
DATE: Monday, April 7, 1997                 TAG: 9704070053

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SUSIE STOUGHTON, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:  104 lines

LONG SEARCH BRINGS FAMILY TOGETHER AN ADOPTEE THOUGHT SHE WAS AN ONLY CHILD FOR 69 YEARS, UNTIL HER DAUGHTER'S SEARCH LED HER TO A WHOLE NEW FAMILY.

Elinor Branch and Lucille Kirk sat side by side on the sofa, squabbling like pre-schoolers.

``She's older than me,'' said Elinor, a former Senior Olympics champion.

``No, she's older than me,'' Lucille insisted. ``I was born in 1929, and she was born in '27. How could I be older?''

But Lucille's birthday comes first - in April - Elinor explained. Hers is in May.

Pleased to have the record set straight, Lucille smiled smugly, then grinned at the sister she first got to know nearly a year ago.

``I'm very happy that I have her,'' Elinor said, nodding at Lucille. ``In the beginning, I was kind of skeptical of her.''

Not surprising, perhaps, for someone who had been an only child for almost 69 years.

For more than three years, Elinor's daughter, Carol Shao, had been seeking information on her mother's birth parents.

Her search led her by phone to Roanoke, Alexandria, Norfolk, Portsmouth and North Carolina. Along the way, numerous people assisted, including Suffolk's Circuit Court clerk, Henry Murden, who helped her file a $10 petition to get official records released.

Attorneys had asked for $500 or more to do it for her.

Unfortunately, the local records had either been lost or destroyed.

Shao persisted. Later, she spent $60 more and made numerous long-distance phone calls until she finally connected with a woman who does genealogy research.

The researcher deciphered the handwritten maiden name Garris - they had mistaken it for Garrett - and found a whole new family for Elinor, who had been raised in Suffolk by a loving couple - George and Bessie Eley.

Lucille and another sister, Frances Jones, who now lives in South Carolina, grew up in Chesapeake and Portsmouth, never knowing there was another sister. No one ever mentioned the baby who had been given up a month after birth.

They knew they had two older half brothers, who have since died. But no one had told them that their mother - in bad health during the Depression - had separated from her first husband, Elinor's father, before a daughter was born.

The news was a jolt for Lucille. ``I'm still in shock to know I have a sister,'' she said.

But when they met, she had no doubt they were related.

``The onliest part is she looks so much like Mama I don't know which one is which,'' said Lucille, who lives in Portsmouth.

``I know one thing - she teases like my Mama did,'' Lucille said. ``Boy, she loves to tease. So did my Mama.''

Lucille cared for their mother, who had been bedridden for 14 years until her death in 1989.

``That woman,'' Elinor said, hugging her sister, ``is the most patient woman.''

Neither refers to the other as ``half sister.''

Elinor has met Frances once.

``We're so near alike she couldn't stand me,'' she said.

For Elinor, discovering family was not her first shock.

More than 50 years ago, when she was 17 and working at ``Roses 5-and-Dime on the square,'' a family friend let it slip that Elinor had been adopted.

``I had to stop work,'' she said. ``I was stunned. They had to take me home. I was in shock.''

At first, her mother denied it, but Elinor poked around until she found her birth certificate and read that she had been born in Roanoke.

Finally, her mother admitted that Elinor had been adopted but gave no details, afraid she would leave or no longer love her. Even after she was grown, Elinor never searched further, afraid she would hurt the only parents she had known.

She had plenty of relatives - aunts, uncles, cousins, but no sister or brother. ``I still can't get used to it after 60-some years of being alone,'' she said.

At first she was hesitant to meet Lucille. Carol, who was visiting from Kannapolis, N.C., drove her mother to Lucille's, but she balked at going inside.

``This one here, when she met me for the first time, she said, `I don't think I like that lady,' '' Lucille said. ``She was shy of me.''

But two days later, Elinor took her sister to Long John Silver's to celebrate her birthday. They haven't stopped going since then.

Her sister's a great cook, Elinor said.

Lucille cooks; Elinor drives - to shopping malls, Williamsburg, Jamestown, to family reunions in Murfreesboro, N.C., to their grandmother's grave in Conway, N.C.

``I think the good Lord sent her to me,'' said Lucille, whose husband had died about a year before.

``It was really meant for us to be together,'' Elinor said, adding that her husband, Willard, sometimes gets a little jealous of the time the two spend together.

``When I found out she was my sister, I loved her more than anything,'' said Lucille.

``You did?'' Elinor asked. ``You've got to be a very special person to put up with me.'' ILLUSTRATION: PERSISTENCE PAYS OFF

[Color Photos]

JOHN H. SHEALLY II photos/The Virginian-Pilot

Two photos of Carrie Burnham - the mother of Elinor Branch and

Lucille Kirk - show her at 16, left, and 38. Kirk grew up never

knowing her mother had had a daughter from her first marriage, and

Branch didn't know for almost 69 years that she had a sibling.

Carol Shao sits with her mother, Elinor Branch, left, and her

newfound aunt, Lucille Kirk, right, at Branch's Suffolk home.