April 16, 2024 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Eddie Willis always knew he was adopted. And, he was fine with not knowing where he came from... That is, until he had his children of his own. He tells the story of the search for his birth parents and an outcome he never could've imagined.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. And up next
we have a hometown story, a story from our little
town of Oxford, Mississippi, home to twenty thousand people, and Ole,
miss home to sec sports folks. And we're about an
hour south due south of Memphis, Tennessee. This story is
told by Eddie Willis, who's a pastor here in town today.
(00:32):
He's here to share the story about his adoption and
his decision at the age of forty, the search for
his birth parents.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I learned at the earliest age that I was an
adopted child.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I had a lot of questions for my parents and
they always answered. They were always open and honest. This
was at a time before adoptions.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Were open where you knew your parents, and that in
itself was much different than today.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
It was almost like a spy movie.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
They met some of the social workers in a park
and had to bring in a round paper sack clothing,
be very discreet, and they handed me off in a
public park in New Orleans.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
And that's how.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Up until about the age of forty, I had the
mindset that this is the way it was, and they
set me on this path in the adoption process, and
my parents that adopted me were the only parents that
I had and needed. I felt like I was fine
not knowing where I came from, and so it wasn't
(01:48):
until adulthood, marriage, children of my own that I really
started having those desires. My wife and I started our family,
and then it was during the birth of our first
child that I started having these feelings.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
That I'd never had before that I'm a parent.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
You know, there must be an emotional attachment to me
from my birth mom, is the way it started out.
And then as a father myself, there must be these
feelings from my birth father. And so all through childhood,
I was told that I was adopted out of Methodist
Children's Home in New Orleans and it's one of the
(02:29):
last states that has sealed records that just will not
be opened. And ended up at the door of the
Office of Records, and a sweet, kind lady came outside,
and I don't think she knew how emotional it was,
and she said, your records are probably five feet behind
(02:50):
this door, but if I open these records, I myself
would suffer consequences.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Legally, I can't let you see these records.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
So I had a friend that was in industry of
private investigation and tried to go that route, just a
dead end. My wife even found the doctor that delivered me,
and he's retired and very elderly, and he said, well,
(03:18):
the reason your husband was adopted out of the Methodist
Children's home but was birth at the Baptist Hospital in
New Orleans is that it would have been a high
risk pregnancy. And she said, well, that makes sense because
this birth certificate says he's a twin, and so I
am a twin that survived.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
My brother didn't make it.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I'd tried through the legal system, and only legally. I
had written some letters to senators in Louisiana, and I
knew some bills were coming before the state Senate, and
I wrote several of these people in power that I said,
I can no more more about my own canine than
(04:02):
I can about myself. I could look up my dog's ancestry,
but you're stopping me. Could you please open these records.
It's frustrating, and then it's so ironic. One of my
best friends from my hometown he had seen something that
I had posted on the internet at Facebook about looking
(04:24):
for my parents, and he said, hey, my wife's old
roommate does this. His wife was roommates with a lady
that found her mother on her own and started helping
other people as a hobby. She's helped a lot of
other people and has used a lot of resources at
her fingertips, whether it's actual data or favors from people
(04:44):
that can get the data, and those favors are typically
from people that she helped them find their birth parents.
He connected me with her and this kind sweet lady,
I call her my adoption angel.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
She reaching out.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
To all the sources that she had during the seven
years that she was trying to help me.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
She said, Eddie, this is the hardest case.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I go through dead end after dead end, and she
said in my dining room, I have dead end charts
with you at the top, and it's like CSI, I'm
trying to solve this case, and it just I keep
hitting dead ends. Would you please try ancestry? Would you
please try the DNA swab? And I just really was
(05:29):
guarded about and it still am guarded about my personal
information in my DNA, and my wife really was at
the forefront of really helping me. She could tell there
was a little bit of my heart that needed to
be filled A vacuum that was still empty, and so
she had been helping me search and bought me a
(05:49):
kit for my birthday and it's sat there on the shelf,
and reluctantly, after about a month, two months, three months,
I did this swab send it in. I let my
adoption angel as I call her, have the password and
everything to get into this site. And about three months
later she called me and said, are you sitting down.
(06:13):
I said yes, I'm driving and she said, okay, I
know ninety nine point.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Nine percent who your birth mother is. And I just
wanted to pull over and I did, and I just
was so happy.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
And I had this information and I had phone numbers
because the resources that the sweet lady that had helped
me on this journey found my birth mom and so
there was this information. So again, you know, my wife,
who had been helping me through all of this, said
(06:47):
you need to call her, and.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I'm like, oh my goodness, I can't. I can't do this.
It was just so nervous.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I was like a teenager trying to call someone that
I was in love with. And I just would pick
up the phone that I'd hang it up and then
I'd dial the number and that i'd close my phone,
and finally I.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Left a message.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
And my profession is a minister, and I didn't want
to think that they were getting this strange phone call
from a number and I was trying.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
To sell something.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I said, I'm a minister in North Mississippi and I
was trying to connect with you on a situation. And
I didn't hear anything for a day. I didn't hear
anything for a couple of days, and I told my wife,
I said, I've heard of adoption stories that just don't
turn out.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
This is not going to work.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
And so it was a week to the day that
I had called, and I had this phone call and
it was a Louisiana number, and I'm staring at my phone.
I'm so nervous, and I answered just so intrepidly, and
I said, hello, my name is Eddie, and I'm a
minister from north of Mississippi and I was born in
(07:57):
Louisiana in nineteen sixty eight. And she said, Edie, it's
me and just stopped all of this jargon that I
was spewing out of my mouth. It was my birth mom,
and so calmly she said, I just have two questions.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Have you had a good life. Have you had good parents?
Speaker 2 (08:16):
And I said yes, and we just both broke down
on the phone.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
And we wept. It was just a joyful, joyful.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Moment, and she said, I wondered if this call would
ever happened. She told me about the process and about
how this had been a relationship in high school and
she and my birth father did not get married, but
she remembered even so long ago, fifty years ago, at
(08:48):
the time, she said, I just remember your feet, your
small little feet.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
And evidently at the.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Time, adoptions were closed and they limited the time that
the birth mother would have with the baby, and she said,
I didn't really I didn't really get to hold you
very long. And then the process started where your adoptive
parents were able to take you home just a few
days later.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
And you've been listening to Eddie Willis's story with the
search of his birth parents. He hadn't given it much
thought until he was forty years of age. My parents
who adopted me were the only parents I wanted or needed,
he said. But then came the birth of his child,
and he started to have these feelings and the search, well,
it started for his birth parents, and ten years later,
after that search commenced, came that call from the Louisiana
(09:39):
and he heard these words from his mom, Eddie, it's
me when we come back. More of this remarkable story.
We love adoption stories here on this show is they
are the ultimate act of human love. More of Eddie
Willis's story here on our American Stories. And we're back
(10:09):
with our American stories and with Eddie Willis's story. When
we last left off, Eddie, at the age of fifty,
had finally connected through a phone call with his birth mother.
Let's return to Eddie for the rest of the story.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
After that beautiful conversation, I called her back and there
was a no.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Dial tone that said this.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Number is no longer in service, and I was thinking,
this is terrible. She's disconnected her phone and doesn't want
to hear from me, and I.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Was so sad.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
She called me back in another day and was panicked.
They had installed a new phone line in their house
and they didn't know when the company would cut their
old line, and she was trying every way she could
to contact me, but couldn't, and she was nervous thinking
that I was thinking she didn't want to ever hear
from me.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Again, which is what I was thinking.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
And again, you know, she was overjoyed that I had
found her, and she had wondered most of her life,
even having three kids with her husband. And she married
a gentleman named Ed. My birth father's name is Ed.
I'm Ed, and it's just, you know, there's so many
(11:29):
ironic things. But she couldn't wait to come up with
her husband, and she came to our town and we
just had this wonderful reunion and she had gifts for
my children and just instantly fit into the grandmother role.
So we had a great relationship. And then through this
(11:49):
DNA company, through ancestry a lease, my adoption angel had
called and said, I just noticed your account. You have
somebody looking for you and it's on your dad's side.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
And if I were you, I would call.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Your dad before they get to him and tell him
all this information about you've been found and that you found.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Your birth mom.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
So I had a half sister that was looking for me.
So what I wanted to do. I could have reached
out to him, but I told my birth mom. I
wanted to give her the opportunity to reach out to
him and say, hey, our son is looking for you
he found me because they see each other unions and functions.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
They have an.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Admiration for each other, even though the relationship didn't continue.
But he had really been very very quiet about it
on his side.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I mean, you don't.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Really talk about hey had a relationship in high school
and my girlfriend had a baby, and you know, he
didn't say much, if anything about it. She had called
me back and said he'd definitely wanted to find me.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
When I reached out to him, his first words for
why'd you wait so long? And you know, we talked
about sports, and we talked about life.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Then he really started wanting to get into things deeper.
And so then he called me the next day, and
then he started calling more and more. We became deeper
and deeper, and you know, we've become very close, just
like my mom and I. And so he wanted to
meet and he said, why don't we meet right north
(13:30):
of Jackson at a steakhouse. He probably wanted to make
sure I was normal. I assume he'd been there a
lot longer than I had, and I think he was anxious.
And so we met him there and he said, reach
out your hands, and I reached out and he grabbed
my hands from across the table, and he said, our
family has this line in the palm of our hands,
and I have the same line just like his.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
And both the palms and my hands.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
And he said, my daddy, your grandfather has that line,
and my brother has that line.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And he just got really teary eyed, and he's holding
my hand.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
And the waiter comes and were these two men holding
hands in the restaurant. And I said, I'm so glad
we found each other. And I'm not sure what all
I said, but I said, since I much surviving twin.
He said what I said, since i'mer surviving twin, and
he just wept and just wept, and he said my
father was a twin. After that, he said, we've got
(14:25):
to get our families together, and it was time to
connect with my father's side of the family. And so
they threw a crawfish bull for us. They invited relatives
far and wide to come, and.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
I mean it was it was so neat. It was
like a movie. The Sun's going down.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
And my dad said, Eddie's a guitar player, and my
half brother said, well, I've got a guitar upstairs, and
a cousin things real.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Well, And I mean it was a movie setting.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
We're having crawfish, the son's going down, We're singing James
Taylor's songs and songs from the seventies, and the families
joining in. It's like a campfire scene. It was just
a wonderful, wonderful reunion. It brought a lot of good memories,
and I want to say it brought a lot of
healing because it was such a time of angst swirling around.
(15:15):
You know, the relationship that my mother and father had
and then my birth and then you know, the ending
of that relationship, and I guess, not knowing where I was.
My father's children, which are my half siblings, were saying
he would never talk about it, and.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
It just was a closed and shut story.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
And I think it was breached once or twice and
the family understood that they shouldn't bring.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
That up again.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
So it was almost a biblical homecoming story for me
and my family and my children were just welcomed in.
And I think he's so proud of our family. You know,
we walk into a restaurant and he'll see his friends,
this is my son, and he is mentioned, you know,
we've got.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
A lot of living. I've got a lot of living
to do.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Even though the records are closed, it was an open
story for my parents and the way I was brought up,
and my mother and father were just overjoyed that I'd
found my birth mother. And and shortly after that, my
father passed away. And shortly after as when I found
my birth father, you know, I never could nothing could
(16:28):
take the place of him. But it's interesting how finding
my father after my father passed away, and just so
many things in my life have fallen into place. I
wonder what my children think that. You know, for a while,
it was like, hey, you have a new relative. You've
got another relative. You've got another here's some grandparents, more grandparents.
(16:50):
They've been on a quite a ride with me, and
I mean not even bouncing back.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
They just were very forward. And this is the way
it is.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
So we trade off with all sides of the family
making trips down there and up here. And our initial
reunion in Louisiana with my mother, I was able to
go see my grandparents. They were still living in their nineties,
and my grandmother, who probably was four foot four, she
(17:24):
leaned up and I leaned down, and she said, I
always knew this day would come, and my grandfather was
so happy to see me. And they were always the
volunteers at their Methodist churches. They always volunteered in the
youth department, and they knew someone at the Methodist Children's
(17:44):
Home through their United Methodist connections in Louisiana. And every
Sunday at my local church, a tradition that was started
before I came to that church. I say, and now
the children are going to walk around and take up
the chain.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
This goes to the United Methodist Children's Home.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
I could look at my personal story negatively, but I
don't think I've even chosen. It's just the way I
think about it as so positive. As a pastor, I
talk so much about being adopted into the Family of
Christ and I've had a great life. To answer my
birth mom's question, is it's been wonderful.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
It just was very natural.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
The way my parents packaged it. It was that my
birth mother loved me so much that she chose to allow.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Someone to take care of me.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
And you know, every now and then people would say, well,
you're adopted, and I'm like, yes, aren't you.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
And a great job on the production by Madison and
a special thanks to Eddie Willis for sharing his adoption story,
and my goodness, what a story about love, about sacrifice,
and what a gift Eddie is to this community, and
what a choice that young couple made to let this
young child get adopted. This community would not have Eddie
Willis but for that decision, and he's been ministering two
(19:04):
thousands of young men, young women and students here at
all miss and contributing in ways that are unimaginable and incalculable.
The story of Eddie Willis here on our American Stories
And we returned to our American stories. And up next
we have a hometown story, a story from our little
town of Oxford, Mississippi, home to twenty thousand people, and Ole,
miss home to sec sports folks. And we're about an
hour south due south of Memphis, Tennessee. This story is
told by Eddie Willis, who's a pastor here in town today.
(00:32):
He's here to share the story about his adoption and
his decision at the age of forty, the search for
his birth parents.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I learned at the earliest age that I was an
adopted child.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
I had a lot of questions for my parents and
they always answered. They were always open and honest. This
was at a time before adoptions.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Were open where you knew your parents, and that in
itself was much different than today.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
It was almost like a spy movie.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
They met some of the social workers in a park
and had to bring in a round paper sack clothing,
be very discreet, and they handed me off in a
public park in New Orleans.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
And that's how.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Up until about the age of forty, I had the
mindset that this is the way it was, and they
set me on this path in the adoption process, and
my parents that adopted me were the only parents that
I had and needed. I felt like I was fine
not knowing where I came from, and so it wasn't
(01:48):
until adulthood, marriage, children of my own that I really
started having those desires. My wife and I started our family,
and then it was during the birth of our first
child that I started having these feelings.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
That I'd never had before that I'm a parent.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
You know, there must be an emotional attachment to me
from my birth mom, is the way it started out.
And then as a father myself, there must be these
feelings from my birth father. And so all through childhood,
I was told that I was adopted out of Methodist
Children's Home in New Orleans and it's one of the
(02:29):
last states that has sealed records that just will not
be opened. And ended up at the door of the
Office of Records, and a sweet, kind lady came outside,
and I don't think she knew how emotional it was,
and she said, your records are probably five feet behind
(02:50):
this door, but if I open these records, I myself
would suffer consequences.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Legally, I can't let you see these records.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
So I had a friend that was in industry of
private investigation and tried to go that route, just a
dead end. My wife even found the doctor that delivered me,
and he's retired and very elderly, and he said, well,
(03:18):
the reason your husband was adopted out of the Methodist
Children's home but was birth at the Baptist Hospital in
New Orleans is that it would have been a high
risk pregnancy. And she said, well, that makes sense because
this birth certificate says he's a twin, and so I
am a twin that survived.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
My brother didn't make it.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I'd tried through the legal system, and only legally. I
had written some letters to senators in Louisiana, and I
knew some bills were coming before the state Senate, and
I wrote several of these people in power that I said,
I can no more more about my own canine than
(04:02):
I can about myself. I could look up my dog's ancestry,
but you're stopping me. Could you please open these records.
It's frustrating, and then it's so ironic. One of my
best friends from my hometown he had seen something that
I had posted on the internet at Facebook about looking
(04:24):
for my parents, and he said, hey, my wife's old
roommate does this. His wife was roommates with a lady
that found her mother on her own and started helping
other people as a hobby. She's helped a lot of
other people and has used a lot of resources at
her fingertips, whether it's actual data or favors from people
(04:44):
that can get the data, and those favors are typically
from people that she helped them find their birth parents.
He connected me with her and this kind sweet lady,
I call her my adoption angel.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
She reaching out.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
To all the sources that she had during the seven
years that she was trying to help me.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
She said, Eddie, this is the hardest case.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I go through dead end after dead end, and she
said in my dining room, I have dead end charts
with you at the top, and it's like CSI, I'm
trying to solve this case, and it just I keep
hitting dead ends. Would you please try ancestry? Would you
please try the DNA swab? And I just really was
(05:29):
guarded about and it still am guarded about my personal
information in my DNA, and my wife really was at
the forefront of really helping me. She could tell there
was a little bit of my heart that needed to
be filled A vacuum that was still empty, and so
she had been helping me search and bought me a
(05:49):
kit for my birthday and it's sat there on the shelf,
and reluctantly, after about a month, two months, three months,
I did this swab send it in. I let my
adoption angel as I call her, have the password and
everything to get into this site. And about three months
later she called me and said, are you sitting down.
(06:13):
I said yes, I'm driving and she said, okay, I
know ninety nine point.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
Nine percent who your birth mother is. And I just
wanted to pull over and I did, and I just
was so happy.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
And I had this information and I had phone numbers
because the resources that the sweet lady that had helped
me on this journey found my birth mom and so
there was this information. So again, you know, my wife,
who had been helping me through all of this, said
(06:47):
you need to call her, and.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I'm like, oh my goodness, I can't. I can't do this.
It was just so nervous.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
I was like a teenager trying to call someone that
I was in love with. And I just would pick
up the phone that I'd hang it up and then
I'd dial the number and that i'd close my phone,
and finally I.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Left a message.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
And my profession is a minister, and I didn't want
to think that they were getting this strange phone call
from a number and I was trying.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
To sell something.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I said, I'm a minister in North Mississippi and I
was trying to connect with you on a situation. And
I didn't hear anything for a day. I didn't hear
anything for a couple of days, and I told my wife,
I said, I've heard of adoption stories that just don't
turn out.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
This is not going to work.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
And so it was a week to the day that
I had called, and I had this phone call and
it was a Louisiana number, and I'm staring at my phone.
I'm so nervous, and I answered just so intrepidly, and
I said, hello, my name is Eddie, and I'm a
minister from north of Mississippi and I was born in
(07:57):
Louisiana in nineteen sixty eight. And she said, Edie, it's
me and just stopped all of this jargon that I
was spewing out of my mouth. It was my birth mom,
and so calmly she said, I just have two questions.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Have you had a good life. Have you had good parents?
Speaker 2 (08:16):
And I said yes, and we just both broke down
on the phone.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
And we wept. It was just a joyful, joyful.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Moment, and she said, I wondered if this call would
ever happened. She told me about the process and about
how this had been a relationship in high school and
she and my birth father did not get married, but
she remembered even so long ago, fifty years ago, at
(08:48):
the time, she said, I just remember your feet, your
small little feet.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
And evidently at the.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Time, adoptions were closed and they limited the time that
the birth mother would have with the baby, and she said,
I didn't really I didn't really get to hold you
very long. And then the process started where your adoptive
parents were able to take you home just a few
days later.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
And you've been listening to Eddie Willis's story with the
search of his birth parents. He hadn't given it much
thought until he was forty years of age. My parents
who adopted me were the only parents I wanted or needed,
he said. But then came the birth of his child,
and he started to have these feelings and the search, well,
it started for his birth parents, and ten years later,
after that search commenced, came that call from the Louisiana
(09:39):
and he heard these words from his mom, Eddie, it's
me when we come back. More of this remarkable story.
We love adoption stories here on this show is they
are the ultimate act of human love. More of Eddie
Willis's story here on our American Stories. And we're back
(10:09):
with our American stories and with Eddie Willis's story. When
we last left off, Eddie, at the age of fifty,
had finally connected through a phone call with his birth mother.
Let's return to Eddie for the rest of the story.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
After that beautiful conversation, I called her back and there
was a no.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Dial tone that said this.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Number is no longer in service, and I was thinking,
this is terrible. She's disconnected her phone and doesn't want
to hear from me, and I.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Was so sad.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
She called me back in another day and was panicked.
They had installed a new phone line in their house
and they didn't know when the company would cut their
old line, and she was trying every way she could
to contact me, but couldn't, and she was nervous thinking
that I was thinking she didn't want to ever hear
from me.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Again, which is what I was thinking.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
And again, you know, she was overjoyed that I had
found her, and she had wondered most of her life,
even having three kids with her husband. And she married
a gentleman named Ed. My birth father's name is Ed.
I'm Ed, and it's just, you know, there's so many
(11:29):
ironic things. But she couldn't wait to come up with
her husband, and she came to our town and we
just had this wonderful reunion and she had gifts for
my children and just instantly fit into the grandmother role.
So we had a great relationship. And then through this
(11:49):
DNA company, through ancestry a lease, my adoption angel had
called and said, I just noticed your account. You have
somebody looking for you and it's on your dad's side.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
And if I were you, I would call.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Your dad before they get to him and tell him
all this information about you've been found and that you found.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Your birth mom.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
So I had a half sister that was looking for me.
So what I wanted to do. I could have reached
out to him, but I told my birth mom. I
wanted to give her the opportunity to reach out to
him and say, hey, our son is looking for you
he found me because they see each other unions and functions.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
They have an.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Admiration for each other, even though the relationship didn't continue.
But he had really been very very quiet about it
on his side.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
I mean, you don't.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Really talk about hey had a relationship in high school
and my girlfriend had a baby, and you know, he
didn't say much, if anything about it. She had called
me back and said he'd definitely wanted to find me.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
When I reached out to him, his first words for
why'd you wait so long? And you know, we talked
about sports, and we talked about life.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Then he really started wanting to get into things deeper.
And so then he called me the next day, and
then he started calling more and more. We became deeper
and deeper, and you know, we've become very close, just
like my mom and I. And so he wanted to
meet and he said, why don't we meet right north
(13:30):
of Jackson at a steakhouse. He probably wanted to make
sure I was normal. I assume he'd been there a
lot longer than I had, and I think he was anxious.
And so we met him there and he said, reach
out your hands, and I reached out and he grabbed
my hands from across the table, and he said, our
family has this line in the palm of our hands,
and I have the same line just like his.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
And both the palms and my hands.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
And he said, my daddy, your grandfather has that line,
and my brother has that line.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
And he just got really teary eyed, and he's holding
my hand.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
And the waiter comes and were these two men holding
hands in the restaurant. And I said, I'm so glad
we found each other. And I'm not sure what all
I said, but I said, since I much surviving twin.
He said what I said, since i'mer surviving twin, and
he just wept and just wept, and he said my
father was a twin. After that, he said, we've got
(14:25):
to get our families together, and it was time to
connect with my father's side of the family. And so
they threw a crawfish bull for us. They invited relatives
far and wide to come, and.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
I mean it was it was so neat. It was
like a movie. The Sun's going down.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
And my dad said, Eddie's a guitar player, and my
half brother said, well, I've got a guitar upstairs, and
a cousin things real.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Well, And I mean it was a movie setting.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
We're having crawfish, the son's going down, We're singing James
Taylor's songs and songs from the seventies, and the families
joining in. It's like a campfire scene. It was just
a wonderful, wonderful reunion. It brought a lot of good memories,
and I want to say it brought a lot of
healing because it was such a time of angst swirling around.
(15:15):
You know, the relationship that my mother and father had
and then my birth and then you know, the ending
of that relationship, and I guess, not knowing where I was.
My father's children, which are my half siblings, were saying
he would never talk about it, and.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
It just was a closed and shut story.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
And I think it was breached once or twice and
the family understood that they shouldn't bring.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
That up again.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
So it was almost a biblical homecoming story for me
and my family and my children were just welcomed in.
And I think he's so proud of our family. You know,
we walk into a restaurant and he'll see his friends,
this is my son, and he is mentioned, you know,
we've got.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
A lot of living. I've got a lot of living
to do.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Even though the records are closed, it was an open
story for my parents and the way I was brought up,
and my mother and father were just overjoyed that I'd
found my birth mother. And and shortly after that, my
father passed away. And shortly after as when I found
my birth father, you know, I never could nothing could
(16:28):
take the place of him. But it's interesting how finding
my father after my father passed away, and just so
many things in my life have fallen into place. I
wonder what my children think that. You know, for a while,
it was like, hey, you have a new relative. You've
got another relative. You've got another here's some grandparents, more grandparents.
(16:50):
They've been on a quite a ride with me, and
I mean not even bouncing back.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
They just were very forward. And this is the way
it is.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
So we trade off with all sides of the family
making trips down there and up here. And our initial
reunion in Louisiana with my mother, I was able to
go see my grandparents. They were still living in their nineties,
and my grandmother, who probably was four foot four, she
(17:24):
leaned up and I leaned down, and she said, I
always knew this day would come, and my grandfather was
so happy to see me. And they were always the
volunteers at their Methodist churches. They always volunteered in the
youth department, and they knew someone at the Methodist Children's
(17:44):
Home through their United Methodist connections in Louisiana. And every
Sunday at my local church, a tradition that was started
before I came to that church. I say, and now
the children are going to walk around and take up
the chain.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
This goes to the United Methodist Children's Home.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
I could look at my personal story negatively, but I
don't think I've even chosen. It's just the way I
think about it as so positive. As a pastor, I
talk so much about being adopted into the Family of
Christ and I've had a great life. To answer my
birth mom's question, is it's been wonderful.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
It just was very natural.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
The way my parents packaged it. It was that my
birth mother loved me so much that she chose to allow.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Someone to take care of me.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
And you know, every now and then people would say, well,
you're adopted, and I'm like, yes, aren't you.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
And a great job on the production by Madison and
a special thanks to Eddie Willis for sharing his adoption story,
and my goodness, what a story about love, about sacrifice,
and what a gift Eddie is to this community, and
what a choice that young couple made to let this
young child get adopted. This community would not have Eddie
Willis but for that decision, and he's been ministering two
(19:04):
thousands of young men, young women and students here at
all miss and contributing in ways that are unimaginable and incalculable.
The story of Eddie Willis here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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