NYPost: A county judge in Arkansas found his birth parents after an interview with Fox News Digital about his journey from a Chicago orphanage to his state’s 2022 race for lieutenant governor.
Joseph Wood, a Chicago native who now serves as county judge of Washington County, Arkansas, commemorated National Adoption Month in November by taking his lengthy search for his biological parents public.
As he explained to Fox News, Wood spent the first 10 years of his life being shuffled through foster homes before he was adopted. He struggled profoundly throughout his youth with issues of identity and always questioned where he came from.
When Illinois made it possible in 2010 for adult adoptees in the state to apply for their original birth certificates, Wood discovered that his earliest record was a foundling certificate, which indicated he had been abandoned as an infant.
He learned he had been left swaddled in a shoebox in front of an apartment building March 20, 1965, which he had always thought was his birthday. more
Pretty amazing.
I’d like to know how they are using DNA matching from a period when it wasn’t “a thing”, seems counterintuitive.
Maybe the parents and family didn’t want to be found, don’t they have the right to privacy?
Quite a story and I guess one’s family tree is important to most. In my family, that would be my sister. Almost all of my uncles, aunts, cousins and of course my parents are gone. Even my only child died several years ago. Fact is I’m not too interested in where my great grandparents came from or how children from my father’s first marriage are doing. That whole trace your DNA which again my sister has done, (imagine sending your DNA to a data base run by who the fuck knows) couldn’t mean much less. I’m of Italian descent, that’s enough.
I’m happy for this guy but I’d think the people in his life that he can call friends would matter more than ones that abandoned him.
Deserve privacy? absolutely not, when your ass abandons a new born baby to the elements your ass deserves to be found out.Any other “variables” mean shit.
You are a shit human even if you leave it at fire station, your barely a step above a baby killer or an abortionist. Still better, I guess.
^^^^you’re^^^^
And I’d say several very giant steps above being aborted
Sounds like he was the lucky one. Imagine how dysfunctional a family must be to abandon a baby outside in Chicago in March.
Only God knows the purpose of each child. Only time will reveal that purpose.
Good for women contemplating abortion to consider.
“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”
Jeremiah 1:5
Chicago? Arkansas? Paging Bill & Hillary Clinton!
Had to read that headline a few times…why would you want to know who threw you away?
Very good story,very nice man.
Had to share it.
Stop2think MARCH 13, 2022 AT 3:02 PM
“Had to read that headline a few times…why would you want to know who threw you away?”
…I don’t know about this guy, but if it were I and I had become successful enough to be a judge, I’d kind of like to find them and find out what sort of folk they were, and based on that either thank them for not outright killing me in the womb so I could live to make something out of myself after they put me in God’s hands, or push it in their face that they basically threw me away and I thrived and became successful in spite of them, and maybe wave my money around just to show them what a meal ticket they gave up.
Depending on what sort of folk they were.
…but that’s just me…
Sippin, any relative tested will share dna with other relatives. The more you share the closer you are related. When a closely related family member is identified, they can help direct a researcher to the likely parent even if that parent is dead.
I watched a documentary a few years back on adopted children who search for their biological parents. One woman got a knock on her door from the kid she gave up when she was a teenager. She never told her husband or her children of the child she gave up. Needless to say, the mother was shocked, angry, and her relationship was strained with her husband. Another was a woman who was contacted by the kid she gave up. She told the kid if he ever knocked on her door she’d kill him. The kid was a product of rape. She was another one who didn’t tell her family about her ordeal. I dunno, one part of me says why shouldn’t he know who his parents are, and the other side of me says, the people who raised you are your parents, quit looking any further. It’s a fine line.