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Registry reunites adopted kids, birth parents
Lynne Bates and Shirley Saxon stand outside Gilcrease Museum. MIKE SIMONS / Tulsa World
By MATT GLEASON World Scene Writer
Published: 11/5/2009 2:19 AM
Last Modified: 11/5/2009 4:03 AM
On a lonely day in 1964, 25-year-old Shirley Saxon gave birth to a baby boy she could not keep.
In the delivery room of Queen of Angels Hospital in Los Angeles, Saxon only saw her newborn's face for a moment.
"I could have gone to the nursery to see him, but I knew I couldn't and still let him go," said the 70-year-old Saxon as tears wet the Tulsan's eyes in her lamp-lit apartment. "I could have held him, but I knew I couldn't, because I knew that if I touched him, that would be it — then I would take him into sure friggin' hell."
Life with a cash-strapped divorced mother of four was no place for a baby.
Four days after her son's birth, the boy ended up in the arms of his adoptive parents, Robert and Gwendolyn Brown, an Idaho couple Saxon selected herself.
The couple named their adopted child Robert Wayne Brown. Family and friends simply called him Wayne.
Forty-three years later, Saxon, a retired marriage and family counselor, resolved to finally find Wayne. She'd been searching since he was 21. It was time.
"I assumed that this baby, if it was loved and nurtured and cherished, would have no needs of me," Saxon said just before emotion soaked her words. "But I learned really quickly, I had need of him. You don't give up a part of yourself without extreme trauma. And that's a life sentence.
"But I always knew I could find him."
Ties that bind
Lynne Bates was the youngest of seven girls. She was the unruly one, maybe
even a little wild. And she was the only adopted child of Ray and Jean Tag of Tulsa.
"It's kind of weird when you're growing up in a family where, of course, everybody is very similar — and you're not," recalled the 43-year-old Tulsan, who works in advertising. "There's a sense of being different and of struggling with: 'Do I want to conform to what I think this family is, or do I want to be myself?' "
Trouble was, even if Bates chose to be herself, she wasn't sure who that person was.
"There's a lot that you take for granted just having those blood ties," said the step-mother of two boys. "When you don't, it is like you're finding your way by yourself."
But maybe, as she often wondered as a child, her birth parents would show up one day to complete her. All she knew about them, however, was that they were getting a divorce when she was born. Bates always wondered if her birth caused the split. She also knew she had at least one older sibling.
Once an 18-year-old Bates realized her birth family wasn't going to show up, she began looking for them.
Futile hunt
Both Saxon and Bates signed up on the Soundex Reunion Registry, but neither Saxon's son, nor Bates' birth family, were on the registry. And, because Oklahoma is not one of the six states that allows an adult adoptee to receive his original birth certificate, Bates' search was, to say the least, frustrating.
Bates said, "There were a lot of times during the process where I said, 'It's out of my control. I just have to trust that what's meant to happen will happen.' "
Then it did — for both Saxon and Bates.
Lost, then found
On a September night in 2008, Saxon's search led to a telephone call.
"This is Wayne Brown," said the voice of her baby boy, now a man in his 40s.
"Oh," Saxon said, then tears dripped from her eyes. On the other end of the line, the emotion, too, swept over Wayne far away in Idaho.
In July 2008, Bates not only found her birth mother, Marion Cifreo, of Louisiana, she also found her older brother, Scott Dallas.
A month later, Bates stood at the door of an Owasso hotel, where they were staying.
"I couldn't go in," Bates said. "My whole life was going to be entirely different as soon as I stepped through that door."
She stepped through anyway, then into the embrace of a family she'd never known.
These days, Saxon and Brown have seen each other only twice in person, but they bridge the distance between Oklahoma and Idaho with daily telephone calls — sometimes several times a day.
Saxon said her heart "literally bows" at Wayne's feet.
As for Bates, when she's not with her birth mother and brother, who both live in Louisiana, she talks on the phone or exchanges text messages with them sometimes more than once a day.
Looking back on her reunion, Bates said, "It's even surreal to me now, just stepping into this family and belonging instantly."
About Soundex
The International Soundex
Reunion Registry is the nation’s
largest and oldest nonprofit
agency that reunites family
members separated by, among
other things, adoption.
Saturday is the registry’s 15th
annual nationwide RegDay, which
includes Tulsa’s RegDay ’09 at
Promenade Mall, 4107 S. Yale Ave.
From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday,
attendees can enter the free
registry, learn about adoption
support groups, along with lifelong
issues in adoption, search,
and reunion.
“It’s a scary step to search,”
said Samantha Franklin, a Bixby
adoptee who is a part of RegDay
’09, “but everything I’ve ever
heard is that no matter what you
find out — even finding out my
birth mother had passed away
— it was so much better for me
to know than not to know. It just
fills so many voids in our lives.”
To demonstrate the power of
filling a void, Franklin pointed to
the stories of two Tulsa women.
Meet both at RegDay ’09.
For more
To read search tips by
Samantha Franklin, a Bixby
adoptee and Oklahoma
representative for the
American Adoption
Congress, visit tulsaworld.com/sfranklinsearchtips
Matt Gleason 581-8473
matt.gleason@tulsaworld.com
By MATT GLEASON World Scene Writer
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