Search, Contact and Reunion Program: Damon's Story
When Damon would look at pictures of himself next to family members, he was always struck by how he didn’t resemble any of them. His nose was larger and his ears shaped differently. His physical features were uniquely his own.
In 1970, the Board of Child Care placed Damon as an infant into an adoptive home. Nearly 40 years later, Damon felt it was time to finally search for his biological parents after both his adoptive parents passed away in 2009. “I’d always thought about my biological family,” he says. “It was always in the back of my mind.” Plus, he just felt there was something missing in
his life.
BCC recently helped reconnect Damon with both of his birth parents and an entire network of extended family he never knew he had. Reuniting with his birth family, Damon says, “hugely completed” him. “It just blew my mind to see my mother for the first time … to be able to look at her eyes and see they were my eyes.”
For many decades, BCC served birth mothers who voluntarily relinquished their parental rights and the agency placed these children within adoptive homes – primarily during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. BCC no longer directly places adoptive children, but the Search, Contact and Reunion Program serves adopted adults and their birth parents whose past adoption services were provided by BCC and who may now want information about one another.
BCC is one of the few agencies in Maryland currently offering such a service. Many agencies have either shut down over the years or lack the funding to pay for a search service for former clients, leaving adopted children and birth parents to turn to the state for help, where there is a longer wait for service.
Anne Pearce, BCC’s Director of Adoption Services, says some adults, who were adopted as children, have no desire to reunite with their birth parents, but many do. “I don’t think it is at all reflective of how much they love their adoptive families,” she says. “They just have a very natural desire to learn about their background and medical history and to understand their past.”
And for the birth parents – most of them unwed mothers and fathers from a more conservative era who were discouraged from having contact with the families that adopted their children – finding their birth child can be a healing process.
“It’s a chance for them to finally make peace with this decision they made years ago,” Anne points out.
When Damon contacted BCC, he knew little about his birth parents, other than they were young and unwed at the time of his birth. Anne searched BCC’s old records and was able to find more information relatively quickly. The records included information from the intake interview with Damon’s birth parents in 1969, when they were both 17-year-old high school sweethearts.
When Damon said he wanted to take the search further, Anne stepped into her role as a trained “confidential intermediary.” Through a process of letter writing and phone calls – all very carefully conducted due to the emotional nature of the process – she helped Damon and his mother, Christy, eventually reunite at a dinner meeting on Valentine’s Day.
When they saw each other for the first time, “We hugged for a really, really long time. I don’t think we said a word to each other,” Damon recalls. “I told her, ‘It’s really good to meet you. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.’”
Christy had in fact wanted to be found. Shortly after giving birth to him, she had written a letter to be placed in the adoption file saying he could contact her in the future, but the letter never made it into the file.
“I wish I had the words to express the gratitude I have for what you have done for me,” Christy wrote in a letter to Anne Pearce following the reunion. “Damon and I finally met … and it was wonderful! Actually, ‘wonderful’ doesn’t really express how truly great it was to see him and talk to him and hug him. I did not want the day and that moment to end.”
Damon’s father, Ed, similarly embraced him with open arms. “Damon is everything I would want in a son,” Ed says. “I personally want to thank Ms. Pearce for her work in finding both Christy and the Young family.”
Christy and Ed ended up parting and marrying separate people but both stayed in the same town and maintained contact over the years. Damon’s extended family now includes a brother and sister on his mother’s side, and three brothers on his father’s side, and all of them have been accepting, warm and welcoming.
“I’ve been very lucky,” he says. “With both birth parents, it’s like I’ve been their son for 40 years. It’s hugely rewarding. I only see us getting stronger and better from this.”
