c. 1996 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ They approached the long table one by one, tentatively, as if answers lay somewhere among the pastel pamphlets or in the understanding faces of the volunteers.

“That’s all I know,” Steve Hoffert said, with an almost apologetic shrug. He handed his scantily filled-out form to one of the young women, who assured him that a few scattered facts is all it takes sometimes. A birth date, a hospital, a time, a town.

The 32-year-old Avon Lake, Ohio, father smiled, but did not look encouraged. He has been searching for his biological parents since the birth of his first child three years ago.

“I had no desire to find them before that,” Hoffert said. “But when he was born, when I looked down at him. … I don’t know how to describe it. I saw myself. I actually saw some bond to me.

“I never felt that before, like I’m part of a line,” he said. “It’s just hard to go through life not knowing.”

It is nearly as hard to explain what “not knowing” means. The more than 20 people who signed up here recently with International Soundex Reunion Registry are not really looking for people. They’re looking for pasts.

“I used to wonder why I tanned so easily,” said Theresa Emerson, 33, of Brooklyn, Ohio. “People asked, `What’s your nationality?’ I had no idea what my nationality was. You get tired of saying, `I don’t know.”’

Emerson, an Internet account administrator at Case Western Reserve University, was matched earlier this month with her birth mother, half brother and five half sisters. They had registered with Soundex, a database for adults seeking birth family members, in October after years of trying traditional search methods.

“My sisters told me they had actually put ads to me in the newspaper, like `Happy 32nd birthday. Wish we knew who you were,”’ said Emerson, still overwhelmed by their persistence. That the computer registry requires both adult parties’ consent eased her angst, she added.

“Had I found my mother knowing she was not looking for me, it would have been a lot harder,” she said. “I don’t know if I’d even have approached her.”

Emerson is content to absorb the details of her origin a little at a time, for her birth mother’s and her adoptive parents’ peace of mind. In these few weeks, she has already acquired her own.

“I can’t describe to you how happy I was,” she said. “Oh, by the way, it turns out my father was Greek and my mom is German.”

While “I used to wonder if she was wondering about me,” a relationship with her biological mother was not what she sought, Emerson said. “I wanted closure,” she said. “I wanted to know the simplest thing of all: how I came to be.”

Adoptive and biological parents who fear the fruits of searching must understand this, adult adoptees say: The love they feel for the people who raised them has nothing to do with their desire for _ some say a right to _ a heritage.

“My (adoptive) parents couldn’t have been more wonderful,” said Renee Mills Arnold, who met her “bio-mom” in 1994 after five years on the Soundex registry. “But once you know you’re adopted, you do feel differently.”

Interestingly, physical reunion with biological relatives isn’t necessarily the goal, said Arnold, a television producer who volunteered to assist with the Cleveland area registry. Soundex also offers the Reunion Registry at other sites around the country.

“It’s a drive. It’s inate,” she said. “You want to know who you are and where you came from, for better or worse, because even if you get a door slammed in your face, that’s better than not knowing.”

Arnold, 32, said she felt the urge to know more fiercely when she was pregnant with her daughter, born six weeks before a Soundex representative called to say her biological mother, Linda, was waiting in Florida to hear from her.

“It was a pretty emotional time,” she recalled. “I had always asked myself, `Where did I get these green eyes?’ And the first thing she said to me on the phone was, `Do you have green eyes? Do people notice them right away?’

“After we talked, I had no doubt about who she was. Then she sent pictures. I was so freaked out, seeing my face in the faces in the photos,” Arnold said. “Remember, I did not have this feeling until I was 30 years old. “I ran to my friend’s house. `Am I seeing this just because I want to?’ And my friend said, `No, no. You look just like these people.”’

Arnold, born in Washington, now knows her birth name was Christina. She has four half-brothers. She has talked to her biological father for the first time. He wants to see her and his granddaughter _ and the former high school sweetheart he hasn’t seen since her parents whisked her off to an unwed mother’s home in 1964. He called the phone call “a miracle.”

Arnold realizes she is extremely lucky her quest had such a fairy tale ending. True peace, she said, came when her birth and adoptive mothers spoke on the phone, each expressing gratitude to the other.

“I understand why adoptive parents are fearful,” Arnold said. “But Linda doesn’t take the place of my mother. She never could. Anyone can give birth. It’s raising children that makes them yours.”

Finding peace while preventing pain is at the heart of most mature adoptees’ searches, experts say, and resentful confrontations are extremely rare.

“I told my birth mother, `You did the most courageous thing you could have done,”’ Theresa Emerson said. “ `And you blessed my parents’ lives, too.”’

Steve Hoffert seeks only the answers his birth mother can provide. A reunion is secondary.

“My (adoptive) parents are my parents, and I love them,” he said. “It doesn’t even matter if I meet my biological mom. The only thing I would say to her is `Thank you for my life.’ I don’t blame her for giving me up. I feel blessed just to be alive.”

Only another person who has been separated from his or her past can truly understand the need to search, said Anthony Vilardi, who founded what would become International Soundex Reunion Registry with his wife more than 20 years ago. Emma Vilardi, an adoptee, died in 1975.

The private, nonprofit organization, based in Carson City, Nev., registers birth parents, adult children, siblings and other biological relatives regardless of the cause of separation, he said. During the Depression, for instance, large families were split up and never reunited.

The free registry does not assist with searches. It matches information and contacts each party separately. Vilardi estimates about 5,000 biological relatives have been reunited, mostly in the United States and Canada.

It is often very difficult, he said, especially when adoption records are sealed and adoptees have only reissued birth certificates with little vital information.

The passage of years and loss of documents may also cut off a search.

One Westlake, Ohio, woman asked to register on behalf of her 10-year-old adopted son, who may have a hereditary illness. He has no desire to find his birth parents “but he may someday, and the trail gets colder the older he gets,” she said.

(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)

The Soundex registry’s eldest registrant is a 94-year-old birth mother still searching for a daughter born in 1919, Vilardi said. Two older women who registered recently were looking for their mothers.

“I just always wondered,” said one of the women who, at 72, understands her search will most likely take her to a cemetery. Or nowhere, unless there are siblings.

“It does just come up sometimes, doesn’t it?” asked the volunteer who took her application, because the older woman was close to tears.

“It comes up big time,” she whispered.

The second woman, born during World War II, scanned an out-of-state road map and jotted down the names of county seats. Like many adoptees who fear disturbing family members, she declined to be identified. Why, after 50 years, was she still searching for the mother she never knew?

She stopped writing but did not look up from the map. “I’d just like to tell her I’ve had a nice life,” she said.

JC END LESIE