report.

  On December 5, the judge approved my request and a clerk asked me to submit $23.50 for photocopies. After spending six hundred dollars for the DNA paternity test, this was small change. I mailed a check.

  The file arrived on December 13, 1990. It was a big day for me. I had done something that 99 percent of adoptees only dream about: I had acquired a complete copy of my legally sealed adoption file.

  Initially, I was somewhat chagrined to see that most of the file—accounting for the majority of the copying cost—was the copious correspondence between the judge and me. I already had all that. The actual documents from 1946 formed a relatively small part of the file.

  Still, I carefully pored through those records surrounding my birth and relinquishment. It was the story of my life, the basis for my existence. The fact that such records were forbidden fruit for adoptees made reading the file even more exhilarating.

  My joy was tempered somewhat knowing that millions of other adoptees will never see their own files. For the sake of those receiving non-identifying information, I hoped other files were at least truthful.

  Probably not, I thought. Surely, Jackie was not the only unwed mother to lie or otherwise misidentify a child’s birth father.

  Focusing on the task at hand, I compared the court documents with information I already had in my notes. There were a few key dates and addresses I lacked and some minor new details. I had hoped to find a clue hinting at the identity of my real birth father. Yet there was nothing to suggest anyone but Conrad.

  Still, I did find two new items of interest.

  When I learned earlier that Jackie was afraid her out-of-wedlock child might cost her custody of Michael, I had assumed it was Leonard about whom she was worried. Not so. It was Leonard’s mother, Mrs. Bojanzyk, who was trying to get legal custody of her grandson.

  The second piece of news made me smile. It was a social worker’s statement that “Mrs. Hill and Jackie are fond of each other.”

  I remembered Mom’s harsh comment about Jackie, during the one conversation we had about my adoption. It was nice to hear that even Mom liked her in 1946.

  Following a seasonal pattern, my business workload dropped dramatically in the last two weeks of December 1990. I took some unused vacation time and stayed home to review my search records.

  My best lead soon became apparent.

  Carol Woods had learned Jackie’s name from some relatives in her mother’s family. Those same relatives had mentioned a rumor that someone in their family got Jackie pregnant.

  Unfortunately, they had refused to reveal who it was. And I had not followed up, because the man was not Polish.

  In the one conversation I’d had with Mom about my adoption, she insisted Carol’s mother had checked out that rumor and determined it to be false. But with so many lies and cover-ups surrounding my birth, I decided to initiate my own investigation of that longstanding rumor.

  25

  RUMOR REVISITED

  Nine years had passed since I spoke with Carol’s distant cousins, Barb and Lorraine. Carol’s great uncle, Bill French, had been their father. Although they willingly provided me with Jackie’s name, they had balked when I asked about my birth father.

  That’s because a man in their family had been rumored to be the father of Jackie’s baby. Decades after the fact, they had refused to reveal his name.

  Since I was now forty-four and out of leads, I decided to call the sisters again. Lorraine’s phone number was no longer in service, but Barb’s number rang through.

  Fortunately, Barb remembered me from our prior conversation. I shared that I had found the Polish man Jackie named as my father, but a DNA paternity test proved he was the wrong man.

  Although she was still not ready to reveal the man’s name, Barb was, nevertheless, sympathetic to my situation. As we talked, I could tell she was trying to walk a fine line between helping me and keeping a family secret.

  Since Barb was willing to listen, I kept talking, reviewing all the reasons I wanted to identify my birth father. Then I wore her down some more by telling her about all the years I had wasted tracking the wrong man.

  Her empathy growing, she revealed that the man was an uncle, married to one of her mother’s sisters.

  Thinking of the scenario where Jackie might lie to hide an affair with a married man, I asked if her uncle had been married at the time Jackie got pregnant.

  “No,” Barb said. “His fling with Jackie occurred before he met my aunt.”

  However, she continued, “When Jackie got pregnant there was a rampant rumor that he was the father. Everyone in my family just understood that it was his baby.”

  “Did your aunt ever hear that rumor?” I asked. Barb did not know. But she did worry about her aunt and uncle’s reaction if someone were to ask them about it today.

  Barb went on to tell me that her uncle had served in the Army during World War II. Just three years ago, he had retired after a successful career at Ford.

  That would probably make him sixty-eight, I thought. Crunching the numbers in my head, I determined that he would have been about four years older than Jackie.

  When I asked Barb to describe his appearance, she said he was a handsome man about five feet ten inches tall. He had two grown sons, both of whom were taller than he was.

  Just as I was thinking that I now had enough clues to ferret out the man’s name on my own, Barb’s wall of secrecy broke down completely.

  “I think you have a right to know your father,” she said, pausing for a moment.

  “His name is Roy Klann and he lives in Livonia. If you speak with him, please don’t tell him you got his name from me.”

  Wow! I didn’t expect that. Carefully, I added all this new information to my notes and confirmed the spelling of Roy’s last name. I thanked Barb sincerely and ended the call.

  I then dialed directory information for the Detroit area and got Roy’s phone number and complete street address.

  Next, I called Carol and shared what I had learned. She had heard of Roy, but at first, she could not remember where he fit in Barb’s family. Then she recalled that he was married to a younger sister of Barb’s mother. Unfortunately, she didn’t know much more about him.


  I then called Aunt Lynn and Conrad to see if the name Roy Klann was familiar. The name did not ring a bell with either one of them.

  My final call was to Jeanette, my trusty search angel, who always knew the right thing to do. I explained that I had Roy’s name, address, and phone number, but I didn’t want to upset his wife or get either of them mad at Barb.

  Jeanette promised to think it through and come up with a strategy for reaching Roy discreetly. Then Jeanette shared an unexpected piece of news.

  While working on another adoption case, she was able to see what she described as my original birth record from the hospital. It was not a legal birth certificate like the other two I had. Jeanette would not reveal how she found it. So I accepted her vagueness about the source and just recorded the information she had found.

  My original first and middle names, given to me by Jackie, were Gerald and Lee. On the paper that Jeanette saw, someone had crossed out “Gerald Lee” and replaced it with “Richard Harold.”

  I knew that “Lee” was Jackie’s middle name and “Harold” was my adoptive father’s first name. So the middle name transition from “Lee” to “Harold” made perfect sense. It was the first name transition that surprised me.

  Mom had insisted that she and Dad named me “Richard” because it was simply a name they liked. I had doubted that story, wanting to believe that Jackie named me “Richard” after Leonard’s kid brother. But these new facts shot down that speculation. Mom had told the truth about the origin of my name.

  But why had Jackie chosen the name Gerald?

  I had not run across that name in her family and I wondered if she might have named me after my biological father.

  26

  ROY

  I rechecked all my records and the only man with a name close to Gerald was Jerry Jarskey, one of the men Jackie had dated. But according to an old city directory, his formal name was “Jarrold” with a “J” and not “Gerald” with a “G.”

  I tucked away the information on my original name, not knowing if it would ever prove to be useful or not. Then I turned my attention back to the best suspect I’d had since Conrad: Roy Klann.

  Wanting desperately for all the pieces to fit, I wondered if Cookie Girl’s boyfriend, whose father looked like me, could be a grandson of Roy Klann. If that were the case, there might be a young man named Klann living in the Grand Rapids area today.

  Anxiously, I checked the local phone book for the name Klann and found a single listing. Without any plan at all, I dialed the number. As it was ringing, I decided to ask if he had ever dated a girl who worked at the now-closed cookie store in the mall.

  A man answered who identified himself as a roommate. He said Klann was out but would return the following afternoon. I thanked him and hung up.

  With time to think, I realized that an out-of-the-blue call from a complete stranger about one’s dating history might be kind of alarming. Not wanting to upset anyone, I decided not to call again.

  Still, my call wasn’t wasted. I now knew that the Klann in Grand Rapids was single and lived with a roommate. That suggested he was young enough to be Cookie Girl’s boyfriend.

  Once again, pieces of my puzzle seemed to be falling into place. Even though I had to put my search on hold through the holiday season, I enjoyed the warm glow of optimism that had been missing since the paternity test with Conrad.

  In mid January 1991, I called Jeanette only to learn that she was leaving for Las Vegas and would not return until late February. I was on my own for awhile.

  Before contacting Roy, I figured it would be nice to know if I looked anything like him or his offspring. If one of his sons was, indeed, the father of Cookie Girl’s boyfriend, the resemblance should be obvious.

  On the first Tuesday in February, I took a half-day vacation and made another trip to Plymouth. My first stop was the historical museum that had the old Plymouth High School yearbooks. I didn’t know if Roy went to the same school that Jackie had attended, but it was possible.

  Checking the Plymouth yearbooks for the period did not yield any students named Klann. The city directories listed a Fred and Dorothy Klann in the Plymouth rural routes. I wondered if they might have been Roy’s parents.

  The area east of Plymouth, formerly Livonia Township, was now the city of Livonia. Since that was Roy’s current residence, my next stop was the Livonia Civic Center Library.

  If Roy had lived in Livonia when his sons were growing up, they might be in the Livonia high school yearbooks.

  I learned that Livonia had two high schools in the late sixties and early seventies when Roy’s sons would probably have been students. I checked Franklin High School first and did not find anyone named Klann.

  Checking Bentley High School proved to be more productive. There was a Roy Klann in the class of 1967 and a Rod Klann four years behind him in 1971.

  Roy and Rod? With such similar names, I thought, they had to be brothers, or at least cousins.

  Both boys appeared to be slender in build. Roy (presumably Roy, Jr.) had light hair and a square jaw and looked nothing like me. Rod, on the other hand, at least had dark hair and a narrow chin. Yet even he did not jump off the page as my obvious double.

  I had been hoping that the Roy Klann rumor and the Cookie-Girl story might merge in a son of Roy who looked just like me. But it was not to be.

  Since I had the elder Roy’s address and was already in Livonia, I drove by his house. The man had retired from Ford, so I was not surprised to see a Ford Taurus and a Ford Bronco in the driveway.

  Not wanting to arouse suspicion, I kept going until I was out of sight. I waited about ten minutes and then made another pass from the opposite direction.

  This time the Taurus was gone. I wondered if that was his wife’s car and Roy might now be home alone. Would this be a good time to just show up at his door and introduce myself as Jackie’s son?

  Although I was sorely tempted, I remembered the rude and uncooperative response I got when I called Tom Martin. Not wanting to face that kind of rejection in person, I decided to take it slowly and wait for Jeanette to return from Las Vegas.

  Having thought to bring my camera, I surreptitiously took a photo of Roy’s house and then began the long drive back to Grand Rapids.

  On the first Friday in March 1991, I was at work, but couldn’t get my mind off Roy Klann and the fact that he might be my father. Giving in to my urges, I closed my office door and called Jeanette. Since I was more comfortable writing letters than making cold calls by phone, I suggested that I write Roy a letter and mark it “Personal and Confidential” to discourage his wife from opening it.

  Jeanette did not like the letter idea, since he might choose not to respond. It was better, she thought, to catch him off guard by phone.

  “OK,” I said. “When can you call him?”

  Since Roy’s wife might answer, Jeanette decided that she could not make this call. A strange woman wanting to speak with her husband and refusing to disclose the subject would definitely be alarming.

  “You should call him yourself,” Jeanette said.

  She suggested I start with my usual spiel about trying to contact people who knew my mother and see where the conversation went from there.

  After ending the call with Jeanette, I waited for what seemed like an hour but was probably only several minutes. Then I cleared my throat and dialed the Klann number. A man answered and I confirmed it was Roy.

  Our conversation turned out to be a brief one. The good news was that Roy did not ask me how I got his name or why I thought he knew my mother.

  The bad news was that he claimed not to recognize Jackie’s name. I tried another angle and asked if he knew Bill and Marion French. When he said he didn’t know them either, I knew he was lying, because he and Bill had married sisters.

  I apologized for bothering him and ended the conversation.

  “Disappointed” is not an adequate description of how I felt. But at least the man had been cordial. It was nothin
g like the rude reception I got from Tom Martin.

  When I reported the call to Jeanette, she said I might as well go ahead and send my letter. Having written many successful direct-mail letters in my career, I knew I could write a persuasive letter.

  Without naming a source, my letter explained that I knew for certain he had dated my mother. I shared some of my history and my reasons for wanting to identify my father. I promised to keep our discussion confidential and I asked him to call me at his convenience. I enclosed my business card on which I had added my home phone number.

  Adding the business card was a subtle way of assuring him that I was not some destitute street person looking for money.

  Six days later our receptionist buzzed my office and asked if I could take a call from a Roy Klann. This was it, I thought, and I had her forward the call to my extension.

  If I said my heart wasn’t pounding as I heard Roy’s voice on the other end, I’d be lying. He sounded friendly and apologized for not being more helpful when I called him the previous week. Admitting that he did know Jackie, he went on to explain how they met.

  He was in the Army Air Corps serving in Texas and had just come home on furlough in December 1944. One of his first stops was a favorite watering hole, Dann’s Tavern, where boys in the military rarely used their own money for drinks. It was there that he met Jackie.

  I knew December was the month that Jackie had left Leonard and moved in with her mother near Dann’s. So she must have just started working at the bar.

  Roy was smitten with Jackie.

  “She was one of the most attractive girls I ever met,” he reflected.

  He gave her a ride home from work one night, but he did not see her again until his next furlough in May 1945.

  “She was a hard girl to get a date with, but I succeeded.”

  Ray then asked when I was born. I told him May 20, 1946, which suggested a conception date around August 20, 1945.

  “It can’t be me,” Roy concluded. “I know I was in Texas on V-J Day, which was August 14. In fact, the May furlough was the last time I was in Michigan until November.