Ormond Beach woman, son reunite after 50 years

ORMOND BEACH — The letter arrived in a nondescript white envelope, with an unfamiliar name and Massachusetts return address.

Inside, Vicki Kirschner she found a folded, typewritten letter — and the answer to a question that had haunted her for 50 years.

“My name is Michael Anthony Zizza. I was born August 26th, 1965,” the writer began, noting the hospital and city where he was born. “I believe you are my birth mother.”

Kirschner dropped the letter and burst into tears.

A photo of a handsome, dark-haired man spilled from the envelope onto her dining room table. “There wasn’t any doubt,” she said. The man in the photo was her son.

“I couldn’t believe it. My heart was pounding,” said Kirschner, 74, at her Ormond Beach home. “I don’t know how long I stood in the kitchen crying and laughing and re-reading that letter.”

The 18 months since she opened it have been filled with firsts she couldn’t have foreseen — surprising revelations, a birthday celebration and an emotional reunion a half-century in the making. lung cancer. She quit school and got a job to help her mother pay off their significant medical debt.

At about 21, Kirschner moved to upstate New York to work as a flight attendant for a small regional airline. She attracted the attention of a pilot more than 15 years her senior. He invited her to spend a weekend at his mountain cabin. Kirschner agreed, not realizing the expectation of intimacy such an offer entailed.

She never saw the pilot again. She soon found out she was pregnant, and quickly transferred to Boston.

She knew she couldn’t afford to care for a baby. The social stigma, too, weighed heavy on her heart.

“People still used the B word — a child born out of wedlock was a bastard," Kirschner said.

Kirschner felt adoption was her only option. She found a Boston hospital through Catholic Charities that had a ward for unwed mothers, took a leave of absence and moved into St. Mary’s Home for Girls in July 1965. Kirschner gave birth alone on Aug. 26, 1965.

Just before she was discharged, a social worker came to take Michael into Catholic Charities custody. It’s a memory Kirschner has tried not to revisit. “It was horrific,” she said. She took another flight attendant job based in Dallas, and a friend who did social work helped her get certified as a temporary foster parent for newborns awaiting adoption. Caring for those babies helped alleviate her sense of loss.

In May 1969, Kirschner moved to Chicago to work as a hotel desk clerk. There she met Steve Kirschner, a glass company salesman. That August, Steve noticed Vicki’s distress.

Kirschner shared her secret. Steve was patient and comforting. Their friendship blossomed into romance, and they married a few months later.

They had two daughters, Jess and Dani — now in their 40s, with children of their own — but the void in Kirschner’s heart remained. The letter that arrived in her mailbox just before Thanksgiving 2016 finally eased her fears about Michael’s fate.

Michael’s letter told Kirschner he was raised in a loving, close-knit family in the small town of Westwood, Massachusetts, about 15 miles southwest of Boston. His brother and sister also were adopted.

“I think a lot of adopted people carry a lot of abandonment, but I never felt that way,” Michael said in a May 3 phone interview from his home in northeastern Massachusetts. “It was more, ‘I wonder what the story was’ than ‘I wonder what could have been.’ ”

Michael’s life, he said, has been pretty normal. He married his wife, Lorna, 25 years ago. They have three children, ages 19 to 22.

Michael decided to search for his birth mother after reconnecting with a high school friend and fellow adoptee who was writing a book about her adoption experience. He received Kirschner’s response in December 2016. A few days later, he dialed Vicki’s number. They talked for hours. Kirschner showed her daughters Michael’s letter. They both were moved to tears.

In January 2017, Michael and his wife drove one of their daughters down to Columbia, S.C., for school. They scheduled a few extra days for a side trip to Atlanta to visit Kirschner.

When Michael’s family arrived, “the whole thing was surreal because we just fit. It was like we had never not known (them),” said Kirschner. Her daughters joined them for dinner, and they all spent the evening telling stories and taking pictures.

“They were like, ‘We can’t believe we have a brother. We always wanted an older brother,’” Michael recalled. “It was a lot of fun — no awkwardness or anything.”