The Vietnam legacy of 'fatherless' children

Lorraine

Today I found a close kinship with the fathers of the children conceived in the years we were in Vietnam, as I read a long take-out about the search and reunion of those children with their American fathers in the New York Times. "It's like the mother who give up their kid for adoption," said George Pettitt of Wales Center, N. Y. "You just never stop thinking about it."

Whoa! This guy gets it, I thought. The piece--on the front page no less--tells us that Mr. Pettitt, 63, had a relationship with a woman when he was 19 and in Vietnam.Though he had not "meant" for her to get pregnant, she did. He returned home to New York, got a job as a truck driver, and raised a family. But when he retired in 2000, he "found himself haunted by memories of the child he left behind--a boy, he believes." Mr. Pettitt paid a man to find the boy in Vietnam but the trail went cold. A woman in Virginia called to say she thought her husband might be his son, but a DNA test proved negative.

The Wacky Website of a Woman in Hiding (from her daughter)

As this post is getting a lot of traffic right now because Kathleen Hoy Foley is publicizing her book and book in progress, I am amending this post (3/13/12) to add certain salient facts up front:

1. Kathleen Hoy Foley had a 1-1/2 year dating relationship with her boyfriend, Penn's father. He thought they were getting married and was stunned when Foley's mother slammed the door in his face.
2. The father's family tried to stop the adoption and wanted to take the baby (Elaine Penn) home with them. They were thwarted in their efforts by Catholic Social Services (CSS) and Foley's family who insisted the baby be adopted. Because they were not married, the father had no legal rights.
3. Penn's "non-identifying information report" from CSS contains nothing about any "rape" allegation and, in fact, is replete with touching details of how mother wanted to keep her baby and hesitated for several months signing the relinquishment papers. Thus, she had no warning or reason to think her mother would not want to be contacted.
4. Penn contacted Foley ONCE 15 years ago through the family attorney and NEVER again. She has kept Foley's privacy and silently endured Foley's abusive attacks ever since.
5. Penn has relationships with both members of Foley's and her birth father's family. He deceased before she found his family.
6. Foley is an "adoptee" only in the sense that while her natural mother raised her, her step-father legally adopted her for parental rights. That is hardly what the world knows today as an "adoptee."

 Now, the previous blog:

O What a tangled web we weave...Remember Kathleen Hoy Foley, the birth mother terrible--oh excuse me, she wants to be called "biological source" or even better, "biological cunt"--who is loudly and publicly opposing open records in New Jersey after being "FOUND" BUT NEVER CONTACTED by her daughter?

Apparently it is not enough to be quietly located by your own flesh-and-blood, through a son-in-law--it is important to go public and be in the papers, as the above link shows. Well, there's more--Ms. Foley has her own delectable website, Woman In Hiding, where she posts all sorts of venomous verbiage against adoptee rights, to wit:

Today these women [that would be us], many of them elderly [well, I am a grandmother of a teenager], face threats of being hunted down and found by stranger-adoptees [au contraire, I actually found my daughter] and the dread of their secret pasts being exposed to friends and family [I welcomed that], including their children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren [well, I hope my other granddaughter--the one my daughter surrendered to adoption in Wisconsin contacts me].  I was subjected to that naked exposure and it is an anguish unimaginable, practically unexplainable to those who have not suffered such inexcusable public humiliation.[Uh, really? You poor thing.]

Foley rants on in pages called "Mean and Nasty;" "Speaking the Ugly," and pathetically, under "Strategies," how to deal with the unwanted "stranger-adoptee" who might come knocking at your door after you hang up on them. As for what she wants to be called?

Birth mother—a slur that branded me a slut; a whore.  The label that blamed me for getting pregnant from rape.  The label that ignored the rapes; turned my torment into a hot and heavy teenage romance with me unable to keep my legs closed....Biological Source is a description I can force-feed myself, grudgingly accept.  It is, after all, the truth and nothing gets to change that.  However, I prefer Biological Cunt.  Biological Cunt speaks my personal truth.  It does not fake a smile and make nice.

She talks about her husband, Phil, who tirelessly campaigns against giving adopted people their birth right, as in, a name, and an original identity. It's all so sick sick sick but then, I guess we have to expect that people like Foley would pop up here and there. She could belong to the club of women seeking the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, with thanks to Pope for that great line. But most of them are institutionalized. I could go on but Osolomama, an adoptive mother extraordinaire and one of our regular readers, also wrote about Foley's folly at her blog and you can take it from there.

Well, amazingly enough, her daughter, Elaine Penn, rather than be abashed by her biological mother's scorn and outright rejection, is a staunch supporter of the legislation that would open records for almost all adoptees in New Jersey. After the Catholic Charities conception confusion of Phil Bloete, who thought he was reunited with his birth father, only to find out through a DNA test that they were not a match, Penn wrote this letter to Francis Dolan, head of NJ Catholic Charities, as he ponders whether or not his organization can support open records, as does, say, the archdiocese of Albany in New York.

I am a Catholic Charities Adoptee through  Trenton. Please help us convince Assemblyman Roberts to bring A752 to the Assembly Floor for a vote before 2009 is over.

It seems considering the recent news, it would be beneficial for Catholic Charities to help get this law passed. That way, your organization could focus on the positive contributions it can make to society, instead of draining your resources fighting old, worn battles. Bill A752 would give birth mothers a year to be able to black out their name, along with leaving medical history. It's a good compromise -- and this is the time for compromise.

I know something about your old fights because Kathleen Hoy Foley is my birth mother. She's been blasting away at me, my deceased birth father and Catholic Charities for quite awhile now. (I'm sure you've seen her in the Philadelphia newspapers and on CBS-NY news.) The sooner that this law gets passed, the quicker her soapbox gets taken away. These fights will no longer have anything to do with Catholic Charities.

Please consider helping us pass this Bill and finally having it behind all of us.

As a post script to this story, Penn was recently featured in a front page story in The [NJ] Star-Ledger:

Elaine Penn, a 45-year-old adoptee from the Trenton-based Catholic Charities, can’t get a passport with her current adoption certificate. Finalized in March 1966, well after her birth in Sept. 1964, it came later than the one-year gap the federal government allows in order to use adoption certificates as a form of identification.

And when she found a lump near her armpit after a mammogram several years ago, she wasn’t immediately able to provide her doctors with an accurate medical history. 

“I asked if it would help if the doctor knew my family medical history and she said ‘Absolutely,’” Penn said. “The insurance companies, they’re not going to pay for extra tests and treatments without a history.”

Unfortunately, attempts to contact Penn’s biological mother, Kathleen Foley, in 1998 were rebuffed, although Foley’s lawyer did provide Penn, who now lives in Howell, with a medical history. 

As regular readers know, I have little sympathy for those closeted birth/first/real mothers who will not acknowledge and meet the children they surrendered to adoption. If any of them are reading this, please consider what your rejection does to your child, who has already grown up with the sense of rejection that adoption can not help but infer, no matter how great one's adoptive parents are. I was struck by this once again in reading through a reunion story this morning, when a thrilled and relieved reunited adoptee Raymond Deschesne, of Boulder city, Colorado, says he blurted this out during his first phone call to his mother, Kathie Walker: he asked her what he had done wrong, why she let him be adopted. 

He added, I don't know why I said that, I was two or three months old when I was adopted. 

But there is hurt that comes before language, and that is the hurt that can not be erased. It can be accepted, but not erased.

My daughter, Jane

Oh, my baby, my daughter, you did nothing wrong. Nothing at all. I am so very sorry that you were adopted. Like I told your daughter, my granddaughter, I made a mistake.--lorraine

FOR AN UPDATE ON THIS STORY SEE:

To stay in the closet, don't publicize being a 'maternal source'

___________________
A bill in New Jersey that would give adopted individuals the right to their own birth certificates passed the Senate with an overwhelming majority (31-7) but is stalled in the Human Services Committee of the Assembly. Speaker of the Assembly is Joseph J. Roberts, Democrat of Camden, who so far has refused to bring the bill up for a floor vote. (Live in his district? We need you to call him--now: 586-384-5862. Outgoing governor John Corzine has stated his support of the bill and will sign it if we can get it passed! The bill does have an out for people like Ms. Foley, as birth parents have a year in which to object, and their names will not be released, though updated medical information is asked for. The New Jersey Coalition for Adoption Reform and Education is holding a press conference at the capitol in Trenton on Monday, November 23rd. If you can attend, or otherwise lend your support, please contact birth mother Judy Foster (jfoster@optonline.net) or adoptee Pam Hasegawa (pamhasagawa@gmail.com). Anyone with a New Jersey adoption connection of any sort should raise your voice and act up now. This won't happen unless legislators hear from you. And you.