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Filling in the blanks
Indiana adoptees and birth families find each other with state's help
By Elizabeth Flynn
Star correspondent
January 23, 2005
Before Shirley Guffey gave up her newborn for adoption, she held her close and
gave her a name: Tina Marie. Then the 15-year-old packed her things, left the
Florence Crittenton Home in Terre Haute and went back to being a teenager in
Muncie.
But for the next 37 years, Guffey felt a void.
"Something was missing in my life," she said from her Jacksonville, Fla., home.
"And all along I thought it was a man."
She said she struggled through the years with one unhappy relationship after
another. Then, in December 2000, she was reunited with her birth daughter. "It
changed my life. That missing thing, it was Sue."
Baby Tina had been renamed Sue Ann by her adoptive parents, Robert and Dorothy
Power of Terre Haute. On a snowy January day in 1964, they settled her into a
house Robert had just built.
"I never had a void or curiosity about my birth family -- it just wasn't a
pressing thing with me," said Sue Power, 41, who now lives in that house in
Terre Haute with her husband and son. "I had very loving parents -- they were
always there for me -- and a very happy childhood."
But a lump found in her breast when she was 36 drove her to search for her
medical history. A biopsy proved the lump to be benign, but she began to worry
about future medical problems, and decided to seek health information about her
birth parents.
"If I happened to find my birth family, great; if I didn't, that was OK with
me; and if they did not agree to give out my medical history, then I would have
to accept that, too."
She said her adoptive parents, who had died by then, would have supported her
search. In fact, they had told her what little they knew about her birth
mother: that she was very young and unmarried.
Power, an antiques dealer in Plainfield, called her attorney to find out how to
begin the search, and was put in touch with Lori Smith Baxter of Marion, a
confidential intermediary for the state. Confidential intermediaries are
judge-appointed and given access to court records in order to search for
biological family members. If the family is found, members are given the choice
of revealing themselves or not.
Before 1993, adoption records in Indiana were closed and no one could access
them. In the early 1980s, the Indiana Adoption Coalition -- a group of adoptees
lobbying for changes in the laws to enable them to search for their biological
roots -- was formed.
Baxter, herself an adoptee, was part of this group, and was set to be the
coalition's guinea pig once the law changed. "I was the test case. They had me
ready to challenge the law," she said. So in 1993, under revised state law,
Baxter became the first person in Indiana to petition the court to have her
records opened to a confidential intermediary.
"There are 50 different (state) adoption laws in the country," Baxter said,
"and Indiana has one of the best because of the mutual-consent requirement,
which protects every party."
State Sen. Murray Clark, R-Indianapolis, author of numerous pieces of adoption
legislation including the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1998, stresses the
importance of the mutual-consent clause, and especially of protecting the birth
mother if she doesn't want her identity released. "It's a very courageous act
to carry a baby to full term and then release the infant for adoption, and I
think the state should encourage that."
Once Baxter's case was complete and she was reunited with her birth family, the
floodgates opened. Adoptees, birth parents and separated siblings were filing
so fast that the sole confidential intermediary couldn't keep up. Baxter was
asked to help. She has handled 140 cases since 1993, reuniting 115 families,
and now is the state's primary intermediary.
Reuniting with her own birth family, Baxter said, "was wonderful. It satisfied
any void I had. I have no more questions about why I look the way I look and
why I act the way I act."
Her biological mother and father never married each other, but have kept in
contact for more than 51 years. Baxter still keeps in touch with her birth
family.
A birthday surprise
The day before Power's 37th birthday in 2000, Baxter told her she had found her
birth mother and was going to call her.
"I was so nervous I couldn't breathe," Power said. "I could just picture my
birth mother sitting around the kitchen table with her family, who may not have
known about me, and all these years had passed -- and then she gets this call.
I mean, she might just hang up the phone."
But Power's birth mother, now Shirley Wright, had been waiting and hoping for
that call for years; when she finally got it, she was "elated." Wright said she
couldn't search for Power. "I guess because of the shame -- I just wanted her
to come to me."
But as the years went by, Wright said, "and the call didn't come, I thought
maybe she was dead." She also considered the possibility that Power's parents
had never told her she was adopted.
Not a parent, a friend
Baxter advised the women to go slowly and to start by communicating via phone.
Birth mother and daughter got to know each other over the phone for nearly two
years before they met in person. In September 2002, Wright flew to Terre Haute
and the two finally met.
"Now I know where I get this curly hair," said Power. "Shirley is not like a
mother; she is a really good friend. I just like talking to her. She can always
cheer me up, and she makes me laugh unbelievably."
For Power, getting her medical history was "huge," and meeting Wright's son,
her half brother, was very revealing. "Her son and my son have almost identical
personalities; it's scary. It made me realize that there are things that are
genetic whether you're raised the same way or not."
For Wright, meeting Power lifted a lifelong burden. "It was the thrill of my
life to meet her. I learned a lot about myself after I met her. She's a
beautiful, successful woman. She had a wonderful mother and father -- I could
have never given her the insight, the drive and the love that they gave her."
Wright stayed in Power's family home that first night they met. "I slept 12
straight hours, and I'm an insomniac -- there was just this peacefulness. The
home her father built is a magical place."
Baxter counseled the two of them throughout the process, but she warns adoptees
and birth parents that there are no guarantees that a search for biological
relatives will turn out well. "No matter what the outcome, though, it will
change your life."
A confidential intermediary isn't always needed. Since the Adoption History
Registration Program came into effect in 1988, birth parents and adoptees 21
and older can register with the program and give their consent for their
information to be released to the other. If both parties are in the registry,
the process is simple. Many are reunited this way, but Baxter said thousands
don't know the registry exists.
Mary Hinds, manager of special projects and registries with the Indiana State
Department of Health, is the person to contact about searching for biological
family members through the registry. "I get anywhere from 30 to 50 calls a day
from people wanting information," she said. "A lot of people want to be found
at holiday time, so I try to expedite things at that time."
No searches are done at the registry. It's simply a repository for information.
There are currently 14,430 individuals in the registry. If a match is found,
consent forms are signed and names, addresses and phone numbers are released to
each party. If one party is not in the registry and no match is found, the
other must petition a confidential intermediary to search.
Ironic discovery
Baxter had quite a surprise recently when she received a petition to search.
She found the petitioner's birth record and discovered it bore the surname
Smith. Baxter's maiden name is Smith, the name of her adoptive parents. After
verification, she found that the petitioner was related by blood to Baxter's
adoptive family.
"She has Smith blood running through her veins but wasn't raised by them; I
have no Smith blood but was raised by them."
Telene Edington, an adoptee in Indianapolis who had wrestled for years over
whether to search for her birth family, finally decided she would start the
process by her 50th birthday. She contacted Baxter in the summer of 2004 and
was told the usual -- not to get her hopes up and not to count on anything.
But in less than two months, Baxter found Edington's birth mother, Nancy Smith,
with weeks to go before her birthday. "I was overwhelmed. It just sends cold
chills because you don't know what to expect."
When they first spoke by phone, Edington said, "We talked for over an hour."
And though they haven't yet met in person, Edington has seen pictures. "I look
just like her -- more than her other children do." Edington, raised as an only
child, now has two half sisters and one half brother. She and her birth mother,
who lives in New Mexico, plan to meet in person soon.
How to search
• 1. Birth parent or adoptee (adoptee must be 21 or older) sends, calls or
e-mails name and address to Mary Hinds at the Department of Health.
• 2. Department of Health sends forms to fill out. There are three forms:
identifying, non-identifying and medical.
• 3. Birth parent or adoptee sends back the filled-out forms.
• 4. Hinds enters the information into the computer and checks for a match by
date of birth, place of birth and of the child.
• 5. If there is a possible match, it is first verified and then consent
forms are sent. Both parties sign the forms and attach a photocopy of
identification. Once that's complete, Hinds sends identifying information --
name, address and phone number of each party to the other. The two parties
arrange to get in touch.
• 6. If one party is not in the registry and no match is made, Hinds sends
out non-identifying information to the one searching (about 75 percent of
searchers are adoptees looking for birth mothers). That is: the time of day the
adoptee was born; weight and length at birth; mother's age at time of giving
birth; her education, her race, and her state of birth. If medical information
is available, it also will be sent. At this point, a confidential intermediary
can be appointed to further search for the other party. If the intermediary
locates the other party and that party does not wish to give out information,
the search ends and the interested party must wait until the other party is
deceased before obtaining records.
Where to get help
Adoption History Registration Program: Indiana State Department of Health, 2 N.
Meridian St., Indianapolis, IN 46204. (317) 233-2700. Mary Hinds, manager,
mhinds@isdh.state.in.us.
Confidential Intermediary for the State of Indiana: Lori Smith Baxter, 1533 N.
Grant County Road 500 West, Marion, IN 46952. (765) 384-5885, smile@comteck.com
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To learn more
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A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
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