Greg Louganis Adoptee

Greg Louganis and his biological father, Fouvale Lutu, in 2017

I learned about this adoptee from a favorite adoptee blogger, Tony Corsentino, in a recent blog LINK>Beautiful Man. I personally LOVE reunion stories.

I’ll admit I really didn’t know anything about Louganis’ Olympic career. In 2017, People magazine wrote about his reunion with his paternal family – LINK>How He Found His Birth Father by Patrick Gomez. Louganis told People – “I needed to know I wasn’t a throw-away child.” Like many adoptees (my mom included) being adopted filled him with questions about his birth parents. Being told his biological parents had been young when he was born and had no choice in giving him up for adoption, he says “helped ease the question of whether I was loved.”

Louganis’s birth parents met in Hawaii, but his biological mother moved to San Diego while pregnant and Louganis entered the foster care system at birth. At 9 months, he was adopted by Southern California-based Frances and Peter Louganis, who were unable to have biological children. The couple had also adopted a daughter two years before and were always open with their kids about their family history.

Among his biggest fans was Fouvale Lutu, who for years had quietly followed his son’s life from afar. When an endorsement event for Speedo brought Louganis to Honolulu in 1984, Lutu decided it was time to meet his first-born son. “One of the hosts came up to me and said, ‘Your father’s here.’ And I said, ‘My father’s in San Diego,’ ” recalls Louganis. Then he said, ‘No. Your biological father.’ “

“It was interesting because as the years progressed,” Louganis says, “I saw a lot of similar traits in him that I saw in myself.” He adds, “when I did the DNA testing and found out how we were connected, it validated everything that I knew in my heart.” Through the DNA test, he also discovered the identity of his birth mother.

Back to Tony Corsentino, his adoptive parents extolled Louganis as a role model for him. This caused him to realize he had resented Greg Louganis as a child. In maturity, he realized that his parents’ tokenizing of Louganis as what adoptees can achieve was mixed in with his resentment. Then, he realized that he would have needed to be able to theorize his adoption in terms that separated his own self and his questions and needs as an adoptee, from his adoptive parents, their motives and their needs as adopters. The idea of adoptee-in-reunion erasing everything that does not support the dominant conception of adoption as child welfare through family creation. The very idea of finding and reclaiming one’s roots.

A bit more about erasure from Tony – the term is a cultural project requiring many interconnecting parts: laws, institutions, ideas. Denial of citizenship to intercountry adoptees is one manifestation of it. Also, adopting children out of their communities; punitive, draconian terminations of parental rights through our systems of family policing; sealing of birth records. More broadly still: ideas of adoption as child rescue, and the presumption of adoptee gratitude, function to enmesh everyone in the project of erasure. Against such a polymorphous force, resistance takes correspondingly many forms. Greg Louganis’s willingness to talk about his reunion and his reassertion of his ancestral identity through inscribing and adorning his body with native tattoos are potent acts of anti-erasure, no matter how personal their meaning for him.

I love reunion stories because I had to make a determined effort to reclaim my original roots for my own self.

Life Can Be Difficult

Keanu Reeves and his sister Kim were born to Patricia Taylor, a costume designer and showgirl, and Samuel Reeves, a geologist in Beirut, Lebanon. The actor was only three years old when his father abandoned his family, leaving Patricia Taylor alone to raise the two children all by herself. Throughout his younger years, Keanu Reeves and his sister would move around with their mother quite a bit and have lived in Hawaii, Australia, and even New York. Finally, Patricia Taylor settled down in Canada with her children.

Although Samuel Reeves was barely around in his childhood, his actions were still able to fill Keanu Reeves with pain. The last time he spoke to his father was around the age of 13. Years after being abandoned by his father, when the actor became a world-famous star, his father was arrested for the possession of cocaine and heroin in the 1990s. Samuel Reeves was given a sentence of 10 years behind bars.

“The story with me and my dad’s pretty heavy. It’s full of pain and woe and f***ing loss and all that s**t,” Reeves said.

Samuel Reeves has opened up about his estranged relationship with Keanu Reeves and blamed himself for the broken, practically non-existent relationship they share. The last memory that he has of his now-famous son is one where Keanu Reeves is still a little boy and they’re in Hawaii’s Big Island, splashing around in the water.

The father admits that his addiction to drugs and his shifty lifestyle stopped him from having a proper relationship with Kim and Keanu Reeves. From afar, Samuel Reeves has seen his son go through tragic moments, which include the actor losing his daughter after she was stillborn and losing the mother of his child, Jennifer Syme, whom he once loved.

Disturbing

What causes such a sweet face to create such a pained looking smile ? It is Isabella’s smile in the most recent pictures that disturbs me on some psychic level. The adoptive parents (Lehua or Isaac Kalua) are now strongly suspected of having murdered the 6 year old a full month before they reported her missing in Hawaii. They have now been arrested and are awaiting a hearing to provide them with legal counsel. There is an article about the current state of the case at this link from Maui.

I found a dissertation by Katherine E Sunder titled Mothers Who Kill Children They Have Adopted. Her dissertation topic is described this way – A mother killing her child is a disturbing and puzzling crime. A review of the cases in the United States from 1993 through 2013 that involved mothers who killed children they had adopted was conducted. The similarities and differences between mothers who kill their adopted children and mothers who kill their biological children are described. The common factors and general patterns that exist among these mothers are examined to propose a theory for why a mother decides to kill her adopted child.

While an average of four children die every day from child abuse and neglect in the United States, adoption is often put forth as a way to try and prevent such tragedies from occurring. Generally, parents who adopt domestically and also internationally are described as extremely devoted and committed to family. They are described as people who will literally “lay everything on the line” to parent a child. Considering the rigorous and demanding process these parents go through in order to adopt a child, it raises the question of why would a mother kill the child or children she adopted ?

However, the killing of a child is not an arbitrary or unpredictable crime. Instead, it can be viewed and experienced as imbedded in and a reflection of the societies in which it occurs. Abuse by adoptive parents is often mentioned by adoptees in privacy constrained groups. In an abuse-related killing of a child, the mother has intentionally committed a purposeful physical assault that unintentionally led to the child’s death. The purpose was not to kill the child but to provide harsh discipline. 80% of these cases involve the child welfare services in their background. Some cases involve the mother’s attempt to stop the child from crying. Some cases involve an abusive relationship with a violent male partner.

Isabella’s body has not yet been found and it is not known what may have caused her death. Homicide investigators say, “What was initially reported was that she had left her home in the middle of the night, and when they [her adoptive parents] woke up they didn’t see her.” Police say support from the city deputy prosecuting attorneys and individuals from the domestic violence division was critical getting police where they are today in their now eight-week investigation. Also the FBI is credited with offering evidentiary analysis that was extremely valuable including behavioral analysis unit into the mindset of the suspects in this case.

Late Discoveries

This is not as uncommon as you might believe. There are people who believe that someone is their original parent all of their lives, and suddenly, usually because someone in their family has died, they learn the truth. Today’s story is one of those . . .

My grandmother just passed away a few days ago. Yesterday my mother (grandmother’s oldest of six kids) gets a call from one of the sisters who has been taking care of things (the mother is in Colorado, sister and grandmother are in Hawaii). The sister tells my mother that my grandmother was married to another man, prior to marrying the man who we all thought was my mother’s dad.

The first husband was my mother’s actual biological father. He abandoned my grandmother, leaving her with my mom and disappeared. So the ‘grandfather ‘ we always knew, offered to marry my grandmother and tell everyone that my mom was his oldest daughter. They got married and moved to Germany. They told everyone that my mom was his daughter. And this was my mom’s life.

Somehow my mom, lived into her 60’s without ever needing a copy of her birth certificate….honestly, which I am not sure how…but yeah. Now, she needs her birth certificate and asks her mother if she has it….her mom tells her that the hospital had burned down or flooded and all the records were destroyed….

Somehow after going back and forth, my mom managed to get a copy of her birth certificate…which had what she thought was the wrong name on it. It had my great grandmother’s last name on it, my grandmother’s ‘maiden’ name….which coincidentally turns out to be also the last name of her biological father. (Apparently grandmother married a step brother? Maybe. No actual biological relationship though….because his father was not my grandmother’s father and his mother was not her mother.) My mom has a fit and somehow manages to get her birth certificate changed to my grandfather’s last name….all because that is who she has always thought she was.

Now she is questioning everything. Apparently she is not who she thought she was. Her birth certificate should not have my grandfather’s name on it. She wants to know if she is LEGALLY married to my dad…they have been ‘married’ for over 50 years.

But of course – Yes, she is legally married to the woman’s dad because she legally used her legal name when filing for her marriage certificate. Officials do ask for information on the parents, but that is to streamline county record keeping and would not make the marriage certificate null and void. The mom answered those questions to the best of her ability with the knowledge she had, she did not commit fraud and her marriage is valid.

It is shocking to hear something like this. It takes a while to adjust and get through the emotions that any person would feel when presented with such unexpected information. It is not unusual in these kinds of circumstances to find out after one’s mother has passed. In this case, the mom at the age of 70….this grandmother would have been 92, but she passed a few days before her birthday. It is life changing and learning this is like having the rug pulled out from a person.

The sister finding out was accidental. There are three sisters. The father told the second sister in 1984 after he had been drinking too much…and she told everyone but the mother and a third sister. The third sister found out and crying, very upset, told the mother. She only told her because the second sister was threatening to tell the mother but not a nice way. Sadly, the family is a bit horrible and not terribly close.