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February 26,
2009 Volume
5, Number 8 | ||
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In This
Issue
E-Mail
cynthia.davis@house.mo.gov Special
Committee on Children and Families
Chair
Chair Special Committee on State
Parks and Waterways Official Homepage for Official Government Homepage for your
Look up Missouri House Bills – View
Entire Text, Summary, and Last Action Look up Consumer Federal
Links Congressman Blaine
Luetkemeyer |
Keeping
Terrorists Out of This session, I am
co-sponsoring a resolution, HCR 16, to protect Missourians from the
dangers associated with the closing of
I can’t stop these
prisoners from going to This resolution also
expresses our opposition to using To see a copy of this resolution, click
here: HCR
16 Your
thoughts are important to me, so please let me know what you think about
where the Constituents
of the Week UMKC Students
of Dental Hygiene
These six ladies
who came to my office last week attend UMKC and are studying to become
dental hygienists. One of them is Erin Dudley. In 1994 when I
was running for the O’Fallon Board of Aldermen for the first time,
Cynthia
in the News Woman seeks birth mom's
identity
LOOKING FOR
MOTHER Cathy Lauderdale has correspondence from a woman she’s never met.
Relayed to her by a child-placement agency, the letters are evidence of
the woman who gave Lauderdale up for adoption when she was a baby. Reading
one letter, she muses where the 72-year-old woman might live. She’ll have
to keep wondering: At her kitchen table Saturday, Cathy Lauderdale
sat reading a letter that recently arrived in her
mailbox. In an elegant longhand, the correspondent wrote:
“To my very special daughter I have never met, I want you to know that all
these years I have not forgotten the day you were born and how beautiful
you were while holding you in my arms for the very first and last
time.”
Cathy Lauderdale,
right, shares a cup of coffee and details of her efforts to learn more
about her birth mother with Judy Bock of the Adoption Triad Connection of
Mid-Missouri yesterday at Lauderdale’s home in Columbia.
Lauderdale, 54, is the mother of three adult
children, but she does not know who her mother is. Given up for adoption
as an infant, she began searching for her birth mother about 10 years ago.
Just months ago, she learned that her mother also is searching for her.
Lauderdale petitioned the child placement agency, the Children’s Home
Society, to be reunited. The agency referred Lauderdale to the court
system, and she mailed documents to the 22nd Circuit Court in In Lauderdale’s case, a judge ruled that her
mother’s ex-husband and her biological father both must sign off on
disclosure of the records. The ex-husband is not on speaking terms with
her mother, said Lauderdale, and the biological father cannot be
found. “Nobody could proceed without these stupid
signatures. That’s pretty much it,” Lauderdale said. “It’s mission
impossible.” So Lauderdale is stuck, puzzling through the
letter for any clues about who or where her birth mother is. She has
learned the woman is 72. Other identifying information in the letters has
been censored by the Children’s Home Society. Lauderdale said one passage
gives her an idea about her mother: “We have lots of seagulls flying
nearby, and the sand cranes live here all year
long.” “That sounds like ● Lauderdale and others in similar circumstances
might benefit from the efforts of the Adoption Triad Connection of
Mid-Missouri, which is pushing for a bill introduced in the Missouri House
in December by Rep. HB 48 would allow any adopted person at age 21 to
get an unaltered version of his or her birth certificate. The Triad group, including Nancy Bennett of
The proposed changes in adoption law have stirred
opposition from the Missouri Catholic Conference. Larry Weber, executive
director of the Catholic conference, said women who gave children up for
adoption before 1986 were promised complete anonymity under the law, a
promise that should be kept. “They have lived with the assumption based on the
laws at the time that they could make a clean break or clean start,” Weber
said. “Now that’s not a modern understanding, but we’ve got to keep in
mind we’re talking about society as it was back then, and there was a lot
of shame involved in giving up a child.” Weber said he would support a change to the
Missouri Adoption Registry to require fewer signatures to facilitate a
first meeting between one parent and the adoptee, but he said he would not
support giving all the rights to the child. “This bill puts the adoptive
child completely in the driver’s seat,” he
said. Bennett never met her birth mother, who gave her
up for adoption at age 19 and later committed suicide. She said most birth
mothers want to meet their children later in life. “When you’re 16 and you
give up a child, you have a whole different perspective than you do when
you’re 25 or 50,” she said. ● With the help of Triad, Lauderdale has registered
with the International Soundex Reunion Registry, a “In my situation, my ex-husband is adopted and I’m
adopted, so my children have no cousins or anything, and they don’t know
anything about their past,” Lauderdale said. “And they’re real excited.
I’m trying to keep my expectations low, but they’re getting pretty high.
You know, I’ve never had anybody who looked like me
before.” Reach T.J. Greaney at 573-815-1719 or
e-mail tjgreaney@columbiatribune.com.
A Little
Bit of Humor… The Three
Sons
Three sons left
home, went out on their own and prospered. Getting back together, they
discussed the gifts they were able to give their elderly mother.
The first said, "I
built a big house for our mother." The second said, "I sent her a Mercedes
with a driver." The third smiled and said, "I've got you both beat. You
remember how Mom enjoyed reading the Bible? And you know she can't see
very well any more. I sent her a remarkable parrot that recites the entire
Bible. It took Elders in the church 12 years to teach him. He's one of a
kind. Mama just has to name the chapter and verse, and the parrot recites
it." Soon thereafter, Mom
sent out her letters of thanks: " "Gerald," she wrote
to another, "I am too old to travel any more. My eyesight isn't what it
used to be. I stay most of the time at home, so I rarely use the Mercedes.
And the driver is so rude!" "Dearest Donald,"
she wrote to her third son, "you have the good sense to know what your
Mother likes. The chicken was delicious!"
This Capitol Report is a weekly
column by Representative J If you know of anyone else who
would like to receive my Capitol Report, please send an e-mail to Cynthia.Davis@house.mo.gov with the
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