In the midst of my post whoring, I was reminded, you guys are smart bunch.
A few years ago, my half brother, who was given up for adoption found me. The short version of that story is that our mother has passed many many years ago.What we don't have is his dad. My once large family is now whittled down to almost nothing but a cousin in S.C. and me. The cousin is a few years older but knows about s much as I do. My step-Dad knew nothing of the brother. The friends my mother had that might have known have all passed, so family and friends are not an option.
What's more, South Carolina, the state where he was adopted from, has some of the worst laws n the US as far adoptee rights. All of his birth records are sealed. I tried the hospital he was where he was born to no avail. In fact they kinda picked up quick on what I was trying to do, but don't maintian birth records anyway.
He found me through a now defunct volunteer agency that managed to get a record with one first name not blacked out, our mothers. By compating that to generic information regarding her and coming up with a name. That led to my cousin, which led to my step Dad, and then to me.
Ths summer, we are palnning a week long road trip to see if we can dig up some info. Also I just want to show him where our family started and its an exucse to connect with some folks that I haven't seen since my mother died in 1989.
I know that he was a student at the University of Georgia in the early 70's. He was still a student when my brother was born in 1974. When my mother left my Dad in 73, she moved to Athens for a while before moving back to South Carolina.
According to the records we do have, he was a business major. He was also opposed to the adoption, instead wanting to marry my mother. His parents knew about the pregnacy, my mother's did not. His family was living in Florida at the time. His name is crossed out but it looks like it was a short name, Like Jim or the like.
My memroies are very very fuzzy, but I remember 2 guys around that time. I was barely 3. One was a tall very thin guy with dark curly hair who drove a Honda Civic wagon. There was also another guy who had a Pontiac Lemans Sport coupe that he traded for a new Celica coupe. He was a bigger person. My brother is tall and thin.
Both of these were around the Greer/Greenville area of South Carolina. My brother was born in Greer at what is now part of the Greenville Hospital system.
So if you guys know of any web-based resources or agencies that can help, that might give our road trip more structure.
Right now, we really only have 2 quaisi-plans. One, go to the state capital in Columbia, shamelessly play my military card (I am debating about being in uniform or not) and seeing what we can get. My wife has even given permission to remove my ring and flirt if I think it will help (for the record, I don't).
Plan 2 is to go the the University of Georgia and look through yearbooks to see if we come up with a possible match.
So as you can see, we are grasping at straws here.
What do you guys have?
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