Letter to a Wisconsin Bureaucrat

June 2001

Thank you once again for your prompt attention to these matters. I received a copy of my original birth certificate via fax this morning and look forward to it in the mail.



Your letter states that my search request is now complete. No, it is not. I still want a clean copy of all the documents about me in my adoption file. I trust that you will coordinate this with Children’s Service Society of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

In putting together that clean copy, I would also like you to consider the following. Please share this treatise with all the “powers” that be in your neck of the woods.

With all due consideration to your lawyer and your policies, there is no legislation currently on the books in Wisconsin that supports the policy that the Division of Children and Family Services adheres to regarding the deletion of certain information in my adoption file.

First, my birth father is not “alleged.” Simply because my birth mother was not married when she had me does not mean that I am “illegitimate,” nor does it mean that she does not know who my birth father is. Simply because the judge did not bother to ask her under oath who my father was and thereby “adjudicate” him as my birth father does not mean that Frank East is not the man who made love to my birth mother and got her pregnant on Valentine’s Day 1967 on the campus at Oakwood College. Just this past father’s day, I met my birth father, held him, laughed with him, took pictures with him, and I look just like him. I am, indisputably, his progeny. A simple medical test would refute his “alleged” status to the State and the Courts who remain limited by social mores that, as far as I'm concerned, have been outdated for centuries. It is unfortunate that Frank East's name does not appear on my original birth certificate, written in long hand. Unfortunately, this cannot be amended. It would be more unfortunate if his name were deleted from the clean copy of my adoption records as well, especially since Dania, Florida, which is where he also currently resides, was left in full view on the document the first time I received it.

I will challenge such a deletion should I receive my records without it.

I will also challenge the deletion of the names of social workers, foster parents, and any other “indirect” participants in this historical account of my genesis. After all, that is what it is: history. My history. Not yours, nor your assistant’s, nor anyone else’s currently employed by the State of Wisconsin or the affiliated agency, Children’s Service Society of Wisconsin.

There is no language whatsoever in the Wisconsin Statutes calling for these deletions. The law is very clear on what it does include, and very clear on what it does not. I know the names of my birth father and social workers, and my adoptive mother believes she remembers the name of my foster parents, who, given that they were already grandparents in 1967, are possibly still alive, but more than probably dead. Who’s being protected by your policies thirty-three-plus years after the fact? Are you afraid that I am going to bring suit against Miss Gates, Miss Culver or any of the other social workers that handled my case, or bring suit against their heirs or estates, because they did not handle some aspect of my adoption correctly? Sounds ludicrous, doesn’t it? I cannot imagine the need for protecting their “privacy.” Even though they worked for private agencies, their names should not be deleted from my records.

As for my foster parents, I pose the same question. Is the State afraid that I would bring suit against them and/or their heirs and estates for some lack of care during the sixteen months that I was in their stead? If nothing else, I might like to locate them or their daughters who baby-sat for me in order to thank them from the bottom of my heart for taking such good care of me during the transition from birth mother to my parents. How can your policies disregard this possibility and remain so inhumane?

I will challenge such a deletion should I receive my records without them.

I have been more than saddened and pained by the treatment I received from the bureaucrats and social workers that handled my adoption search and follow-up requests. It should come as no surprise that I had to complete the search myself. How lucky for me that I had the time, determination, and resources to do so. I feel for those who must leave their search entirely in the hands of the State of Wisconsin. (I’m sure there are some happy reunion stories the State can be responsible for and some compassionate workers who bend the “rules” in order to bring joy and a sense of completion to people's lives, but in my experience searching over the last five years, they seem to be rarer than the rarest gems. I certainly hope that you continue to be one of them.)

I am annoyed that my original request for non-identifying medical and social history included many more deletions than required by Wisconsin law. In fact, I was unable to meet my biological grandfather before he died in 1998 precisely because of this broad, presumptuous, archaic, paranoid, and erroneous interpretation of the Wisconsin Statutes that govern the adoption search program.

The social workers have told so many of us that the law requires that our pasts remain full of secrets and lies when in fact the law requires no such thing.

This madness must end.

Wisconsin bureaucrats treat adult adoptees as second-class citizens who have no right to know anything about their genesis, and this must change even if I die trying to change it.

I look forward to receiving a true clean copy of my adoption file. No more secrets and cover-ups and fear and paranoia. I’m all done with that. Your policies are not founded in ethics, morality, or the law. Furthermore, they protect no one, and they need to be reviewed and changed sooner rather than later.

I can only imagine that the disgruntled, disappointed, depressed or suicidal adult adoptee who does not possess the tenacity or the resources may never complete their search when they have to negotiate within a system populated by bureaucrats and social workers who seem to “get off” on their petty little power trips, controlling what information can and cannot be disclosed when they have absolutely no regard for the law. These bureaucrats and social workers do not know what they are talking about, and they should all be relieved of their duties unless or until they become aware of the law and are able to treat each adoptee as an individual being.

You apologized for my experience and stated that you do not know what happened. Simply put, my request was not read. I submitted my birth mother's notarized letter along with a request to receive a clean copy of my adoption file, and I was given a form-letter response, as though I were someone initiating a new search. If I had already located and met my birth mother, then why on earth would I be interested in a document describing the entire search program to me and requesting up-front money for the state to begin searching? Presumably, the bureaucrats were too lazy to read my letter and too lacking of compassion to see the human being behind the letter.

The paternalistic, arrogant, and erroneous instructions and form letters that searchers are given should be criminalized, and I will spend the rest of my life bringing these travesties into the light so that all of us, including those of us who are adopted, can experience the inalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness-principles which have been infused into the articles of the United States Constitution. Will we need to go all the way to the Supreme Court?

I look forward to your cooperation in these important matters and I feel sure that I will soon possess an accurate collection of documents regarding my genesis, my history, my life.

Prologue

Upon reading the letter, a judge in Wisconsin ordered that a true, clean copy of everything in my adoption file be sent to me. I received it in August 2001.

tags: adoption, adoptee, birth mother, birthmother, birth father

Why Did You Search?

I’m asked that question often. The short answer is always, “Because I wanted to see her face.” The long answer goes something like this:



March 2001

Dear Ms. Richardson:

I am not exactly sure why I feel compelled to write you this letter, but I do know that it’s not in my hands now.

When I first contacted Oakwood College Archives, I told either you or Faye that I was looking to do some research on a family book project and that I had some photographs I was hoping to cross-reference with pictures from Oakwood College yearbooks.

That was not exactly true. For that I apologize, because I know that lying is not divine and I was raised to tell the truth.

Imagine my surprise when you said to me over the phone that you thought my mother attended Oakwood College! I never told you that, and so I took this as a sign that I was doing the right thing.

As it turns out, my birth mother did attend Oakwood College, as did my birth father, although documents from my research to date indicate strongly that he might not even know I exist.

Let me explain.

My birth mother was a freshman at Oakwood College in 1967 when she became pregnant with me. She left college at the end of the school year, went home to Wisconsin where her mother had her sent away to a boarding house in a small town so no one would know she was pregnant. I was born in December of 1967 and placed in foster care 6 days later. I was adopted sixteen months later in 1969 by a family in Wisconsin who raised me to be who I am today.

But something has been missing all my life.

I am a 33-year-old black Harvard graduate and corporate manager with a good marriage, home, and relationship with the Most High. I was even briefly “famous” as a performance poet and theatrical artist.

But there is still an empty place inside. All my life, I have longed to know more about my birth mother and father, and their families—my roots—and so I started to search for them about five years ago.

All my life I have wanted to see at least a picture of them just to see which one of them I might look like.

Well, thanks to you and Faye, you have made that part of my dream come true.

I was able five years ago to get a collection of documents from the agency in Wisconsin that handled my adoption. In these documents, I was able over the years to figure out that my birth mother was also from Wisconsin, that she attended a college in Huntsville, Alabama, that her brother attended the same college, that my birth father attended the same college, that her first name was Jennifer, that her last name was five letters ending with the letter e, and that my birth father was from Florida. I also knew that she named me Joseph Bernard when I was born.

That was about it, because anything else in these documents that might remotely give me a clue as to where she lived, her birthday, her last name, her parents’ first names, her grandparents’ names, who my first doctors were, who my foster family was, where they lived—all this information was blacked out.

Imagine reading about your people, your life, and seeing long black streaks that render you anonymous.

But I didn’t give up. I called the agency. I convinced the social worker to tell me the states where my great grandparents lived, but she refused to give me more information because Wisconsin adoption laws are rigid and archaic and don’t seem ready to change any time soon.

I couldn’t imagine that my mother, after all these years, if she were still alive, would not want to be found.

I couldn’t imagine that she had not thought of me many times. I have no intentions of turning her life upside down or making any demands on her. I just want answers to so many questions; she probably wants the same.

So here I am. I have been denied information by anyone who holds the power to give it. I haven’t been able to get her birth date, place of birth, last known address, social security number or anything that might assist me in my quest to find her.

But I haven’t given up, and I don’t intend to.

I have posed as private investigator, genealogist, doctor—anything I could think of to persuade those with the information to give me what I wanted—but with no success.

I guess that’s why, in the beginning, I posed as a researcher with you for fear that if I told the truth, another door would be slammed in my face.

Well, I hope you and Faye understand and accept my apology.

But more importantly, I want to thank you both from the bottom of my heart for giving me a picture of my birth mother, whose face I have now seen for the first time in my entire life.

And I look just like her.

I am enclosing some money so that you can copy the entire yearbook of 1967 and send it to me, and maybe I will be able to find a picture of my birth father and uncle as well.

Because this is so important to me, please do whatever you have to do to make it the best quality possible.

Maybe someday I will visit Oakwood College to experience firsthand the place where I was conceived, where my birth parents once walked this earth.

In the meantime, I look forward to the yearbook. I thank you both so very much for what you have given me, and wish you nothing but blessings.

I am certain I will speak with you again soon.

Very truly yours,
Craig V. Hickman (born Joseph B. White)
Boston, Massachusetts

tags: search and reunion, Oakwood College