Our Missing Stories

My friend, Ande Scott, does a podcast called LINK>The Adoption Files. The Adoption Files seeks to provide a place for adoptees and allies to discuss the laws preventing adoptees from accessing their identities, and the emotional and physical challenges adoptees face in the process of dealing with the obstacles we face. I was once a guest on her podcast. Ande is also a late discovery adoptee – which means she grew up never being told that she was adopted and only found out much later as an adult. Today, she shared something so poignant, I needed to bring it here to reach others who might not be her friend on Facebook. Here is what she wrote –

As adopted people, we are severed from our stories. Along with photos, the greatest treasures I have received from family members are the few stories I have been told. My grandfather who testified against the mob, my other grandfather who walked back to allied lines after his bomber was shot down. The great-uncle who ran away to Australia.

My youngest expressed to me the loss he feels when he sees the photos, hears the stories, sees the traditions that thread together the strands of his friends lives.

I wish I had those things to give to him, that the false narrative had been the true story. Not the fantasy that was torn away from not just me, but my children as well.

I probably make my grandkids a little crazy, bombarding them with the stories of trips to the museum and days spent in Lego architecture and how I used to take their dad and uncle for “walks”; me on my quad skates, their dad in rollerblades, their uncle on a skateboard. How we would take turns carrying the eight pound dog when she was worn out from keeping up.

I want them to have stories to fill in at least a little of the void that stretches out behind them just two generations back.

Because being lost to family isn’t just about the adopted person.

It’s about everyone who comes after, as well.

blogger’s note – I was recently in contact with Barbara Raymond (author of The Baby Thief) which is about Georgia Tann, who looms large in my own mother’s adoption story. She said – you have more adoption in your family than anyone else I have heard of. It’s true. Not only were BOTH of my parents adoptees but each of my 2 sisters gave up a baby to adoption. That makes 4 adoptees in my immediate genetic, biological family. Long ago, as I was uncovering my actual genetic, biological grandparents, my youngest son said – you have a very complicated family. That is true and I’ve been doing my best to come to terms with that and integrate it into my own understanding of what family is. All 4 of my adoptive grandparents were “good” people who treated us well as genuine grandchildren. Learning the truth of my original genetic, biological grandparents did shatter that a bit for me personally. I’ve been doing my best to put ALL of the pieces back together again.

The Baby Thief

I was surprised today to learn there may be a new “Georgia Tann” movie coming based upon the first book I ever read about her, The Baby Thief by Barbara Raymond. One of my favorite actresses, Octavia Spencer, has optioned it. I should not be surprised because it is a story that returns time and time again.

The story is personal to me. My mom was adopted from the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, from the Memphis branch that Tann was in charge of for decades. The book is hair raising. I read it just one month after my dad died, only four months after my mom first died. All I could think of as I read so many horrendous and tragic stories was “thank god my mom and her brother ended up with the Dittmers”.

The truth is it was a comfortable placement. My grandfather was a banker, my grandmother a socialite. My mom disrupted their fondest hopes and dreams for her life when she conceived me out of wedlock while only a junior in high school. Thus my mom was never a debutante nor did she marry “well”. Instead we grew up the working class children of a oil refinery worker. Even so, we had good enough lives.

My grandmother was over the moon happy about both of her Georgia Tann babies, considering them to be geniuses and brilliant. As my mom grew up, tensions occurred. I understand, having spent some one-on-one time with my grandmother when she took me to Cambridge University in England with her for a summer session.

My grandmother was always very concerned about her body image. Her mom and sister were rotund Missouri farm gals. Not my grandmother, who artistically made herself into a remarkable woman. So my mom never felt she lived up to her adoptive mother’s expectations. Turns out biology gave us big bones and stocky frames from our Arkansas/Tennessee farm stock.

My mom died believing she had been stolen from her parents due to the stories she consumed about Georgia Tann and her methods and the odd circumstance of being born in Virginia but adopted as an infant in Memphis Tennessee.

Octavia Spencer with author, Barbara Raymond

After Good Housekeeping ran an article written by Raymond, she received many letters from people asking her if she could help them find their child who had been stolen. She decided to research and write a book about Tann. She placed ads in newspapers and received 900 replies.

Because of Tann’s ties to Juvenile Court Judge Camille Kelley and Memphis political Boss E H Crump, as well as other important people around town, she was able to falsify birth certificates as well as hide or destroy records. In my mom’s adoption file, I found clear evidence that Tann was certainly not above fudging some details. Tann’s efforts to hide her criminal activities were instrumental in the extensive use of sealed adoption records all over the United States. I have my mom’s records (which she was denied in the early 1990s) only because Tennessee decided to make them available to the victims.