The following is an excerpt from a letter written to Governor Christie by adoptee Stacy Patton. Very interesting letter.
I am case number KC 114343 in the New Jersey foster care system, and like thousands of other adoptees — some women like me, some black like me — I will not have a right to my birth certificate unless Gov. Chris Christie signs the Adoptees Birthright Bill (A1406/S799) passed this month by the state Assembly (and the Senate in March).
Though Christie and I are set in different positions on this issue, I write this piece to show how adoption touches everybody’s lives in unexpected ways, even strangers.
A few years before I was born, my biological grandfather was brutally murdered and dumped in the Kearny swamps. The prime suspect in his gangland killing was the late mobster, Tino Fiumara, a fearsome convicted Genovese crime family captain who is also a distant relative of Christie’s. As I learned more about my biological family of origin, I discovered this odd twist of history that neither the governor nor I willed, but nonetheless ties our fate.
My grandfather’s 1969 murder set off a chain of tragic events that led to my birth mother’s mysterious suicide and then to me being case number KC 114343. In my book “That Mean Old Yesterday,” I tell how my adoption and reunion with my birth family unfolded even without access to my original birth certificate. But here I wish only to explain that while neither the governor nor I can undo unchosen family ties and choices, as he prepares to sign or veto the bill, he is now empowered to heal what fate has dealt.
