I will have to tell you, how I came to learn who my birth mother is, some other time.  Right now I am going to tell you how I came to put this information on this site.  [Expanded from an E-mail sent out March 12, 2006] If you think I might be talking about your family, please contact me.

On April 12, 2000 a friend of mine contacted Linda the woman I believe to be my birth mother.  She denied having a child the year I was born.  At one point she said that she had a son and daughter.  The son was living in Dallas.  I am not sure if she said he was a lawyer or not.  She may have said he was a lawyer. [I have it written down somewhere, but I have to find it.] She did not say what her son's name was.

After the phone call I had sent a "letter" to the woman believed to be my birth mother. I told her I wouldn't contact her again.  It bothered me that my half siblings and some of my other relatives didn't know I existed.  I thought of ways of contacting other relatives. I always abandoned the idea, as it would freak out the other relatives.  And also, it would have been like contacting Linda through a back door. It didn't seem like a very nice thing to do.

At one point I typed in my birth mother's last name and the town she lived in.  Up came a web site for a Richard O. McKennon who was a lawyer near Dallas.  He had a web site. [http://www.mckennonlawfirm.com/ It is no longer working, July 2006.] From reading his biographical information, I came to believe that he might be my biological half brother. [He was into some sort of Martial Arts, see if this URL works. http://www.thebelt.com/Home/photos/Photo_7/Goe_Pics_4/Goe12/richard_m.htm]    

One thing and another happened.  Around March 2004, I decided it was too painful to do any more searching for my birth family.  Yet, I couldn't shake this feeling that I hadn't given the search for my birth father a proper chance.  I really wanted to find "Franklin" or at least give it a good effort.  I wanted to be able to give him the opportunity to say, "I don't want to know you".  (Of course I do know I might not find him alive, or if he is alive he might not be "aware".)

"Things" finally got the better of me.  On March 11, 2006 I decided to put my adoption information on this site.  I figured that if the family sees it good, if they don't, they don't.  At least I made some effort to let them know I am here. I can stick the information on here and then forget about it.  I figured that at least the lawyer with the web site might run across this information and find me.  If he has a web site, he might go online and find this site. I was really hoping that someone in Linda's family would see this stuff and then be able to help me find Franklin. 

I also thought, who knows, someone might learn how to find their family by reading my information.

I was getting the page ready to stick stuff on it.   I decided to type in my birth mother's name in order to see if there was anything "new" about her online.

Up came this blog entry. It was all about this woman's ex-brother in law. He was in a traffic accident and he died. It was very freaky because I recognized the photo. It was the lawyer near Dallas that could be my half brother. (Richard O. McKennon) It was very unsettling to see this. He died a couple of days before Douglas' birthday in 2006. Don't know why she called it a "traffic accident", as that sounds "tame" like a fender bender. (http://www.xanga.com/damonsangel)

I had never been 100% sure that Richard O. McKennon was indeed my half brother. His mother is Linda and he was born in Wichita Falls. But what if Wichita Falls had two Linda McKennons? I wondered why Richard's obituary didn't mention Linda's mother, Eleanor Wallace. I found an online searchable SSDI. (Social Security Death Index) It listed an Eleanor Wallace of Wichita Falls as having died in 2003. Another shock. I sent in a request to the library in Wichita Falls, to get Eleanor's obituary from the newspaper archive. When I got it, it listed the names of her grandchildren and Richard McKennon is on there, I now firmly believe he was my half brother.  I was very disappointed to learn that he wouldn't be finding this information online. 

When the Wichita Falls library sent me Eleanor's obituary, I had them look up her address in the City Directory. I wanted to know if Linda still lived there. I could not find her in an online phone book. The library said that there was no entry for that address. They said it usually means that the house is vacant. So now I don't know where Linda lives. She was living with her mother in Wichita Falls.

I didn't know if I should have been grieving for people I didn't know. It was very strange stuff.  If you want to know more, then read the other pages in my "Adoption Story".