An advocate for the records
Face of LR airport doubles as a worker for adoptees’ rights.
For most of his adult life, Shane Carter has told the stories of others. As a TV news reporter at KAIT in Jonesboro he told stories of his community, the good and the bad. Working in public relations, he helped tell the story of Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/ Adams Field in Little Rock, and before that, he told the story of the Arkansas Methodist Medical Center in Paragould. It is work he clearly enjoys.
Now Carter, 39, is telling his own story, but the beginning is a little murky.
“I’ve always known. My parents were very upfront in telling me that I was adopted,” he says.
What Carter has never known, though, is the identity of his biological parents.
He is seated at a large table in the second-floor conference room where the Little Rock Municipal Airport Commission meets. Outside, the summer sun beats down on the tarmac. One floor below, passengers come and go in a steady stream, just a few of the nearly 1 million travelers who use the airport every year.
He speaks thoughtfully, deliberately, which is not surprising for someone who has spent so much time on camera or speaking with officials and the public.
But there are times when emotions are too strong, his voice shakes, and he has to pause.
Five years ago, around the time he became the director of public affairs and governmental relations for the airport, health problems arose that required a family medical history. Nothing alarming, but still, his doctor needed some background.
“I had nothing to provide,” he says.
Oh, sure, he had his birth certificate, but it was amended and didn’t include the names of his birth mother or father. When he went to the vital records office at the Arkansas Department of Health, he received the same thing, an amended certificate. He learned then that his original had been sealed, which was the case on all closed adoptions in Arkansas.
“That’s when I started putting together a plan to change our law,” he says.
YOUNG NEWSMAN
Carter grew up in Paragould, the beloved only child of Johnny and Kay Carter, who adopted him when he was 6 months old.
“Everything he’s ever done, he’s put everything into it,” says Kay, 70. “We were always really proud of him. He’s accomplished a lot in his life and we just tried to give him all the support we could.”
Carter was the kind of kid who carried a briefcase to school and was enamored early on of TV news and radio.
“My grandmother had a manual typewriter,” he says. “I would watch the evening news and listen to everything they said and type out a script.”
When he was 7, he used his parents’ camcorder to make newscasts with his friends.
“He would do news stories about the neighbor kids,” Kay says with a chuckle. “He would interview them.”
When he spied a WKRP in Cincinnati turntable and microphone in the J.C. Penney catalog, he asked Santa to bring it for Christmas. By the time he was 14, he was an intern at KDXY-FM in Paragould and was soon working on-air shifts and writing copy at KDRS AM-FM in Paragould.
As a freshman in the Gifted and Talented program at Greene County Tech, Carter naturally became involved with the high school’s cable TV station, Channel 49, anchoring newscasts and editing football and basketball games. He and his dad even rebuilt the station’s set one summer.
It was during high school that he started applying for a spot at Jonesboro TV station KAIT. By his senior year, he was hired as a production assistant. Of course, he was already known among the staff. Carter had interviewed anchor Diana Davis for a school project when he was in the eighth grade.
“I remember meeting him and his dad at the front door,” Davis says.
Carter made an even greater impact when Davis spoke at Greene County Tech. “He stayed after class to ask more questions.” Davis urged him to get his foot in the door at KAIT and “everything I told him to do, he did.”
Davis, who remains close to Carter, calls him an “old soul. He wanted to learn everything he could about broadcasting. He couldn’t get enough.”
He enrolled at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro and moved up at the TV station, reporting on events like the March 24, 1998, Westside Middle School shooting where four students and a teacher were killed and 10 students were wounded. “It’s something you never forget,” he says, shaken by the memory. “I still think about that.”
He earned a degree in radio-TV broadcast news and political science from ASU and eventually became a news anchor and weather reporter for KAIT. He spent nine years there, doing a little bit of everything, and was bitten by the weather forecasting bug.
FORECAST CALLS FOR …
In 2004, he earned a Broadcast Meteorology Certificate from Mississippi State University and headed out for where the real weather action is, “Tornado Alley,” landing a job as meteorologist at KJRHTV in Tulsa. “Weather really fascinated me, and I knew that I wanted to forecast severe weather,” he says.
The grind and the long days of Oklahoma’s severe weather season were relentless and, by his third year there, Carter was ready for a change. His father had a chronic inflammatory muscle condition, inclusive myositis, which was worsening, and Carter wanted to return home to be closer to his parents.
He’d always enjoyed reporting on health care problems and applied in the spring of 2007 for a spot as director of public relations and marketing at Arkansas Methodist Medical Center in Paragould. When he got the job, he packed up and left Tulsa for home.
His work at the 129-bed hospital was a good fit, and he planned to follow in the footsteps of his boss, hospital Chief Executive Officer Ron Rooney. Carter commuted monthly to Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., to earn his master’s degree in health care administration, while also advancing at the hospital. He was part of the team that developed Chateau on the Ridge, a 91-bed assisted living retirement facility in Paragould, and worked his way up to vice president for institutional advancement at the hospital.
And then the airport flew in.
“I have quite a bit of experience in making predictions, but forecasting a career at the airport was not on my list,” he says.
His work with the hospital frequently brought him to Little Rock, where he caught the eye of airport officials.
In January 2012, he became its first director of public affairs and governmental relations, a gig that puts him in charge of communications for the airport and working with firms like Dassault Falcon Jet of France, which leases 1.2 million square feet of space at the the airport and employs 1,600 people. He also interacts with elected officials, the airport commission, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Security Administration.
“I did everything I could to make him think I was a lunatic because I wanted to see his reaction when he was pushed,” Ronald Mathieu, the airport’s executive director, says of the interview process. “He was as cool as a cucumber. I thought, ‘This guy is good.’ There was no question. He’s been one of my best hires.”
The airport — which has undergone remodeling and is debt-free — has grown steadily. A Phoenix Marketing International survey from the first quarter of this year found users 99 percent satisfied with the airport.
“When you look at our commission, you have some of the most dedicated people that you will find,” Carter says. “They are very big thinkers and so is Ron Mathieu. That’s how you’ve seen such large changes here in such a short time.”
HIS OWN ARCHIVE
At the end of the conference room table where Carter is seated are mementos from his professional life — photos, newspaper clippings, ID badges. And then there are two scrapbooks, shipped overnight from Paragould by his mom the day before, filled not only with more clippings but artworks and other souvenirs from his childhood.
The scrapbooks came as a surprise. His dad, who died in January, put them together.
“I didn’t know I had an archive,” he chuckles. “I knew the material was there, but I didn’t know these existed.” His father also recorded every newscast Carter made at KAIT and many of his radio broadcasts.
Did he realize how proud his father was of him?
“It didn’t really hit me until after he died,” Carter says before pausing to regain his composure.
“My parents were phenomenal,” he says later. “They loved and encouraged me to achieve any goal, including the legislation.”
Ah, yes. The legislation — the result of a five-year journey by Carter to loosen the state’s grip on sealed adoption records of adult adoptees.
A NEW LAW
“Arkansas adoptees are unable to access their original birth certificates, which I believe denies basic biological truths,” he says. “Adoption records were originally sealed to protect against illegitimacy and shame. We’ve learned that keeping this information from an adoptee is extremely unhealthy. We don’t have the
details on the first chapter of our stories.”
As Carter worked in his spare time on gathering information, his father, retired from a long career as a truck terminal manager and confined to a wheelchair as a result of his muscle condition, surfed the internet for more information on other states’ laws and adoptee support groups.
“He’d been my private investigator,” Carter says. “He would be on the computer, searching websites that deal with adoption reunification and sites with resources on laws. I became more determined than ever that someone should not have to do all of that to find out their personal information.”
In 2016, Carter met state Rep. Deborah Ferguson (D-West Memphis), and when she heard his story, said she would work with him.
“She listened,” he says, fighting his emotions.
“I give Shane all the credit,” Ferguson says. “I got people together, but he did the research and was responsible for gathering the data and the stories necessary for passing legislation.”
The bill was sponsored in the house by state Rep. Chris Richey (D-Helena-West Helena), whose two children, ages 12 and 7, are adopted.
“When I looked at the bill and saw what they were trying to do, I definitely understood what they were trying to accomplish and wanted to help,” Richey says. He and his wife had their children’s biological history, and knew how important it could be.
“It resonated with me and I wanted to help adoptees have that same opportunity.”
House Bill 1636 was introduced Feb. 21, passed the House and was sponsored in the Senate by state Sen. Dave Wallace (R-Leachville), himself the father of two adopted children.
“Sen. Wallace did an outstanding job,” Carter says. “I was on the edge of my seat. He mentioned from the floor the work my dad and I had put into this, and the Senate looked up and applauded and then they passed it.” On March 16, Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed Act 519 into law.
The law, which is retroactive,
allows Arkansas adoptees 21 and older access to their complete birth certificate.
Nationwide, about half of the states allow adult adoptees some access to their original birth certificates, according the Pew Charitable Trust.
Act 519, Richey says, will still allow biological parents to conceal their identities, but they will have to provide a family medical history. If they’re happy with having their names revealed, they can indicate if and how they can be contacted should the child ever want to find them.
“This gives us the right to information, not a relationship,” Carter says. “I feel we have an approach that handles both sides, though I’m partial to adoptees. Research shows that a majority of birth parents don’t mind their child having that information.”
The Department of Health has until next summer to prepare the procedures for administering the birth certificates.
NOT ALONE
Carter is the first to credit others who have helped him along the way these past five years, from fellow adoptees who told their stories to legislators, to organizers for adoptees from states like Ohio who shared their experiences and to the General Assembly.
In the meantime, he’s still digging for information on the first chapter of his story. He registered through the state Department of Human Services for the mutual consent adoption registry, to see if someone had searched for him.
They hadn’t. Not yet. Though his information will be on file for the next 99 years. He has also started the process of genetic testing through the 23andme.com website, a direct-to-consumer genetic testing firm.
“Where I stand now, this is about giving rights to all Arkansas adoptees,” Carter says. “Adoption is a lifelong journey. I’ve been fortunate to be able to take my experiences in TV, through my hospital work and governmental affairs here at the airport to be a part of this, and it’s something I want to share with anyone who is adopted.”
“Adoption is a lifelong journey. I’ve been fortunate to be able to take my experiences in TV, through my hospital work and governmental affairs here at the airport to be a part of this, and it’s something I want to share with anyone who is adopted.”