Lena Pierce was just 13 when she gave birth to a baby she named Eva May in Utica, New York in 1933.
Social welfare officials took the baby away because Pierce, then 13, was herself a ward of the state.
Advertisement
Eva May was adopted by a family on Long Island and grew up as Betty Morrell, an only child.
Morrell said: “I grew up a very happy child. I was so content in the family I was adopted by.”
"(But) after my adoptive parents died, that’s when I started looking (for her birth mother). Being that it was a closed adoption, it’s like hitting a brick wall because you can’t get any information.”
She was in her early 30s when she started looking for information about her birth family. She had been told her birth mother had died during childbirth and was shocked when she eventually learned she was still alive.
Morrell’s granddaughter, Kimberly Miccio, started helping with the search.
The breakthrough finally came in September when Miccio got in touch with a distant relative of Morrell’s through Ancestry.com, and that person put her in touch with Millie Hawk of Windsor, New York, one of Pierce’s daughters.
Morrell said: “Kim and I got on the phone and called her. I had found my baby sister, who’s 65. We just clicked. It was like we had known each other all our lives.”
Morrell learned she had four sisters and two brothers, and that her mother was alive and well, living in an assisted-living apartment complex in Hallstead, Pennsylvania. That’s about 20 miles from where Hawk lives.
Amazing moment 82-year-old woman is reunited with mum
06 February 2016
Read: 932
AN 82-YEAR-OLD WOMAN given up for adoption has finally been reunited with her 96-year-old mum - after searching for 50 years.
-1780923278.jpg&h=190&w=280&zc=1&q=100)
