ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 14, 1996 TAG: 9601150050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
LAST SUNDAY, we wrote of Judy Patterson, a California woman who has spent years searching for information about her birth parents in Roanoke. By Tuesday, she had information - and a sister.
Judy Patterson suspected there were no simple answers to the questions that had racked her brain for years: Who gave birth to her in Roanoke 55 years ago? Who was her father? Why had they given her up?
Last week, after a story about her search for information about her birth parents was published in The Roanoke Times, her suspicions were confirmed.
Patterson uncovered a tale that was snarled enough to sustain a soap opera.
Her birth parents were married, but not to each other. Her mother had entered the hospital under her adoptive mother's name. Her adoptive mother had padded her belly for months, faking a pregnancy. The adoption may not have been legal.
That was only the beginning. All week, bits of Patterson's family history were relayed to her from people who read the story and contacted her through the newspaper. The niece of one husband of Patterson's adoptive mother even had a photo of Patterson as a child, perched on his shoulders.
In sifting through the flood of information, Patterson, now of Pico Rivera, Calif., found a sister.
The affair between Patterson's birth parents produced two children - girls born a year apart. The woman gave both of them up for adoption - Patterson in 1940 to a Roanoke woman named Virginia Brooks Parker, the other child in 1939 to a Waynesboro couple.
A Roanoke woman called the newspaper last week and said she was almost certain that Patterson was the sister of someone she'd known for years - Gloria Evers of Lyndhurst.
The woman, who asked that she not be identified, said she'd known the birth and adoptive parents - all now deceased - of both women.
Patterson called the woman. There were too many coincidences to dismiss the woman's story, Patterson said.
The woman had the name of Patterson's mother. It was the same name that Patterson had long suspected was that of her birth mother - a name Patterson first heard when she was 7 years old, and had been buried in her memory for years.
The woman also knew how people referred to her adoptive mother. Though the adoptive mother's first name was Virginia, people called her ``Gerry,'' short for ``Geraldine,'' her middle name. Patterson said very few people would have known that.
Patterson got Evers' phone number from the woman and called. Patterson said she spent much of the hour-long phone conversation in tears.
``I have a sister,'' she said in a phone interview last week. ``From thinking I didn't have anybody to all of sudden - all this stuff. It's mind-boggling. It was like this emptiness I had. And now it's not there. It's just a great feeling.''
Patterson and Evers discovered they had the same middle name - Mae. They discovered they are both aunts: Patterson has five children; Evers has one.
Evers knew for several years that she had a sister, but never tried to find her. Nor did she search for her birth parents, though she knew of them.
While going through her adoptive mother's belongings after her death last fall, Evers found newspaper clippings stuffed in a Bible. They included two obituaries - a woman from Roanoke who died in 1962 in Cape Charles, and a Roanoke man who died in 1964.
The woman's obit said she was survived by two daughters and one son. The man's said he was survived by two sons and a daughter.
Evers suspected that the two daughters mentioned in her biological mother's obit were herself and the biological sister. The son was a mystery.
But Evers said she realized that she could have other half-siblings. She did some digging for family information and found the names of her birth father's children. She found one - a half-sister in Towson, Md., the daughter of the man and his wife.
But Evers could not find anything about her mother's other children, particularly the sister. She didn't even have her name - until last week.
Connecting with Patterson by phone last week ``was overwhelming,'' Evers said. ``I always said that if I ever started looking, she'd be the one I'd like to meet.''
The sisters are planning to meet in February.
Their childhoods were very different. Evers was raised by a well-to-do businessman and his wife. Patterson was dragged all over the country by an adoptive mother who, according to family lore, was running from the law.
Evers ``had a good adoption. I had a bad one,'' Patterson said. ``She was happy and content, and I've been frustrated all my life, always wanting to know that I came from somebody.''
None of it matters anymore, only that the huge gaps in her life are being filled, Patterson said.
``I don't care what the woman did or what was going on,'' she said. ``I've been trying all my life to find out who my parents were - not what they were.''
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:by CNB