When Edward Di Gangi sat down with us, we knew we were about to embark on a journey unlike any other—a quest for identity that turns the pages of the past to illuminate the present. He mesmerizes us with his narrative, one that began with his adoption during a time known as the baby scoop era and flourished into an idyllic upbringing by his loving adoptive parents. His story, detailed in "A Gift Best Given," unravels the complexities of adoption experiences and society's evolving views on the practice, punctuated by his own positive outlook and the warm embrace of family bonds that extend beyond genetics.
The heart of Edward's tale lies in the artistic legacy of his biological mother, an aspiring professional ice skater with a story that could fill novels. With the scant details of an old document and the digital troves of Ancestry.com, Edward pieces together a rich tapestry of a life once hidden from him. It's a narrative punctuated by serendipitous encounters—from a photograph that finally puts a face to a name, to a visa application shedding light on her dreams and aspirations. As Edward reveals the intricate details of his mother's journey and the discoveries that led to his poignant book, our listeners are invited to witness how the convergence of past and present can enrich our understanding of self.
Our conversation culminates in the emotional resonance of family reunions and the revelation of long-held secrets, as Edward recounts his encounter with an elderly woman named Isabelle, who unknowingly held the missing pieces of his lineage. Through a treasure trove of memorabilia and the endearing discovery of a half-brother, Edward's personal history becomes a kaleidoscope of shared experiences, heartfelt connections, and the enduring question of what truly makes us who we are. This episode isn't merely about tracing lineage; it's a testament to the power of human connection and the relentless pursuit of one's story, which can bring unexpected closeness and a profound sense of belonging.
When it comes to the amplification of male adoptee voices, it is crucial to recognize the unique experiences and perspectives they bring to the table. Each male adoptees has a valuable role to play in helping to shape the narrative around adoption by providing insights into their own personal journeys. This last episode in the series which has us on a spectacular journey of meaningful conversations, were male adoptees have been empowered to share their stories, break down stereotypes, and contribute to a greater understanding of the adoption experience as a whole.
Find your people, cherish your people and love your people.
#adoptee #adoptees #adopteevoices #adopteestories #adopteestrong #adoptionreality #adopteejourney #adoption #wanderingtreeadoptee
When Edward Di Gangi sat down with us, we knew we were about to embark on a journey unlike any other—a quest for identity that turns the pages of the past to illuminate the present. He mesmerizes us with his narrative, one that began with his adoption during a time known as the baby scoop era and flourished into an idyllic upbringing by his loving adoptive parents. His story, detailed in "A Gift Best Given," unravels the complexities of adoption experiences and society's evolving views on the practice, punctuated by his own positive outlook and the warm embrace of family bonds that extend beyond genetics.
The heart of Edward's tale lies in the artistic legacy of his biological mother, an aspiring professional ice skater with a story that could fill novels. With the scant details of an old document and the digital troves of Ancestry.com, Edward pieces together a rich tapestry of a life once hidden from him. It's a narrative punctuated by serendipitous encounters—from a photograph that finally puts a face to a name, to a visa application shedding light on her dreams and aspirations. As Edward reveals the intricate details of his mother's journey and the discoveries that led to his poignant book, our listeners are invited to witness how the convergence of past and present can enrich our understanding of self.
Our conversation culminates in the emotional resonance of family reunions and the revelation of long-held secrets, as Edward recounts his encounter with an elderly woman named Isabelle, who unknowingly held the missing pieces of his lineage. Through a treasure trove of memorabilia and the endearing discovery of a half-brother, Edward's personal history becomes a kaleidoscope of shared experiences, heartfelt connections, and the enduring question of what truly makes us who we are. This episode isn't merely about tracing lineage; it's a testament to the power of human connection and the relentless pursuit of one's story, which can bring unexpected closeness and a profound sense of belonging.
When it comes to the amplification of male adoptee voices, it is crucial to recognize the unique experiences and perspectives they bring to the table. Each male adoptees has a valuable role to play in helping to shape the narrative around adoption by providing insights into their own personal journeys. This last episode in the series which has us on a spectacular journey of meaningful conversations, were male adoptees have been empowered to share their stories, break down stereotypes, and contribute to a greater understanding of the adoption experience as a whole.
Find your people, cherish your people and love your people.
#adoptee #adoptees #adopteevoices #adopteestories #adopteestrong #adoptionreality #adopteejourney #adoption #wanderingtreeadoptee
Welcome to Wandering Tree Podcast. I am your host, Lisa Am.
Speaker 2:I'm going to start seeing if I can find anybody. And you said you don't need to write it down. I just pushed the cart and across the table at me and said we've just been holding this for you, that's all yours.
Speaker 1:Welcome to today's episode. It's a pleasure to have with me to author and adoptee Edward DeGangy. He has penned a book named the Gift Best Given and he's going to share a little bit about his story with us. It's really interesting. The message around today is it's never too late to search and find things out about yourself. So welcome to the show, Edward. How are you today?
Speaker 2:I'm well. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you for joining us today. Why don't you go ahead and dive right in, get started with your story and tell us all the great and interesting points of? It's never too late to get started on your search.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's actually I come from probably a little bit of a different place than most of your listeners in in that, um, yeah, I'm now 75 years old. I was adopted in New York City in May of 1948. So I guess that was probably right in the beginning of what's you know, what's come to be known as the baby scoop era, and I I was very, very fortunate in that I my discovery later on was to find out that I was born to a woman who had a career and had resources and was able to manage her pregnancy and then the subsequent adoption. I guess the closest I could could equate what she did is to open adoption these days, in that she sat down and wrote down a list of what she hoped the people who adopted me would be able to provide me, and she hit it right on the head and it's a. It's a remarkable story in in those terms. So, in terms of it's never too late, I, you know I was, I was adopted into a family that could not have loved an adopted child any more than they would have loved a natural born child. And I, you know, and I I've heard some people say oh, you know, you're, you're doing the unicorn and balloons type of thing, and and I, I, I don't accept that, you know it's. We all have different experiences and I had a very idyllic childhood.
Speaker 2:I discovered somewhere early I'm thinking seven, eight years old that I was adopted and again, different than the current times is, it seemed like the the method back then was to not tell your child. And I was told eventually, or my wife was told by my birth, by my, by my adopted mother, that she was instructed to hold me and say you are a beautiful adopted child and we love you. And she obviously did that right up to the day where I had any memory of her doing it, because I don't recall that. But going through some papers, you know and I was very fortunate, my mother is meticulously organized person when she passed away she had a fireproof box with with documents in it and it was the deed to the house and the insurance policies and all of those things. And it was another envelope with my mother's name handwritten on it.
Speaker 2:And when I was a young child I looked in there and it wasn't until way later that I realized it was a copy of my adoption decree and that adoption decree was signed by both of my adoptive parents, by their attorney, whose name, remarkably, I remembered for years and years and years and years, and then another signature of a person who I didn't recognize, a woman, and it didn't mean a lot to me at the time. But I put the papers away and I think my you know, my eight year old mind was saying if my parents aren't talking about it to me, then it's not for me to go and ask them about it. And so I. I went through the rest of both my parents natural lives, never asking the question and, to the best of my recollection, they they never brought it up. I certainly know my father did not and I'm certain my mother did not either.
Speaker 1:And I find that interesting because you don't really fall in the category of I didn't really know. You've expressed, you had some indicators, you kind of really knew deep down and at the same time, you're not really late discovery but you have some late discovery type traits associated with that. It is very unique and you know how we approach these stories and these journeys and these experiences I also want to touch on I don't think there's anything wrong with also being happy with who you are and how you got to where you are. With whom you got to where you are. We can all have a different experience and I think that we have to start embracing a little bit of that side of our community as well which says, okay, you're, you had a great one and how fortunate.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I think that's. That's quite the fact. And you know, when you and I talked previously, we talked about the fact that there is a, the community which is online and you know, with social media, with the podcast, and essentially you know it's a, it's a. It's a community supporting itself and supporting individual stories and and sadly, not all of them are happy stories. I would say the majority of them are not. By the same token, I know for a fact there are, there are countless of them. There are countless adoptees out there who don't even know that social media and podcasts for adoptees exist and they're just kind of plodding along with their lives. Yeah, I spoke with them.
Speaker 2:Man, I went to a literary festival last week and there was a gentleman who read from his book and was there was quite a touching book, was not about his adoption but just about, you know, his family life and such. And at the end he said you know, he said I'm 73 years old and I'm unique because I started writing when I was old and he was 50. I started when I was 69. And he said and I was adopted at the time I was born. So afterwards, you know, I went and grabbed one of his books and I went to get it signed and I said I, you know, I'll challenge you when you're being old. I said I started writing at 69. And he kind of laughed and you know, and I said and I was also adopted at birth and you know, so we've we'd begun a conversation now and he's yeah, he just he's a very accomplished academic. He's now retired and you know, and we talked very briefly about the adoption he said it was just, it was a fact of my life. He said I went to good people and I just went on with my life. So I don't feel like I'm unique and I don't feel like that's a unique situation out there.
Speaker 2:So, to kind of get forward a little bit, you know, I had this. I had this idyllic childhood. I my parents passed away. My father passed away in the 1970s, when I was 28,. My mom passed away in the 1980s, when I was just about to turn 40. But I just sort of plotted on and I never really had any kind of strong impetus to to go searching for anything to do with my, you know, biological parentage.
Speaker 2:But in 2017, my wife and I had moved her parents down here to North Carolina from New Jersey and they arrived in compromised health and in in fairly short order.
Speaker 2:Her mom had passed away and then six months later her dad passed away and we were up in New Jersey to enter his ashes and, coincidentally, this cemetery where we were doing this was very close by to a Russian Orthodox cemetery where my adoptive mother's family were all entered and, thinking it may be the last time we were ever in that area, we went over to the cemetery and you know, and I saw the people who I knew as aunts and as uncles these are all adopted family and I was standing over the grave of my adopted grandfather and adopted grandmother and something said if you're ever going to do this, you know, start now.
Speaker 2:But but where I went I was, I was reading a book and I had read it a couple of times already, a book by Daniel Mendelssohn called the Lost and it's the search for six of six million. And Mendelssohn went on a worldwide journey. He went around the world twice looking for people who knew the precise circumstances of the death of six distant relatives in the Holocaust. He was not satisfied knowing that they died in the Holocaust. He wanted to know where they were, when they were and how it occurred. And he wrote this fabulous, fabulous book and I recommend it to everybody with a with an interest in genealogy, if it doesn't stir you and nothing ever will. But I had read that book and it was. I was still kind of digesting and standing over my grandparents graves and I I said this is a good time. If he could do that, I could do something similar, even though nobody was going to fund two trips around the world to do that.
Speaker 1:Wasn't going to happen for you, huh.
Speaker 2:No, that wasn't. That wasn't taking place, that, you know, not that weekend. So when we got back here to North Carolina, I went to our local library, I got on the onto ancestrycom and I put in my adoptive grandparents names and got a wealth of information that came back, things I never knew from family stories. And I was sitting there and I was thinking, okay, if it's this easy, I wonder how hard it would be to find out where I came from biologically, what my heredity was. And I knew that piece of paper was still sitting at home in that same metal box.
Speaker 2:So I folded up my notebook, drove home, got out that envelopes, pulled it out and there was the name you know, and I looked at it and by then I knew that that name had to be the person who, who had surrendered me for adoption. So I wrote it down, I got back in the car, went back to the library and I typed it in, you know, and it was a. It was a Polish name, genevieve Narowski, and I had always assumed that my birth mother was a high school girl who got into trouble and, you know, got pregnant and her parents found out and sent her someplace and the baby was taken from her, and that was that's what I always assumed. So I plugged her name into ancestry and I kind of sat there with my finger over the entry button and said how far do you really want to go with this?
Speaker 1:Well, it's a tough decision, right? I mean it really is. You had an aha moment. You started and enacted and started moving, and then you're now here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'd got 69 years and it hadn't mattered, and yeah. So suddenly today was going to be the D day, so I pressed the button on it and I got a screen full of information. You know, there were those, the 1930 census and the 1940 census and some other various things. That kind of went down with my finger and I looked at you and because everything had dates on it, and I found a document that was dated 10 months after my birth, I thought that was interesting. What was even more interesting is it was a visa application to travel from Miami, florida, to Rio de Janeiro, and that just absolutely puzzled me. You know, I couldn't imagine what the high school girl who got into trouble and got sent away was doing in Rio, unless they were really sending her away.
Speaker 1:She was really getting the punishment and you know yeah they were banishing her, so you know.
Speaker 2:So I said, let me do that one first. I said that's the one closest to my birth date and I was amazed. This application came up and it's written in Portuguese, which is a language in Brazil, but it was all completed in English and it had her name and her birthday and I found out that she was. She was 23 years old, not 20, not a high school girl, and it showed her parents' names and it showed her birth date and such and it also listed as her occupation or her prophecy that she was an artista. And that puzzled me because I didn't know what kind of an artista. And by the time I came home and talked to my wife, we had like a list a mile long of what kind of artista she might have been going to Rio.
Speaker 2:But you know, the other remarkable thing was is, you know, one sheet was the application, the other sheet was her photograph, and I just sat there and I looked and I looked all around me like I wonder if anybody is looking at this and nobody would have cared, but it was. It was fairly amazing and I sent that photograph back via email to my email account and I hustled home and I got home and I told my wife I said do you want to see a picture of my mother? And she said we've got lots of pictures of your mother. I said no, not this one. And that's kind of where the whole process began, the whole journey, and the journey went on for the better part of three years, from 2017 into 2020, and then the subsequent publication was a gift best given.
Speaker 1:Well, I think you realize in this, edward, that you are one of the fortunate people that had access to records, and how fortunate you were that your adopted parents kept all that material in a fire safe box. That's phenomenal. A lot of us do not have those.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a gold mine.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, and it just kind of accelerated what you were able to accomplish in a short time, as it relates to at least the identification of your birth mother. So tell us a little bit about her, tell us a little bit about the artista.
Speaker 2:Well, it took a little bit of searching because I found that she had left New York City, where she was born and she lived as she grew up as a teenager, and probably a 15-minute bus ride from where I lived growing up as a preteen. So we were really very close several times. What I learned is she had been an ice skater and her dream was to become a celebrity performer, professional performer, and she traveled from New York City Grand Central Station in November of 1942 alone across the country by train in the midst of World War II to join an ice skating troop in Vancouver, in Vancouver, british Columbia, and for the next five years she kind of crisscrossed the country with different organizations and performing in different places before she unexpectedly became pregnant and returned home where she essentially hid out. She came from a conservative Catholic family and nobody in the family knew, with the exception of her eldest sister and her sister's husband and I think I said it earlier, I was. So she was gifted with the fact she she had had a quickly accelerating career. She had resources, so she was able to sublet an apartment from a friend and basically hide out there and manage her pregnancy at a hospital that catered to individuals trying to maintain discretion in their privacy.
Speaker 2:And I remember as a kid asking my adoptive father where was I born, where's the hospital? And he kept on sort of saying I said it's a little hospital in New York. It's not there anymore. And my thought as a kid was there is nothing little in New York and hospitals just don't go away. What I ultimately found out is it was a little hospital and it didn't go away, but that's that's where she managed her pregnancy and she, for the couple of weeks prior to giving birth, remained in the hospital there and what was, you know? It's almost like a guest suite. And then ultimately was there until she gave birth. My adoptive parents arrived on the scene the second day of my life. She remained there a couple of weeks afterwards and then went home, went back to her private apartment and then ultimately went back and reunited with her, with her brother and sisters and mother and father and grandparents, and started managing the secret.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that that's a perfect way to segue into another really interesting component of your story. You spoke earlier of having a picture from the library during the search on ancestrycom, but you also stumbled on some additional, I'd say, memorabilia, yeah right Material regarding your birth mother, and this story, when we talked previously, fascinated me. From the perspective of you can't make this stuff.
Speaker 2:Okay, you just can't.
Speaker 2:This has been a succession of yeah, it's serendipity a succession of coincidences and kindness from total strangers. As I said, my mother went to Vancouver, british Columbia. When she got there, the people she was skating with insisted that, for simplicity, in the newspaper, she adopt a stage name. So Genevieve Norowski, the 17-year-old girl, turned into Genevieve Naras, and I would search for Genevieve Norowski, couldn't find her. Genevieve Norowski couldn't find her and ultimately I came across two blogs online, coincidentally, both of them from Antiques dealers. One of them was in South Carolina and she talked about how she had attended an auction in 2012. And she had pictures of these huge objects you know, giraffes, elephants, an eagle with a 10-foot wingspan and she and her partner bought these all up because they were highly sought after as folk art. But in this blog post, which was actually an online Antiques magazine, she explained that Genevieve Norowski had become Genevieve Naras and, along with her husband, who she married several years after I was born, been professional ice skaters and ultimately, after retiring, had opened a company that created props for ice skating shows and theatrical events and commercial purposes, and that's what this auction was of of items that they had created. But now I had something new I had Genevieve Naras Ice Skater, and I also had her husband's name, which was MESA, so I had Genevieve Naras Norowski, mesa. In a common.
Speaker 2:In trying combinations, I put in Genevieve Naras Ice Skater and a second blog post came up. This one had about half a dozen photographs of my birth mother. It had a copy of her middle school diploma. It had a copy of her first professional contract, and the blog post basically said you know the the woman who had posted this was at an antisoction in Atlanta in 2012,. So the same auction had seen a carton of memorabilia you know, just photographs and a scrapbook and some other documents and, knowing nothing about who they belong to, just said it was a glamorous age and a glamorous person.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna buy it and I would think she probably paid very, very little for it. It was just a carton of stuff. So I, you know, I saw that now, this 2017, as I'm viewing this, so it's five years after the auction and I'm thinking, you know, she's an antiques dealer. These things are a long gone. I had already contacted the people with the big pieces and they were long gone Because I had a vision of that 10-foot eagle. They went bang. My wife is very thankful I never found it.
Speaker 1:I could just see it right now behind place.
Speaker 2:I've got the place, but I I Located this woman, the second dealer, online on Facebook and I sent her a message saying I'm exploring a possible family Relationship. I saw your blog and I'd be very interested to know if you still have those items, and I didn't think there was a prayer and I was hoping she would answer me at all. Within 10 minutes she sent me a message back and she said I'm really very busy now, but yes, I do have them. I'd love to talk to you. I'll call you later.
Speaker 2:One day went by, two days, three days, four days, and after a Week I sort of had the feeling that you know, later was going to to not come. So I sent her another message and this time I said the photos you have in the documents, all are of my birth mother, I was adopted in 1948 and within five minutes she called back. She you know, this time she didn't message. She called and she apologized. I said I just forgot. She said but you need to come to Atlanta right now and you know we're in North Carolina. But a better week later my wife and I drove to Atlanta and this woman and her husband came walking into the hotel lobby, the woman carrying the carton and the husband Coming in carrying a sword and shield sort of Allah mutant ninja turtles.
Speaker 2:You know, and everybody's kind of looking at him. And I've got that. I wish I could do something with a camera. I've got the sword and shield hanging outside, you know.
Speaker 2:So we sat down, we went through this carton and and there was a stack of photographs of other ice skaters and all of them were autographed to my birth mother and saying, you know, to the greatest partner ever and you know, good luck. And and the last one I found was from a woman, a really really beautiful woman, and she would have been in her early 20s at that point. She said to the best roommate ever love Izzy. And I said if anybody's and be able to tell me anything about my mother, and if anyone could tell me who my father might have been and I hadn't, I'd never had any interest in who my father was I Said it's Izzy.
Speaker 2:But I was yeah, I was taking notes and you know, and the, the dealer's husband, said what are you doing? And I told him. I said you know, just writing down these names and I'm gonna start seeing if I could find anybody. And he said you Don't need to write it down. He just pushed the carton across the table at me and said we've just been holding this for you. That's all yours and they just gave it to us and you know. So at the very bottom of the carton was a picture of my mother skating with some other teenage girls in 1942 as amateurs to raise money for the for the World War two bond effort. And then that's where she Essentially was discovered, and they, you know, and her ice skating career started right there. And again, it was interesting because all the Margins had been clipped off the paper, so I didn't have any clue where, where it came from.
Speaker 1:Ultimately I found that I found her right to the paper and right to the date well, what I love about this story, edward, is the fact that the most random thing brought you to a treasure trove of information and To just meet people who picked up something because it kind of looked interesting. But more importantly, I love the fact it just kind of warms my heart a little bit that they gave it to you. They weren't asking you to buy this material, and you know just what a heartwarming Component to have a the husband of the you know this a couple to say we've been holding it for you. I know there's a little bit more to that story about you and that couple. So it's not like you guys just ding dong, ditch, like we're in the hotel here. You go away, we go. You guys are still, still connected, correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've remained. We've remained good friends. You know, with COVID we've not been able to, to you know, to travel as much as we had, but last year I traveled from North Carolina to Texas to talk with a book club. That's a long way to go to talk to a book club, but this was kind of special circumstances. But we, we purposely routed ourselves through Atlanta so we could overnight there on the way back and meet them for dinner. And yeah, I think the thing I should really point out is, after you push the carton over to me, and so we've just been holding this, they then took us out to dinner. Yeah, I said, and I want to, yeah, I wanted to pay. He had already gone, sort of snuck off. I thought he went to the men's room.
Speaker 1:He went me paid, gave somebody his credit card so there wouldn't be a, wouldn't be a discussion what I like about your story is that your community Extended outside of the adoptee community as well and you've had such a positive experience Associated with that, which will give others some hope, that it doesn't always go that way. And I get in your circumstance. It's almost this is almost like your uniform and you know some of the things that went down and and I know you know that and and you're sensitive to that for other other adoptees let's move forward a little bit in your story because it does not end with. You know you get all this memorabilia. You actually start going the next level and trying to find Living, living relatives and I want to know did you actually connect up with Izzy?
Speaker 2:We did. I, yeah, I went through that stack and I went through it name by name and you know, and given the ages and number of the women were Deceased, some others were just just couldn't find them. And when I got to Izzy, you know I searched and I did is a Isabelle Smith ice skater, and I didn't find her directly. But I found an obituary for, you know, for men who is like a very, very prominent officer during World War two and and occupied Italy and all sorts of things, but kind of almost in small print at the bottom of the obituary he survived by his wife, isabelle. Yeah, his wife of 50 years, professional ice skater. We shipped that in Johnson's ice follies. So I still couldn't find Isabelle but I knew, at least up to a certain date, that she was alive. And it gave the name for two sons.
Speaker 2:I Randomly picked one. One was, I think, somewhere in Iowa perhaps, and the other one was in many in Minnesota, which sounded like ice skating country to me. So I reached out to him, I sent him a letter and one of the things I did with all of the letters that I sent to people is I hand wrote them just Because it. I thought it would look less like some sort of crazy man or a scam. And to this letter I attached a picture of photo stata of my mother and a photo stata of the picture of his mother. So I was happy because the letter didn't come back as undeliverable or anything.
Speaker 2:And a week or so later the phone rang and it was him and he said mama's alive. I showed her the pictures and she was tickled to death. She's really excited, she wants to talk to you. And I was tickled to death and really excited and wanted to talk to Isabelle. And he must have since my elation because he said I just need to caution you about one thing. And then, yeah, then he had to hear the sigh and he said you know, he said mom is in a memory care facility, but the good news is mom doesn't know what she had for breakfast this morning, but she can give you a recitation of every minute of 1947. He gave me mom's contact information, he gave me the switchboard number for the for the facility and you know.
Speaker 2:And then when you get that person Asked for the nurse, and you know in such and such a place and they'll go and get mom, you know. So we went through the process and I'm waiting and all of a sudden there's mom on the phone. There's is about right in alert and I kind of introduced myself and she said this is so remarkable. I saw those pictures. She said it brings back so many memories and I said well, I said I would like to ask you some questions, but I know it's kind of unfair to ask somebody who's 92 about what happened to them in 1947. And there is a pause. She said who told you on 92?
Speaker 1:the things we care about right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I kept. I sort of just sat quietly and she said I'm 88 and I'm quick, doing Math on my fingers, saying if she was 88, she was 12 years old when she was skating, which I learned is not impossible. But then she said, as a matter of fact, I'm 85 and I just left it there. You know, we we kind of left it that way and we had a conversation that went on probably the better part of an hour. I guess the key to it is, she said I didn't realize your mother was pregnant. I don't know who she dated, so I learned some more about my mother and her nature and the kind of person she was.
Speaker 2:And as we came to the end of the of the discussion, yeah, I. I said you know what I said I've got some airline miles and I've got some hotel points. And I said, yes, I said let me look into this and maybe at some point we'll come to visit. And she said, well, that would be wonderful. And then she like paused again and she said now, how old did you say you were? I said, well, I'm 16. I'm 69. She said, well, I'm 65, you know.
Speaker 1:She got younger every hour. Yes, oh, she was.
Speaker 2:I should have skipped on the phone. She would have been a newborn, but we did go out there, we did visit with Isabelle and we spent the better part of four and a half five hours with her. That's fantastic she had some real scrapbooks with her and we had a wonderful time. She's the kind of person if you know, if we live nearby. She's the kind of person you want to go and visit on Sundays, because she'd be the closest thing you could have to a grandma.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so sweet, that really is a nice story. Well, let's fast forward now a little bit, because it certainly doesn't end there. So you take the information that she has you kind of hit a wall. You don't have, you know, anything really to move forward on the paternal side. What was your next step?
Speaker 2:I found my mother's name at several different addresses in a, in a specific area of Georgia, south of Atlanta, and I would hand write a letter and I send it off and letters are all coming back as undeliverable Not at this address, never at this address, will never be at this address. And I eventually found a man online and I very distant relationship to a, to a woman who I learned later that my maternal half brother had married in the early 1980s and he's you know. I found him and he was on ancestry and I reached out to him and he was. He again came back, very helpful and he said to the best of my knowledge, your mother is no longer alive and I think your brother. There's a brother and I think he was in an accident. I don't know where he is. This is not terribly helpful, but via that that second antique Steelers blog I found a name of somebody who said he had been a neighbor and a friend to the person who turned out to be my maternal half brother. So I reached out to him and he came back and he said you know, no number one, your, your mother is not alive. I sang at her memorial memorial ceremony and two year brother was in a calamitous fire and is in a rehab facility but will be getting out soon. He gave me an address for the rehab facility where my brother was.
Speaker 2:So I again wrote letters. Never got a response to the letter. I explained that to him. I said I sent a letter explaining. It didn't get anything back. If you could get him to call me, I'd really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:You know, within the week the phone rang and there's this person who turns out to be my half-brother and we had a very nice conversation. He kind of explained to me his mother had died in 2014. And then he said well, tell me again, what kind of kin are we? You and I have the same mother and there was kind of a moment's silence. He said well, I have to go now. He said but I'll call you back. I have to go and I take my wife for a walk, kind of like the, the antique dealer. I'll call you later. Turned into weeks.
Speaker 2:So I got back to his friend again, said I haven't heard from Ted. Could you give him a nudge? And he called back again. He said I'm getting out of here in the next two or three days and I said yeah. I said I would really like to come down and meet you at some point once you're moved. He said that's a good thing, he said, but I just wanted to ask you again what kind of kin are we? And once again, I explained it. So you know, to jump forward a little bit, we ultimately, in September of 2017, we met him and it was good.
Speaker 2:You know, he was obviously nervous and we were a little bit, and we were staying in a nearby hotel and before I left I brought a copy of my adoption decree and by then I seen enough of my mother's things to know the signature was hers and to know that he would know when he saw it.
Speaker 2:So I handed it to him. I said this is the document where your mother gave me up to these other people as their child. And he kind of looked at it and the friend who had put us together was there as well and you know, my brother handed him the paper, you know, and Kevin, god bless and looked at it and just didn't know what to say, just sort of shrugged his shoulders and handed it back and my you know my brother was going to hand it back to me. I said it's a photo stat and I said so, keep it if it means anything to you. You know his, his thing was well I guess every woman has a secret, and you know his. His mama had a secret and I think he he's so idealized his mother. He had her on a pedestal, which I think is a beautiful thing. Just could not initially fathom that she could have had a child and then kind of gone on with this carrying the secret through life.
Speaker 1:I like when we talk about the reunions and some of the aspects of when we first meet a family member, and I find it very interesting that when we do that we are also talking about their reactions to meeting us, how that may come across to us as rejection or secondary rejection and that happens, that absolutely happens. But I'm empathetic to the other side of that conversation, who you just spoke of, a woman who you know had really quite a fabulous life and, in the grand scheme of things, some great stories that went with that and had a son, and you know she was up on a pedestal. And now here you are. I'm just thinking through my head what it's like to be on the other side of that conversation. I mean through it all. Even though he was hesitant, it sounds like he kept coming back for just a little bit more. He just really needed some affirmation somewhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, it wasn't until later and I looked at it. I had thought over and over, if my mother is still alive, how would I approach her? With an eye toward being delicate and just realizing 70 years later it becomes quite the shock. When I found that that she was not alive, I stopped quite thinking that way and just kind of barged into my brother's life. I just kind of stepped in and there was no rejection. He just could not wrap his head around it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just such a different perspective. Yeah, absolutely. You talked a little bit about your adoption decree. I believe you've kind of mentioned that you had some information associated with your original birth certificate at some point in time, and so in any of that material was there a recognition of who the father was there?
Speaker 2:was not and that was, I think in the era was very, very typical. I was a summer romance. I was the product of a summer romance.
Speaker 1:So I do want to ask though did we make a connection to your paternal family? I don't know if we've chatted about that.
Speaker 2:No, we have not and as little as I thought about who my birth mother had been. I gave virtually no thought to who my father might have been. Yeah, when I was still in the mode where she was a high school girl, I had him as the guy who pumped gas at the gas station, and that turned out not to be the case either. Before I got on to this search, before that February, when I decided I'm going to go looking at that, previous Christmas I bought two DNA kits, one for myself, one for my wife and I just wanted to know. You know what my background was, and I got my pie chart back which said I was probably about 70% Eastern European and then kind of random slices of Northern European.
Speaker 2:And then I went over and I looked at my living up my thousand closest relatives that they sent me. The one at the top of the list was listed as first cousin, close family, and I knew you know from all my research by then that he was not on my mother's side, that was not a maternal name, and they had a family tree with that 600 people on it. His father was an only child. His mother had five sisters and a brother. So I said, okay, if he is my. If this man who I match on DNA is my cousin, then this one last person who's his uncle, must be my father.
Speaker 2:So I'm pretty excited, you know, really, you know, hadn't having gone from never thought of it to well, look what I found and the logic with uncle Harris seems, seems to hold water. So I thought I'd done all this great logic and I made a discovery. And it wasn't a spit in a tube. And look what I found. That's the price you pay for waiting until you're 69 to go looking for your parents. So you know, I found a brother, and and which was what a, yeah, what a sweet thing to tell somebody you don't even really know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but as we wrap up here a little bit, I think that your real message and and just to continue to articulate that is, you didn't have a boundary based off of the age and you, granted, may have had one of the more well-faved golden path roads to getting your information, and I know you recognize it's not the norm, but I do know you also want to encourage people to look in the not so obvious places for information. Do you want to give us a little bit more on that as well?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, there's a lot of material that's online and certainly you know you're at an advantage if you know anything. If you don't know anything, that's really you don't know what to search for. If you can pick a little piece and go to work on it, they, it starts to get bigger. You know that the little satellite turns larger. You know, I think, ask questions and you know and it's, if you don't ask the questions you won't find any answers, and so I guess that's that's the one thing I can really put out there. If you, if you've got a name to work with google, the hell out of it.
Speaker 2:And if you know, if you haven't done DNA and you're really interested, do it now yeah, I would agree yeah, because more and more people are doing it and if, if you can't figure out your results, but you see somebody who even looks remotely like a close relative, go get some help with it. There are all sorts of search angels, you know. So it's, it's certainly doable there. You know, dna has just brought us to a place. There are very few secrets left out there anymore, like it or not yeah, yeah, I would agree with that.
Speaker 1:I would absolutely agree with that.
Speaker 2:I think pretty much everything matters, everything really does, and you know, you just hear the stories and you know, one little piece opens the door and it goes from there well.
Speaker 1:I have found our conversation to be very encouraging for others. I want to thank you for being on today's episode. It has been a pleasure. Before we sign off, I want to restate the name of your book. It is called the gift best given, so go out and check that out. It has been a fantastic conversation with you today here on the podcast. I just want to say thank you so much for joining us and opening up to other adoptees, but also opening up as a a gentleman in our community it was a pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me thank you for listening to today's episode.
Speaker 1:Make sure to rate, review and share. Want to join the conversation? Contact us at wanderingtreeadoptedcom.