CHICAGO — For nearly 50 years, Bob Brown longed to know the identity of his birth mother. Adopted as a baby, he wondered if learning who his birth parents were would help him understand the man he’d become.
CHICAGO — For nearly 50 years, Bob Brown longed to know the identity of his birth mother. Adopted as a baby, he wondered if learning who his birth parents were would help him understand the man he’d become.
So when a new Illinois law allowed adoptees to request copies of their original birth certificates — documents they had been legally barred from seeing in the past — Brown had his paperwork hand-delivered on the first day applications were accepted, he said.
For Brown, that birth certificate, a single sheet of paper, held answers he had searched for his entire life.
“All of my life, there have been some empty parts of my identity,” he said. “Stuff everybody else knows about themselves, but I didn’t. I don’t know my ethnic background, my family history, who my mother and father were.”
Brown, of Winfield, Ill., is one of 5,485 adoptees who applied for copies of their original birth certificates under the 2010 law, which took effect in November, that made the records available, officials said. According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, there are about 250,000 adoptees eligible to apply for their birth certificates, said Melaney Arnold, a communications manager for the agency. Those born before 1946 were able to apply for their birth certificates before November under the same 2010 law.
So far, only about 1,400 adoptees in the later group have received their original birth certificates, officials said. And because the requests for the documents are coming in so fast, there is a backlog to fill them, said George S. Rudis, assistant deputy director of the Department of Public Health.
“It’s a pretty complex process in terms of locating the record we need to issue,” he said. “The staff goes through great lengths to identify that birth certificate. We understand this is a very emotional issue. We take this very seriously.”
For some, access to their original birth document means finally answering so many questions about their past. For others, the certificates’ scant information leaves adoptees with still more questions. But getting the documents also means opening the door to long-held family secrets and stepping into an era when unplanned pregnancies, adoptions and out-of-wedlock births were steeped in shame, sadness and sometimes humiliation.
“All of these adoptees are getting the first chapter of their life which has been hidden from them since they were born,” said Melisha Mitchell, executive director of the White Oak Foundation, which specializes in helping adoptees and birth parents locate each other. “I know many adoptees are getting their original birth certificates and are not searching for more. For some it’s just about having their information.”
Despite getting a copy of her original birth certificate, Anita Walker Field, 74, an adoption rights advocate from Skokie, was still unable to find her birth parents. But the document helped her accept her birth name, her only link to her biological relatives, she said.
“I still feel good to know my name,” she said. “This is who I really am.”
Alice Wilson, 61, of St. Charles was only a teenager, barely out of high school in 1969 and living in Chicago, when she discovered she was pregnant, she said.
“When I told the guy I was pregnant, he told me he was married,” Wilson said. “I was 19. I lost my job. I couldn’t even take care of myself.”
Her parents were ashamed of her, she said. Depressed and afraid, Wilson gave up her tiny baby girl just days after giving birth.
“I did what I felt was right, even though I was crying during the adoption,” she said. “There’s always been an ache in my heart. My life just hasn’t been complete. All I ever wanted to know is if she was OK.”
After getting an envelope in the mail that she knew held the key to her past — her birth certificate — Jennifer Dyan Ghoston, 47, waited nearly a month to open it. She wanted to do it ceremoniously, surrounded by her adoptive family, friends and open records advocates in the adoption community.
“My contribution to the adoption community is to be open, honest and public,” she said. “It would have been nice to sit at home and open it, but it’s such a big issue, I wanted others to be there.”
After all, Ghoston’s adoptive parents had always been honest with her, she said. There was never a point in her life that she didn’t know she was adopted from a foster home when she was a toddler.
Still, Ghoston longed to know where she came from, how her life began.
From her birth certificate, she learned her original name: Bonnie Lynne Upshaw. She also learned her birth mother’s name: Wanda.
Having that name made it easier for her to track down her biological mother using public records. But as she stood outside the brick, three-flat building on South Ridgeland Avenue in late January, Ghoston recalled she was gripped by nervousness.
When an older woman answered the door, Ghoston said she simply blurted out, “Wanda Upshaw is my birth mother.”
The woman, who happened to be an aunt by marriage, immediately embraced her. The family knew who she was.
“She told me my birth mother had been looking for me,” Ghoston said. “She couldn’t believe I was there.”
But she wouldn’t be able to meet her birth mother after all. She died in 1996. But the South Side woman who had given her up as a baby had a son, Harold Williams.
Hours later, Ghoston met her biological brother. Nearly all of his life, Williams had been told he had a sister, he said. When he finally saw her, he recognized her.
“When I seen her, I saw my mother,” Williams said. “I knew she was real. It feels so good to know I have a relative now. It’s like Christmas.”