I'll Be Waiting

My story begins at age 9 when I learned that I was adopted. It was a heartbreaking day and even though I was given the "you were chosen" story, I could tell that I was not a real part of my family. My grandmother would always say things such as, "You're one of my favorites even though you're not my blood."

For many years after I left home I would ask questions but got always got the same answers: "I don't remember anything", or "No, I don't know her name" and "We have no paperwork on your adoption."

Although I knew that what I was being told was a lie, I didn't realize that I had a right to what was in those files. After my father died I began to press my mother about my adoption. She became very agitated and finally gave me a number on a piece of paper. She said she didn't know what it meant. That number turned out to be my adoption file number.

I began by going to the law library to find a way to open my adoption records. I soon learned that I would have to court order my documents to be opened and that was a long process. I began with my original birth certificate and my adoption paperwork. The documents took almost 3 months to retrieve where I had to finally sit outside the Judge's office to get him to sign them. Next I went to the hospital and requested my documents from my birth and any that were kept on my mother. All the documents came in at once. I guess they figured after 3 months, I wasn't going away.

Upon reviewing the documents, I found out that my mother's name was Veda Jackson, age 27, at the time of my birth.She had also had two other children in California. My father's name was Bee or B.E. Jackson. His age was unknown but it said that he was a painter. My grandmother's name was Vada Donelson and an address where they were supposedly living was also given.

I found out that I was not born in the hospital but in an ambulance.This happened to be the ambulance service that my adopted father worked for at the time, and the hospital was the same hospital that my adopted mother worked for. The adoption records said that my parents abandoned me and no relatives culd be found at that address. There were just too many discrepancies. My first objective would be to verify this address.

I went to the library in Austin and looked through their archived city directories for 1961 and discovered there was an Ira and Nora Jackson that lived at that address in 1961 and '62. I now had proof that my relatives did in fact live at that address. I began to look at the documents more carefully. I saw that in my hospital records I was premature and being fed by my mother every day. The last two hospital entries read, "Release to mother as soon as she feeds child on the morning of Nov. 2" and "Do not release child to anyone without Judge Richburg's Consent."

That same morning the papers were signed to declare me an abandoned and neglected child. Now I knew there had been foul play, but I didn't know how much until later that year. I continued searching for clues. I called the U.S. Search people and went to the library and pulled city directories from every city in Texas and California; no luck. I went to Dallas to find the attorney who handled the adoption. He was dead but his wife was still alive.

I contacted her and she was kind enough to let me look through her husband's files. He was a personal friend of Dudley M. Hughes. I knew from my childhood that Mr. Hughes was also a friend of my father's and quite a shady character.

Attorney Teague had handled many adoptions from California in which the babies were premature. He had declared the parents negligent and said they had abandoned their children at the hospital. This sounded strange to me but every adoption we found was along the same lines. All from California and all declared abandoned. I still continue to search today but I'm not sure I am even searching for the right name. I pray that someday, my birthmother will look for me, and when she does I will be waiting.

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