Ultimate Reunion

I once heard a sermon by Pastor Dick Bernal in San Francisco which opened my eyes as an adoptee. He shared that in the original Greek texts of the Bible that the words "adopted as God's children" in the book of Romans and others, could be more accurately translated as "reunited" as God's children. The prodigal son in scripture was not his Father's "adopted son", but his own flesh and blood. He ran to embrace his child who had been gone for years.

It is a beautiful comfort to know God is my true Father and I am his child. There is no need for Him to "adopt" me as we think of adoption in today's society, because I actually came from Him to begin with. So many things in this world work to separate us from the pure knowledge of God's unconditional love for us as our Father ("Abba" means Daddy) God. I'm so thankful He runs to reunite with me.

"...I will never leave you, nor forsake you." God
(Joshua 1:5)

Three Decades after Adoption, DNA reveals painful Truth

Three decades after adoption, DNA test reveals painful truth
By Frank D. Roylance

Baltimore Sun reporter
October 12, 2009

For Cockeysville businessman Ron Ryba, the long walk from the parking lot to the stadium in Philadelphia was a 29-year trail of memories.

He had come to meet the son he and his high school sweetheart had never seen when they gave him up for adoption nearly three decades earlier. Now, the baby was a grown man. What would he say to him? What would he look like?

For Phil Bloete, too, the 2004 meeting at a Phillies game, was the culmination of a lifelong dream. He was 28, a high school English teacher in New Jersey. He had enjoyed a happy childhood, and was well-loved by his adoptive parents. But he had always wondered about his birth parents.

Mostly, Bloete said, he wanted to know more about his genetic heritage. He and his wife wanted to start a family, and "if there were any inherent risks, I wanted to know about them."

Their meeting was warm, if a bit tentative. "We laughed a little bit, and talked, and hugged," Ryba recalled. And he was astonished at Bloete's appearance.

Bloete is 6 feet 2 inches tall, 240 pounds with dark hair. He's been a swimmer, lifeguard, soccer coach. Ryba played football in high school and college, but he's blond, 5 feet 8 inches tall, and tips the scales at 175.

"I'm thinking to myself ... 'Man, did he get the good genes,'" Ryba said.

As it has turned out, Bloete, Ryba, and Ryba's high school girlfriend, Kathleen Butler, share no genes at all.

More than three decades after Ryba and Butler gave up their baby son to Catholic Charities of Trenton, N.J., for adoption, and four years after the agency facilitated their "reunion" with Bloete, genetic testing revealed last year that none of them are related.

Lisa Thibault, a spokeswoman for Catholic Charities of Trenton, acknowledged that the situation is "tragic," and that a "mistake" was made somewhere. But she said the agency has done all it is legally able to do for them.

That has shaken Ryba's lifelong faith in the Catholic Church, or at least in those who lead it. And, it has launched him on a thus-far fruitless quest to find the son he believes Catholic Charities has "lost."

Their story began in 1975.

Ryba was a high school football star. Butler was a cheerleader. They were crazy in love, but when Kathy became pregnant at 16, they knew they were both too young to provide a proper home and a secure future for their child.

So, they agreed to give their baby up to Catholic Charities, which arranged an adoption. They were promised updates on the boy's well-being, and assured the agency would mediate a reunion -- if the boy were willing after he grew to adulthood.

"The solace for me was the fact I would someday reunite, and know that the journey I took was for a good reason," said Ryba.

Catholic Charities' assurances were "a very big reason why I believed that what we were doing was the right thing. I never lost faith in that," he said.

Ryba went on to graduate from high school and earned a degree from Glassboro State College. In 1982, he moved to Maryland to open a sporting goods store in Cockeysville. Now 51, he lives in Timonium with his wife and two children. He owns and operates a business that sells uniforms to the U.S. Department of Defense.

But he has never forgotten the boy he and Butler gave up for adoption. And for three decades, Catholic Charities seemed to have kept its promises to Ryba and Butler.

Their baby was born Nov. 25, 1975, at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden. On Dec. 1, according to documents given to Ryba, the infant was transferred to St. Elizabeth's Home in Yardville, a home for unwed mothers run by Catholic Charities. And on Jan. 7, 1976, Phil -- identified on the state adoption consent papers as "Baby Boy Butler" -- was adopted by Anne and Edward Bloete, of Brielle, N.J.

Ryba and Butler split up after high school, and went off to college. They stayed in touch, but married others and lived separate lives. Both have their own children.

Over the years, Catholic Charities case workers sent Ryba baby pictures and information on his son's progress. And in 2004, the agency contacted Bloete and mediated the first direct communications between him and Ryba, which led to the "reunion" in Philadelphia.

Phil Bloete is 33 now, with a wife and daughter of his own. He said he had a happy childhood, and was well-loved by his adoptive parents.

"My whole life I grew up believing that Ron's story and Kathleen's story was the story of my [birth] parents," he said. "Catholic Charities had provided that all along."

Ryba said his long dream of a reunion with his firstborn son, and a resolution to decades of heartache and hope, seemed to have been realized in 2004 when he and Bloete agreed to meet for the first time at a Phillies game.

For Bloete, too, it was the culmination of a lifelong dream. "I had sorta prepared myself my whole life for the possibility that this day would never come," he said. "When it did, I was just surprised."

In the years that followed Ryba, Bloete and Butler grew closer, visiting, sharing photos and family stories and introducing relatives. They set aside the difficulty they all had in seeing family resemblances.

Ryba thought maybe Bloete got Butler's eyes. "You try to make it fit, in a way," Ryba said. "They told me this was my son, so it's my son. You want to believe."

They all tried, but Butler said there weren't any tall genes on her side. Ryba's wife and their 16-year-old son didn't see much resemblance either. Doubts nagged.

So, four years after they had become "family" and friends, as Ryba prepared to add Bloete to his will, he asked for a paternity test. Bloete, with his own doubts, readily agreed.

When the initial test found a "zero percent chance" that he was Bloete's father, Ryba called Butler, and posed the difficult, but inevitable question: Was there someone else? Butler told him, in no uncertain terms, "If you're not the father, then I'm not the mother."

So, they all agreed to a $1,200 DNA test that would stand up in court, if need be. The results again were conclusive. None of them were genetically related.

"We were all just stunned; shocked," Ryba recalled. "Now I realize we don't know who or where our son is. And then I realize Phillip has no origins."

The next call went to Catholic Charities.

"I said, 'You told me for 30 years this was my son. Can't you just go in your files? Maybe you mixed up some files,'" Ryba recalled.

Catholic Charities did provide some documents, but there was nothing to reveal who Bloete's real parents were, or where Baby Boy Butler might have gone.

A meeting was arranged for Ryba, Butler and Bloete with Catholic Charities director Francis Dolan. Ryba was hopeful.

"I'm feeling we're all in this together," he said. He expected that Catholic Charities would agree to search its files, find his real son, and uncover the records for Phil's birth parents.

Instead, the meeting with Dolan ended for Ryba in disappointment and anger, with few answers to his biggest questions. "I finally said to him, 'Are you here to help us?' His recollection is that Dolan replied that his agency had no further obligation to help.

"I don't think there was anything he could have said that could have been more hurtful," Ryba said.

Dolan chose not to speak directly with The Baltimore Sun. Lisa Thibault, his spokeswoman, said that throughout Catholic Charities' contact with Ryba, Butler and Bloete, "we have been mindful of the tragedy inherent in their situation, and have on numerous occasions ... expressed sympathy for them and their situation."

Ryba felt no such sympathy from this agency of the Catholic Church, to which he had belonged all his life.

"The one time I've turned to them ... for their cloak of comfort and help and justice, and they slowly closed the door on me, and said, 'We can't help you,'" Ryba said. "It doesn't diminish my faith in God. It diminishes my faith in the men who lead us to God."

Thibault acknowledged that the situation is "tragic," and that a "mistake" was made somewhere, although she suggested it may have been made before the Butler baby was moved to Catholic Charities' custody at St. Elizabeth's.

Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in New York, a leading research and policy organization in the field that has long advocated an end to secrecy in adoption records, said, "The secretive ways of the past don't yield very good outcomes."

The mix-up in the adoption of the baby given up by Ryba and Butler -- and the mystery of Bloete's origins, even his true date of birth -- is "an abject lesson on how to not conduct good, strong, ethical adoptions," he said.

Catholic Charities did take one other step to try to shed light on the mystery. In September 2008, the agency went into Superior Court in Mercer County, N.J., asking for permission to release information from its files that is normally barred from disclosure under state or federal law -- information it said "would be helpful to [Phil's] search for his identity.".

In April, however, a judge denied the request, and in a June 5 e-mail, William Isele, Catholic Charities' attorney, told Ryba that the documents in the case were sealed. So were the judge's reasons for the denial.

"You can, of course, use your own counsel if you want to petition the court to unseal the Statement of Reasons and the underlying medical documents in the file," Isele told Ryba. "Our client, Catholic Charities, tried to do just that and was told 'no' by the Court."

Contacted by The Baltimore Sun, Isele declined to discuss the case, noting that records in the matter were sealed.

For Catholic Charities, Thibault said, the court's refusal to open the records was the end of its legal options. But perhaps not for Ryba, Butler and Bloete.

Birth records that reveal the identities of adopted children in New Jersey were sealed by a law passed in 1940 and are closed to both the general public and the parties to an adoption. The laws were designed to protect adoptive families from the interference of birth parents.

But there are exceptions when parties to an adoption can show "good cause" to have them opened, according to Steven Sacharow, an attorney with extensive experience in New Jersey adoptions.

"In the case of adult adoptees," he said, "the burden of proof should shift to the state to prove that good cause is not present. I would think the state would have an interest, in the best interests of all the children potentially involved in this situation, to determine what occurred, and as to the integrity of the adoption," Sacharow said.

The experience has sown the seeds of doubt in Ryba's mind. He wrestles with dark suspicion about what happened back at St. Elizabeth's. "How do we not let our thoughts go that way when they're not willing to help us?" Ryba asks.

Angry, and worried about his first-born son's fate, Ryba consulted with a private investigator. He even tried to file missing person and kidnapping reports with the New Jersey attorney general's office. He said he was turned away.

As Ryba continues to search for answers, he recognizes that a lawsuit may be his only option. But so far, he has been unable to find an attorney willing to take his case. He also worries about the cost.

Still, he said, "I would like to know where my son is."

The Day My Mother Told Me

The day my mother told me: 'Your father is not your real father'
By MIRANDA GLOVER
29th August 2009

Miranda Glover's life changed dramatically when the secret identity of
her father was revealed.
It’s early June this year, and I’m standing in a beautiful garden at
Hay-on-Wye. It’s the book festival’s 21st birthday party. Lots of
people I know are here, but the two most significant are my 25-year-
old half-sister Daisy and her mother, the writer and broadcaster Rosie
Boycott. We are bonded in an extraordinary way, by a secret that was
only unleashed when I was 16.
Until then I didn’t know that Daisy and I shared a natural father, the
war correspondent David Leitch. He has clearly passed us both his
genes: we share his Danish blue eyes, his slight frame – and his
passion for books.
1968, the year I was born, was a time of radical social change. So why
would a mother feel the need to keep her love child a secret? Perhaps
because most British families continued to live by the 1950s model
where parents married, worked hard, and where love children spelt
shame. My mum was like that: a young wife with two daughters and Mike,
a respectable businessman husband. She had one chink in her domestic
armour – her first love; the attractive, flawed and incredibly clever
Cambridge graduate David Leitch.
David had spent the past decade abroad covering world affairs for The
Sunday Times. They kept in touch, via the odd letter or lunch. He was
about to head to Vietnam to cover the war, but something made him call
her. They had lunch and then, rather inconveniently, they made me. He
went to Vietnam, she went home. When she realised she was pregnant
with his child she told no one, not even David, who was by now out of
reach.

She decided to tell her husband the truth.
Extraordinarily, he agreed to raise the baby as his own, so long as
she kept the secret firmly to herself. And so she had me within her
marriage, put a brave face on it, and carried on.
When I was seven, my mother got divorced and remarried. The original
pact no longer seemed relevant. She told her new husband – and David –
the truth about me. David was ecstatic. He had just had a son, and now
he had a daughter. Being adopted himself, connections with his genetic
offspring felt significantly important. Even so, my mother refused to
let him into my life. She said that one change was enough to manage at
such a tender age. She inherited four stepchildren, so now we numbered
seven kids most weekends.
My sisters and I still saw our father, Mike, every other weekend. It
was a busy, lively childhood, a melting pot where, paradoxically, it
was the many differences, not similarities between us that bound us
together as a family.
David Leitch was irregularly mentioned only if his voice came on to
Radio 4 or when one of his latest collections of journalism hit the
shelves (we had them lined up in the sitting room, always inscribed to
my mum). I met him a few times over the years. Once he brought this
little sandy haired boy Luke to lunch. I thought little more than that
I admired what he did. Coincidentally, I knew from an early age that
I, too, wanted to write.

I was aware of being different from my sisters – they were tall and
dark, I was small and blond. I was quite academic as a teenager – I
wanted to read Baudelaire whereas they were disinterested in studying,
keen to get out into the world. They had left home by the time I found
out my true identity; the day my mother and stepfather whisked me away
for a weekend to a remote cottage, to let me in on this very big
secret.
‘Your father is not your real father,’ my mother stated, a little too
steadily as we curled up in front of the fire. How often must she have
rehearsed that line? And how hard must it have been to get those words
out? I sat still, trying to absorb the shock, then glanced expectantly
at my stepfather, sitting uneasily next to her. ‘No, your stepfather
is not your natural father either,’ she added, almost by way of
apology. I loved him, but the fact was a strange relief. I knew who he
was to me, and didn’t want that to change.
My mother handed me an envelope as she told me my father’s name. She
looked worried, expectant. Inside was a letter in strangely familiar
handwriting, handwriting I almost share. And photographs, one of a
woman, Rosie, holding a small baby, Daisy, aged six months, another of
David, my new father, and a third of his son, the handsome nine-year-
old Luke, from an earlier marriage.
David’s letter eloquently introduced this other family to me. It had
been written as part of the plan, I was now told, made by my parents
with Rosie and David over dinner a week before. My natural father was
keen to know me. My mother had agreed that perhaps it was time.

My spirit shook with the shock of it. Slowly, the truth unfolded. I
felt no anger. My initial feeling was one of sadness for my mother,
for having held on to this weighty secret for so long. But I loved her
and I trusted her instincts in all things, even this.
I went to bed and reread the letter, looked at the photographs over
and over. The next morning I felt disembodied. I had walked into that
cottage in one skin and I was walking out in another.
Collectively, we told my sisters – their shock was understandable, but
they were generous in their response. Even so, I sensed a wariness in
them, a subtle distancing from me. Over time, that sense of
separateness has diminished again. When I told my friends, they looked
at me with incredulity and I felt a bit of a freak. But I was excited,
too, about meeting David, knowing this other genetic part of me.
We agreed that he would phone me. When the call came I felt so anxious
I needed the loo and told him so. He laughed and said so did he. We
both hung up, then rang back once we’d been. Now the ice had been
broken and we chatted. His voice was familiar and he put me at ease.
We met for lunch the following weekend. I felt immediately comfortable
around him, he was good at drawing me out, was interested in me, and
we shared similar loves, of art, books, French literature.
The first time I went to stay with David, I took a train to Paddington
and was met by Rosie with Daisy in her arms. The bond with them began
then and has grown steadily. Rosie drove me to their home, a rambling,
book-filled Georgian flat overlooking the canal in Little Venice. I
liked the smell of it – library-like, familiar. Luke was loitering at
the top of the stairs. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘you must be my sister.’



‘When I had my son, Fen, David would delight in his time with him.
When Fen was four he patiently taught him to play chess’
David appeared later, hugged me tightly and talked too much and too
quickly, kept moving from place to place. Even though he couldn’t
contain his excitement, I could sense that my presence made him
anxious. It was a time for adjustment for us all.
Fundamental differences between my first and second families fast
became evident. I was a state-educated parochial girl; my father was a
known London bon viveur, a serious drinker, an intellectual with
children in the best private schools. He had a boho lifestyle,
indulged in complicated relationships and had a renowned feminist
wife. Luke came and went between his parents.
Often I hung out with Rosie and Daisy. They became a safety net for me
within David’s chaotic world. At one party David’s Cambridge friends
and Luke’s mum came. They were fascinated by this secret daughter
about whom they had all known for years. I felt uneasy. Strangely
foreign inside my own skin.

I felt I was trying my new personality out for size. In some ways I
felt more confident about my ambitions as a writer, in other ways it
made me feel diminished, as if, against such a literary, successful
family, I was just pretending to be something I was not. With
hindsight I think I tried too hard to make all the pieces of the
jigsaw fit, believing that I could be cohesive again. Since marrying
and having my own children I believe that we are who we were always
going to be, all along.



I continued to see David over the following 20 years. Our meetings were wonderfully enthusiastic, and
engaged in the subjects we both loved: story-making and the characters
who lived in our midst. I ended up living only a few streets away from
David for the last few years of his life.
Essentially, I loved David from the start, felt a true and instinctive connection.
David died four and a half years ago, at home in his bed, aged 67. I
had seen him the day before, with my daughter, Jessie-May, then two
and a half. He had become prematurely infirm.
A veteran war correspondent with a serious drink problem was never
going to live into later life. The death certificate stated that he
died of fatigue. I miss his friendship and his input into my work. I
had my first novel published just months after he died. He used to
read my manuscripts, encourage me in my writing, and helped me edit
the first draft.
I never discussed my knowledge of David with Mike. He knew I knew but
he chose not to talk of it. He had been kind to me, treated me as his
daughter. I don’t think the subject would have been easy to address.
When I was 22 Mike died, suddenly, of a stroke. He took my secret to
his grave.
I wonder, if the truth had never been let out of its box, would I
still be standing here, at Hay-on-Wye with those two people who met me
from the train on that life-changing day; Rosie and Daisy, talking and
laughing as we gaze towards the dusky village of books that has
brought us all here. Scientists agree that nature and nurture affect
the paths we follow, shape the people we become. My path,
instinctively, has brought me into this book-filled world. In my case,
I would vouch that nature has enjoyed the
upper hand.

Miranda’s latest novel, Meanwhile Street (£6.99, Transworld), will be
published on 10 September. To order a copy with free P&P, call the YOU
Bookshop on 0845 155 0711 or visit you-bookshopco.uk

Dad, 26-year-old daughter get reacquainted

Just before CSUF graduation, a family reunites
Dad, 26-year-old adopted daughter get reacquainted in Fresno.
Published online on Friday, May. 22, 2009
By Chris Collins / The Fresno Bee

The phone rang.

Elizabeth Cox could tell from the caller ID that it was James Cliffe III -- a man she had never spoken to, but who shared the same name as her biological father. A father she had never met. Was this he?

With much hesitation, she answered.

Adopted at birth, Cox had only a handful of records with her parents' names and birth dates. For years, she debated whether she should try to find them. But what would she say? "Hi, I'm your daughter" -- it seemed too strange.

Instead, Cox endured the teasing and nagging that adopted children can go through -- "at least my parents wanted me," some of her peers told her.

That didn't stop the Clovis West High School graduate from living her life -- college, music, sports, art, traveling the world. She took it all in. At 17, she moved out on her own.

Independent and stubborn? She freely admits it.

But about a month ago -- as she was finishing up her classes and preparing to graduate from California State University, Fresno, so she could pursue a writing career -- Cox, 26, decided it was time. She was grateful for her adopted parents, Tim and Jodi Cox, but couldn't go through her whole life without knowing her flesh and blood.

She scoured the Internet and chased down a cell phone number for the Rev. James Cliffe III living in the Los Angeles area. There is no way my father is a reverend, she thought. But she called anyway. She got his voicemail.

"Hello, my name is Elizabeth Cox," she said. "Could you please call me back?"

About an hour and a half later, Cliffe called. Cox asked him if he knew a woman named Caroline Purra -- without mentioning that that was her mother's name.

For 15 seconds -- silence.

Then Cliffe's voice came through on the other end: "I've been looking for you for 26 years," he said.

For the next two hours, the father and daughter who had never met -- but had always wondered about each other -- talked about their lives, their pasts and their dreams. They raced to send photos of each other over Facebook.

Cliffe, 63, told Cox about the family she had never known -- including her older half-sister and older half-brother. He told her about his failed relationship with her mother. He told her that he had always loved her.

For the next month, neither had the chance to visit the other in person -- until Friday. Cox invited Cliffe to attend her graduation ceremony this weekend. He said he would be there.

As Cliffe drove from Los Angeles on Friday morning, Cox sat at a coffee shop fidgeting nervously. Her father -- her real father -- would be here soon.

"This is crazy. All those nights staying up wondering and questioning and thinking ... " she said, looking off into the distance and suddenly at a loss for words.

They agreed to meet at a restaurant near Fresno State. Cox went without any friends or family -- she wanted this to be her own thing.

Turning a corner, she came face to face with a slightly chubby, well-dressed man.

"There you are!" she said.

The father and daughter hugged. They took a look at each other. Then they hugged again.

"You're just like your sister," Cliffe said.

At the lunch table, the two swapped stories. The menus were left alone. When a waitress asked a third time if they were ready to order, Cox apologized.

"I'm sorry, I'm meeting my dad for the first time," she said, laughing.

Cliffe, it turns out, was not always a minister. He said he grew up in Illinois and moved to the Los Angeles area to sell insurance. He opened restaurants and bars and hired Purra at one of them.

They fell in love, but split up after about a year. The last time Cliffe saw Purra, she was eight months pregnant with his daughter. Neither he nor Cox had been able to find Purra.

Cliffe's life spiraled downward as he struggled with alcohol and drug addictions. He became homeless. Then, one night in October 1994, Cliffe said, he had a "spiritual experience" in which he felt compelled to get his life in order.

For the past 15 years, he said, he has been clean and sober.

Cliffe also went on to become a minister and start a $750,000-a-year program that provides housing and rehabilitation for parolees. His preaching became popular and he got his own television show, he said.

But throughout the years, Cliffe wondered about his daughter. Every once in a while, he would see someone who looked like she could be her, but never was. He checked hospital records, but found only dead ends.

When Cox called him last month, Cliffe said he kneeled down and thanked God.

Cliffe and Cox, it turns out, share more in common than their green eyes. They both are Dodgers fans, like sports, play pool and enjoy public speaking. And they aren't afraid to pursue life head-on.

"You'll find that as you get out into the world, you'll possess another quality of mine," Cliffe told his daughter. "Mind over matter: If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

By the end of lunch, Cliffe and Cox seemed to have known each other for years. They teased each other. No question was too personal. And when Cox warned her father that she tended to hold on to new friends and that he was "stuck with her now," Cliffe replied, "I don't feel stuck."

"It's not over," he said. "It's just the beginning."

The reporter can be reached at ccollins@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6412.

Ties that Bind

Richard Wright
From Saturday's Globe and Mail, Sunday, May. 24, 2009 12:11AM EDT

On the evening of Feb. 7, earlier this year, I was climbing the stairs
to my third-floor den in a melancholy mood. On the way up, I looked in
on my 10-year-old daughter, reading herself to sleep after another
hard day in Grade 4.

Even in repose, she had a quizzical look, imposed on her by eyebrows
that peak like a roof, just like mine. "Those are my eyebrows," I said
to her.

"No they're not," she laughed. "They're mine."

She had heard this before. I'm sure she knew, in her 10-year-old way,
what I was getting at - the reassuring physical evidence of our
kinship, which is so precious to me. My daughter is attuned to my way
of dressing up serious feelings in jocular garb. (Does that come down
through the genes, like the eyebrows?)

Before I left her door, I declared that she's my favourite daughter.
"Dad," she retorted with feigned impatience. "I'm your only daughter"

It's another joke we like to share. And she was right, of course. She
is my only daughter. But she's not my only child. What was making me
melancholy that night was the memory of another child, born 40 years
ago that day. His mother (who is not my daughter's mom) named him
Graham.

Graham is my only son, but it's hard to say he's my favourite son.
I've never looked in on him at bedtime. We've never shared a joke. In
fact, I saw him just one time, for only a few minutes, behind layers
of glass in the hospital maternity ward. He was one of perhaps 15
newborns arranged in rows in their bassinettes, but even at a glimpse
I recognized him beyond any doubt. His eyebrows were peaked too.

As I watch my daughter grow, I am haunted by my son. For 40 years, he
has been lost to me. Days after he was born, he was gone, hustled off
to the waiting embrace of the Children's Aid Society. At four months
old, he would move on to his adoptive home - as his mother and I had
agonizingly agreed should happen - and out of our lives forever.

Or so we believed. But that is about to change.

On June 1, new legislation comes into effect in Ontario - An Act
Respecting the Disclosure of Information and Records to Adopted
Persons and Birth Parents, also known as the Adoption Information
Disclosure Act or simply Bill 183, which was passed last May.

For many years, the cardinal rule of adoption was secrecy. Once an
adoption was finalized, the law declared in 1927, the records of the
event were closed, severing the relationship between birth parents and
their children.

No information that could lead to either party learning of the
identity or whereabouts of the other was supposed to be released from
the government's files.

In recent decades, however, attitudes have shifted. Open adoption has
become commonplace and next month - following the lead of
Newfoundland, Alberta and B.C. - Ontario will open the closed files
and lift the veil of secrecy.

Adopted adults will be able to apply for copies of adoption orders and
birth registrations. Birth parents will be able to apply for
information from these documents.

After 40 years, we will be able to find Graham and he will be able to
find us.

Graham is one of 250,000 children placed for adoption in Ontario since
the province began to keep records in 1921. His mother and I are
therefore among the half-million birth parents who gave their children
up. The other corner of what is called the "adoption triangle" would
involve roughly the same number of adoptive parents. And surrounding
the triangle are legions of siblings and other relatives.

All of us are facing a future with a new relationship to the past.

Certainly there will be pain in the wake of June 1. There will be
birth parents whose anguish at giving up a child has long since
scarred over and will now find the emotional wounds gaping open again
- Graham's mother, for one. Even though she is a historian, she felt
for a long while that in this one matter the past should remain past.

But now her view has changed. Hoping that revisiting an unhappy
chapter in her life may lead to a happy ending, she is, nervously,
eager to reconnect.

I, too, have wondered how the delicate equilibrium of my present life
will be affected. A child who has been an abstraction to me will
become real. What new complications might this bring? And my daughter?
She will suddenly have a sibling, after years of flying solo. Will she
want this? Do I? I certainly wonder.

There will be other families forced to face secrets they were sure
were safely buried, the ones who fear "the knock on the door." And
there will be some, on all sides of the triangle, who do not wish to
restore broken links or to invite the unpredictable into their lives.

Remember that 40 years ago, when Graham was born, women who were
pregnant "out of wedlock" were shrouded in shame. To protect such
women from a lifelong stigma, and to protect their "illegitimate"
children from odium, "unwanted" pregnancies reached term (abortion
still being illegal) during a convenient absence to some faraway place
- for an Ontario girl, preferably Victoria.

Pregnant girls and women were said to be "away at school" or "visiting
relatives" while they waited for their secret children to be born.
These distant relatives were often relatives of convenience.
Ironically, my own mother was such a (totally unrelated) relative to a
number of girls "in trouble." They came to our household as mother's
helpers who looked after my brothers and me, making lunches and doing
light household chores for someone else's children while they grew
ripe with their own unacknowledgeable offspring.

Although the language now seems quaint, it is still potent for some.
The "knock on the door" lobby, supported by the province's privacy
commissioner, successfully opposed the opening of adoption records in
Ontario for more than a decade.

However, for Marilyn Churley, champion of the "open book" position,
the privacy rights of both birth and adoptive parents are trumped by
the rights of the adopted child when he or she comes of age. "Once you
turn 18," she said, "you're an adult and you have the right to know
your own background, the right to have a relationship with your birth
parents, if that's what you want."

'MOTHER CHURLEY'

As an NDP member of the Ontario Legislature from 1990 to 2005, Ms.
Churley repeatedly introduced bills to open adoption records. Finally,
she helped Liberal MPP Sandra Pupatello draft the original version of
Bill 183, which passed on Nov. 1, 2005.

Two days later, though, the bill was quashed by the Ontario Superior
Court. A group of adoptees and birth parents represented by Canadian
civil-rights lawyer Clayton Ruby, citing potential complications such
as stalking or the reappearance of abusive birth parents, argued that
the law constituted a violation of privacy.

The legislation was amended to include a disclosure veto, allowing
either party to stop the release of identifying information to the
other. Ms. Churley viewed that as a great mistake, believing that
adoptees in particular have a right to know their roots. (Early
warning of inherited diseases, for example, can make a life-and-death
difference.)

Nonetheless, people refer to Ms. Churley as the mother of the amended
bill we have today. But she is also a mother in another sense - as a
young woman, she gave up a child for adoption. As I wrestled with my
own dilemmas and prepared to write this piece, I met her to swap
stories in a coffee shop in the Toronto riding she once represented.

Ms. Churley and I are of the same vintage, both born in 1948. And in
1968, a year before Graham was born, she also had a son "out of
wedlock" (she mimed the quotations in the air with her fingers).

Yet, unlike my partner and I, Ms. Churley struggled alone - the father
of her child denied responsibility and took off. She became one of the
young women of the era who vanished from the public eye for some part
of nine months.

She lodged in a small town with a charitable family and gave birth in
a hospital attended by less-charitable health professionals who, she
says, took moral exception to her "predicament. "

Decades later, she decided to try to find her child. In 1996, she and
William, then 29, were reunited. But the difficulty of that search
made Ms. Churley the fierce champion of freer access to adoption
information she became.

There have always been openings in the shroud surrounding adoption
records, some deliberate and some unintended. In the 1980s, the
Ontario government became the first jurisdiction in North America to
set up machinery to reunite willing birth parents and their adult
children.

When adopted children reached adulthood, they could notify the
Adoption Disclosure Registry of their willingness to be put in contact
with their birth parents. If either or both birth parents also
registered, the parties would be brought together - at least in
theory, as Graham's mother and I were to discover.

Like Ms. Churley, we had decided we wanted to find our child. And so
on Feb. 3, 1987, four days before Graham's 18th birthday, we filled
out an application. But there was a catch - three catches, actually.

Catch 22-A: Graham would apply to the registry only if he knew he was
adopted. Did he?

Catch 22-B: Graham's adoptive parents could withhold consent for him
to receive our contact information.

Catch 22-C: Even if everything was in place, the government admitted
it could take a long time for an overstretched registry staff to link
his name to ours - up to four years. Ms. Churley, who was at one time
the minister in charge of the registry, said that was an
understatement: The wait could be as long as a decade.

So we waited. And we waited. And while we waited we drifted apart,
formed new partnerships, changed addresses and married other partners.
The registry, of course, had no means or motive to track these
vagaries. And in all the bustle, neither of us thought to update our
registry information until very belatedly. If Graham did register, he
may well have met with a series of dead ends.

Our experience was not atypical. The registry reported that in 2004,
of the 57,000 people on its rolls, only 887 achieved a reunion.

Ms. Churley had been more savvy: She had applied to the government for
what was termed "non-identifying information" about her son's adoptive
family, including ages, occupations, interests and miscellaneous other
data. Although it wasn't supposed to, that provided her with enough
clues to find her child.

"It took about a year," she remembered.

Graham's mother and I also received non-identifying information about
our son: His adoptive parents were both teachers living on the
outskirts of the city. His new father was born in 1928 and his mother
in 1931, and they were married in 1953. He enjoyed fishing, she liked
to knit and they both liked reading and gardening.

When their first son was born in 1957, the wife became a homemaker,
but took university courses in Russian, French and English and excelled.

After blood-type complications prevented them from having more natural
children, they adopted a daughter in 1961 and, of course, Graham in
1969. The first summer he was with the family, he went camping and
"seemed to thrive on the trip."

It was distressing to read about this other reality he had entered, as
if he had gone through the looking glass. It made it more real, more
final. At the same time, it was a comfort to believe that he had gone
to a good place where intelligence and strong values prevailed.

While this was not enough information to make finding our son easy, it
may have been enough to make it possible.

But at that juncture, 12 years ago, we blinked.

For me, the sticking point was whether Graham wanted to be found. He
had not apparently entered his name in the registry. But perhaps he
didn't know, couldn't find us, was fearful - the perhapses were
paralyzing.

Ms. Churley sipped her coffee at the café on the Danforth in Toronto
and shared some things experience has taught her: Graham probably does
know he is adopted, she says. By the 1970s, most parents were telling
the truth to their adopted children - and if they did not, the
neighbourhood grapevine would eventually deliver the news.

If he failed to enter the registry, however, it should be no surprise,
she said. The fear of a second rejection is frequently too
discouraging for all adopted children.

Male adoptees particularly often will not take the initiative to seek
out their birth parents. "Frequently when they do, it's their wives or
girlfriends pushing them."

Ms. Churley's final advice was this: "In your situation, I would do
everything I could to let him know that you want to know if he's okay.
That has to be your goal."

Questions and answers

That is my goal now. I've dealt with my reservations. I've spoken to
my daughter, who says it's "cool" to have a brother. Time is getting
short and there is much to catch up on.

I have often imagined our meeting. I have tried to anticipate the
questions he will ask and the answers I will give. Absurdly, perhaps,
I have superimposed my 10-year-old' s boundless curiosity on the now-40-
year-old Graham; on the other hand, maybe it's a family trait.

I can tell him about his roots - his ancestors from Poland and the
Scottish Highlands, and the English inventor who first thought of
perforated postage stamps. I can tell him about his great-great-
grandmother, the famous Impressionist painter, and his infamous great-
uncle who absconded with a crate of her better paintings and ran away
to Belize. I wonder if he'll identify. I wonder if he's an artist too.
Or a scallywag.

I can tell him about his great-grandmother, the celebrated Toronto
bookseller, and his grandmother, the Varsity Sports Hall of Famer.
Perhaps he's a reader, encouraged by those adoptive parents who also
liked to read. Maybe he's a sport.

I can tell him that his mother is a formidable intellect and a great
beauty - if he wants, he can see for himself. I can tell him that he
was conceived in love by parents who remain devoted friends; true to
our natures, we bucked convention, scandalized our community and lived
together until he was born. (Maybe that's his nature too.) I can show
him that he comes by his angular eyebrows honestly.

He may have more penetrating questions, for which I have no ready
answers. The most challenging one would be about regret.

Expectant couples know how long nine months can seem as they wait for
the birth of their child. That is how I feel as I wait for my adult
child to be reborn into my life. Soon after June 1 - very soon, I hope
- Mother Churley's bill will present Graham's mother and me with a
bundle of joy, maybe; certainly one of challenge, complexity and high
emotion.

Forty years of thwarted curiosity, arrested yearning and suppressed
love will be over. We will be able to look into the face of another
human being, and recognize ourselves.

Richard Wright is a Toronto-based writer.

Butterfinger Heaven!

Just have to share this little story...

We were recently at a local pizzeria celebrating with my first Dad for his Birthday. It is always "bitter-sweet" when spending time with my first family. Like cherished times, of which I can't get enough. Yet not able to truly feel fully a part of the family, simply because they have a whole life of history together that is like a gaping black hole for me.

Nevertheless, I DO cherish every minute spent with my family ~ both of birth and adoption. It has really only been in the past few years I can say this, due to the enormous grief and confusion I walked through during those first "waking up" years. After all, adoptees aren't SUPPOSED to care, search, or reunite with their true selves and/or families, are they? No, we are supposed to be grateful and never question. It is just too dangerous.

Well, not I. Anyway, here we were all sitting around the table, finished with pizza, and cutting my Dad's birthday cake. Because I was freaking running around like a crazy woman trying to contain my sensory-overloaded child, I didn't notice that it was a Butterfinger (yes, the candy bar) cake. Mind you, my son has never eaten a candy bar in his short four years of existence. He has feeding issues and won't put most foods even near his mouth. (I've convinced myself that is why I've gained so much weight ~ I'm eating for two. Every bite I beg him to take and he refuses, goes straight into my mouth ~ STRESS). Sorry, I digress again.

So my son thinks that every cake is his personal sensory experiment, to use as finger paint (thanks to creative therapists), and because he can't quite understand why I am holding him back (with great effort), he starts to have a royal tantrum. When his aunt finally figured out what he wanted, she gladly scraped off one of the many mini-butterfinger bars off the cake and gave it to him. And much to my surprise ~ he immediately stuck the thing in his mouth and started nibbling on it! Amazing!

What is even more amazing (and was the purpose of this whole story) is that Butterfingers are my Dad's favorite candy, and low-and-behold, it was the catalyst to convince my son to actually TRY candy for the first time! I just quietly pondered this in my heart, sitting there wondering if I should have shared how surprised I was at my Dad's preference, because Butterfingers are also MY favorite candy bar! I can't count the number of Butterfinger mini-sundaes I've had from Sonic's new dollar menu.

All this is trivial, EXCEPT to an adoptee. It is just FREAKY to find out these little (and yet amazingly significant) similarities with your family of birth. And believe me, this IS just one of the little things. Most of the similarities are HUGE ~ in likes, dislikes, personality traits, voice inflection and tone, non-verbal communication gestures ~ so much is alike. They were inside me. Part of me. Without my knowing. All the while battling low self-esteem from NOT knowing and not being able to see my reflection in anyone else. Wondering and wandering, instead of embracing who I was and where I can from. All because it would hurt too much to deal with it. It still hurts. But it also brings understanding, identity, empathy, and joy ~ just to see myself in them. My whole clan. Each relative reflects a little different part of myself back to me. In my son. My Mother, Father, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Brothers. Grandparents, and Great-Grandparents. I am so blessed to be reunited with them, and love them so much.

And I can't emphasize enough that it wasn't until I crossed the threshold of search, reunion (just the beginning of the journey) into the grieving and healing, that I could look in the mirror and feel real, and learn to love real.

Here's to more Butterfingers!

One Father/Daughter Reunion Deluxe, Please

© Photographer: Raycan | Agency: Dreamstime.com

"How a daughter given up at birth learned her father was Joe Eszterhas"

Sunday, August 03, 2008
James Ewinger
Plain Dealer Reporter

www.cleveland.com/plaindealer/stories/index.ssf?/base/other/1217752259317541.xml&coll=2


Joe Eszterhas sits on a big leather couch next to his grown daughter.

It is a quiet moment at the Geauga County home of a writer renowned and reviled for "Basic Instinct" and his other sexually charged movies.

But for him and for her -- father and daughter -- this gentle suburban idyll is far more dramatic than anything he's written.

This is the first time either has spoken publicly about their relationship.

Until 1996, these two were unknown to each other.

Suzanne Perryman, as she is known today, was adopted at birth by others 40 years ago. She moved to Arizona, where she still lives.

After the death of her adopted father in 1986 and the collapse of her first marriage, Perryman was ready to look into the eyes of a blood relative.

She did not know that she was looking for the man viewed as Attila the Screenwriter.

She did not know her biological parents, did not know their names, where they were, what they did or whether they even wanted to see her.

"I grew up very comfortable with the idea that I was adopted," Perryman said. But she wanted to know her own story.

Eszterhas knew he had this daughter and started thinking about finding her in the late '80s. But a lawyer here, a close friend with an adopted son, advised him not to. "If she wants to, she will find you," the attorney said.

Eszterhas was a Plain Dealer reporter in 1967 when his girlfriend became pregnant. They thought it best to put the child up for adoption. They never married and went separate ways after that. The Cleveland Catholic Diocese handled the arrangements.

Perryman already knew of her birth here and the role of the diocese. She contacted Betsie Norris, a former nurse who founded Adoption Network Cleveland 20 years ago after her own successful search for her birth family.

From the diocese, they got what is called "non-identifying information," which included general data about Perryman's birth weight, height and health and vague details about her biological family.

There were no names, but it gave ages, places of birth, ethnicity, religion, education and what her birth relatives did for a living.

One fact leapt off the page: The document described Perryman's father as a writer who had "journalistic abilities," who was blunt and aggressive and driven.

Perryman was beginning to see her own reflection across the years. She described herself then as the successful publisher and editor of trade publications. She is tough and driven, too.

Detective work

leads to a name

With the profiles, she and Norris checked the records of who gave birth the day Perryman was born. They were able to eliminate women whose characteristics were different from the description.

They were down to two names and needed a few more details to identify her birth mother. Norris went to the Cuyahoga County Courthouse. She would phone Perryman later to tell her the street was blocked off and the courthouse closed. "I think they were filming a movie," she told Perryman.

They were. It was "Telling Lies in America" - Eszterhas' autobiographical movie released in 1997. He wasn't there for the filming that day, but the trail that led to him was in that courthouse.

First it led Perryman to her birth mother, a successful set designer in New York who tried to prepare her daughter for the next leg of her quest. She told Perryman: "It's not going to be easy. He has a public persona. He's Joe Eszterhas."

"I said, 'Who's that ?' " Perryman recalled. She went to a public library, where she found at least a hundred references to Eszterhas in major magazines.

She opened a People magazine first. There was a picture of Eszterhas in top primal form, wearing a wife-beater undershirt and a Viking raider's wild mane.

She gasped and slammed the magazine shut. She thought he was a Hell's Angel.

He was no biker, but he was close - a rough-hewn Falstaff infamous for his temper and tenacity, battling the hegemons of Hollywood, a hard-drinking, chain-smoking rake in the midst of an ugly divorce.

That, at least, was the public persona her mother warned her about - but not the man she met.

No doubt

about relationship

Perryman found a reserved man who readily called her "daughter." "He was warm, he was gentle," she said of their first face-to-face meeting.

That was in 1996 at his mansion high on a Malibu hill, across from Bob Dylan's estate. First glimpse left Eszterhas with no doubt about Perryman's identity.

"She didn't resemble my mother -she looked exactly like her," he writes in his new book about rediscovering his faith, "Crossbearer," which goes on sale Sept. 2.

"Without his influence in her life, she was more like him than his other biological children," said Joe's current wife, Naomi.

He and Perryman felt an instant connection, but both held back - she was awed by his renown and did not want him to think she wanted anything; he because of his own insecurities.

Father and daughter stayed in touch for a while, then lost contact. By 2001 they had not talked for four years. Perryman had given birth to her first daughter, and Joe and Naomi had moved back to Ohio from California, to raise their sons.

Around then, Perryman saw Eszterhas on TV talking about his battle with throat cancer the year before, and she called him.

Their bond

grows stronger

Today, he describes their relationship as "still a work in progress."

But progress it has, from a four-year hiatus to talking at least once a week. "He's always there, and we talk a lot," she said in his Bainbridge Township home last week. "There's a connection there that I didn't have with my adopted father," whom she said she loved very much.

They became even closer after Perryman's two daughters were diagnosed with mitochondrial disease, a degenerative condition that weakens the body's cells and attacks major organs.

She said doctors in Arizona missed the diagnosis, but Eszterhas got his granddaughters to the Cleveland Clinic, where the disease was identified. It has no cure, but there are treatments, and now they come to the Clinic two or three times a year.

"I felt protected by his presence and calmed by his presence," Perryman says of her father and his role in the diagnosis. "That experience definitely cemented the bond that had been formed."

Next spring they will talk about that bond.

Adoption Network Cleveland asked Eszterhas to be keynote speaker next April when the American Adoption Congress convenes its annual conference here.

The coalition wants legislation to open records for adult adoptees so other Suzanne Perrymans will have an easier time finding their birth parents. States with open records, unlike Ohio, have higher adoption rates, research indicates.

Eszterhas wants Perryman at his side then, so both can tell their stories.

Here's the movie trailer:

Said Perryman: "He started out just being my friend. His attitude, it changed along the way, and I concluded that I really love this guy."

Said Eszterhas: "She is absolutely in my heart, and when your kids are inside your heart, they are never far from you."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

jewinger@plaind.com, 216-999-3905



©2008
© 2008 cleveland.com All Rights Reserved.

Thank you, Dad

© Photographer: Piksel | Agency: Dreamstime.com
Ok, now for the good stuff!!!!!

Here are the words on the card my natural father gave me!

"Daughter, You are My Precious Gift" (just think in reunion I can be a gift, not just in adoption)

This next part says it all:

"No one can count on the future or know what they someday might do.
But if I could have chosen a daughter, my heart would have reached out for you-
I'd have wished for your warm disposition and dreamed of your spirit and style, I'd have hoped for your love and affection, imagined your beautiful smile....

Life holds some gifts and surprises, and one of the best there could be
Is having a daughter as precious as the one who was given to me."

Happy Birthday, with All my love, Dad

And when he gave it to me he mentioned that he looked for the "right card". It was so special, I can't even express.