SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNEJanuary 2, 2008
Internet aided siblings' quest to find each other
By Anne Krueger
On the day after they met for the first time, sisters Virginia Johnson (left) and Terri Converse visited their mother's grave at Alpine Cemetery on Sunday.
Virginia Johnson scanned the passengers pouring out of the airport gate. She spotted a woman with bright red hair clutching a black bag with family photographs on the front.
Johnson gasped. “There she is!”
Just minutes before her 60th birthday Sunday, Johnson gave her first hug to Terri Converse, the woman her mother gave up for adoption 65 years ago before settling in East County.
Tears streamed down Johnson's face as she held Converse in her arms. Converse couldn't stop smiling.
“It's a miracle that this happened,” Johnson said.
So ended Johnson's 28-year quest for Converse, who was put up for adoption the year before Johnson's parents met. The search sputtered for years and then – like so many others – found fuel in the power of the Internet.
“Thank you for not giving up,” Converse told Johnson.
Johnson lives in Egypt and Converse lives in Florida, but they came to San Diego County because Johnson wanted to show Converse the places and people from their mother's life.
They visited Virginia Payne's grave at the Alpine Cemetery and stopped by the home of a close family friend who had lived in a cabin near the Payne family in Japatul Valley.
As they talked and laughed, the two women marveled at their similarities – both have high-arched feet, green eyes and long eyelashes – and that they found each other at all, overcoming obstacles of deceit and misinformation.
A secret revealed
Growing up near Alpine, in a house filled with love and laughter, Johnson never knew her mother's secret.
She didn't learn the truth until 1979, 12 years after Virginia Payne died of cancer at age 45. Heartbroken over the loss, Johnson was finally ready to open the box of her mother's important papers.
“He told me that he was waiting for me to ask,” Johnson said. “He didn't want to go to his grave without telling me that I had a sister.”
Charlotte Virginia Payne, who went by her middle name, was an earthy woman who loved children. She often took in youngsters from troubled families who would live with the Paynes for months or years at a time.
The family came to San Diego County after Johnson's father retired from the Navy. They lived in a leaky wooden shack on 200 acres, raising horses, cattle, sheep and goats.
Johnson said their dirt-poor existence was a kind of rebellion for her mother. Despite growing up in a wealthy and influential family in New York, she was content to roam her farm in tattered pants and manure-covered boots.
“I can still remember my grandfather yelling at her and saying, 'How can you live like this?' ” Johnson said.
Johnson's father told her he didn't know much about the birth. He said his wife told him the baby was born in New York, that she knew the people who'd adopted her and that they were Jewish.
With those tidbits, Johnson began her search.
Posing as her mother, she wrote to the New York state bureau of records seeking a birth certificate. She got a letter confirming that her mother had given birth to a girl, Anne M. Cool, in Manhattan in 1942.
Johnson wasn't sure how to proceed. Her mother's relatives refused to tell her anything. She checked Manhattan phone books, hoping to come across the name. She looked up genealogy information in libraries, trying to find a clue.
“I felt so lost,” she said. “Imagine walking down a city street and seeing someone and wondering if that was my sister. I was feeling so desperate to find her.”
Johnson kept up her search from Egypt, where she moved in 2003 after marrying an Egyptian. She remained in Cairo even after her husband died three weeks after the move because of complications from medication. She married his brother a year later.
The Internet helped melt away the miles. She scoured Web sites for adoptees seeking family members, and she posted what she knew about her sister.
For a while, she heard nothing.
An adoptee's search
From her home in Florida, Terri Converse was trying to track down the mother who had given her up at birth.
Converse, who grew up in New Jersey, said she learned at age 7 that she was adopted. A school friend told her she had overheard Converse's mother talking about it. Her parents reluctantly admitted the truth and told her how special she was.
“I remember my father emphasizing, 'You are my daughter,' ” she said.
It wasn't until Converse was an adult that an aunt told her that her adoptive father, a dress shop owner, was actually her biological father. The information also gave her insight about her mother, who never showed much affection during her childhood.
“With knowledge comes understanding. With understanding comes forgiveness. I was able to forgive her,” Converse said.
Converse, who had moved to Pembroke Pines, Fla., said she began searching for her birth mother when she got a computer in 1996. She made friends online with a woman named Judy Lassiter, who helps adoptees with their family searches.
Converse said relatives told her that her parents had paid $10,000 to adopt her from Jerome Niles, a Delaware doctor who ran homes for wealthy but unwed mothers in the 1930s and '40s. Her father wasn't acknowledged on the birth certificate.
Niles, who died in 1963, was known for vigilantly protecting the identities of pregnant women and babies, even falsifying information on birth certificates. The babies often went to wealthy Jewish families in the New York area.
With few records available from Niles' practice, Converse thought she had reached a dead end.
A joyful connection
Johnson said she never stopped trying to find her sister. The death of her other sister, Amanda, from a fall in 1992, and her father's death in April only intensified her efforts.
In July, she joined an online chat group of adoptees seeking relatives and posted a message describing what she knew about the child her mother put up for adoption.
Lassiter saw the message and thought of Converse. She knew Converse's mother went by the name Virginia, as had Johnson's mother. Converse and Johnson had the same eye and hair color, and their noses had a similar shape.
Lassiter put the women in touch, and they began a tentative correspondence.
“I was afraid to really put much into it because I didn't want to be disappointed,” Johnson said.
But the similarities began piling up. Converse said Johnson's photo looked just like her daughter. They even shared allergies to sulfa and codeine.
The two finally turned to DNA testing.
Johnson said she was checking her e-mail three weeks later when she saw a message from Converse: “We're related.” Johnson immediately called her.
“I started crying and talking,” Johnson said. “When I stopped crying long enough, I said, 'This is your sister.' Then Terri started crying. We both kept saying, 'Oh God, it's you; it's you.' For about 10 minutes, it's all we could say.”
Sunday, Johnson and Converse stood over the joint burial plot of Virginia and Amanda Payne. They laid flowers down. Converse took a photograph of the headstone.
They hugged each other, and Johnson sobbed as Converse stroked her hair and whispered in her ear.
Afterward, Johnson said she finally felt at peace. She said she knew her mother would be pleased that she and Converse found each other.
“I brought her home,” she said.
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