The Search for His Mother’s Past Led to a Shocking Discovery

What happens when your search for family stretches across decades, dead ends, sealed records, and fading hope?

In part two of this deeply personal conversation, Corey and Kendall continue their discussion with author and journalist Paul T. O'Connor. Together, they explore the emotional realities of adoption, foster care, identity, and the lifelong impact of family secrecy.

Kendall shares stories from his years-long search for his biological family, including placing newspaper ads in Arkansas long before consumer DNA testing existed, petitioning courts for records, and trying to piece together his origins from fragments of information. The conversation also dives into the strange experience of finally meeting biological relatives and seeing physical similarities reflected back for the first time.

Paul opens up further about his mother’s history in foster care, the disappearance of critical records, and how secrecy and stigma shaped generations of families. It’s an honest conversation about grief, resilience, truth, and the complicated reality that love for adoptive family and curiosity about biological roots can exist at the same time.

Paul’s new book, The Missing Child: The Life She Lived and the Life She Missed, published by Torchflame Books, is available beginning May 26 through bookstores and online retailers.

If you’re part of the adoptee, NPE, donor-conceived, or DNA surprise community, this episode will likely feel very familiar.

Transcript

Corey 0:00

Welcome back to Family Twist. I'm Corey, and this is part two of the conversation with author and journalist Paul T. O'Connor. You've heard part one. You already know Paul has lived through an unbelievable family story. And in this episode, the conversation really settles into something I think a lot of people in our communities are going to recognize. Kindle talks about spending decades trying to find answers, from petitioning courts to placing newspaper ads in Arkansas, long before DNA testing changed everything. There's also a lot in here about identity, about growing up adopted, about feeling connected to the people who raised you while still wondering where certain pieces of yourself came from. And trust me, Kendall has thoughts on finally meeting people he actually resembles after years of hearing, oh, you look just like your parents, when he clearly did not. Paul also shares more about his mother's story, foster care, old records disappearing, and how much damage secrecy caused for so many families back then. It's one of those conversations where everybody's story is different, but the emotions underneath it are really familiar. Before we jump back in, don't forget Paul's book, The Missing Child, The Life She Lived and The Life She Missed, comes out on May 26, 2026. We'll have links in the show notes. Alright, here's part two.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

How do you blame the kid for being born to his mother? You have to be born to your mother. You can't, as you're coming out the door, you can't say, I want to go somewhere else.

Kendall 1:28

I know. I've always felt, as soon as I found out that my birth mother, you know, was forced to give me up. Oh, she was. Yes. Yeah. The story goes in in both families that that my father and she, even though they were ridiculously young, wanted to stay together, wanted to raise me. You know, I don't know if they wanted to get married, maybe so. And all of that was a non-starter. It was like, nope, you're gonna give this baby away, and we're never gonna talk about it again.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

This is about 1970, correct?

Kendall 2:04

Yep, yep. And that's the story. My mother's younger sister, who has been really good to me, um, told me that once she remembered, of course, my aunt would have been like 13 when I was born. She, of course, remembered all of that, but she said, we didn't talk about you again in the household. It was it was not to be discussed. And and my mother continued that because to your previous point, none of her other children knew about me. Her husband did, but you know, that was before his time, you know, with with her. So it's it's it it's a dichotomy. It's so interesting to me how my birth father's family has always been looking for me, and my birth mother's family was not. And so, which is why I mean, I don't have the opportunity to live close to my birth mother's family, but it's why I was so drawn to New England to come and be near my dad and be near my two half siblings here and their children. No, it's just been a wonderful thing.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

Now, are your what I'm gonna call your real parents?

Kendall 3:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Because I I believe that the people who raise you are your parents. Yes. Are your real parents receptive to all this or were they?

Kendall 3:32

A little bit nervous. No, not at all. Um, first of all, they died very young. I was 10 when my mother passed, and 16 when my dad did. Oh, so but before my mother passed, I remember her. She she had been ill for four years. So she knew she was going to die. I didn't as a 10-year-old. But she sat me down not long before she died and said, Kendall, if you have the opportunity to ever connect with your biological family, please do it. You know, and so I knew I had her support. And then after she passed away, my dad and I would talk about it a lot, you know, like, oh, you know, we'll I'll help. He he would say to me, I'll help you find them, you know, and we tried, and um when we petitioned the court to have the records, you know, released and all of those things. And of course, back then they were not going to do that. And in fact, the man who had handled my adoption for my parents was was an attorney, of course, and he had become a prominent judge in my home county. And I even, when I turned 18, I went to his office because he was a family friend. He came to my parents' parties and everything. And I remember going to his office saying, Hey, I know you have details. Could you slip them to me? He's like, Well, I'd rather not be disbarred, you know. I can't, I can't do that. But he was very empathetic and you know, he hoped the best for me. And so I really had very few details. I just had my adoption paperwork, which gave my birth name, my birth date, and the hospital in which I was born in. That's what I used as a an instrument to try to find my family for the next 30 years. I think by the time I turned 40, I don't want to say I had given up, but I was just over it. I was I was sick of trying, you know, to find people. And it was just one dead end after another. And uh and I even tell the story how when I turned 18, I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. And with the hope that anybody from my my birth family would still be around there 18 years later, I put like half-page ads in their newspapers saying my birth name was Scott White. I was born on July 14th, you know, trying to connect with. The irony is that I know now that my biological grandparents, my mother's parents lived in Little Rock. It's a very good chance that they saw those ads. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Well, you already had the birth certificate, so there was yeah, the going into vital records wouldn't have done you.

Kendall 6:24

When my parents legally, so my parents took custody of me when I was two months old. But in the arc in Arkansas back then, they had to wait nine months before the adoption could go through. And so in June of 71 is when my adoption legally I became Kendall. And but they of course called me that from the moment they laid eyes on me. But um the document that they were given in June of 71 said that they were the people who produced me in July. Oh my goodness. I just I that gives me the creeps. I just like, I how do you lie about, yeah, that this woman who'd never given birth to a child in her life gave birth to me 11 months earlier? Come on. So I always knew that that information was completely false. I assume that the time of the day and you know, the like that that all that those details are probably fine. But and I and I do know that, you know, I was born in the hospital now that is l literally listed on that. But ironically, hopefully in the next few days, um, we're receiving my original birth certificate. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, which I've never had. I don't even know if my father is on it because he didn't know whether he was on it. Because he was living in Massachusetts, and my mother was then in Arkansas. And yeah, so it'll be really interesting to see. So, because Arkansas finally released the records.

SPEAKER_02 8:00

The records, in my case, the records worked kind of for me and against me. My mother was never adopted. She was put in the Catholic orphanage, and she stayed there for 12 months, and then this Irish woman, Irish keeps and her husband from New Haven, traveled the 35 miles north, and they took her as a foster child. Well, they immediately dropped the name Irina and started calling her Charlotte. And so they came back, and my mother had this very loving pair of older parents, 45 years old at the time. But six or seven years later, we had one of those flu epidemics come through, and it killed my it killed her mother, Anna Fraser. And so just before she died, Anna said to her niece, will you take in my daughter? Will you take in Charlotte? And Richard, a bur that's her married name, did take in my mother and and treated her like Cinderella. Yeah, which was not so she was responsible for taking care of the two little girls. One was a newborn and one was three. Well, those two women grew up as my mother's sisters, as tight as can be. Where this helped me genealogically is that foster records aren't sealed. So my mother in 1939 or 1941 and 40. New Haven is a big hub for defense industries, and my mother was this beautiful woman. As you can probably figure, since my I'm so good looking. Um that's a joke. She was probably wanting to get married, so she had to be able to prove who she was. So she she got she went up to Catholic charities or Catholic Family Services, I forget what it was called at the time, and they provided her not only with her birth certificate but with uh a document or two documents saying this is the same person. And she was then able to use that to get a job, you know, in a defense factory, saying, proving that she's an American citizen, and she was able to use it to get married and and all of that so that way her being a foster child really helped me. The records were open. The problem was Connecticut has no law on the preservation, or its law on preservation of foster records is considerably laxer than it is for adoption records. Had she been adopted, all of her records would have been open to me in 2017 when I went looking for them because they have to be preserved for a hundred years, and that was 99 years. But the the people at at Catholic charities in Hartford who are just amazingly helpful. And they went and they looked through this warehouse and they didn't they found just one little clue for me, and they said, We ran out of space about five years ago, and we threw out a bunch of records, and I'm afraid years were some of them. Otherwise, I would have the whole story of her being put in foster foster care twice with you know that it was continuous anyways. So that's my story. Um all these stories, I mean I I I breezed through a number of your your podcasts and reading some of the the dialogue, and it's just amazing what people go through in life.

Kendall 12:20

It is, it is, and just thankfully how many, many people come out and they're still resilient and uh and you know, doing good good work with what they have had to deal with. I I feel overwhelmingly fortunate. I really do. From my adoptive parents, you know, to my finding my biological family, it's been overwhelmingly positive. I mean, I'm Corey and I, you know, up sticks and move 2,600 miles to be near people, you know. It's and Corey wanted that for me. I mean, yeah, you know, we'd been together since 2005, and he said, I there's something missing, you know, because I didn't have that piece of the puzzle. Biologically, it's so great to actually finally look like people. You know, it's it's amazing because um I often tell the the joke about how my parents looked physically very different. My father, Dart, had had some Native American, you know, ancestry in their black hair. My mother was alabaster white with auburn hair, and I was this little blonde-haired kid between them, you know. And I I I didn't look like either of them, but it was comical because they would run into friends that they hadn't seen, you know, in years in our little town or wherever. And they'd say, Oh, this is our son Kendall. And undoubtedly the person who's meeting me is like, oh, I can see he looks just like and even as a three-year-old, I'd be stop. I do not I do not look like these people, and it's okay. That's a great story. And they embraced that. They they it was fine. You know what I mean? Like we didn't need to look like each other, but it is now that I've met people that I actually do resemble, it's like, oh gosh, you just are shocked.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

Well, the the interesting thing about these found cousins of mine is they're so different. Well, the politically, and I won't get into politics, but politically, it's amazing that we argue as to how much uh I shouldn't say it this way, we're astounded by how much we think alike. So if we have a difference, it's on the most minuscule one particular cousin who was the law partner of a very good friend of mine. So yeah, that was that was uh that was another coincidence, but they don't look anything like me. And I I I I think that I kind of look like my mother's two sisters from her chosen family. For sure, for sure.

Kendall 15:13

And to your point that you made when we first got on the call, I used to joke, knowing that I was adopted, I used to joke with every uh person I dated as a teenager. I'd be like, okay, so let me just I was born in Little Rock. Please tell me you weren't that, you know, thinking only three hours from there. You know, I don't want to be dating anybody that I'm related to. You know, just it was just comical, but it was something that was a very real thought. It was like, hmm, that's gross.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

I don't want to be real purple fuck. That's one burden. So my sister's two children and one of my best friends, his two children, they're Korean because back in the early 80s, that was very that was an easy path, somewhat easy path towards getting getting children. My sister from from the the get-go had this big support network in the Boston area of Korean American children and their families. And I think that's a big part of why my my niece and nephew are so well adjusted. Uh, another is is that I have a sister who's remarkable. And as my my nephew once said to his sister, we hit a home run with this with getting this mother, which is a nice way of putting it.

Kendall 16:36

Yeah. So is there any way I can get a plug-in from my book? Worse, of course. And we're gonna put all that information in the show notes.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

The missing child, the life she lived, and the life she missed by Paul T. O'Connor, tribute to my uncle Ted, who was after my father died, he was essentially one of my three uncles who became my father's. I had I was raised with three, with a pretty much absent father until I was 11 when he died, and these three uncles took over. And I got to go to more ball games and more good stuff. It was great. Taught me how to play hockey. So it's the life she lived in and the life she missed. It's by Torch Flame Publishing Company out of San Diego, and it's available as of May 26th at your local bookstore or online. But I, you know, when I found this podcast, and there were there were a couple of others in the same genre, uh, I didn't get up with any of those people. But I just think it's so valuable for people who have this hanging over their head. I wish my mother could have listened to this. Yeah. They have podcasts in 1994 when she died. But if she could have listened to your conversations in quarries, it would have been so so helpful. Well, this stigma is so stupid.

Kendall 18:04

It is. And it's sad when people think that one action that many years ago could haunt them for so long. You know, it's it's tragic. And people need to tell the truth. Yeah, I can't ever be ashamed of the way I was created. I mean, was it common? No, probably not. You know, I'm still here, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:28

Kendall, I think it's more common than you think.

Kendall 18:30

Well, true, true. But I mean, it, you know, it's funny because my mother, my adoptive mother would say to me, because she they truly didn't know any of the circumstances of my birth. My mother would say to me, Well, you know, your mother may have been super young, which is what was true of that. And they just said, you know, lots of people are judgmental about girls having babies. And she said, you know, that's okay because we got you as a result. But and ironically, that's exactly what the story was. My fear all those years while I was looking is that I was hoping that either one of my birth parents hadn't died. And, you know, I'm I'm fortunate that they hadn't. I haven't gotten to meet my birth mother, but at least, you know, the possibility's still there, she's still alive. But that always went through my mind as a possibility. Like they could not be around, you know. But if I ever do find them, maybe they won't still be living.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

Well, my mother never had any interest at all. And I remember asking her once, and I'm hoping this is a real memory and not just something that I've made up in my in my memory. And she said, Oh, I don't care about those people. She was bitter about it. Yeah. I understand that because it was a different time and a different set of mores in the society. But if anybody is listening to this and they have come this long and they think there's some something wrong with being adopted, you need to go to church and talk to the priest or your minister and get straightened out because it has nothing to do with the person you're looking at. And and who knows what the circumstances were.

unknown 20:16

Right.

Kendall 20:16

Right. And, you know, this probably makes good sense, but I feel so much like my adoptive parents' child. There's not a day goes that goes by that I'm not talking about them. Corey feels like he knew them, even though he never did, because we talk about them all the time. And um what wonderful impact they had on me during my formative years. And yes, I lost them young, but their ideals kind of live on, and that's what it's all about, I think.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Yeah. And family is so important to everybody, even people who deny that it is. So, and the way I looked at it, I I covered a lot of politicians, some of whom I just couldn't have disagreed with more. You know, you have to keep your mouth shut because you're supposed to be impartial and all that. And I was, even if, even though I was an opinion writer, saying this guy is such a jerk. He's this, he's doing this to people. And then you sit down at lunch and he's at the table and he's talking about, you know, his daughter. Oh, yeah, she's adopted, and you know, and she married this guy, uh, this black guy, and you know, so I have little brown grandchildren and I love them so much. And I'm saying, wait a second, I thought you were this, you know, retrobate, horrible human being. And here you you adopted children, and now you're accepting of her decision to marry outside of her race. Okay. Right. Oh, no.

Kendall 21:57

It hits home when you hear people's personal stories. Stories. That's for that. Well, Paul, thank you so much for being on here and it's been a great hour. Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Corey 22:10

That was part two with Paul T. O'Connor, and I really appreciated how open this conversation was about the weird contradictions that can exist in these stories. You can deeply love the parents who raised you and still want answers about where you came from. You can feel grateful and still feel lost. You can find biological family and still have complicated emotions around all of it. I think this episode really captures that. I also love hearing Kendall talk about what it was finally like to meet people he physically resembled after a lifetime of not having that experience. It sounds simple, but for a lot of people in the Adopte, NPE, and donor-conceived communities, that's huge. Big thanks again to Paul for joining us, and definitely check out his book, The Missing Child, The Life She Lived and The Life She Missed, available May 26th. We'll have info in the show notes. And as always, thanks for listening. Thanks for sharing these episodes with people who need them. And remember, Family Secrets are the ultimate pop twist. Family Twist Podcast is presented by Savoie Faire Marketing Communications and produced by Mosaic Multimedia LLC.