...Started with an E-mail from Diane Ritt of I.C.A.R.E., the Wisconsin Adoptee - Birth Family Registry. I had posted my birth information on an American On-Line (AOL) forum , and she called because we had the same birthday (a number of years apart) and the circumstances caught her attention. 

At the time of her call, my post was about six months old, and had turned up absolutely nothing . We talked a while, and she took the specks of information that I remembered from seeing my adoption documents some 35+ years before, and said that she would be back in touch; wow, was she ever ! 

Diane called back a few weeks later to let me know that she had some information that looked good, showed me how to obtain non-identifying information, and generally to be supportive and encouraging. Within a month or two after that, Diane called to give me the names of possible biological siblings, a raft of information on my birth mother, and phone numbers on surviving family members.

I called my half siblings by birth, and was met with a mixture of wonder and skepticism. My birth mother had died quite a while ago, and the eldest sibling was nearly my age (50). Surviving relatives of hers in Wisconsin were not much help, and denial was the order of the day, as it probably was in 1946 when I was born.

Whether I should have or not, I didn't call back any of the people in Wisconsin, but I did assemble a series of youthful pictures of myself, and started work on finding the original adoption documents pertaining to me.

A year has passed since those calls, and a side benefit to Diane's research has been my establishing a closer relationship with my adoptive sister, resulting in my obtaining the original documents that I had seen so long ago.

As I write this, I have not yet spoken to my birth siblings again, but I now have the original documents that contain the information that was only a distant memory as recently as a week ago; ammunition for the skeptics. Those documents contain my birth name, as well as that of my birthmother.

I cannot overstate how much help and encouragement I received from Diane throughout this whole process, or how much it has meant to me to finally track down some blood relatives. 

I heartily encourage anyone considering pursuing their birth roots to press on with it, to not become discouraged at the inevitable roadblocks thrown up by people and governments, and to follow the path wherever it may lead. 

     Richard Buchholz,
     Covington, KY