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14 -- PORT PERRY STAR -- Tuesday, March 11, 1986 Pouring through her family history, Bev Silverman has learn- ed so much about her birth parents and their relatives. Until a few years ago, she didn't even know who they were, those mysterious people who adopted the smiling child pictured opposite. GUARANTEED INVESTMENT CERTIFICATES Monthly Rates Annual Rates 1 YEAR 10 5/8% 2 YEARS 3 YEARS 4 YEARS 5 YEARS 2 YEARS 3 YEARS 4 YEARS 5 YEARS -- MORTGAGES BOUGHT & SOLD -- Rates subject to change without notice. Call the office for information SCUGOG FINANCIAL SERVICES 250 QUEEN STREET -- PORT PERRY PHONE 985-3832 All Members of Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation ANNOUNCING Rumford Auto Electric OF MANCHESTER has been sold to oo Harry's Repair OF NESTLETON where all your auto, farm and industrial electrical services will be continued by Tim Bartley 986-0046 Two adopted women discover pieces of themselves in search by Cathy Robb It took Faye Alldred 20 years to find her natural mother. It took Bev Silverman 24 hours. From searches for people who had to give them up decades ago, both women have discovered a piece of themselves. Bev"s mother was unmarried when she became pregnant in 1942. The times didn't look fondly on a single woman having a baby, especially when the father was mar- ried to someone else, so the young woman did her best to hide her growing secret. She worked in a Whitby-area munitions plant and was fully aware she might lose her badly needed job if word leaked out about the child | she was carrying. "She used to bind herself up before she went to work so no one would see she was pregnant," Bev says. When the time came for her to deliver her secret, Bev's mother took refuge in the anonymity of a big city hospital and took time only to name her new daughter before han- ding her over to an acquaintance for unofficial adoption. The acquaintance was a woman who worked with Bev's natural mother, one of the very few she confided in about the baby. The woman, who couldn't have children of her own, adopted young Beverley Irene, and took her home to hearth and husband. It would be 38 years before Bev and her birth mother would be Long Wait Faye Alldred, on the other hand, waited 49 years. - A petite woman with curly brown hair, Faye now lives just north of Sunderland on a farm with her hus- band. She has five children, four sons and a daughter, but she has grown up as an only child, an adopted child, with parents who con- stantly reminded her of her adopted status. ' - "1 was told morning, noon and night," she recalls. 'Maybe they did it to remind me what life could have been like if I hadn't been adopted. Maybe they just wanted me to ap- preciate all the things they did for me." Her parents, now deceased, couldn't have children of their own and adopted Marilyn Faye when they were middle aged. "I was told constantly that I was adopted. Anybody would be told I was their adopted daughter. Not, their daugher," she says. Because she was reminded so often, Faye developed an intense curiousity to discover who her birth parents were. A day rarely went by that she didn't wonder about it but her search didn't really begin in earnest until the early 1960's. Her adopted parents hated the whole idea of her searching for her birth parents so she waited until she was married, with a family of her own, to begin her search. She was born in 1933 in a house near Oshawa to a young unmarried woman whose father wouldn't allow her to bring her baby home. As soon as she was born Faye was placed in a home with other children where the golden-haired baby was prompt- ly adopted. Unlike Faye, who was reminded all the time about her adopted status, Bev was more or less ac- cepted as real family. She was told when she was five years old, main- ly so her parents could get her a who came to visit birth certificate. Adopted? Great! "I was never officially adopted but they had me baptised so we could go back and forth to the States," she says. The family lived in the Windsor area and would fre- quently cross the border for shopp- ing trips. Bev wasn't fazed in the least when she found out she was adopted. "I thought it was great! I went out and told all my friends," she recalls, blue eyes twinkling. "I thought it was great because I was different than the other kids." But unlike Faye, Bev always har- boured a curiosity about her birth parents. Both women would go to the doctor and be asked for a history of disease and both women would shake their heads. Was there a history of cancer? Of heart attack? Of blood problems? Neither woman knew. "I wanted to know about my medical history, sure, but I wanted to know more as well," Bev says. "When you're adopted you're look- ing for an identity. You're curious, who do you look like?" Bev calls the sensation her "miss- ing link." She compares it to having a piece of herself stolen from her and the desire to find that piece became an obsession. : Curious Insults Although Bev had asked her parents for information before, she was never told anything." They mistook her curiousity as an insult, s0 Bev let her obsession slide until 1981 when she attended her first Parent Finders meeting. The organization started 11% years ago in British Columbia and has been in Oshawa for seven years. These dayg branches can be found in nearly every major city in the country and all are devoted to help- ing adult adoptees search for their birth parents. "They don't 'actually do the search for you," Bev explains. "They just show you how." It was at this time that Bev phon- ed her adopted parents, who had moved to British Columbia, and demanded to know the name of her birth mother. Her mother wouldn't budge with the information, but her father, reluctantly, gave Bev all the facts she needed to know. She was told her mother's real name and the place where he thought she might have been living. The place was a trailer park in Whit- by, where many munitions plant employees lived. Nervously, Bev phoned the park and talked to the owners, who had only been running the place for eight years. They didn't know Bev's birth parents but they did give her the name and number of the previous owners. No Records The former owner didn't have his old records of the park and said he couldn't recall her birth mother, but he put his wife on the line, who told Bev she did remember. Turns out Bev's natural mom had married Bev's natural father shortly after her birth and while they didn't actually live in the trailer park, they lived in a trailer on a lot down the road. AI The park owner's wife promised to do a little digging and the next day, she phoned back with all the infor- mation Bev was hoping for, a full name and an address. Without hesitation she picked up a phone (Turn to page 15) promotion. sto EASTER SUNDAY, MARCH 30th If you are a merchant and have something to sell this Easter ... from bunnies to bonnets to brunch ... give us a call and we will help you sell it through the pages of the Port Perry Star. Call and ask Deb or Valerie about our special Easter pages for your special Easter 235 Queen St. PORT PERRY 985-7383 ADEE CREATIVE WORDS The unity which is productive of unlimited results is first a unity of mankind which recognizes that all are sheltered beneath the over- shadowing glory of the All-Glorious. P.O. BOX 1153, PORT PERRY BAHAI WRITINGS re er