Vonni learned from the neighbor’s child that she was adopted, but she was too young to know what it really meant. In her teen years, the yearning to understand her adoption led her on a journey an hour away to the adoption agency for her non-identifying information. It contained a horrible terrible story, that seemed to be questionable according to the social worker who documented her adoption. In the years that followed, Vonni continued to drive a long way to search the yearbook archives for her birth mother, only to be linked with her birth father first. When she found him he wasn’t interested in knowing Vonni, until his fond memories of her birth mother kicked in and they figured out she was a different daughter than he thought. He identified Vonni’s biological mother, and within months Vonni had met both parents.

Read Full TranscriptVonnie:                       00:05               I was, I was having such a great relationship with my dad, my bio dad that I, and I told him too. I said, you know, I found her and I said, I don’t even know if I’m going to call her because after meeting him it was enough. I didn’t feel like I needed her anymore.

Damon:                       00:29               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 Vonnie. She called me from Lincoln, Nebraska, where she shared her story of life and adoption as a teenager. Vonnie ventured in our, from her home to the adoption agency that placed her to try to understand more about herself in her non identifying information. She learned a terrible story that seemed to be questionable according to the social worker in the years that followed, she continued to drive a long way to search the yearbook archives for her birth mother. When she found her birth father, he wasn’t interested in knowing her until his fond memories of her birth mother kicked in. He identified the woman and within months Vonnie had met them both. This is Vonnie’s journey.

Damon:                       01:34               Vonnie and her younger brother were both adopted, but they’re not biological to one another, so she grew up fairly comfortable with the notion of adoption. Interestingly, she found out that she was adopted by accident when she was four years old, but she didn’t quite know what it meant.

Vonnie:                       01:50               My little neighbor friend next door who was six, we moved into the neighborhood about a year before my parents built the house and we were playing one day and he said, “you’re adopted”. And I was like, no, I didn’t know what it meant. And I was just like, okay. And then I didn’t think anything of it and a couple of hours later he came back over and crying and he said, “I’m sorry, I said you were adopted.” So he must have gone home and told his mom, you know what he said, and she said, you can’t say that or whatever. She said. And he came back and apologized and I just remember thinking that’s okay. Still not knowing what it meant.

Damon:                       02:37               Vonnie has a vague memory of her mother reading a children’s book about how special adoptees are, but it wasn’t until Vonnie was a teenager that her ankle and self-awareness shook things up. She started thinking about her biological family and whom she might have looked like among them as she developed her own opinions and began to express herself. She also started butting heads with her adopted Vonnie was coming into her own as her thoughts expanded about who she was as a person.

Damon:                       03:05               What did you think about. What did you imagine as you thought about your this other family? As you thought about yourself as an adoptee, what kinds of things did you think of?

Vonnie:                       03:13               Well, I knew certain things because my parents got non identifying information about my birth mother and my mom couldn’t remember everything by the time I was asking, but she told me a few things and that there was no father listed or no information about the father. And My mother was 16 and that was all she knew. And so I imagined that the 16 year old girl was like, whew, thank God I got rid of this, I don’t have to deal with this baby. And probably went on to have this crazy life and was probably a waitress living in a trailer. That’s what I imagined because she was so young and you know, I never thought, oh, she’s a rich, you know, princess somewhere. I, I just thought not very positive things about her because I knew that she knew I had been adopted obviously, and where I had come from and that if she ever wanted to contact me, she would know where I was and she never did. So I had bad feelings about her.

Damon:                       04:24               When she turned 17, Vonnie went to the adoption agency for herself traveling an hour away from her home to obtain the sum of her non identifying information. It gave physical descriptions of both of her biological parents. Her mother is five foot two and blonde while her father is tall with dark hair according to the records. Vonnie identified with her father’s traits the most.

Vonnie:                       04:48               Then I spend this whole thing in my head. Like I’m just like him, I’m just like my father, whoever he is and I’ll never know who he is. So just not looking like anybody in the family is really, it’s really hard and people that look like their family members don’t appreciate that I don’t think.

Damon:                       05:08               Yeah, I could see that. And tell me a little bit about your opinion of your father. It sounds like you kind of identified with him, but I didn’t necessarily hear the negative.,

Vonnie:                       05:19               My birth father, what did you think of him? Well, he was um, in my mind he was just a tall, dark mystery man and I really never spent any time thinking about him except wondering what he looked like. And that’s interesting that you point that out because I never thought about that. I never thought about what’s he doing or where is he until actually about maybe like 10 years ago. It just hit me that he was probably in Vietnam and that he, he could be dead and I’ll never know. And that’s really the only thoughts I ever had about him. It was mostly about her

Damon:                       05:59               when she described the differences between her adopted parents and herself. Vonnie spoke vocationally. Her mother was a teacher and her father had been in the military and manage the glass factory in her youth. Her parents made sure she got dance art and music lessons and Vonnie was always good at them all. Currently she works as an artist and while her parents appreciated her talents and interests, they didn’t share her passions,

Vonnie:                       06:25               but I remember when I was like nine, we went to a South Pacific, the musical, and it just took my breath away. Could not believe it. That’s just the greatest thing I’d ever seen in my life. At intermission, we left because my dad was done. I was devastated. I could not believe we were leaving.

Damon:                       06:45               Vonnie, majored in theater in college and went on to work in theaters and art galleries. She was the opposite of her brother who was an eagle scout, an athlete and was the all around good guy opposing her position as the troublemaker. Vonnie said her desire to search had been festering before she took that hour long trip to the agency at 17 years old. Obviously the agency could only share a little bit about her birth mother, but they did reveal something interesting.

Vonnie:                       07:13               And then they also told me that she had a common name and that there was another girl in her class with the same first and last name is she had. So then I started years of going through yearbooks in that city, trying to find two girls with the same name that had blonde hair next to each other and you know, just whatever research I could do. This is before the Internet. And. And how did you get? Not every day, you know, everyone’s not. I had to go to Omaha where she was from and go to the. I can’t even remember the name of it, but it’s like a sort of a records and archives. Yeah, right. Oh, that’s interesting. And I will look through. I looked through microfiche and because I also knew that she got married when she was 17 and obviously it wasn’t to my father. And so then I went looking through archives of 1967, 68 marriages looking for… Because the other thing I knew about her was that what they said was that she had an unusual middle name. So I was looking for a common name, you know, with a strange middle name and a common last name getting married and I mean this could have gone on forever.

Damon:                       08:29               The archives where Vonnie searched rere an hour from her home. So you can imagine the commitment it took to embark on such a search through old yearbooks and microfiche. Vonnie also asked the agency to do a search in 1991 when she had her first son. She knew medical information was a good reason to continue the journey. They were required to find the woman and get her permission to release the medical information before any information to Vonnie.

Vonnie:                       08:57               Well, what they did, I found out later was they sent a letter to the address that she lived at when she was 16. Of course she didn’t still live there, you know, she didn’t, they didn’t get a response. And that was what I got for my hundred bucks and the next time I tried it had gone up to 200 and I think actually I might have paid them two times and of course they could never come up with anything. The agency is in the same town where she lived, but you know, they just absolutely couldn’t find her. And I got so disgusted probably in about 2000 2005 probably, I was just like, I’m not giving you guys any more money. You’re not helping

Damon:                       09:39               as it’s sometimes the case in an adoption agency. The person tasked with the search and reunion services is asked to do so in addition to their other duties. It’s not a full time dedicated position. Most often the person is faced with a large workload, but not much time with which to investigate any one case. It’s a shame in Vonnie’s case because the person they were looking for was probably uniquely identifiable by her middle name. Exasperated by the lack of responsiveness from the adoption agency. She shared her experience with her childhood best friend and fellow adoptee. The woman worked at a biotech company on the west coast and had heard about the new DNA sequencing being offered by 23andMe, so she suggested Vonnie submitted DNA sample. Of course, back then the database of potential matches was so slim. It took months for Vonnie to even get a third cousin match, let alone find a birth parent. She contacted that person who wanted to be helpful, but her cousin couldn’t identify anyone in the family who might have had a child and then gotten married.

Damon:                       10:44               So 23 and me didn’t prove to be helpful.

Vonnie:                       10:47               No, but the interesting thing that it told me, which I loved, was that it told me I was 48 percent Irish, which I also. That always bothered me not knowing what I was because I have dark hair. I Tan really easily. Um, I’m tall and I could. I thought, am I Italian? Am I American Indian? Am I… I never thought I was Irish because you don’t think I’m dark hair and I’m really excited. Right, right. And that, that was a great day.

Damon: