Finding Dad

by Kara Sundlun

  I gave them a huge hug of relief. “Thank you for coming!”

  “Of course, we would be here. You were great, so great!” Dayna said.

  “So amazing,” Brooke echoed, “Were you nervous?”

  “A little,” I confessed.

  We finished our hugs and went looking for the juice and Danish Henry had put out. There were a couple of newspaper photographers allowed back in the office, and my friends and I posed, linking arm and arm for pictures.

  The next day, I sat on the floor of our apartment reading the newspapers. Some of my favorite articles were the ones showing me with all of my friends. It felt special to stand with the closest thing I had to sisters and show the world I had a father.

  Many of the papers wrote about the “striking resemblance” between the Governor and me, putting our photos side by side for people to compare.

  The Detroit Free Press headline said: “Accept me,” Kara Hewes fights for her name…

  The New York Times wrote: Paternity Suit Just Another Crisis in Rhode Island.

  Sidebar stories quoted experts who analyzed what emotional issues I must have and why I had to do this. “Sundlun’s absence in her childhood and his reluctance to acknowledge her were bound to inflict pain and anger.”

  I didn’t want my wounds laid out like a test case for the world to see, that my life was somehow an example of what can happen when a father screws up. I was hoping they weren’t right. I didn’t want to think I was that screwed up, and I didn’t want anyone else to look at me that way, either.

  The expert went on to say, “Anger is about hurt…you have to ask, what does she really want?”

  The expert was right; I wanted him to accept me, to love me, to do the right thing, so I wouldn’t look like a rejected fool in front of the whole world. I wanted to not be so angry. It was a feeling I had known for as long as I could remember. Growing up, I unleashed it on Mom, but I know good and well that part of that furor came from his rejection. There was a tear in my soul and it had ached my whole life, and only he could stitch it.

  “The Sundlun case exploded because it’s been kept under wraps for so long. The person who breaks out, breaks the secret, wants to say, ‘This is who I am. I am the daughter of Bruce Sundlun.’ We don’t search to hurt, we search to heal,” reported The Providence Journal.

  Yes, I needed him to heal me and give me my place in the world, but I didn’t like seeing it in the paper because it made me feel way too vulnerable. The reporters kept calling me a celebrity, and a part of me appreciated the recognition. It wasn’t the same as the validation of a father, but it felt good to finally have this out in the open, especially since most of the stories were sympathetic. “He’s a pretty important man, so he should do the right thing,” said Marc, a college student in Rhode Island. “She wants a dad, he’s being cold blooded.”

  Other comments hurt and touched that dark place of unworthiness that I tried to block out. “It seems like an eleventh hour try for money,” said Barbara in Warwick.

  The media helped me communicate what I so badly needed to say to my father, and this time he was forced to listen. He could no longer put me off; he would be forced to act. I wouldn’t have to wonder if he got my letters or understood me. It was all there in black and white.

  The next night, my father came back with his own message in an exclusive interview on Channel 10, the NBC station in Providence that he used to run before he ran for governor.

  I caught the broadcast on our local Detroit news. Sitting on the floor of our apartment, I stared at the TV as he spoke about me. He wore his trademark double breasted suit and striped tie as he looked in the camera and started to speak in his deep voice. “The Kara in that news conference was not the same girl I met last year. She’s been coached, manipulated by her lawyer and mother.”

  No, I haven’t, I’m just showing my tough side—the side I inherited from you. And I wouldn’t have had to do any of this if you’d just done the right thing.

  I was dumbfounded. More to the point, he was making me mad. He didn’t seem like the nice guy I’d met, either.

  Then he directed his message directly to me. “It’s going to be difficult, but somehow or another, you and I have got to fight our way through those obstructions. We’ve got to get by Mr. Baskin, we’ve got to get by your mother. My hands are out and my heart is open. I hope yours is, too.”

  What? Isn’t that what I’ve been trying to do since I wrote you my first letter, met you in secret, passed a DNA test, and then finally filed a lawsuit after you kept ignoring my pleas?

  Then he went back to addressing the camera. “I really don’t think I can be accused of ignoring Kara, or not wanting to have a relationship with her. Candidly, I don’t feel the same way about Judith Hewes.”

  Don’t you dare go there again!

  I felt an angry, defensive flame rise in my gut, and the fire in me was starting to rage. Of course, he had been ignoring me! Who’s he kidding? And why does he have to take cheap shots at my mother? Doesn’t he know he hurts me by doing that?

  As angry as I was and as little sense as it made, my heart was grasping at the one ray of light: “My heart is open, and my hands are out.”

  That was the part of him I’d felt when I met him, the part that had cemented my faith, the part that made this quest seem not as crazy as it sounded.

  But could I really trust him, or was it all just wishful thinking? Was I crazy? Then again, I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

  Clearly, the media firestorm was forcing him to rethink his position, but part of me didn’t care. Was it possible for people to change? To realize they’ve been wrong? Baskin was suspicious. So was Mom, who wasted no time expressing her opinion. “Sure, now he responds. He’s just trying to save himself, since the public sees how bad he’s been.”

  Mom was boiling mad, and I couldn’t blame her. She had no reason to have any faith in him, and, unlike me, nothing to gain.

  “I’m the one who raised you all alone, and all he can do is slander me. What kind man does that?”

  “Maybe he’ll make things right if we just give him a chance.” I could hope, couldn’t I?

  “He better apologize to me and issue a retraction for his slur campaign, or I’m going to have to sue him for damages because he’s trying hurt my business.”

  She raged on, then calmed down and apologized for getting angry. “You should do what you want, and I’ll support you.”

  Mom was built soft and sensitive, and got her feelings easily hurt on a good day. I worried what this might do to her and our relationship. I didn’t want to gain a father at the expense of losing my mother. But I knew as much as this hurt, her love was unconditional. Unfortunately, I had no control over the media monster that was growing.

  It had been a crazy week, and my patience and heart were on emotional overload. My father’s news conference had been on Tuesday, mine was Wednesday, and now on Thursday, he was making his television appeal.

  Henry said he would be in contact with my father’s lawyers over the weekend to try and reach a settlement. In the meantime, he asked that we not do anything more on our own with the press. Technically, the law wasn’t on our side, since Mom had signed the settlement papers years ago. But Henry hoped the public pressure would force my father to settle again.

  Today, what happened to me would be illegal. We can thank the famous basketball player Isiah Thomas, who tried to give the mother of his child a lump sum. The courts ruled that parents must provide for the child over the course of his or her lifetime.

  But in 1993, my case was a lightning rod, in part because I was a teen fighting for my own rights, since Mom had given hers up. All weekend long, the press was camped outside my house, my school, and anywhere else they thought they might find someone who knew me. As a reporter now, I know they were all looking for the M-O-S sound bite, or Man-On-the-Street, interview they could use in their live reports that night. And this brought out some pretenders.

&nb
sp; One TV news reporter asked a girl in my class at the 7-11 what she thought. “Shocking, just shocking. Kara never talked about it.”

  Of course, I didn’t. I’d barely spoken two words to the girl.

  The Providence Journal called it a “secret rarely shared,” quoting my classmate, Jerry, who probably said it best: “This was a shock to a lot of her friends. I don’t think a lot of people expected her dad to be a governor of a state, and a millionaire.”

  Brooke, who had been through it all with me, said, “She told her close, close friends…she didn’t want to make a big deal of it.”

  Thankfully, school was already out, so I didn’t have to walk past news cameras on my way to class. But that didn’t stop the news crews from using West Bloomfield High as a backdrop for their reports. I tried to go about my normal days, but now when my boyfriend picked me up, he ended up on the front page of the paper driving me away in his convertible.

  Though Henry had asked me not to give any interviews, I did give my baby picture to Barbara Meagher, a TV reporter from WLNE the then-CBS station in Providence, who had been camped outside for a while. Where most reporters just raised their cameras to start taking pictures when I walked by, Barbara showed a human, almost maternal, side and asked how I was holding up without shoving a camera in my face. She kindly asked if she could have a baby picture to show on the news that night. I gave it to her because she was so nice, and promised not to ask me any questions. I will never forget how gracious and sympathetic she was, a rare commodity when compared to the other reporters. I also hoped my father would see my baby picture on the news.

  Inside Edition and Hard Copy were both offering to pay for my interview, but Henry advised against my granting either offer. “You may get ten grand, but that won’t help you form a relationship with your dad, which is what you really want.”

  He was right, but I was really sad to turn down Oprah. She wasn’t offering money, but I was dying to meet her. There was one national interview Henry thought would be good for us to do, so he set up a time for People Magazine to photograph and interview me at his house. I was so young and put all my trust in Henry. So far, he’d been right about everything. But the People Magazine article was not my favorite. I wanted the article to help me appeal to my father’s heart. Instead, they slammed him.

  It was a sunny day, so we took the pictures out on Henry’s beautiful deck. I tried to smile and give upbeat answers, show my optimism that everything would work out. I couldn’t wait for the magazine to hit the stands to see what they wrote.

  When I opened up my issue with Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson on the cover, I felt a sinking disappointment.

  They labeled me the Gov Child, and used black and white shots that seemed to convey sadness. They’d made Henry’s pretty deck look more like a boxing ring. The article criticized my father for leaving the TV on when we met for the first time, calling him cold, even though I’d told them I didn’t mind. They interviewed his ex-wives on his “aloof” approach to parenting, all agreeing that his career was always a priority.

  “He wasn’t around that much,” said his first wife, Madeleine Gimbel. “He wasn’t involved with the children.” Wife No. 3, Joy Sundlun, added, “Bruce is Bruce. He was very much a businessman.”

  It’s not that I couldn’t see my father was playing hardball, but rather, I knew there was something under his game. I held on to the television appeal he’d personally made to me about how his heart was open, and hoped this article wouldn’t make him change his mind. Actually, Henry’s strategy worked, and the excessive press coverage apparently put enough pressure on my father to come up with a settlement offer by Monday. More than a year of battling in secret was resolved in six intense days with a very public offer to do much more than just pay me off.

  My father’s attorney told Henry he wanted to settle the lawsuit right away and begin to “get to know me.” He promised to pay for tuition at the University of Michigan and, beyond that, treat me as he would any of his other children. Then he did something that shocked everyone: Not only would he pay for all of my college expenses, but he invited me to move out to Rhode Island for the summer to live with him so we could, “get to know each other.”

  Leapin’ lizards! I really do feel like Annie. What did he just say? Get to know each other? I had dreamed of this moment for so long, and it was hard to believe it was finally here. The fairy tale had grown wings, and was now about to soar. Could I really go live with him in his castle and live happily ever after? It all seemed too good to be true. Could he really love me the way I wanted him to? Did he really want to try? Why did he change his mind?

  I would later learn his offer even surprised his staff, who had no idea he was going to come around that much. He was a man who kept his thoughts close to the vest until he was ready to announce a battle plan. One might think it was politically expedient to make the scandal go away—and it was—but my father never cared about being politically correct. He liked to shoot first and ask questions later—literally.

  To prove the point, earlier that year, he had shot raccoons in his yard and, instead of keeping it quiet, he walked into the state police to turn himself in. The press had a field day with a sitting governor accused of illegally shooting off guns at his estate, but my father said he would have done it all over again, since they were trying to hurt a baby fox and he just couldn’t allow that. Eventually, the charges were dropped, but the comics still featured raccoons with GOP buttons.

  Patti would later tell me it was clear to her he was smitten with me and wanted to try to be a father. She said she could tell by the way his face lit up when he talked about me. She later joked that I should have just told them I straightened my hair, then he wouldn’t have needed a DNA test, since he had a standing appointment at the barber shop to chemically smooth his curls.

  Henry beamed. “This is it, kid, this is what you have wanted.”

  I hadn’t realized how tightly wound I’d been until I felt huge weights lift off my shoulders. The validation I’d so badly needed was already rebuilding my core. The effects of a sudden new reality were overwhelming. I was elated, yet I also worried about Mom.

  I wanted to jump up and down and scream a victory whoop, and yell from the top of the mountains, “We did it! He’s accepting me as his daughter!” But I had to think about Mom. She’d always said she wanted me to know him, but I don’t think she ever wanted me to go live with him. And no one could have ever expected he’d extend an invitation. Sometimes her fear of losing me bubbled over with statements she would always regret later. “You just want to be with him because he’s rich and famous. He never wanted us, you know. I was the one who raised you all alone.”

  I couldn’t deny that my father’s fame and power was exciting to me, but it wasn’t why I wanted him in my life. I wanted a father, plain and simple. But the fact that mine came with a fairytale mansion and the stature of a king made me feel like a princess getting rescued. I was elated the DNA fit but, unlike Cinderella, my mom wasn’t wicked, and I desperately wished there could be a fairy-something to magically change her life, too. I felt as though I was being torn in half and forced to choose one over the other, and it was impossible to do. Instead, I had to follow my heart, which meant leaving Mom alone in the scary forest while I went to live in the castle with the man she was starting to hate all over again.

  There would be no vindication for her. Though she had filed a defamation lawsuit against him, nothing came of it. My father refused to apologize, and reiterated that he was only going to help me. The laws back then weren’t fair, but the script had been written. She had signed the settlement back when I was a baby, so she had no legal footing. Instead, she would play the role of victim, thus refueling my inner turmoil that tore at me every day. Painted as the golden child, I lived between guilt and elation, and my emotions pixilated like a kaleidoscope. Despite my angst, I never doubted I would be leaving everything I knew to go live with him. Entering into the unknown, I would accept his o
ffer of acceptance.

  9 Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

  Wednesday, June 16, 1993

  Whisked from my suburban apartment for the land of sailboats and mansions, I was ready to start my new life with my father, where people still had debutante parties and wore black ties on a regular basis. After all the media storm and requests for interviews, I’d felt like an extra appendage. The attorneys had done the deal making, and I’d had only a brief, awkward telephone conversation with my father in Henry’s office after we made a verbal agreement to drop the paternity suit.

  “Hi, so I guess I’ll be coming to spend some time with you this summer. I’m excited. It’ll be great.” So much for memorable or clever.

  “We are looking forward to having you at Seaward,” my father answered formally. “Newport is a wonderful place, and you will enjoy it.”

  “Um, okay, I love the beach.”

  “We have beautiful beaches here.”

  “Great. Well thanks so much for everything you are doing for me. I’ll see you soon,” I said in my sweetest voice, trying to show him I still was the girl he’d liked.

  “Ok, ’bye.”

  Obviously, it had been easier for both of us to communicate through our attorneys, but we no longer had them as our safety net, and we’d have to learn how to talk to each other—especially if I was going to live with him.

  How I wished my attorney could handle the communication problems I was now having with Mom. My whole life, she had always loved to tell me about my father’s world. Now that I was getting ready to leave her for the life she’d talked about for so long, I’m sure this wasn’t exactly her fantasy ending. Her reasoning was that she’d done all the hard work of raising me only to give me, her crown jewel, away to a man who, instead of being remorseful or even grateful, was rejecting her once again.