"Together Again"
My oldest brothers had been looking for my sister, Janet, and I. Dave, my second oldest brother, wrote to the county office where we had been adopted out of to try to find us, but his request for information was rejected. He was upset over it and in the spur of the moment, picked up the phone and called them.
It so happened that the lady who had handled our case twenty-three years earlier had retired ten years before, but for the first time since, was back in the office that day. She overheard the call and asked to talk to Dave.
She told him that she knew exactly where his younger siblings had gone, and that she would try to get ahold of the adoptive mother to get permission to give him their information.
She called where Shirley had worked at the time as a schoolteacher and was able within a few calls to track her down. Shirley agreed to talk with Dave.
Later that evening while I was working at my bakery in Bozeman, I got a call from a guy who started off saying, “Hi, my name is Dave Adkins, and I am your older brother.”
He just kept on talking, telling me what all he had just gone through to get my info to contact me. The whole time he was talking, I was thinking and wondering about who I would have told that I was adopted, and who would pull such a prank, but I could think of no one in Bozeman that even knew I was adopted.
At one point Dave drew a breath and asked me if I was tracking what he was saying. I told him to continue, that he had my attention. He informed me that he had other siblings of ours and my mom, Vivian, waiting to talk with me.
Before the night was over, I had talked to them all. A crazy evening indeed for me. Over the next few months, I talked with a total of eight other brothers and sisters, besides my sister, Janet, whom I had grown up with.
A reunion was organized in Kansas City when we were living in Lawrence, and we drove over to meet everyone. My father, known as “Daddy Bill,” was there too. The man with the gun I had taken a walk with along that path so many years ago.
The local television station came out and filmed the reunion and played some of it on the local news.
It was such a huge thing for me, as I was able to get a lot of questions answered. To be able to see people that even looked similar to me, and seeing how we all related, was amazing.
Vivian, my biological mom, had visited Janet in Springfield right after they had first talked. When she walked into her home, she saw a picture of me on the wall and asked Janet how she had gotten a picture of Kevin, one of my brothers. Janet told her it was a picture of me, not Kevin. Vivian informed her that I looked just like Kevin.
One of the first things Vivian asked me was about the last time we had seen each other, and how I had not given her a hug goodbye. I told her about how I just didn’t want to go through the pain of the aftermath of another separation. She understood but told me how it had been a very painful experience for her too, especially because she had not gotten that one more hug.
I was informed that my dad William, had been drafted and gotten a virus that had killed a few guys in boot camp but had spared him. However, it had cooked his brain and the army kicked him out the day before he was eligible for disability benefits.
He had slowly gone downhill after his release, and after a construction accident when he had broken his back, he was out of work for such a time that the family had to apply for welfare benefits.
The judge, along with a social worker, came by the house to let Vivian know they had been approved, but a ruckus broke out and the judge called the police, and we were taken away.
There is a lot more to that story but to me, it was just a very sad thing to have happened, and even sadder how Daddy Bill had lived on the streets, homeless, for decades since. No way to have treated a veteran.
This event was the only time that all ten siblings along with our mom and dad, Vivian, and Bill, got together at one time. I have since met my dad’s mother, my grandmother and several aunts, uncles, and cousins over the years.
My great-grandfather Jasper Adkins had ten children and there is a huge extended family in the Kansas City area I have never met, but I still hope to, someday.