Twins reunited with mother after 52 years*

WASILLA — Vern Neddeau told his wife Kathleen she’d see the daughters she gave up for adoption again someday.

Little did she know that would happen before she left this world.

Two weeks before Mother’s Day this year, Kathleen received a letter dated April 16 from her 52-year-old daughter, Lori Hessin, requesting a meeting between Lori, her twin sister, Lynn Hessin-Caron, and their biological mother, Kathleen.

“Lynn and I have been looking for our birth mother for a while, and today I was presented with your name and information,” Lori wrote. “So far, everything seems to fit.”

But how did they even find each other?

After so many years, Lynn said, she and Lori wondered if they could get their hands on their original birth certificate. Out of curiosity, Lori contacted the Division of Public Health in Juneau and found she could request certificate, for a small fee. Since the twins' had been a closed adoption, their birth parents' names were not supposed to be released, but Public Health seemed to have turned a blind eye to the rule. What was mailed to Lori and Lynn weeks later included Kathleen's name.

With that information, Lori began searching for ways to locate her birth mother, and came across a Facebook page called "Adoptees Reunited." Days later, after submitting her information through reunionregistry.org, a page administrator contacted Lori with word that Kathleen's daughter Melissa Triche had submitted similar information, looking for her lost sisters.

Lori's contact number was then given to Triche, with her approval, and they began correspondence over text message. That same day, the twins were on the phone with Kathleen and arranging a meeting. Lori and Lynn had lived in Alaska all their lives, and were living in Anchorage and Eagle River at the time, so they didn’t have far to drive.

“They came over to my house and we sat around and cried all day and took pictures,” Kathleen said, of her twins, the day she met them.

Regret was not on anyone’s mind that day, Kathleen said, so great was the joy of their reunion. Between the two of them, Kathleen and Vern have 10 children, 30 grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren, and one great-great grandchild — they were happy to include the twins in that count.

“We increased our family by many fold,” Vern said.

All thanks to a well-managed Facebook page.

"All of the credit for this (reunion) goes to them," Lynn said, of Adoptees Reunited.

Looking back

In a letter Kathleen wrote the First Baptist congregation on Mother’s Day, May 10, she recalled the many times she wondered about the twins — including the moment she gave birth to them.

“For a moment or two I hesitated — was this the right thing to do? Would the girls ever know about me? How would I know they had been adopted into a loving home? Would I ever know them?” she asked herself. “I often wondered if they even survived. After all, they had been so small."

Fifty-two years later, Kathleen learned the rest of the story.

“My girls had not only survived, but they were vibrant, intelligent, well-mannered and wanted to meet me,” she wrote.

By the time they did meet, the twin’s adoptive mother had passed away, but Kathleen would not be called “Mom” by her long-lost girls.

“I didn’t wanna take that away from their mother,” she said.

Neither did Lynn and Lori. Out of respect for both their mothers, the twins have chosen to call Kathleen “Mam,” which is Irish for mother.

Kathleen was 19 years old when Lynn and Lori were born. She said she didn’t think she was ready for that kind of responsibility, though she said she did love them, even as hospital staff whisked them away. It was for the best, she thought.

“Mothers make some of the most difficult and sometimes heart-wrenching decisions with their children’s best interests in mind. This is the type of decision I was charged with making when I found myself pregnant with twins at age 19,” Kathleen wrote.

She wrote a letter to the girls’ parents-to-be when they were born, but a closed adoption meant all records were sealed, and it was never delivered.

But “God has a plan” for all lives and “works his way in his own time,” Kathleen said.

“He must have always been aware of those shaky, faith-testing life moments, when I was sure that he had entrusted a particular child to nothing short of a bumbling idiot, not in current possession of her faculties, much less the tools necessary to bring a child to adulthood,” she wrote.

Later in life, Kathleen felt more prepared for a family and actively raised four children, one of whom is the second in five generations of women currently living. Kathleen and Vern also will celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary this September. Renewing their vows, she said, will be made extra special by the new additions to their family — a happy, though unexpected, pair of surprises from the past.

And despite what the adage assumes, Kathleen maintains that sometimes, the past can, in fact, bring good news.

“‘When the past calls, let it go to voicemail, believe me it has nothing new to say,’ — that's not true, not this case,” she said.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.

*This story has been modified from its original version.