Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / August 2004

http://www.post-trib.com/cgi-bin/pto-story/news/z1/08-28-04_z1_news_01.html

Mother and son reunited after 45-years
Aug. 28, 2004

Dale Moore and Jude Savoree have been looking for each other for a long time,
though they didn’t know each other’s name until this summer.

Their quest began Sept. 28, 1958, when a 15-year-old girl from Hammond gave
birth to a 7-pound 8-ounce, blue-eyed baby boy at a Salvation Army hospital for
unwed mothers in Chicago.

It ended — and their new life together began — a month ago, with a phone
call.

Dale was speaking from his workplace, the locomotive shop of U.S. Steel Gary
Works. Jude was having breakfast in a restaurant in Florida, while she was on
vacation.

“It’s official,” Dale said. “You’re my mom.”

“I couldn’t say anything,” Jude said. She threw the phone to her
ex-husband Mike, with whom she was traveling. She said to tell Dale that she
would call him back and that she loved him. Then she ran outside and vented 45
years of stored emotion in tears.

Shortly after his birth, Dale was adopted by Nona and Donald Lee Moore of
Hammond.

His parents told him he was adopted, that his mother had been a girl that was
too young to care for him and that she had given him up so that he could have a
good life with people who loved him.

Over the years, Dale, who lives in Hobart, wondered about his birth mother and
thought about trying to find her, but he was worried.

What if she were dead?

What if she had kept his birth a secret and didn’t wish to be found?

And, most troubling to him, would Nona, who had bandaged his scrapes and cared
for him, be hurt by his desire to know the woman who had given birth to him?

When he finally decided to start looking in 1989, he went to Nona and explained
his feelings.

“You were there on the first day of school,” he said. “You were there
when I was in Cub Scouts. You were there when I had rheumatic fever. That’s
carved in stone and nothing could change that.”

For her part, Jude yearned to be reunited with her son from the moment the
social worker took the boy from her arms and drove away. In those days, keeping
the baby was not a viable option; her parents made the choice for her.

When she was 21, she wrote a poem describing the greatest trauma of her young
life. It included these lines.

A mother’s love never dies,

And years can’t ease the pain,

And I’d give anything I could to see you once again.

And, son, wherever you may be,

I hope and pray somehow

You’ll know how much I loved you then

And how much I love you now.

She had eight other children, and she told each of them the circumstances of
their oldest brother’s birth and how she hoped they would meet him some day.

But an “illegitimate” birth was among society’s secrets when Jude was
young. The adoption records were “sealed up tighter than a drum,” she said.

Dale, assisted by his wife, Jane, made a couple attempts to lift the veil, but
had no more luck than Jude did. “Any lead you’d follow, you’d hit a brick
wall,” Jane said.

The years passed.

Then things began to change for birth parents and the people looking for them.

The Internet evolved into a powerful tool for searching and posting
information.

And states began to recognize that the records of people who wanted to identify
each other should not withheld.

But there were other complicating factors for Dale and Jude, such as residence
in one state and the birth in another.

Jude, who got into the search early, said she entered her vital information on
hundreds of Web sites, hoping her son or someone who knew him might happen upon
one of her posts.

Whether out of cruelty, delusion or ardent hope, there are those who prowl
these Web sites and torment searchers. This happened to Jude a number of times.
She paid for the flight from Seattle to Chicago for one young man who seemed a
likely match; as soon as she saw him, she knew he wasn’t her son.

These false alarms and disappointments were so painful that she came close to
deleting all of her postings, Jude said.

But in July, the search ended.

Jane, looking at the adoption search database at www.skylace.net/adoption, saw
one of Jude’s posts. Jane sent an e-mail message to Jude at her home in
Watseka, Ill.: “Your information matches that of my husband.”

Jude was getting ready to leave on vacation. She was waiting at home for two
new tires to be installed on the van. One of her daughters called. She wanted
Jude to put an ad up on an online trading post. Jude hesitated; the computer
was shut down and the phone disconnected in preparation for her trip.

But mothers tend to ignore inconvenience when their children want something.
After she posted the ad for her daughter’s car, she went into her computer
mail and waited for the confirmation response.

It was then she saw Jane’s message.

She’d been on this roller coaster before.

Jude said “I began talking to the computer like a nut. 'No, you’re not
going to ruin my vacation.’” She thought about deleting the message and
shutting the computer down.

But instead she sent a noncommittal e-mail, saying she was going away for two
weeks and that she’d need to see pictures or paperwork before she went
further.

Jane and Dale, who knew nothing of Jude’s many prior trips down false trails,
were disappointed. But he got Nona, who now lives near Monticello, to pull some
of his childhood pictures. Nona took the photos to a neighbor who scanned them
and e-mailed them to Jane, who forwarded them to Jude.

At her Aunt Jean’s home near the Alabama-Florida line, Jude sat down at the
computer to check her mail.

As Dale’s pictures took shape on the screen, Jean, who was standing behind
Jude began pounding on Jude’s back shouting, “That’s him!”

Jude could see the resemblance between Dale at 7 and her next oldest son Dave
at the same age. But her heart wouldn’t let her believe.

“I need more,” she said. “I need DNA.”

“I’m your DNA,” Jean said, “And that’s your son.”

It turned out the both Dale and Jude had entered their personal data with the
Indiana Adoption Registry, which tries to match birth parents with their
children.

On July 28, state officials confirmed the relationship. Jude cut her vacation
short and headed home.

The plan was for Dale and his family to go to Watseka the following weekend to
meet his birth mom and siblings.

But Jude, who had waited so long, could not wait any longer.

When Dale got home from work Friday and walked into his kitchen, Jude was
there.

She said, “I’ve been looking for you for 45 years.”

They filled the empty space in their lives with a hug.

The next day, the Moores visited Watseka to meet Dale’s three brothers and
three of his sisters. Dale will meet the last of his siblings at a planned
Labor Day party.

“They were strangers until he walked through the door,” Jude said of her
children. “Then it was though they’d known each other all their lives.”

The meeting revealed many shared family traits, both good and bad.

Jude, Dale, Dave and one of the sisters compared a history of heart trouble.
But it turns out they share a love of music, and spent part of the day playing
and singing together.

“It’s more than a dream come true,” Jude said. “It’s been a long,
long road.”

 



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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