(CNN)Some adopted children spend years looking for their birth parents.
It
took Betty Morrell decades -- five, to be exact. But she was recently
reunited with the woman who gave birth to her 82 years ago, according to
CNN affiliate WBNG.
The
mother and daughter met for the first time in more than eight decades
last month in the lobby of the Greater Binghamton Airport in Binghamton,
New York.
"It seems like it's unbelievable," Morrell's birth mother, Lena Pierce, told WBNG.
Pierce
was forced to give up her 6-month-old in 1933 after state officials
concluded she was too young to raise the child, according to another
of
Pierce's daughters, Millie Hawk.She was 14 at the time.
She
went on to marry twice and have seven children, but the baby she gave
up as a young teenager was never far from mind, she told WBNG.
"There was a lot of times I worried about her and wondered where she was," Pierce said.
Morrell, whose adoptive parents died when she was in her 20s, was raised an only child in Long Island, New York.
"I
had imaginary sisters, and I had imaginary brothers," Morrell said.
"And I had them all named, and I would talk to them at night."
Morrell found Pierce after an aunt revealed her birth name -- Eva -- and birthplace -- Utica, New York.
A
birth certificate from the hospital and research on a genealogical
website led her to one of Pierce's daughters and finally their January
reunion.
"I'm not alone anymore,"
Morrell told WBNG. "I have my mother, and I have sisters and brothers.
It's surreal but so wonderful to be together again after all this time."
Click here to watch the video
Yahoo News
This highlights the importance of medical records and specifically birth registration. It's very sad to see how the process of gathering this very important data is treated so casually by officials in Nigeria. Millions of births in that country are undocumented and the quality of the information when it is documented cannot be guaranteed in many cases. Pathetic.
ReplyDelete