By LORI MARTIN
Staff Writer
Together again. it’s a refrain Susan Thompson and her daughter, Betsy, are singing these days. Ever since they reunited July 10, after being separated for 32 years.
The last time Thompson saw Betsy Jo, her daughter was 2 years old. It was the 1960s, and at that time, Thompson was a I6-year-old unmarried mother, living at home. Ever since her daughter was taken away from her, against her will, Thompson searched for her.
“It was so funny,” Thompson said Saturday morning, of meeting her daughter for the first time. “I was real apprehensive at first. I wasn’t sure she was going to like me. But, I guess it’s because I’m her mom, and she’s my daughter. It fits like a glove.”
Thompson, who works at Westside Daycare and attends classes at Coffeyville Community College, tried various means of finding Betsy Jo, but had no success until contacting Ohio Adoptee Searches. Jolin DeHaven, of Ohio Adoptee Services, was able to locate, within two weeks, the names of the couple that adopted Betsy.
DeHaven described, in an email Saturday, how he located Betsy’s adoptive parents.
“Basically, we had to scan public birth records to establish a new name for Betsy, then order her birth certificate. In Ohio (public records) are available to anyone. (The birth certificate) listed her adoptive parents’ names and where they lived at the time of the child’s adoption.”
According to information provided by DeHaven, people whose adoptions were finalized from Jan. 1, 1964, through Sept. 17, 1996, “have only one recourse. You must file a petition with the probate court where your adoption was granted. They will forward this request to the State Bureau of Vital Statistics, who will open and send you the contents of your adoption envelope only if a birth parent has also filed a release.”
Complicating DeHaven’s search, for Thompson’s daughter Betsy was the fact that Betsy’s adoptive parents had divorced and relocated.
DeHaven said his next step was to search the data bases for “current addresses and names of other relatives we could call to find Betsy.” DeHaven found Betsy’s adoptive mother, whom Thompson called, and who told her how to find Betsy who had been living in New Orleans.
When Thompson reached Betsy, who had been named Carolyn Elizabeth by her adoptive parents, she told her mother she had also tried to locate her throughout the years.
Thompson said she and her daughter “talked on the phone every day,” and finally decided it was time to meet. Betsy flew from New Orleans to Tulsa, arriving July 10.
Betsy’s visit has been a very good one. So good, in fact, she’s decided to stay, Thompson said.
“Betsy Jo is going to stay. She told me, ‘I don’t want to leave you.’ I told her, if you try to leave, I’m going to cut your legs off,” Thompson said, laughing. She continued, more seriously, “(Betsy) say’s she’s sick of New Orleans. She likes being here.” Thompson said her daughter is looking for a job, and an apartment, in Coffeyville.
Thompson said, since their meeting, she has called Betsy by her birth name, rather than by her adopted name.
Mother and daughter are comfortable and happy around each other, with Betsy helping out with chores, and laughing and chatting with her new familv, Thompson said. Her other children also seem happy with their newfound sister. Thompson is the mother of three grown children, two stepehildren, and has adopted two of her grandchildren, Cody, 6, and Shanna, 4. Thompson described a time this past week when her son, Daniel, called from Germany, and, instead of talking to his mother as usual, asked to talk to “sis.”
Thompson, who has missed so many birthdays and Christmases with Betsy, recently purchased a golden retriever puppy for her.
For Thompson, locating Betsy would have been easier if Ohio, had an open record policy; that is, the ability for anyone adopted to access their original birth certificate
Kansas is one of the few states in America with an open record policy, but according to Marley Elizabeth Greiner, executive chair of “Bastard Nation“, the country’s largest adoptee civil rights organization, most of the United States does not.
“As you may know, Kansas has never sealed adoption records– unlike the rest of the U S., with the exception of Alaska, and now Oregon. Kansas, in fact, is always used as the model in arguments by proponents regarding open records,” Greiner said.
Greiner and DeHaven said that a major battle on behalf of adoptees was won in Oregon Friday. Measure 58 was passed, which will allow open records in Oregon.
According to information about the measure at the Bastard Nation’s website, “Judge Lipscomb (on Friday) upheld Measure 58, saying the Oregon Constitution held no promise of secrecy to women who gave their children up for adoption. ‘Plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate either any contractual right to absolute privacy or confidentiality, or any impermissible impairment of any such rights.'”
Greiner said the victory in Oregon could be an impetus for change throughout the rest of the United States.
“This victory in Oregon, coupled with the resignation/retirement of Dr. William Pierce, president of the National Council for Adoption (the chief institutional opponent of open records) heralds a new day for open records for the U.S.”
Thompson, meanwhile, is enjoying her time with her daughter.
“It’s been a big burden lifted off me, that’s for sure,” she said, now that her search has come to an end. “I can’t change the things my daughter has gone through without me being there. I wish I could. All you get to change is what happens from here on out.”
New York Adoptee Rights Coalition
