TRI-TOWN NEWS,March 31, 2008
Ocean View
A journey into the labyrinth
PATRICIA A. MILLER
Born 8-20-50
Baptism - done
Birth weight
Present weight - 111/2 pounds approx.
Full term - normal delivery
No immunizations given as yet
Parentage - American of German, English
and Slovak ancestry
That was all the information my adoptive parents had to go on when the Catholic Children's Aid Association placed me in their home two days after Christmas. When my adoption was finalized inMarch 1952, the court papers noted that my natural mother had surrendered me in writing and that my father was "unknown."
The two-page judgment of adoption also noted "the condition in life of the child's parents" and said the adoption would be in my best interest.
"...from the date hereof, the rights, duties, privileges and relations heretofore existing between the said Patricia Ann Zurick and his parents shall in all respects be at an end..."
But it didn't end there. And it still has not ended.
That long-ago legal document provided only bare details about my beginnings in this world. But it did hold one all-important clue- my natural mother's last name. It's a detail the state of New Jersey decided that no adult adoptee should have, back when adoption records were sealed in 1940.
I was lucky. My adoptive father handed me the final adoption papers on the day I turned 21.
"You have a right to see this," he said.
Most adult adoptees aren't so fortunate. Their ancestral quest can't even begin without that last name.
The questions began in my childhood. My earliest memory goes back to age 3. It was New Year's Eve and the bells and honking cars wokeme.Mymuch-loved parents came into the room to comfort me. It was then, if my memory is correct, they dropped the bombshell and told me I was adopted.My natural parents, they said, had died in a train wreck.
And my life changed forever.
Occasionally, I would summon up the courage to askmymother aboutmy natural parents. It made her uncomfortable. She told me she thought the last name had started with a Z.
My phantomparents hauntedme. I had an irrational fear they would snatch me off a street corner on my way home from school. At night, I imagined them in the shadows of my bedroom.
When I was in my early teens, my mother dropped another bombshell. My natural parents had not died in a train wreck.
It tookme untilmymid-20s to begin the search. I went to my birthplace, Margaret HagueMaternityHospital in Jersey City.A kind lady in the records department listened to my plight and told me she was sorry she couldn't give me the hospital records. But she gave me some very important advice.
"Go to your family doctor, sign a records release authorization form with your original name, then send it back to me," she said. "We get a lot of people like you here."
The papers arrived in my doctor's office soon after. That was when I learned I weighed 5 pounds, 13 ounces, that I was 19 inches long, that I arrived three weeks early and that I was my natural mother's fourth child. The papers had another stunning bit of information - both my natural mother's and father's names. My parents had been married at the time of my birth. They were both from Shamokin, Pa., a small coal-mining town.
My then-husband went to the Jersey CityHall of Records and wove a story about a medical emergency. We needed my family's history and we needed names, he told the clerk.
The clerk was angry. He said the information was sealed by state law. My husband persisted. I was very sick, he said, and we needed the information.
The clerk walked away. He came back several minutes later with a ledger book and dumped it on the counter.
"Here," he said. "You didn't get this from me." The birth records matched the hospital records. I knew who I was.
But the subterfuge the adoptedmust resort to continued. I went to St. Aedan's Church in Jersey City, where I had been baptized six weeks after I was born. The rectory receptionist greeted me warmly when I asked for a copy of my original baptismal certificate. I gave my last name as Zurick. She left the room and returned a few minutes later. Her demeanor had changed. "What are you trying to pull?" she asked angrily. "You know we can't give that information out."
Shortly after that, I dialed Pennsylvania information and asked for any Zurick listings from Shamokin. There were quite a few. I closed my eyes and picked out one. It landed on the name Joseph Zurick.When I dialed the number, his wife, Gertrude, answered. Instead of being annoyed by a stranger's call, she was intrigued.
That was the beginning of a five-year friendship. I learned the man listed as my natural father had been an alcoholic, who brutalized my mother and three brothers. She left him and moved to North Jersey in 1946. They never divorced. He tried many times to get her to return.
We visitedmyAunt Gertrude andUncle Joe in 1977. No one answered the front door, so we walked around back. My aunt and uncle had just returned from church. They had a group of relatives assembled to see the stranger who had come to visit. When I rounded the corner of the house, there was a collective gasp. To use an old cliché, I was the spitting image ofmy natural mother.
I never met her. We did reach her by phone once. She denied ever having me.
I wrote to her. I told her I had no wish to intrude on her life, that I just wanted some basic medical information and family history. She never answered.
Adult adoptees should not have to resort to lying or misrepresentation to find out who they are. Imagine telling an African- American, Chinese, Hispanic, Irish or person of any ethnicity they are not entitled to their original birth certificates.
The New Jersey state Senate approved bill S-611 recently. The bill would allow adult adoptees to petition the state registrar for their original birth certificates. The bill now heads to the Assembly.
That's the good part. But the bill also gives biological parents a year to file a "no contact" letter to allow them to remain anonymous. The birth parents would instead have to provide a family history form and update it every 10 years.
That's too big a loophole.Adult adoptees have a civil right to their original birth certificates. It's that simple.
Patricia Miller is a managing editor with Greater Media Newspapers.
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