Finding My Birthfather

As a point of clarification, the Lund Home was not allowed, by Vermont State Law, to disclose any identifying information to either adoptees or birth parents. At the time I was searching, there was a legal process to follow that entailed petitioning the probate court. They could authorize the adoption agency to search for the birth parents or adoptee, with the intent of getting permission to release identifying information. If the agency couldn't find either one of the birth parents (in my case) then a hearing would have been scheduled with the court.

Since the probate court had authorized The Lund Home to locate "my birthparents", I had some hope that they could locate my birthfather since Irene wanted no contact. I had tried to find him previously using information that The Lund Home had given me, based on the facts that Irene had supplied when she was in residence, so to speak. We knew these facts:

His first name was Lowell.

He was born in 1931.

He was 6' tall with a slight build, weighed 170 lbs, had dark blond hair and blue eyes.

He was of German heritage, and in his 3rd year of college studying business administration.

He was Protestant and of "good intelligence and health".

His parents had divorced when he was 13 and he had two sisters. He was the middle child.

The paternal relatives all had a general educational level of high school.

He worked part-time as a laborer while in college and was in the service for 2 years.

And finally, he was engaged to Irene, in fact the engagement had been announced when he decided against the marriage.

We knew that Irene lived in Pennsylvania at the time of my birth, so we went on the assumption that he did too.

It seems like a lot of information - one can certainly get a sense of what Lowell might have looked like. But without a last name or a birthplace it was like searching for a needle in a proverbial haystack.

And what if....just what if....the information that we had was completely wrong?