St. Louis Woman Reunited With Daughter UPDATED

“Eighteen black women who were told decades ago that their babies had died soon after childbirth at the same Missouri hospital are now questioning whether the children are actually still alive.

Their suspicions arose following reports last month that Zella Jackson Price, a St Louis woman who had also given birth at the hospital, learned that her daughter, Melanie Gilmore, was alive – nearly 50 years after nurses told her the child had died.

The duo finally met after Gilmore’s children tracked down Price on social media.

After their reunion, other women started coming forward to say that the story sounded familiar.

Price was 26 when she gave birth at the now-shuttered Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis in 1965, only to be told hours later that her daughter had died.

Price’s attorney, Albert Watkins, said stories emerging from other women are strikingly similar.

Most of the births were in the mid-1950s to mid-1960s at the same hospital and all of the mothers were black and poor, mostly aged between 15 and 20.

In each case, a nurse – not a doctor – told the mother her child had died, a breach of protocol. No death certificates were issued, and none of the mothers were allowed to see their deceased babies.

‘These are moms,’ attorney Albert Watkins said. ‘They are mothers at the end of their lives seeking answers to a life-long hole in their heart.’

One of the mothers, Brenda Stewart, told Fox13 that she had given birth at the hospital in 1965 when she was just 15 – and that she has never stopped believing the child is alive.

Although the baby girl was crying when she was born, staff later told Stewart that the infant had died, she told the local channel.

Stewart’s parents were told they could not see the child because their daughter had already signed papers donating the baby’s body to science – although Stewart said she did no such thing.

I still grieve it still hurts me to know my baby is out there because I never believed she was dead,’ she said.

Another woman, Otha Mae Brand, also questioned the account she was given in hospital after seeing the story about the reunited mom and daughter.

Brand was 15 when she gave birth to a daughter in 1967 and a nurse told her over the phone that the girl had died. The nurse also asked if the child’s body could be donated to science.

‘I need answers,’ Brand told KSDK. ‘I can’t go on in life without knowing that. To have peace of mind, I need that. I need that closure.’

Watkins, the lawyer, said city officials are investigating, but that no one can locate birth records from the hospital that closed in 1979.

Messages seeking comment from officials at the St. Louis Health Department were not returned.

The hospital opened in 1937 as a blacks-only hospital at a time when St. Louis was segregated. Even after desegregation in the mid-1950s, the hospital served predominantly African-American patients.

Watkins has no idea who, or how many, people may have been responsible if babies were being taken, though he believes they were put up for adoption.

His client, 76-year-old Price, was contacted by her daughter’s children through social media after they found her through names their mother had spotted on adoption papers

Gilmore, who is deaf and lives in Eugene, Oregon, learned in March through lip reading and sign language that her mother had been found. They reunited in April.

‘She looked like me,’ Price said, a gospel singer who has five other children. ‘She was so excited and full of joy. It was just beautiful. I’ll never forget that.’

But she said she’s saddened by the lost years that she could have spent with Gilmore.

‘For me not to be able to love on this child like I did with the others, I’m going through a lot of emotions,’ said Price. ‘But I’m so blessed to know that she is alive.”

 

Are our babies still alive too? 18 black women told 50 years ago that their newborns had died ask the question after St Louis woman is reunited with her daughter half a century later

[Daily Mail 5/1/15 by Lydia Warren and Associated Press]

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Update:“Fifty years after a St. Louis gospel singer said she was told that her daughter died at birth — a claim disputed by authorities — and months after the 76-year-old woman learned that her daughter was still alive, a judge is being asked to restore the birth mother’s parental rights.

Attorney Albert Watkins announced the petition Tuesday in St. Louis Circuit Court in which Melanie Diane Gilmore seeks to invalidate her 1983 adoption and re-establish Zella Jackson Price as her legal mother.

Gilmore was born prematurely on Nov. 25, 1965, at Homer G. Phillips Hospital, which mostly served black residents until it closed in 1979. Price said a nurse told her that her daughter had died, but she was not allowed to see the deceased infant and never received a death certificate. She said she was stunned earlier this year when she learned that her daughter was very much alive. DNA testing confirmed with near 100-percent certainty that they are mother and daughter.

But authorities questioned Price’s claim and now believe she abandoned the baby. U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan said in August that medical and adoption records showed discrepancies in Price’s story. He said there is no evidence that the baby was stolen.

Price did not respond to an interview request.

Watkins said Price has never wavered from her story, and he stands by her. He said medical records from 50 years ago are inconsistent and incomplete.

“The ambiguities contained in the discovered medical records are beyond the pale and cannot be reconciled with facts,” he said.

Watkins said giving parental rights back to Price would allow Gilmore to be an heir to Price’s estate. It also gives him, as Gilmore’s attorney, legal access to more details about her birth. But the suit was necessary beyond pragmatic reasons, he said.

“This is, on an emotional level, something really important to both of them,” Watkins said.

Price’s baby-stealing claim prompted concern that other black women from that era were perhaps also victims of baby theft. The St. Louis Department of Health urged any women with concerns to come forward, and more than 300 did.

Many of those women made similar claims: They were told their children had died at Homer G. Phillips, often by a nurse instead of a doctor, and were not allowed to see the bodies or provided death certificates. Watkins suspected that a baby theft ring was operating at the hospital, preying primarily on young, poor black women, with the stolen babies sold for illegal adoptions.

But there have been no substantiated claims of baby theft.

Gilmore was living in Springfield, Oregon, when her daughter sent a Facebook message to Price that led to the reunion.”

Oregon woman aims to revoke adoption after 32 years [Oregon Live 11/24/15 by AP]