[lauralee3]

I can't begin to tell you all how much this article helped me. The woman mentioned at the end of the article did not have any of my mother's records, BUT she referred me to someone who did! I hope it is an equally useful tool for all who are involved in a search.

Good luck!!

Laura
____________________________________________


Buried Truth
Thursday, September 02, 2004
BY PEGGY O'CROWLEY
Star-Ledger Staff

SUSAN BEATON spends a lot of time with her family these days. A spring trip to New Orleans with sisters Ruth and Ellen. Visits to brother Bill in South Jersey. At the minimum, she talks to her siblings on the phone about once a week, she said.

A year ago the retired teacher from Howell didn't even know her brother and sisters existed.

And she never would have, if not for the opening of an adoption file that sat for years in the basement of the Youth Consultation Services building at 284 Broadway in Newark. Filed away for decades, it is just one among 1,000 cases of children whose parents gave them up to other families.

Many of them now are middle-aged and elderly, and this may be their last chance to discover their biological families.

"At first it was a big shock," the 66-year-old Beaton said of learning about her siblings, nieces, nephews and other extended family. "But now I have more people to care about me, and more people to care about."

The adoption files were consolidated over the years at the Youth Services Consultation building -- the original Protestant Foster Home -- as adoption agencies in the area merged or closed down, said Kim Garfinkle, the administrator of foster home programs and adoption services at YCS. The agency agreed to keep all the records in storage when the Children's Service Agency donated the 1875-era Gothic orphanage to YCS in 1976, she said.

The yellowing, typed reports were gathering dust when Garfinkle first reviewed them several years ago and decided to get the word out that they existed. YCS became a licensed adoption agency two years ago.

"It really wasn't serving anyone keeping them in the basement. We have people's histories here, records of serious medical conditions," she said. "Hopefully, we'll be reconnecting people who need medical information or people who want to find each other."

Most of the cases, dating from the 1930s through the 1960s, were from the greater Newark area, including Newark, the Oranges, Montclair and Kearny. Most involved birth parents of Italian, Irish, and German descent, since most minority adoptions were referred to the Spence Chapin adoption agency, Garfinkle said.

Many of the births were to young, unmarried women in their teens and twenties during a time when out-of-wedlock births were shameful and abortion was illegal. Young pregnant women often were sent to relatives or homes where they gave birth, relinquishing their children in the hospital. The babies were adopted right away or after a stay in a foster home.

Beaton believes she was a toddler when she was adopted by Richard and Elta Orloff, a childless couple who raised her in Bogota. After an "amazingly wonderful childhood," Beaton attended New York University, got married, and taught elementary school. After moving to Monmouth County, she and her husband adopted two children.

Beaton, now divorced, is comfortable with adoption, and she had no problems when her daughter reunited with her own half-siblings and her birth father. But she had no clue that she had biological relatives somewhere until her half-niece, Dawn Piatkowski of Voorhees, found out about her while doing some genealogy.

Piatkowski, Ruth's daughter, was helping her aunt Ellen obtain her birth certificate, which she needed for a trip. The birth certificate mentioned that Ellen was the second child born to Ruth Pollard, nee Britt. After negotiating the Internet, Piatkowski contacted Garfinkle, who then called Beaton.

"She asked me if I was willing to talk to my sister, and my heart started flooding. I never knew I had a sister," she said.

After exchanging pictures, the siblings met last July. The Pollard children were stunned that Beaton looked exactly like their mother. The records show another stunning development: Beaton's birth father had two other children, although they are impossible to find because the father's name is not in the case history -- not an unusual situation decades ago, Garfinkle said.

However, Renee Renzetti Philips, a 45-year-old mother from Sugar Grove, Ill., was able to find her birth father, Anthony M. Chudyk of Brick, by tracking down her 1959 adoption file. The need for medical information was behind her desire to find her birth parents, she said, as well as "natural curiosity about who I looked like."

She began her search with her birth certificate, which mentioned she had been adopted through the Children's Aid Society, one of the agencies whose files ended up in the old foster home basement. Philips had been adopted at 4 months old by Michael and Betty Renzetti, who moved to Illinois. She contacted Garfinkle, who helped locate her birth mother, still living in New Jersey.

"She was fabulous. This woman went to the grave site of my birth parents' parents," she said of Garfinkle.

Because New Jersey's adoption files are sealed by law, Garfinkle was only able to provide a "non-identify" report that contained information about the birth mother's ethnicity or medical data, but nothing about the mother's married name or living circumstances, to protect her privacy.

Garfinkle can contact the biological or adopted party to find out if they are interested in a reunion. In Philips' case, her mother was adamantly against it, so they have not met.

"Sometimes the news isn't so great," Garfinkle said. "Sometimes you search for someone who wants a reunion, and when you locate the person they're looking for, that person isn't interested."

New Jersey has one of the more restrictive rules on adoption records in the country. Advocates who want more access have been trying to change the laws for 20 years. The latest bill, which was released to the Senate from the Health, Human Services, and Senior Citizens Committee, would allow adoptees access to their original birth certificates, with birth parents submitting a preference of whether they want to be contacted or not.

Opponents, including the National Council for Adoption, argue that more access would compromise birth parents' privacy and might lead to an increase in abortions over adoptions. But Jane Nast of Harding Township, legislative director for the American Adoption Congress, said when a similar bill was passed in Oregon, the majority of birth parents were interested in a reunion.

Philips' case had a silver lining. In all her paperwork, there was only one mention of her biological father's name, but Garfinkle was able to find Chudyk, 72, a divorced father of five -- or so he thought. "He never even knew I existed," said Philips, who met him last summer for the first time. Chudyk lives within a few minutes of Betty Renzetti, who had come back to live in New Jersey.

"It's great. He never misses a birthday or Christmas," she said. Her only regret is that she cannot contact her other half-sibling, her birth mother's daughter. "I feel bad for her," she said. "She's an only child."

Anyone seeking information about the 1,000 adoption files can contact Kim Garfinkle at Youth Consultation Services in East Orange, (973) 854-3600, x419.

[AandKmom]

Hi Laura,

I saw this article and read it, and imediately called the phone number. I left a message about a few weeks ago but still have not received a call back yet. How did you get a response back?
I was adopted through Children's Aid and Adoption society, at the time was in Bogota and moved to Cedar Knolls after I was adopted. I was adopted in 1974 and not sure if the have my records but it is worth a shot. If you have any resources that would possibly help me in my search that would be great. Thanks and I would love to hear your progress.

Sarah
DOB 1/6/74
Born at Mountainside Hospital Glen Ridge NJ
Mom was one of 13 Brothers and sisters

[lauralee3]

Sarah,

I too had left a message at YCS and didn't get a return call, so I called back and Kim answered the phone. I told her my story and who I was looking for (birth sister) and she referred me to Children's Aid. So my suggestion is to just call back.

But I also have the name and # from Children's Aid - email me at llc630@yahoo.com and I'll give it to you.

Laura