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I delt with Laura Long (lblong@comcast.net) from CC in Kansas City, Missouri. She kept in constant contact with me even if only to report that she had nothing new. I feel confident that she did everything in her power to help me reunite with my b-mother (who didn't sign the papers because she was afraid of the reactions of her husband and children). On one single pice of paper that came home with me from St. Anthony's Home for Infants (a feeding schedule), the name "Dawn Ann Lewis" appeared at the top. Since I was a child I had always thought that actually had been my name. Laura said that the b-mother would have never even been able to hold me much less name me & that I had been given a name for my first baptism (Catholic Nuns felt that if you died before you were baptized that you would not go to heaven, so every baby was baptised as soon as possible -- then I was re-baptized later by my adoptive family). Another interesting thing that I was told is that CC protected the identity of their mothers at all costs, even from other mothers. They were given fake names to use if they lived in the home for unwed mothers. Additionally, they set up a way for families to pretend that the birth never happened. For example, the daughter of a rich family in NY would send their daughter to KCMO before she started showing. The girl would tell all of her friends and family that she was going to CA to try to be a actress. If any letters were exchanged during the period she was gone, they would be sent to CC in CA and forwarded. If the girl wrote back, they would go to CA first so the postmark would be correct. I would guess that this would only happen with rich families because poor ones couldn't afford it. As for the birth date and birth place being wrong, I am now curious about my own but I think that the times that this change would have been made would have been very few. In addition, if the change was made on the paperwork at the time of the birth/adoption, the people at CC today would have no idea about that unless it was noted in the files in some way. Otherwise, it is possible that names are similar and got mixed up or some other explainable mistake. The one person said they hired a non-CC agency who kept telling him various birth dates. Maybe he got a fly-by-night company who was just taking his money!!
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