Denny Glad
My mom learned about Denny Glad when 60 Minutes did an expose in the early 1990s on the baby stealing and selling scandal related to the activities of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society’s (TCHS) Memphis Branch under the control of Georgia Tann. My mom was adopted through that agency in 1937.
Denny was able to give my mom a tiny bit of personal information and suggested she request her adoption records from the state of Tennessee, who rejected her because the living or dead status of her original father could not be determined (who by the way had been dead for 30 years). They didn’t try very hard.
It is thanks to the efforts of Denny Glad and her Right to Know organization in Tennessee that I now possess an extensive adoption file for my mom, with notes and letters from both her original mother and her adoptive mother as well as lots of insight into the operations of the TCHS in her particular situation.
Only about half of our 50 states allow any kind of access to once sealed records even today. I have bumped up against solid obstacles in Arizona, California and Virginia. Thankfully, inexpensive DNA testing and the matching sites – Ancestry and 23 and Me – have filled in the blanks, where the practices in half our 50 states would have prevented me from achieving success.
I would have thought, with both of my adoptee parents deceased and all of the grandparents (original and adoptive) also deceased, there would be no harm in myself as a descendant finally knowing the truth of my own origins. A fact many people simply take for granted.
Missing Mom 
How do you get ahold of her. My father and his 5 siblings were adopted and nobody knows who their birth parents are. They were born in winchester tn.
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Denny passed away in May 2008. Adoption records are available in the state of Tennessee to adoptees and their direct relatives. Here is a link for you – https://www.tn.gov/dcs/program-areas/foster-care-and-adoption/adoption-records/how-to-request-an-adoption-record.html I was amazed at how much I received from them related to my mother’s adoption. You have to jump through some hoops and pay some money but for me it was well worth it. Wishing you every success !!
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