Second registry day draws hundreds Goal is to help adopted children, birth parents reunite

BERKELEY -- Kiplie Thurlow always wondered why she towered above her brothers and sisters and didn't share their fair complexions.

For much of her life, she thought it was a fluke of nature. It wasn't until she was 22 that she discovered that she had been adopted by her stepfather.

The revelation that she never knew her biological father sent Thurlow on a quest to find him. For the past 20 years she has looked for the man who abandoned her when he was a teenager. She often spent days poring through old telephone books and yearbooks looking for that one piece of information that would lead to a reunion. The search has always been unsuccessful.

On Saturday, the Oakland woman took a critical step, one she hoped would lead to her father, Ron Lynn. Thurlow signed up with the International Soundex Registry, a free, non-profit, mutual-consent registry that helps birth parents and adopted children find one another. Thurlow was one of hundreds who flocked to bookstores around the state, in cities from Sacramento to Berkeley to Cupertino, to participate in the second annual International Search Registration Day. By adding their names to a huge database, they all hope to reconnect with their biological families.

``This registry is magical,'' said Susan Love, a therapist specializing in counseling families touched by adoption. ``It gets around the sealed records laws which are so abusive.''

Even though there are an estimated 5 million to 6 million Americans who have put children up for adoption or are adopted themselves, it is still almost impossible to get information about adoption. Virtually every state -- with the exception of Alaska and Kansas -- has sealed adoption records. That means social service agencies, former homes for unwed mothers, religious organizations and adoption agencies can only release the barest information about a person's biological beginnings.

``You have the right to get your credit record, you have the right to get your driving record,'' said Julia Sudbury, who was raised by a Scottish couple but found her English birth mother and Nigerian birth father because England's adoption records are open. ``But somehow your own identity, your own personhood, you don't have access to.''

There has been a virtual explosion of activity around adoption issues in recent years as the stigma of illegitimacy fades. There are numerous sites on the World Wide Web that help people search for family members.

Some of the organizations have a political slant, such as Bastard Nation, a group of adoptees fighting for open records for all adults. The members call themselves ``Proud Bastards'' and sport buttons that proclaim ``Help! I'm Being Held Prisoner in an Adoption Agency File Drawer.''

That enthusiasm was evident Saturday as hundreds of people braved rainy, chilly weather to make their way to a table set up outside Cody's Bookstore on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. At times, people lined up to collect literature on how to search for lost family members.

At the Cupertino Super Crown Books store, calls regarding registration day started coming in two hours before the store opened, according to organizers.

Pamela Mayerle, 55, of Cupertino, was one of those who arrived shortly after the store opened. Mayerle last saw her son in June 1964 -- the day he was born in a Salvation Army hospital in Omaha, Neb. She was unmarried at the time, just out of nursing school, and didn't have the financial resources to raise her son. She felt she had no alternative but to give him up for adoption.

Mayerle, whose maiden name is Martin, has never forgotten her son, whom she named Michael. In an attempt to reconnect with him, she registered with the Salvation Army two years ago. On Saturday, she also signed up with Soundex to increase her chances of a reunion.

``I've heard a lot of (adopted) kids want to know who their birth parents are,'' said Mayerle, who is married with four other grown children. ``If he's alive and he's wondering, I would like him to have that opportunity.''