After more than 80 years, birth mother and daughter reunite

[StevieM]

~snip~

For more than 80 years, Eileen Wagner kept a secret from her children. She thought it was the best way to protect all of them — not only the two kids she raised with her husband, but also a third child, whom she had given up for adoption in 1933 when she was a teenager.

Then, last month, 99-year-old Wagner sat alone in the front window of her home in Monroe, Wis., her eyes blurred by glaucoma, her legs weak from knee replacements, but her mind and memory intact. The phone rang, and Wagner picked up the call she had all but given up on.

"Hello, Mother," the long-lost daughter, Dorien Hammann, 83, recalls saying.

Wagner said her eyes filled with tears of joy and relief to hear the voice of her baby, now a retired senior who spends most of the year living two hours away from Wagner on the other side of Wisconsin.

http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-87264384/

[Thinkingabout]

1. A wonderful story, thanks for sharing, it is amazing to have waited thei long and still

Be able to make a connection.

[StevieM]

2. It probably wouldn't have taken so long if adoption records weren't sealed.

Everyone should have access to their original birth certificate.

This myth of protecting birth mother privacy needs to be dispelled. Birth mothers never asked to be protected from their own children, especially not during the Baby Scoop Era. Records were originally sealed out of concern that birth mother would be able to track down their long lost children.

[DesertRat]

3. What a great story

Thank you for sharing it.