Fill In The Blanks
Family Ties: C.K. Bertrand Holub in her
Oct. 3 is 'Registration Day' for a national database that helps adult adoptees and birth parents reunite.
Germantown home with a photo of the half
sisters she met two years ago
photo: Abby Borrow
by Frank Lewis
C.K. Bertrand Holub's reunion with her birth mother - two years ago, at age 47 - wasn't quite the stuff of made-for-TV movies.
She learned that her name had been Katherine. (She was raised by her adoptive parents as Cynthia, but now prefers the more inclusive C.K.) She learned that she has three half-sisters and a half-brother in New Mexico. And she learned that her biological mother, though she agreed to a meeting, was less than thrilled to have been found.
"It's been very difficult for her to deal with, so she's not dealing with it," Holub explains matter-of-factly. "And that's fine. That's her right."
Today, Holub - a Germantown resident and librarian with the Free Library - is close to her half-siblings, but maintains a respectful distance from the woman who gave her up in 1949. She is content to have filled in the blank pages in her personal history, to have gotten answers to the questions that became even more urgent with the birth of her first child 10 years ago.
Most adoptees, she notes, aren't so lucky. In 48 states, they are denied access to their birth certificates. And this is why Holub, though her own search is over, remains a passionate advocate for adoptees' registration in the International Soundex Reunion Registry (ISRR), and an organizer of the annual Registration Day (Oct. 3).
Established in 1975, the ISRR database provides an alternative to birth-record access that doesn't violate the privacy afforded - rightly or wrongly - to those who give up children for adoption. Birth parents and adult adoptees participate by completing as much as they can of the registration form. (Third-party enrollments are not accepted.) The information is entered into the database, and the computer compares it to the submissions of all other registrants. If "coincidences" are found, the staff reviews the applications. If they appear to match, the parties are notified. What they do next is up to them.
The service is free. ISRR is a nonprofit corporation funded entirely by donations.
Matches often can be made with little information. Tony Vilardi, registrar of the ISRR, says the most useful data are date and place of birth and name of the agency that handled the adoption.
"Sometimes it's a shot in the dark," he says. "Sometimes we're wrong [about an apparent match], but mostly we're right."
No one is certain how many matches have been made through ISRR since 1975; the founder died in 1990, and most of her records still are not computerized. Vilardi estimates the total to be 4,000 to 5,000. Last year, 603 matches were found. (Most, but not all, involved families separated by adoption. The ISRR also accepts data from those separated from relatives by divorce, a parent's death, or other circumstances.)
And obviously, the more that participate, the more matches can be made. That's where people like Holub come in.
Holub is active in the politics of adoption. She is a member of the executive committee of Bastard Nation (www.bastards.org), which advocates adult adoptees' access to their own birth certificates (only Kansas and Alaska currently allow this, although Oregon residents will vote on a ballot measure in November, and legislation is pending in New Jersey). The opposition - which includes anti-abortionists, who fear that scrapping confidentiality would lead to more abortions, and many adoption agencies - is organized and well-funded, and progress has been slow.
That's why Holub also helps to promote the next best thing: voluntary reunion programs like the ISRR. She is the Philadelphia coordinator of the Adoption Registration Coalition's Registration Day - or RegDay, as it's known - the annual drive to enroll more birth parents and adult adoptees in the ISRR. In Philadelphia, she and others will answer questions and provide registration forms on Saturday, Oct. 3, at Borders Bookstore, 1727 Walnut St., from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Volunteers also will be on hand at the Borders in Willow Grove Mall and in Langhorne.
"Every year when we have RegDay," says Holub, "there are dozens of reunions over the next few weeks as the forms are processed."
One local success story involved Joanne, a Montgomery County resident who asked to remain anonymous.
Joanne's daughter gave a child up for adoption in 1974. Joanne learned of ISRR through Adoption Forum, a support group, and filled out the registration form several years ago. But her daughter suffered from an adrenal system disorder that left her unable to deal with stress, so Joanne never submitted the form.
When her daughter died in December 1996, she decided it was time. Two weeks later, she received a call from ISRR. Her granddaughter - a full-time student and single mother living in Oregon - had been in the system for four years. (Joanne later discovered that her daughter also had filled out the form, about 10 years earlier, but never sent it in.)
"I was absolutely shocked" that a match was made so quickly, Joanne recalls. Their first phone conversation was "very, very sad. We must have cried for an hour.… It's sad that she missed knowing her mother by only four or six weeks."
Joanne expects to meet her granddaughter and great-grandchild for the first time around the holidays.
Holub says she has yet to hear from someone who regrets succeeding in the search for a parent or child.
"It's always better to know," she says. "And I've met people who were the product of rape. The truth is better, even if it's unpalatable.… It anchors you. No matter what you find out, it anchors you in a way you couldn't be without it.
"It's like the saying: The truth will set you free."
More information on RegDay is available online, at www.regday.org. To obtain registration forms through the mail, send SASE to: ISRR, P.O. Box 2312, Carson City, NV 89702-2312.