Terry shared the story of his biological parents’ wartime extra marital affair that brought him to life.  He said his adopted parents felt he was “the sun the moon and the stars”, and spoiled him that way. As a teen, Terry wanted to apply for a job and needed his birth certificate from his parents. But that simple request worried his mother deeply about her place in his heart because she thought he was beginning a search for his biological family. He didn’t connect with his biological mother until his own parents were in failing health, but what an emotional day it was when he did finally meet his first mom!

The post 005 – Part of Her Memory That She Lost Was Me appeared first on Who Am I...Really? Podcast.

Terry:                          00:02               My Mom, her dad are dying and I'm going to beat my birth mother for the first time and my two half sisters that I've never met before. So I pulled up and Mary came out and we hug, but she was very, I don't want to say distant, but she certainly wasn't real warm.

Voices:                        00:27               Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Damon:                       00:34               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. Hey, it's Damon on the show today is Terry who located his biological family at a time before the Internet allowed easy searches for facts and information. He was born in the 1940s a time of war for our country, but it's also when his story begins and his journey, you'll hear about his path to learning who he is in so many ways and a very emotional day that he met his biological mother for the first time. I've been really excited to talk to you since Carmen may the introduction, so thanks for making time. Tell me a little bit about your childhood and your community, a little bit about your family and just generally how you grew up as an adoptee.

Terry:                          01:26               Well, um, my parents had tried to, uh, have a child for like nine years and they were unsuccessful. They had a good friend. My mom's best friend, um, had a boarder in her house who's husband had gone to war and, uh, she was having an affair and I was the result of that affair. So when her husband came home, uh, he was pretty upset about the fact that she was pregnant and my moms friend knew that they'd been trying to have a kid, so they worked it out that I could be adopted by..

Damon:                       02:06               Wow.

Terry:                          02:06               Anyhow, Clarence and Charlotte were the only parents that I ever knew. They were wonderful parents in one respect, except that they were over over protective. I mean, they did not go anywhere without me for the first six years of my life, I was never outside of my mom or dads vision, you know. But I adapted to it and it was, it was okay, but you know, one o the classic examples I give is that Christmas really doesn't mean all that much to me anymore because when I was, I don't know, five or six, I came out of my bedroom and the entire living room floor was covered with packages and they only have my name on it and I just thought life was supposed to be, you know, and uh, my cousins always remark about the fact of how spoiled I was and how, you know, my mom just doted on me and all of that stuff. I didn't know anything different. I didn't know the world was any different than that. I didn't know that there were, I didn't know there was evil in the world. I didn't know there was, you know, I mean, I was so incredibly protected because I was the sun and the moon and the stars for them.

Terry:                          03:16               Now they told me from when I was a young child that I was adopted. I mean, there was a period of time, till I was 18 that we really didn't discuss that at all. My mom, when I was going through puberty, my mom was going through menopause. Oh, that was just a horrible time. It was just a horrible time. But we were, yeah, we were always fairly close, except she couldn't, accept.. Really she wanted me to be a doctor. She wanted me to be an MD and nothing else would work. And I went away to college. And so I flunked out of Denison University after a semester and a half, and she was just devastated. And then I went to Kent State and I was there for the massacres, unfortunately on May 4th.

Damon:                       04:01               Oh no.

Terry:                          04:01               Um, yeah, yeah, it was, uh, probably one of the things that changed my life more than anything.

Terry:                          04:08               And I was a Hippie and she hated that. She just, she thought that was awful. And, uh, I was living with a woman at the time. Uh, she was real unhappy about all that stuff, so I wasn't turning out the way she wanted me to. And I also came out and we barely ever, I think I told them that I was gay and, um, we never discussed it after that. Never mentioned. And I moved to San Diego and that nearly killed her. Uh, she thought I was moving away from her, but I was just moving away from the weather in Akron, Ohio. She had talked to Virginia, I talked to Virginia after I moved here and she said, Oh yeah, your mom cried for a solid year. She just couldn't believe that you had left her. And you know, I'm missing my twenties for Heaven Sake.

Terry:                          04:58               You gotta be your own person. You know, she liked her the way she thought was the way things should be and that was what was right. And that was what was going to happen. And anything that went afoul of that was not, she just couldn't quite handle that one. So there were some difficulties. There were definitely difficult times in my, uh, post puberty, puberty and post puberty times when I was becoming my own person. I then, when I went to get a job and they needed a birth certificate, so I called my mom and said, I need a birth certificate. And boy, that was just dead silence on the other end of the phone. And my mom's not happy about me wanting to delve into it because she thought that I wouldn't love her anymore if I found my birth mother and father.

Damon:                       05:44               She felt a little bit threatened. If you found your biological family that she would be relegated to a lower status in your mind.

Terry:                          05:52               Right. So anyway, I got the paper that she had, which basically says, you were born. My dad said well I'll give you your adoption papers if you want them? I said, no, no, all I need is this paper should suffice. You know, he was pretty cavalier about the whole thing. It was my mom that was pretty upset.

Damon:                       06:08               And how did you comfort her over that? That's a, that is a pretty, that's a valid concern of hers. Do you recall how you comforted her into being at peace with you having this internal desire to look

Terry:                          06:19               well, I didn't do much. I didn't do much because I thought it was kind of silly. I didn't, first of all, I didn't know that it had affected her that much. I knew it affected her somewhat, but I laugh, you know, it wasn't really a major concern. It's like, oh, for God's sake, I'm not gonna, you know, I, all I care about is that, you know, I get the job, that's all I really cared about. So I got the paperwork and I, and I got the job and all that good stuff. And then when I was, you know, by probably three or four years later, it just started, you know, I started thinking about it and thinking, well, I, I would kinda like to know, I would like to know if my mom and dad are still, if my birth mother and father are still alive, I would like to know, you know, and maybe meet them if they wanted to.

Terry:                          07:07               I wasn't going to push anything. I did some real preliminary stuff and I didn't do a whole lot. Uh, and I really didn't get anywhere, so I kind of dropped it. It really wasn't a big deal to me. So I kind of gave up the search in 2003 my mom and my dad were both in their late eighties and in failing health. And, um, I just thought, well, you know, this is a good time to find out. I'll see what I can find out. Things are a lot better. Oh and the adoption records had been open. That was another thing. Adoption Records were closed I believe when I was first looking at it in the 70s.

Speaker 3:                   07:50               And sorry, just tell me Terry, what's, what state are we in?

Speaker 1:                   07:54               Oh, Akron, Ohio and I just found that it's a certificate of live birth from the Ohio Department of Health. That's the only thing I had to go by and it doesn't list anyone on there at all except my, my birth except my mom and dad. Clarence and Charlotte.

Damon:                       08:12               Your adopted parents?

Terry:                          08:13               Yeah, my adopted parents. And so that's all I had. That's, that was the dead end that I came to. So then after the, after the records were opened up and my parents were in, uh, failing health, I thought, well, I'll just see. It'd be interesting to see. So I started nosing around and I found out that the Mormon Center in San Diego has a lot of information on genealogy. So I think I went there. Then I got the name of a group in Cleveland, Ohio that does searches for adopted kids. Anyway, the person I contacted was very nice and she said, yeah, I'll do some research. It's going to take me a little while, but I'll, I'll do some research and then I kind of dropped it. She was emailing me back and forth. She found the record of my, my birth mother's husband.

Damon: