He had no idea she existed, and she had never seen him, but she remained hopeful of finding him. A moving story about the importance of knowing and connecting with your roots. Catherine Benoit-Schwartz discovered as a teenager that she was an adoptive daughter. She had a nice childhood, growing up with loving parents and three younger brothers.
“I was about 14 years old when I began looking at family photos and wondering why I didn’t resemble any of the relatives. My loving parents did not dodge the question and told me straight away that they had adopted me as an infant. Of course, I wanted to know who my biological parents were. When adopting in the United States, parents are typically given a birth certificate in which they are listed as the adoptive parents rather than their biological parents.
However, in the instance of Catherine, for some reason, the name of the biological mother was mentioned in the paperwork, while the column “father” read “Unknown”. Catherine felt an irrepressible yearning to see her mother when she was 19, married for the first time, and expecting her first child.It was 1982, there was no Internet, and she had to sift through phone directories.
She discovered her grandparents, but there was no reunion of relatives: they spoke to her coldly on the phone and informed her that her mother did not want to know her. That is it. The girls were disappointed by their frigid reception. But a few days later, her own aunt contacted her, and I told her the account of her birth in complete secrecy (mentioning Catherine was forbidden in their family).
Catherine’s mother gave birth to her out of wedlock in 1963, which was a source of great humiliation for her conservative family. Catherine’s mother had already ended her relationship with the unborn child’s father when she discovered she was pregnant. The girl was placed for adoption immediately after birth. “I was astounded at the coldness on the maternal side.
I grew up to be a vibrant and good-natured person, yet I clearly failed my mother. Maybe my father looks more like me.” Catherine asked her aunt for her father’s name, but she only remembered it roughly. I believe his name was Casey Vandenberg, and he worked at a nearby hospital before leaving. She had no idea where. Catherine spent the next 30 years or more searching for her father.
Her preoccupation with locating Dad affected her children. They browsed through phone books on a regular basis, and with the introduction of the Internet, they used search engines to hunt up other spellings of their name and surnames. Catherine discovered Family Tree DNA, a genealogy research website that allows you to search for relatives using their DNA. She sent DNA samples to the service and awaited the findings.
Two months later, she was notified that a cousin had been located in England. “When I saw that her last name was Vandenberg, my soul sank into my heels.”
She wrote off by email, and when asked if the Englishwoman knew a certain Casey Vandenberg, she received the following response: “Yes, this is my uncle from the USA.”
Casey Vandenberg, 82, was living a calm life as a pensioner in Florida when his niece from England called him. “It was overwhelming news. At first, I couldn’t believe it, but then I remembered the girl I was courting half a century ago. When I told my 53-year-old wife that I might have a daughter, she nearly choked on her sandwich. It was a really funny time.”
Catherine, her half-brothers and sisters․ Catherine and Casey communicated on Skype before meeting in person. “It was a shock to both of us, but we immediately felt a connection. We had no communication issues or doubts, and we immediately began addressing each other as “dad” and “daughter”. “We are like children reaching for sweets now that we have found each other. I am so glad I did not quit up all these years.”