From "For years, he didn’t know he had a daughter. At 66, he adopted her.
Jennifer Skiles said hearing her father’s voice for the first time 'felt like home.' Four years later, their emotional bond is now a legal one" (WaPo)(gift link, so you can read the whole story, which will make you cry, unless you never cry about strangers).
April 29, 2026
"Lonardo met Skiles’s biological mother, Cheryl Brown, in the late 1970s while they were both stationed at Fort Dix. During a weekend off..."
"... they decided to travel to New York City together.
They stayed at the Hotel Chelsea, Lonardo recalled, and visited the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. They had a fleeting romance, and shortly after they returned to Fort Dix, they went in different directions and never spoke again. But for nearly five decades, Lonardo has kept a bar of soap from the hotel...."
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26 comments:
Can't get past the paywall. I once had an account with them and they're holding me hostage. Your pass doesn't work. Too bad. I would have liked to have read that story.
https://www.wpri.com/news/its-good-news/it-felt-like-home-ri-man-adopts-biological-daughter-he-never-knew/
Thanks, Howard. I guess if I took a moment I could have found an article on it. I had already moved on. Or...did I?
Good story. I need some of those to offset the crap coming at us all day, every day.
Good for mom. Good for daughter. Good for father, too. Better late than never.
If I ever want to cry, I watch Bang the Drum Slowly again.
Will average WaPo readers understand the old-time polite and respectful notion of a "fleeting romance"? Maybe they ought to write "hooked up" or "had a one-night stand" to connect with Kamala's 2024 pop singer twerking campaign?
New motto!
Althouse morphing into Scut Farkus?
About 5 years ago, my adopted sister was in her late 40's when she reunited with her birth mother's family for the first time, with the full support of my parents. She found kind people who were interested in her, but she also saw the shit show their lives were. Meth, prison, relative poverty, broken homes. She came away thankful she had been removed from that. I don't believe she has been back since. YMMV when seeking out long lost relations. Glad the WaPo story was a happy one.
Does he owe the mother child support?
Was she raised on government help provided to single moms?
Do the taxpayers recoup anything now that she finally admitted paternity and he is stepping up to acknowledge his child.
No tears, just questions. Seems like the responsible men and women are always picking up the tab for these people who breed out of wedlock and cannot communicate post conception.
Less emotional reactions please, ladies.
Skiles appears to be an alias of Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Maybe she uses the Skiles name when she wants some anonymous privacy. Here's a picture of her from the article:
https://d2w3sf6n0m0xs4.archive.ph/qjGkS/148ca95b50c8b55f88f35b80b27157e82b7222f3.jpg
YMMV when seeking out long lost relations. Glad the WaPo story was a happy one.
Yep, in the real world not every one a happy ending.
Woman, mid thirties, married, 2 kids, had a baby at 14, gave up for adoption. Husband is un aware and would not be delighted to be informed.
Another one, Grandma and her husband raise baby from birth, boy believes they are mom and dad. Kid turns 16, birth father contacts son via internet, eventually "parents" divorce, teen lives with dad long enough to discover they don't like each other.
Another one, adult woman asked if she would like to know who her birth mother was. "I already have a mother, I don't need another one."
Do know of one where Mom and adult daughter reunited with encouragement from adopted parents and everybody still happy.
If you've ever "been there/done that" (or think you might have),
there's an ending of a "lost love" movie that will hit your heart/mind like a hammer. It's on one of the main streamers and the name is "Touch".
This sort of reminds me of a clip I saw recently in which Bob Weir relates the story of getting in touch with his biological father. Sometime in the 80s or 90s I believe. It was a similar situation, where the guy had a brief thing with Bob's biological mother and then had no idea a child had resulted.
According to Bob, it wasn't hard to locate the guy - he was the commanding officer of a military base near San Francisco. So Bob calls him, tells him his name, says I think you're my father, and the guy says "The only Robert Weir I'm aware of sings and plays guitar for the Grateful Dead." Yep that's me, says Bob.
I don't think Bob was looking to get adopted, however.
Here's what's less heartwarming: Her mother knew who her father was, and how to find him, but never told him that she was pregnant or notified him when she had the baby. She didn't put his name on the birth certificate. She never told him, or gave him a chance to step up as a father, when she put their child up for adoption at age 3 ("because she was in an abusive relationship"). Years later, when their daughter's adoptive parents had died and she went looking for her biological mother, that was a heartwarming reunion, but the mother still didn't tell her daughter who her biological father was right away. While the timing is unclear, one article states, "Before her biological mother died, she shared one final piece of her story: the name of her biological father and where he may be living." So, finally, once the daughter was well into adulthood and it was far too late for the father to have any part in raising her, she gave her the information she had had all along. The father was delighted to learn he had a daughter, but probably heartbroken to learn that she had been alive for decades, and even put up for adoption, without him ever knowing. As the daughter said, "“Neither one of us had any choice in this. I never had a choice in this, and he was never told."
Key and Peele Jordan meets his father.
Our hostess missed an opportunity to pun about impregnating someone at Fort Dix.
I can’t read it either, but these people really dodged a bullet.
The Weathermen planned to bomb an enlisted soldiers dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey, on Friday, March 6, 1970.
The weathermen, a leftist sexist patriarchal organization tried to kill soldiers but ended up killing themselves.
Thats what the greenwich village condo bomb
"For years, he didn’t know he had a daughter. At 66, he adopted her. Jennifer Skiles said hearing her father’s voice for the first time 'felt like home.' Four years later, their emotional bond is now a legal one"
“But then, in an unexpected twist, the DNA lab found that it had made a mistake, and she wasn’t his daughter after all! So now they’re suing the shit out of each other!”
Now that would be a story to cry about. Tears of laughter, the best kind!
A nice story. Glad it worked out for them. It's a shame her mother didn't reveal her father's name at the beginning.
People were weird about adoptions in days gone by. My grandparents adopted a son because my grandma seemed to produce only daughters. They renamed him even though he was already talking and knew his own name, and throughout their lifetimes they never told him his parents' real names. They treated him differently, and worse, than their biological daughters (including my mom) - all of whom, to their credit, split their inheritances to make up the shortfall after their little brother was bequeathed a pittance. I found the adoption papers when I was cleaning out my grandparents' house and gave them to his son. By that time my uncle was on his deathbed and never got to reunite with his family, but my cousins did get to make contact with them and kindle a rather strained but rewarding relationship.
Saint Croix said...
If I ever want to cry, I watch Bang the Drum Slowly again.
If I want to cry, I watch “The Dirty Dozen”. The climax is heart breaking.
https://youtu.be/y3VoSgIswek?si=FXHdO6aA2HdEaUtS
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