Woman finds Mother after 59 Years

“Delores “Cookie” Bledsoe recently completed a journey that took 59 years.

Bledsoe, who spent her first years of life in a children’s home awaiting adoption, recently located her birth mother who is living in Tampa, Fla.

And when Bledsoe traveled from her hometown of Anderson to Tampa, she learned she had three sisters. Two of them had been living in Indianapolis, within 30 miles of her, for decades.

After working through a court-appointed go-between, Bledsoe, 59, reunited with her mother, Deloise Cash, in April.

Bledsoe was thrilled. “It’s like a joy, as they say in the Bible, that’s unspeakable,” she said.

Her mother was overwhelmed.

“I never thought it would ever happen,” said Cash, 81. “It was totally a surprise when I found out that she was alive and well.”

Bledsoe was born prematurely in 1956 and placed in an incubator. Her mother, who already had two daughters, didn’t believe that as a single woman she could raise the newborn. The infant was placed in a children’s home in Indianapolis.

The mother said her goodbyes when Delores was 5 months old. They sat together for a while and a nurse took a photograph of the two.

The photo was lost over the years.

Both mother and daughter thought of one another over the decades, they acknowledged.

Cash said, “I wondered if she was well, if she had been adopted and had good parents, if she was happy. I was sure she was still probably alive, but I just didn’t know anything. I was hoping that everything turned out well for her.”

Bledsoe said she holds no resentment. Her journey, however, has made her more appreciative for those who suffer, she said.

“Sometimes I wondered why couldn’t my grandmother have taken care of me. … But it sounded like my grandmother insisted that she (Cash) did what she did,” Bledsoe said. “But now I have such a love and passion for hurting people. I know my mother had to be a hurting person.”

Adopted when she was 6 years old, Bledsoe was raised by a Muncie family. That couple is now deceased. Bledsoe, who has been married twice, has a son, two daughters and six grandchildren. She has been a patient care technician for 17 years at Community Hospital Anderson.

In December, Bledsoe decided to track down her birth mother. She had the woman’s name from her birth certificate but Indiana laws make it hard for some adoptees to find birth parents. She went through a court-approved intermediary who came up with answers for Bledsoe.

Bledsoe also learned she has a sister who lives in Tampa; and two sisters in Indianapolis. She met up with the Indianapolis women over dinner at a Red Lobster restaurant.

“How could somebody not know that they had two sisters that lived so close to where I was and I’m just now realizing that,” said Bledsoe. “I thought maybe I ran into them in the past and didn’t realize they were my sisters.”

Confidential intermediaries

To help with the search for her mother, Delores Bledsoe worked through what is known in Indiana as a confidential intermediary.

These people are hired as go-betweens for adoptees searching for birth parents. In turn, they become court-appointed representatives who protect the privacy of the adoptees and birth parents.

“If I were to contact the birth mother and she said no, then we would have to honor that,” said Cheryl Alford, the Lafayette-based intermediary who handled Bledsoe’s search.

Though there is no certification program for CIs, as they call themselves, there are only a few in Indiana. To find one, adoptees register with the Indiana State Department of Health.

Indiana’s “closed records” process concerning access to birth records has become easier for adoptees to find birth parents.

In 1994, Indiana legislators allowed all adult adoptees adopted in that year or later to have access to their records if they requested them after they reached 21. But adoptees from 1941 to 1993 were not covered in the change until recently.

In March, a bill authored by Rep. Brent Steele, R-Bedford, was signed by the governor and allows adoptees born between 1941 and 1994 to access birth records. However, those records cannot be distributed if a birth parent has a non-release form, also known as a contact preference form, on file with the state health department.

The search process is intimidating enough that confidential intermediaries can come into play.

Alford’s initial fee is $35 to prepare court paperwork. Her search fee begins at $350 as she makes phone calls and scours internet sources, court documents and other records. Filing fees in local courts are additional.

“It’s sometimes scary because you don’t know what you’re going to find. I found one where both the mother and father had been murdered in Indianapolis and it was a big story in the 1950s. I tell adoptees that you can never be prepared for a worst-case scenario.”

Bledsoe’s search worked to the benefit of all, she said.

“I was so happy for them,” Alford said.”

Adoptee’s find leads to ‘unspeakable joy’[The Herald Bulletin 6/3/16 by Scott L. Miley]

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