Friday, July 21, 2000

Long-lost sister becomes very best friend

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By John Johnston
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        Tammy Bates grew up in a happy home, reared by a loving couple who adopted her and, later, a younger boy.

Everyone has a story worth telling. At least, that's the theory. To test it, Tempo is throwing darts at the phone book. When a dart hits a name, a reporter dials the phone number and asks if someone in the home will be interviewed. Stories appear on Fridays.

        “Our parents made us feel that we were special because they picked us,” says Tammy, who is now 35. She owns a court reporting business, Riverside Reporting, and lives in a hillside condominium in Fort Thomas.

        Through the years, though, questions would often surface. Some were simple. Who do I look like? Others, more complicated. How could someone give up an 11-month-old baby?

        She knew that was her age when her birth parents put her up for adoption. She also knew she spent six months in foster homes, and that she had siblings, although she was unsure how many.

        Until seven years ago, she had made only a few half-hearted attempts to find her birth family. But then a medical condition arose (which, as it turned out, was not serious), and learning her health and family history became a priority.

        She contacted a social services case worker in the California county where she was born. The case worker strongly discouraged a search for the birth family.

        This was a child-abuse case, she said.

        She told Tammy the file showed that her mother was mentally unstable, and her father, an alcoholic, had inflicted the abuse. The case worker also said that when Tammy was brought to a hospital as a baby, she was so malnourished and bruised that officials feared she would not survive if sent home.

        Despite such grim news, Tammy decided to continue her search. She knew she had siblings. Finding them became the goal.

        It took only a week.

        Tammy wrote the California hospital where she was born. It was a closed adoption, officials said, and the records would stay sealed.

        But local newspaper records showed that only one girl was born at that hospital on her birth date. The name: Tammy Hewgley. From the birth notice, she also got her birth parents' names.

        She then hired a California private investigator. He called back a few days later with both good and bad news.

        He had found her birth family. But he found them through the obituary of a brother Tammy would never meet. The brother had died in a motorcycle accident.

        There was more. The investigator said Tammy's mother had died of cancer a few years earlier. He also said Tammy had two older sisters, Brenda and Bonnie.

Painful memories
        Tammy first spoke by phone to Brenda, who was 5 years old when Tammy was adopted. Brenda, in tears, recalled Tammy being picked up from a crib by her father and thrown against a wall. Brenda, too, had suffered at the hands of their father.

        Brenda didn't know about Tammy's adoption. At first she had been told that Tammy had died. Much later, she was told that Tammy was retarded, and had been institutionalized. Brenda said she had often tried to find Tammy.

        Brenda also told Tammy about a half-sister, Colleen, born after their mother divorced and remarried.

        Brenda, Bonnie, Colleen and Tammy met at a California hotel in 1993.

        They spent four days together. Long enough for Tammy to get answers to many of her questions, and to forge one very special bond, with Bonnie.

        When it was time to leave, Tammy and Bonnie stood in the hotel parking lot for more than an hour, hugging and crying, unable to say goodbye.

        Six months after meeting her sisters, Tammy received a call from her biological father.

        “I don't know what to say to you,” Tammy said.

        “I know, Tammy, the words are hard for me, too,” he said.

        It was not what she wanted to hear. It was not, I'm sorry.

        “I don't think I have anything to say to you. Please don't call me again,' ” Tammy told him.

        He died a few months later, but the sisters didn't find out about it until last year.

Sisterly love
        Tammy and Bonnie have remained close, even though Bonnie lives in Washington state. The year after their reunion, they spent a week together in Florida.

        Now, when Tammy's court reporting work takes her to places such as Spain and England, Bonnie accompanies her. Tammy, who is single, spends Christmases with Bonnie's family on the West coast.

        They talk and laugh at each other's jokes. They share little details of their lives the way sisters do, such as when Tammy told Bonnie how much she likes pearls.

        “I can tell her anything,” Tammy says. “We talk absolutely every day. She's by far my best friend.”

        “Vice versa,” Bonnie says by phone from Washington, “no question about it.”

        Last Christmas, in Bonnie's home, the two of them sat on the floor, and Bonnie handed Tammy a gift.

        A string of pearls.

        But not just any pearls; these belonged to their mother.

        Tammy accepted them, with tears and hugs for her sister.

        “I couldn't have given them to anybody else,” Bonnie says.

       

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