My Adoption and Reunion Story

In loving memory of Betty Jean Stevenson Jaske Lewin

February 18, 1929 - May 21, 2000

In loving memory of Ronald Harvey Deck

January 11, 1915 - April 6, 2002

I was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1949.  when I was born my mother had to give me up for adoption.  My father had left her and she had four other children at home who she didn't know if she could provide for or not. She wanted better for me than what she was able to provide so she made the hardest decision in her life.  She chose to give me away to total strangers.

When I was three days old she handed me to my adopted parents and never saw me again.  Not a day went by, nor did a birthday pass that she didn't wonder where I was and what kind of a life I was having.

Because of her unselfishness,  I had a very good up bringing.  We lived a upper middle class life.  I was raised an only child, and had the best of everything that my parents could buy me.  (The only thing my father would not buy me was my own horse, but then we had no place to keep one either.  For some reason, he wouldn't let me keep it in my bedroom. Can't understand why not?)

When I was about 1 we moved from Chicago to Cleveland, Ohio.  We lived on the far east side until I was 7 years old.  Then we bought a house in Sheffield Lake, to the west of Cleveland.  I grew up there and graduated High school.

All the years when I was little my father made a bed time story out of my adoption.  He used to tell me that he and Mom couldn't have children and they wanted one very badly so they went to this hospital where they had babies to give away.  They walked in this room and there were hundreds of babies for them to chose from and they chose ME.  It always made me feel very special and loved.

When I got married and started my own family, I started wondering about the medical history of my birth family.  Unfortunately, the adoption records in Illionois are sealed, and they don't keep any medical history on the birth family in private adoptions.

I wrote to a judge in Cook County and he did send me non-identifying information on my family.  I found out from him how old my parents were when I was born and how many children my mother had before me.  Now I knew for sure I had siblings out there somewhere.

In 1995, out of the clear blue, my father sent me my original adoption papers. Now I had names to go with my birth parents.

On Mother's Day of 1998, my husband got me a computer.  I just knew that my family would be out there somewhere looking for me too.

As soon as I got online, I put my birth fathers name in and came up with two matches in Tennessee.  This couldn't be him. They lived in Chicago.  So I put the names and addresses in a file and continued to look in Cook County.

Finally, an online friend talked me into at least writing the two people who's addresses I had.  Toward the end of June 1998 I did.

Then I got in contact with a private investigator in California.  She came up with the same addresses I all ready had and tried to talk me into calling them myself.  Well, I was afraid to.  I had read the horror stories of adoptees who found their families and had the door slammed in their faces because the birth families didn't want anything to do with them.  Either because of guilt or shame, and I didn't want that to happen to me. So she called them for me.

She ended up emailing me that night to tell me to get off the computer so she could call me.  (That's what I get for only having one phone line.) The two numbers in Tennessee where my oldest brother and his son and the family had been trying to find ME for about 15 years off and on.

After being raised an only child, it is hard to get used to having 3 brothers and 8 sisters now.  My birth mother is still alive and well and living in Chicago.  I have two brothers and a sister in Tennessee, a brother, mother and 5 sisters in Illinois, a sister in Missouri and a sister in Iowa.  And I live in Florida.

On Labor Day weekend of 1998, we had a family reunion in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.  I met my family for the first time in 47 years. It was a great reunion. I even share a birthday with a brother.  And my Christmas card list is about 4 times larger than it was on the 4th of July.

I now also have a sister who shares my love of genealogy.  She has been tracing our birth families roots for a long time.  Now we are going to work on it together.

I guess the message to this page is "If you are adopted, NEVERgive up hope.  Your family is out there somewhere.  And just possibly, THEY are trying to find you too.

Good Luck and God Bless to each and every one of you who are looking for your lost family.

This is my MOM!

This is my Dad! The man who CHOSE me!

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