TALKEETNA -- Kris Drumm welcomed 1970 by giving birth in an upstate New York hospital. Her daughter was 7 1/2 pounds and 19 inches long, a blond, blue-eyed beauty she didn't trust herself to touch.
Kris, a 19 year-old single mother, allowed herself one long look at the sleeping baby in the hospital nursery before she left.
Her child was one of 175,000 placed in an adoptive family that year, the highest number of adoptions ever recorded in the U.S., according to a 1994 study for the federal government. Kris, who spent her last trimester in a Salvation Army home for unwed mothers, soon moved to Alaska with her new husband. She left behind an ex-fiance who refused to marry her when she was pregnant and a self-worth mired in shame.
Although the period predated Roe v. Wade, Kris said a friend could've gotten her an abortion but she didn't consider it. To her, the baby was a life meant to be, regardless of her family's disapproval, the loss of her enrollment in nursing school and a society that condemned unwed mothers as sexual deviants.
"It was not a good situation," Kris said recently from her Talkeetna home, a lifetime away from the scared teenager from an upstate New York dairy farm.
"I felt like I couldn't raise her because, if I was such a dirty person, I really couldn't take care of her life," she explained. "In those days, (adoption) is what you did."
Kris went on to have three sons and a career as a certified nursing assistant at Sunshine Community Clinic in Talkeetna. Her family knew all about her daughter but Kris marked every January birthday alone. She prayed and thought constantly of the child she'd given up.
In 1997, Kris's son, Judah Mahay, then 16, made an announcement.
"He said, 'Mom, I deserve to know who my sister is and if you don't look for her I will,' " she said. "That's what started me to start looking."
She first signed up with an online adoption registry but three years later, she added her name to the New York adoption registry. The state registry notifies families when both parties sign up for a match. She included with her registration a handwritten letter for her daughter. Then she waited.
Amy Archer was raised an only child in Buffalo, N.Y. Although never told she was adopted, Amy couldn't help noticing that her questions about her birth and her mother's pregnancy went unanswered.
"I stuck out like a sore thumb," she said. "Everybody in the family is an engineer but I just didn't fit the mold. I'd always wondered if I was adopted and as I got older, nothing added up."
KEEPING A SECRET
Years later, she discovered that her mother had warned her extended family off ever spilling the news. A strong personality, coupled with a bone-deep conviction that it was wrong to tell a child she was adopted, meant the secret never slipped.
But even the strongest will can't erase the truth. Her mother shaved five years from her own age in an effort to reassure Amy, who as a child was terrified her older parents would die and leave her alone.
When Amy was in her early 20s, a godmother let slip her mother's actual age. That information convinced Amy what she had suspected for years.
Twelve years ago, both parents had heart attacks. Her father died. Amy confronted her mother with her knowledge and asked for information on her birth parents -- medical information, anything. She was refused.
Out of respect, Amy let it be. She married, eventually got three college diplomas and started medical school in Glendale, Ariz., moving there with her now ex-husband. Of all the members in a support group for adult adoptees, she alone had never searched for her birth parents.
STORIES TO SHARE
Her mother died last year and Amy decided it was time. Now a fully qualified doctor of osteopathy with a practice in Phoenix, she put herself on the New York registry last April. Two weeks later, the notification of a match came. Kris' letter fell out as Amy opened the envelope. She froze.
"Looking at that handwriting, knowing I came from somewhere, that I'm genetically linked to this woman, it was so powerful," she said. "I thought, oh my God, I'm connected again or maybe for the first time."
She cried for three hours and then picked up the phone.
In April, Kris opened her notification letter in the Talkeetna post office and promptly alarmed a friend with her heart-deep weeping. It took her 15 minutes before she could even start her car.
Ten days later, the phone rang.
"She said, 'Hello, this is Amy, your birth daughter. I want to thank you. I've had a wonderful life.' " Kris said. "Obviously, I was crying -- I was bawling. I said, 'I'm glad. That's what I wanted, that's why I did what I did.' "
They talked for five hours that night and almost daily since. They e-mailed photos and marveled at how similar were their smiles, the curve of their cheeks. It took only a few weeks before Amy flew north, drawn like a magnet to metal.
Their meeting June 6 at Stevens International Airport was intense. There were lots of tears, lots of hugs, lots of "Oh my God!"
Touching Amy was surreal for Kris. "She was my baby and my grown daughter and I was the child who gave up the baby, all at once," Kris said.
Kris whisked Amy away for a weekend of fellowship and river rafting in Talkeetna. She held a party at her home where everyone hung on Amy's neck, delighted at the fairy tale ending to this story. There were hours of talk and revelation, an emotional high that left Amy exhausted but exhilarated for her return to Arizona. Kris plans a trip south in October.
"One of my sons asked me why I've made this whole thing so public," Kris said. "At work, there was one gentleman I've known for a long time and I saw him and was sharing (the story) with him. He started crying because he has a daughter in her 40s he has never met and he said it gives him such hope. So that's why I've shared -- it gives people hope."
Find Melodie Wright online at adn.com/contact/mwright or call 352-6721.
