Help For a Missing Momma
Lynne Humphries-Russ writes:
I'm writing to you in hopes that you can help me and my husband. We are not Mormon. In fact, I am currently studying to be a Methodist minister. However, my husband is 48 years old and is looking for his birth parents. They were both Mormons, according to the non-identifying adoption papers. He was born on July 25, 1954, in Erie, Pennsylvania, in Hamot Hospital. As Mormons, I hope you can understand his deep need for roots.
While his adoptive parents have been wonderful to him, he has a void in his life that he is trying to fill, a void that just knowing who they are would help to fill. I have done a great deal of genealogical and historical research in the past on my own family. I know mine back to the early 1700s. I find that each time a new bit of the family puzzle is put into place, the shadows of the past clear up a bit more. If there is any way that you can help to clear up the shadows of my husband's past, please help us. He is in deep spiritual need.
God bless you.
Alison says:
Lynne, I have forwarded your message to the other Circle of Sisters columnist, in case she has some input. But I have to warn you that we probably aren't going to be of much help. There are over 11 million Mormons in the world, so asking us, as Mormons, to help identify you husband's birth parents is kind of like asking the same of someone because they live in Pennsylvania. I wouldn't even know where to start.
The LDS church does have the largest genealogical collection in the world, but genealogy is not generally recorded through birth families, it is done through adoptive families, so even those records (which your husband is also free to access at any LDS Family History Center at no charge) would not likely be of help.
I do know that there are agencies that help match mutually agreeable birth parents and children as well as others that help birth parents and/or children in their searches, but I am not familiar enough with any of them to make a recommendation. An internet search might help. You could even hire a private investigator.
Perhaps I should explain something else. One of the most compelling LDS doctrines is that couples are not married "until death do you part." If they are married in the temple and keep their covenants, they are sealed together eternally. Their children are also sealed to them and so families, we believe, are eternal, rather than just worldly, entities.
I was also adopted as a child (in 1965). My parents were married in the temple. Since I was not their natural child, I went with them to the temple for a sealing ordinance. On that day I became part of their family (just as my adopted brother had), not just for a while, but eternally, just as my sister (who is their biological daughter) is sealed to them. It makes no difference to God that I have different DNA or a different medical history or ethnicity or hair color. I believe it is because of this sealing that I have never felt the void you speak of.
I remember in the seventies that "adoption search" TV movies were something of a craze. There were dozens. And even as an early teen, they completely baffled me. I couldn't imagine why anyone would care in the least. My family was my family and that was that. I was just as much a part of it as my sister. Consequently I have never looked into my birth parentage and so have nothing to offer in the way of advice.
I am more empathetic now at the ripe old age of 38, but I still have no desire to go in to any kind of search. If a birth sibling or parent was to look me up, that would be fine, but they would just be another acquaintance to me. They would not be family. Currently in the process of having my sixth child (all of mine are biological) I know without a doubt that it is loving and nurturing and time and commitment that make a parent—not having sex and giving birth. The latter can be done by most anyone. The former requires something godly.
My best to you and your husband.
Lynne responds:
Thank you so much for your very thoughtful and kind testimony, Alison. It was a privilege to share it. I think my husband could have continued his life as you are in yours, not interested in anything about his birth family, if it weren't for the incursion of medical issues. He has now, at 49, been diagnosed as bipolar; he is an alcoholic; he has high blood pressure and horribly high cholesterol, even with a low fat diet and medication. We have two sons, one of whom contracted viral encephalitis and was in a coma for three days before awakening.
Thanks be to God that he has no repercussions from it, but at the time, we had no idea why it was happening. Before it was diagnosed as viral encephalitis, there were many questions brought up about our medical history. It was the start of the searching for Daniel. Until it impacted his own family, I think he was content to know that he was a member of his adoptive family and to remain in that. The biological side of his life began to emerge with his awareness of the ramifications of it in his own children, specifically when it seemed as though it threatened their life.
The lifelong, and indeed eternal, bond of the Mormon family is exactly why I decided to write to you. I'm well aware of it and when we received the papers from the court saying that Daniel's birthparents were Mormon, we were both astonished that a Mormon man and woman would have put a child up for adoption, especially when there were fewer influences from the outside world as was the case in the 1950s. Perhaps it is just that special bond that drives Daniel in this quest.
We have put his name on all of the lists and we are currently considering a private detective. As a genealogist myself, I have "found" many families for people. My Carroll family has a genealogy that dates even to Adam and Eve, if that can be believed. I have uncovered many aspects of people's lives that remained hidden for generations. But this family of Daniel's, I cannot find.
I know it will happen if it's God's will and in God's time. I keep praying that God will help Daniel to find someone, some place, that will help to bring him serenity.
Thank you again, Alison, for your kind words.
Alison says:
Having an unknown medical history is certainly an issue among adoptive children. Sometimes its a blessing not to know! But usually it is beneficial to have that information.
An acquaintance of mine (who also has red hair) said that a few years ago his brother and sister-in-law were filing out an adoption application. The questions included: Would you mind a child who is physically handicapped? Would you mind a child who is of another ethnicity? Would you mind a child who has red hair?
What?????
I guess my parents failed to answer that last question correctly! They obviously didnt know what they were getting into!
Kathy says:
Hi Lynne. I hope we can find some readers who know your husband's birth parents. It is possible. If I were involved in your search, I think I would also call LDS Family Services. It's feasible that his birth parents might have gone through this agency to place him with his adoptive parents, or they (Social Services) might have other ideas for you regarding a further search.
We'll ask your question in our column scheduled to post on the first Monday in May, and see if there are any responses. Knowing the date and the hospital should help people identify the couple, if we have any readers who think they may have a possible identity. We might also elicit other helpful comments from Mormon readers who know more about the process. In my hometown, this sort of thing was often managed by the doctor who delivered the baby, without much official intervention. If this occurred in your husband's case, the doctor was possibly LDS also. Because there were not many Mormons on the east coast, probably all the members knew each other. I hope we can find the right professional, or happen upon the right "grapevine" that could lead to more information. It never hurts to ask!
By the way, I have read kind of a lot about the phenomenon of adopted kids feeling a lifelong (or at least pervasive in some ways) sense of being not quite complete or even of abandonment that defies logic but still hurts. Please accept our empathy and our hope that we can help by getting the word out.
Congrats on your clerical career! When will you get your first congregation?
Lynne writes:
It was a gift from God that I saw the listing for Mormon Momma. I have always maintained, since we discovered that Daniel's parents were both Mormon, that the way to finding out their identity was through the Mormon Church. Because of my own work in genealogy, I knew that were I to go to the LDS Family History Center, I would have to have some names to do research on. We have no names, so I haven't gone to a history center for answers.
I had no idea that there was such an organization as the LDS Social Services. It never crossed my mind that there would be a different group of social services for the Church than there are for the general population. Methodists have groups such as the Board of Child Care, so I guess it should have occurred to me. Oh, well. Thank you so much for the idea! We will definitely try them. And I have also said that there were probably very few Mormons here on the east coast so that Daniel's birth mother would have been known by someone in Erie. The social services person from the court in Erie has said that she was not from a neighboring state to Pennsylvania, however, and she felt that his birth mother had returned to her home after the birth. She has been unsuccessful in finding her, possibly because she has changed her name through marriage. We don't know if she is even alive. There was official intervention, I'm certain, because my husband's adoptive parents were Presbyterian, not Mormon. We don't know the doctor, however. He (or she, I guess) may have been LDS.
Quite frankly, I don't think Daniel knows what he will do with the information once he finds out who his family is. He is a wonderful man who has a huge set of problems in his personal life. All of that aside, he is extremely successful in his work. He's also working very hard at overcoming his personal difficulties but keeps coming up against this huge brick wall of pain that is, as you said, completely illogical but there nonetheless. If it is a result of not knowing his birth parents, then finding them will offer some answers. What he does with that information, he'll have to work out. I know that as his wife, I will do all I can to forward his journey in this world.
As for my clerical career, I just gave my first sermon to a class this past week. It was an awesome experience. Not only the work in preparation for it but in the giving and then in their response to it. I will continue to do what God is asking me to do and pray that it pleases God. It seems to do that. It certainly pleased the class!
When will I get my own congregation? When God makes that decision. Currently, I'm a Music Minister in a congregation. I'm preparing myself and that church for my eventual move to pastoring another church. I'm hoping to go to seminary before I have any kind of appointment. In the Methodist Church, a candidate has a proscribed process outside and within the seminary that carries them to an appointment in a local congregation and the ordination as elder. I'm on the second of nine steps of that process. I can be appointed as a pastor of a local congregation even before going to seminary, though. We'll see what God has in store for me! I'll keep you posted. Again, thank you for your interest.
Readers, does anybody have a lead regarding Daniel Russ's biological parents? Who has folks from (or in) Erie, Pennsylvania?
Alison says:
Reading this a couple of years later, a few thoughts occurred to me that might help piece together this puzzle. An LDS couple who had a baby placed for adoption would most likely be an unmarried couple. Having a child out-of-wedlock would mean that the couple—at least at that time—was not practicing LDS doctrine. So, while members in name, it may be that other member did not know them well. If I understood what Lynne said, then the couple (or at least the birth mother) went to Pennsylvania for the explicit purpose of having the baby in a place they were not known. Lastly, the fact that the baby was adopted by a Presbyterian family indicates that LDS Family Services was not used in the placement and also reinforces the idea that the couple were not active members of the church.
I also have some level of discomfort about one-sided searches. There are groups where both parties (birth parents and adoptees) can register and be connected, if both desire a reunion. But it worries me a bit that those parents who agreed to continue pregnancies and place their children with loving families—under the auspices of anonymity and confidentiality—are being sought out without consent. I fear that such searches will discourage women from seeing adoption as a tolerable option to a difficult situation. I hope that isn't the case.