Daughter Finds Mother After 71 Years

Woman, now 90, gave her up for adoption after rape, was told she had died
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 25, 2013 4:31 PM CST
Updated Dec 28, 2013 11:36 AM CST
Daughter Finds Mother After 71 Years
   (Shutterstock)

It's not all that unusual for an adopted child to grow up and seek out her biological mother, but the LA Times has the story of one such reunion that's remarkable on a few fronts—the big one being that this reunion takes place 71 years after the fact. The story begins in 1941, when Brooke Mayo, a California woman about to set off for London with a civilian Army corps, was raped. She decided to have the baby but give it up for adoption. ("You didn't go to the police," she says. "Not back then.")

She then went off to London for the war, and when she called the hospital to make sure the adoption had gone OK, the hospital told her the infant had died. Turns out, that wasn't the case. Her baby grew up to be Patricia Hamlin, who didn't learn she was adopted until she was 51. A records search then revealed her mother to be Mayo, now 90, and the two spent their first Christmas together this year. "It's a gift," says Mayo. "I must have done something right in this world. You know?" Click to read the full story. (More uplifting news stories.)

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