Dear Mr. McDaniels,
The Record printed an account of your visit to the New Jersey State House last week. I cannot tell you how happy that made me.I've made a number of attempts through the years to get my birth certificate -but you know the end of that story. At the age of 15 I found the adoption papers.I do believe that the trauma of that day has stayed with me ever since and I am 78 yrs. old.I had been with these people long before I was able to be aware of my surroundings. My so called father was a drunk who beat his wife quite regularly. The surroundings were very dirty and I can remember in the second grade a girl telling me she wasn't allowed to play with me because I was too dirty. This is a very long story made short here.
I saw the name of the woman who had given birth to me on the adoption papers and also the name I still had at that time. Nothing else. There was no phone so I used to seek out telephone booths and use the attached phone book to look up the name that was on those papers. Never had any luck. I always worked from the time I was in the 8th grade and by the skin of my teeth graduated from highschool.
I can't put an exact date on this but somewhere between 15 and 20 years ago I read that adoptees were allowed to have their files open-NOT birth certificates-just to look at the files. Little by little over the years I found out as much as I could. It turned out that these people who adopted me had had a daughter who was married and in July of 1929 had died in childbirth but the child,a girl,had lived. The husband of their daughter got a court order saying they were not allowed to see or have anything to do with that baby. The date on the adoption papers is Feb. 21,1930 (I still have them). At what point the woman of that family went to the Salvation Army I don't know but she did and took me home.I lived in the above described circumstances only to find those papers at 15. I can remember screaming from within "I want my mother" It never did happen.
As the years went by I have obtained documents from the Salvation Army letting me know that I am that little baby she took home. The woman who gave birth to me was 29 yrs. old. She and her 3 sons had been abandoned by her husband.In those days The Salvation Army had a facility on Ocean Ave. in Jersey City which was called The Salvation Army Home and Hospital. She went into the hospital section,gave birth to me, and LEFT the same day.Guess she had to get back to those other kids. Seemingly I was in the home section when that woman came looking for a baby and I wound up being it.
How did the rest of my life go? I got married but evenually the marriage did end in a divorce.I have one son and 2 grandsons aged 21 and 24. I had 2 miscarriages and one boy who died at birth.
So then what happened ? I was seeing a therapist while going through the divorce. This WONDERFUL human being worked very hard and through some magic that only he seemed to know he got me a scholarship to college and I became a public school teacher here in New Jersey at age 40. I retired at age 69 and thanks to him: I have a pension and social security. Not bad for an orphan?
Thanks again for your help for all of US,
Dolores C
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