DL called me from Manhattan, New York. He talks about his youth in a home with a mother addicted to prescription medications who probably wasn’t fit to adopt. When he moved out at 18, he followed his natural talent to climb his way into the music industry. However his suspicion that his birth mother was alive, contrary to what he was told, never left him. 

In reunion, DL's birth mother nearly backed out of meeting him as the guilt of his relinquishment washed over her decades after her decision. Thankfully DL’s sister made sure their reunion, and his reunion with his sisters, did happen. This is DL’s journey. 

DL (00:04):

I walked into the living room and my brother in law sees me and his jaw drops to the floor because I look exactly like my mother and my mother was seated on the love seat. And I walked over to her, sat down, gave her a big hug and just whispered in her ear. I want you to know that I'm not mad. And she started crying and I started crying.

Damon (00:32):

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? This is who am I really a podcast about adoptees that have located and connected with their biological family members. I'm Damon Davis and on today's show is DL. He called me from Manhattan, New York DL talks about his youth in a home with a mother addicted to prescription medications who probably wasn't fit to adopt. When he moved out at 18, he climbed his way into the music industry, but his suspicion that his birth mother was alive. Contrary to what he was told, never left him in reunion. His birth mother nearly backed out of meeting him as the guilt of his relinquishment washed overheard decades after her decision. Thankfully, DL sister made sure their reunion and his reunion with his sisters did happen. This is DL journey born in 1952, DL said adoption was just becoming a more popular option for family planning. Back then childless couples were just starting to turn to adoption as an opportunity to make a family. Some of them trying desperately to avoid scuttlebutt and derisive gossip from their peers. DL's mother could not conceive. And the people around her were having children or talking about adopting. So his parents adopted him. He grew up in Vineland, New Jersey in between Atlantic city, New Jersey and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the only child in their home listen to the way he describes his mother's choice to adopt a child.

DL (02:21):

My mother, uh, I don't think was really prepared for adoption. Um, in the first place she had some serious psychological troubles and she was also carotid to prescription medication, um, namely amphetamines and barbiturates, which made her mood swings, uh, violent and sudden. Um, so she really would have been probably better off getting a dog.

Damon (02:51):

What does that mean for you as a child who's experiencing these youth? So, you know, as a kid, you don't know that she's cross addicted. You've this sounds like knowledge you've gained as an adult, but what did it feel?

DL (03:02):

No, I gained as a adolescent.

Damon (03:05):

Okay. So what did, what was it like for you as a kid to experience these, these mood swings and the, and the, her addiction?

DL (03:13):

Well, I was protecting myself a whole lot, um, because she would turn on a dime. Um, it would just come out of nowhere and she would just go sort of mental and start screaming and hitting and, uh, you know, fairly, uh, psychologically and somewhat physically abusive.

Damon (03:35):

[Mmhmm. And you were told around age eight that you were adopted, would that, how did that conversation go that to your recollection? And what did it mean to you for someone to say these, these words?

DL (03:49):

Uh, well, around age 8, you know, I realized that I didn't look anything like either of my parents. So I went to my mom and I said, you know, what's the DL. Um, and she said, well, uh, you are adopted, which means you are special in quotation marks. And also, um, your real mother died in childbirth and I'm like, I'm special. And what so that, you know, all of a sudden she's telling me that I'm responsible for my mother's demise and even eight years old, I could figure out what that meant. So, uh, but all the while she's telling me this, I didn't actually believe her or what I believe for I guess I know we sent the inside. I actually didn't blame her. And I wanted to believe that my, uh, my birth mother was still alive. And, uh, and I carried that belief with me through my entire adolescence and early adulthood and my whole life. Um, always knowing in somewhere in my heart that she was still alive somewhere, and that I'd find her one day or that she may be looking for me. Uh, but one day I knew that we would actually meet

Damon (05:01):

Even as a kid, DL didn't believe that what he was told was true, but think about it. His mother had been such a volatile person. It wasn't too much to imagine. She would make up a story to protect herself and close the issue down with DL. His sense was she wanted to immediately bring finality to the issue of him acknowledging another mother. His mother was competitive with others. So when the girls next door started taking piano lessons, she enrolled DL in piano lessons too. With the same teacher, he was an older gentlemen who played organ in the church. One town over DL, took lessons for several months and got very good, but he wasn't reading the music at all.

DL (05:46):

I never learned how to read because I'm severely dyslexic. Um, but I would make him, um, play the next week lesson for me before he left that day. And I'd practice it all, rehearse it all week, the way that I heard it. So it was playing by ear basically, and he'd come back the next week. And I play, I assume he say he say he made a couple of mistakes, but that's really very good. Somehow my mother caught on that. I wasn't reading and she fired him. He came back the next Saturday. Um, even though he was fired and he actually got down on one knee in front of my mother and begged her to let her, let him come back and teach me again, because he thought that I was something of a prodigy or something. Um, and she declined. So, um, that was it. So I was basically left to, you know, teach myself. And that's what I did.

Damon (06:47):

Since his mother was against paying someone to teach DL the piano. He taught himself. He said she was very frugal in some areas, but she would do things like decorate the living room and dining room in French provincial style, making the rooms so nice. No one could walk in them.

DL (07:04):

It was, it was like living in a museum. Um, um, I, I wasn't allowed to put trash in my own trash bin. I had to walk it into the kitchen and all kinds of crazy rules. They were, there was a bathroom right next to my bedroom with a big tub and everything. And she had put velvet curtains, um, over the tub with little, little dress , uh, thing with tassels on the end, really like super fantasy looking. And no one could use that tub. So my father and I, and my mother had used this tiny little bathroom with a stall shower that was between their bedroom and the laundry room, just off the kitchen so that it was this all sorts of rules and confinement and ways to sort of keep the house looking pristine and basically untouchable

Damon (07:58):

Regarding his father. DL said they didn't really have a relationship. His dad was absent working on the road quite a bit as a salesman. They hardly spoke. And his father only spent quality time with DL. When his wife told him to. When DL was a teenager, he suspected his dad was seeing someone else because he kept coming home later and later, and his mother's condition was spiraling out of control. One day in his early teens, DL got home from school to find he was in the house by himself. He went through the cupboards looking for snacks,

DL (08:34):

And I opened up the wrong cabinet and there was just vials and vials of drugs, um, all kinds of amphetamines. I mean, every amphetamine that you could think of by sentiment twenties, you know, black, black beauties, yellow jackets, uh, S controls, all kinds of stuff. And then there were all kinds of barbiturates amytal, Seconal, nembutal, Pentothal she even had queloz before anybody even knew what they were. Um, she had literally a cabinet. He had like a drugstore in their kitchen to be spiraling out of control. I think even worse. She had all these drugs at her disposal and she was pretty much, I would imagine impossible to DL with. I mean, she was for me. So I would imagine that she probably was for him too. And I know they were not having any loving moments, so to speak. I'm pretty sure of that. Um, I think for her, he was really her second or third choice as a husband. So it was just all like messed up from the very beginning. Basically, it was just a, just a really messed up relationship and it just continued to get more and more messed up.

Damon (09:48):

DL is not the name he grew up with. He adopted that identity apart from the name he was given in adoption. It's an interesting story that I'll let DL explain. One other thing that I read in the article online was that you grew up with one name and that you changed your name and you split. Can you tell me a little bit about what are ultimately want to get to is when you decided that you wanted to search, but I sense that there's an identity change happening for you prior or at the same time. So tell me a little bit about the, your transition out of your house or what have you.

DL (10:26):

Okay. Well, it's a little bit of a, more of the backstory, but when I was about eight something else that she had mentioned in that conversation, when she told me that I was adopted, um, just sort of as a side note, she said, um, and I should've realized that this actually gave credence to my belief that my mother was still alive. Um, she said to me in passing your mother apparently always wanted your name to be David. So when I was named by them, uh, I was named Gary David. She didn't want to name me David, because she didn't want people to call me Dave. And of course the first thing people started doing when I was named Gary was always calling me Gar. So that didn't really work. Um, but anyway, when she told me that I should have realized, well, how did she know that for one, how does she know that my mother wanted me to be named David?

DL (11:22):

And I found out later exactly how she did know, but I just resonated with that name. So I just kept that in the back of my head. And, um, after I graduated, uh, prep school, I, uh, I worked for a few months until early February. And then I moved to New York city on my own pretty much, um, on February 14th, 1971 Valentine's day, I was just 18. So I knew I wanted to get into the music business, but I didn't set about to change my name right away. But as I started to actually get into the music business, um, I eventually figured, okay, now I nip it in the bud do it now. And I started just sort of informally tell my friends and associates. I said, you know, don't call me Gary anymore. My name is David. And by the way, my last name is Byron because I just liked the idea of, you know, Byron sort of sounded like Dylan to me.

DL (12:21):

I was a big Dylan fan. And you know, I was also a fan of, of George Gordon, Byron as well. I was really into poetry at the time and still am. And I just wanted to be known as David Byron. And when I realized that there was another David Byron who lead singer of Uriah Heep, um, I realized I needed the middle name. And, um, the first job that I had in the city was working at colony records, which was a really big record store on Broadway. I only worked there about nine months. And then until I got my first staff writers job, but I work with this guy named Lee lands and he spelled it Lei, G H, which is sort of the Anglican way of spelling it. So I thought that guy said, Oh, Lee, yeah, that's cool. I'll be David Lee, Byron, and that'll make me DL Byron. Oh, that's even cooler. So that's what I went with. Eventually I just became DL. Byron

Damon (13:18):

DL said the manager of the first publisher who signed him into the music business was a wonderful woman whom he had shared his adoption story with. She offered to help him find his biological mother by connecting him with adoption agencies, but not knowing his birth mother's last name presented a challenge. And there were no commercial DNA testing options back then, like there are now. So he was hitting lots of brick walls. After a few years, DL returned to Catholic charities in South Jersey. At the time they were maintaining sealed records, not assisting anyone with reunification services. He pretty much gave up on his search. Years later, he decided to reach out to Catholic charities. Again, he was in his late thirties, married and the environment for reunification had changed dramatically. Catholic charities had done a 180 an offer DL, a caseworker named Betty. She was a semi retired older woman who worked part time.

Damon (14:19):

The pair chatted every couple of months about his case, updating DL about the family trees. She had investigated DL caught word that Betty had been transferred from Camden, New Jersey to Vineland. DL's hometown, just one hour from the Jersey shore. He called her office to see if they could connect face to face. Since they had been speaking by phone for two years. Unfortunately, Betty, the social worker who was an avid golfer had suffered a broken ankle and was out for eight weeks. When DL called back eight weeks later, he left a message for Betty. She called him back the next day.

DL (15:00):

So I'm back in New York city at the time. And I had been up all night, writing, writing something, working on something. And it was about 11 in the morning. My wife had gone to work and the phone rings and it's Betty, it's her. And she said, uh, I said, hi, how are you? She said, hi, I get a pen, get a pad. And, and listen to me, write all this stuff down. And I want you to promise, never, ever tell anybody about what I'm doing right now, because I'm going out of the confines of my job. And I love my job. I don't want to lose my job, but get a pen and pad and listen to me. I said, okay, okay. So I, I did all that and I'm okay, go ahead. And then she started telling me stuff, your mother's name is Jean.

DL (15:43):

Just give me your whole, like her, her whole name, last name as well, her birth dates, a bunch of other information. And she said, you have, you have a sister who, uh, whose name she gave me, who was an attorney in cherry Hill, New Jersey. And here's her work number? And I said, that's it? And she said, that's it. And if something worse had happened to me, then just breaking my ankle, no one would have ever, ever picked up...