An adoption reunion that was 50 years in the making

ERIE, Pa. – Mary Beth DeSanto was watching an episode of “Long Lost Family” on March 5 while she cleaned her kitchen.

The TLC program about reunited families comforted her. DeSanto had given birth to a daughter who she gave up for adoption almost 50 years earlier. Unmarried and just 18 at the time, DeSanto, then Mary Beth Wolfe, did what she thought would be best for her baby. But the decision haunted her.

“I loved watching ‘ Long Lost Family’ because I knew at the end there would be a happy ending. But I knew it was something I never was going to have,” DeSanto, 68, said.

“That morning in March I was cleaning the kitchen and turned on ‘Long Lost Family,’ but I finished cleaning and shut it off before it was over,” she said. “I didn’t see the ending, but within half an hour, the doorbell rang and my husband brought in a letter.”

The letter from New York began: “Hello Mary Beth. My name is Victoria Rich. This may not be the letter you’d expect to receive every day. I was born at the Our Lady of Victory Infant Home in Lackawanna, NY on August 20, 1970.” DeSanto’s daughter had found her. “I’ve often thought that I didn’t see the happy ending on the show that day, but the letter was my happy ending,” she said.

Mother and daughter were reunited at DeSanto’s Millcreek Township home in August.

Their story was recorded for the online PBS series “American Portrait,” about what it means to be an American today. Mother and daughter are featured in an episode of “Self-Evident,” an 11-part series highlighting American Portrait stories.

“I couldn’t ask for a better daughter. She grew up to be a remarkable woman. She’s who I wish I would have been. She’s intelligent, independent, persistent. She’s not just a daughter but a super daughter. She’s not only OK, she thrived,” DeSanto said.

DeSanto has been “super welcoming,” Rich said.

“I’d had an idea of an ideal situation with my mother, and thought, oh, that’s not going to happen. But it did,” Rich said. “It was kind of ridiculous how positive and welcoming she was.”

Mary Beth Wolfe was 17 when she realized she was pregnant. around Thanksgiving in 1969.

She graduated from Erie’s former Academy High School on June 8, 1970, and the next morning was in the car with her parents and on her way to Our Lady of Victory Infant Home outside Buffalo, New York, where she would stay through her baby’s birth.

“On one hand, I just wanted it to be over and wanted to go back to life the way it was,” DeSanto said. “But it would never be the way it was again.

“At the same time, I didn’t want it to be over; it was the only time I had with (my baby), just a few months. I wrote poems for her. I talked to her. I wrote letters to her. I knew our days were numbered.”

When her daughter was born that August and was placed in her lap, DeSanto changed her mind about giving her up for adoption.

“I was just a kid,” DeSanto said. “I felt so overwhelmed. It was a chance I couldn’t take. I didn’t want to ruin her life as I had ruined mine.

“When the day came, I walked out of there without her.”

Rich is a photography editor and video producer, has a master’s degree in fine arts and also has worked in art education. For years, she had never seriously looked for her birth mother.

“It’s something that sort of was on the back burner,” Rich said. “I’d always been curious but never really wanted to look.”

Then she read “The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade,” by Ann Fessler.

“Most of the women expressed a lifetime of worry about their baby. They thought about their baby pretty much every day. I’d feel like an irresponsible person if I didn’t try to alleviate that worry for whoever my mother should be,” Rich said.

She did a DNA test without conclusive results and poked around on the internet. Then in 2019, New York state passed legislation granting adoptees access to their birth certificates. The law took effect Jan. 15.

“I applied, with a few thousand other people, that very first day the site opened,” Rich said.

She got a copy of her birth certificate, with Mary Beth Wolfe’s name on it, in early February. Friends helped her search the internet and find DeSanto.

It

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Then the question became how to approach her. Rich drafted a carefully worded letter and enclosed some pictures of herself.

“I didn’t know if this was a secret for her. If no one knew, I wrote the letter in such a way that if it got into anyone else’s hands, they wouldn’t know,” Rich said. “And I didn’t want to come across as a crazy grifter. I didn’t go into too many details about my life. I didn’t want to overshare. I wanted to sound like a normal person ... and let her know I was open to any contact that she wanted.”

Rich sent the letter via UPS on March 3 so that she could track it. She was at work on March 5 with her phone face up on her desk when the call came.

“The caller ID said Erie, PA,” she said. “I was trying to be cool, and she’s like, ‘Is this Victoria? It’s Mary Beth. I received your letter.’ Then she paused and I expected her to say, ‘Please don’t contact me ever again.’ But she said a positive thing and I immediately knew that she wanted this, and that made it OK.”

Mother and daughter began talking and texting, and then planning to meet.

Rich was to be in western New York, not far from Erie, for a college graduation in May and a wedding in June.

“All of that was taken off the table because of the coronavirus, and in a way that ended up being kind of a good thing,” Rich said. “We spent a lot of time talking and texting and getting to know each other.”

Rich drove to Erie to meet her birth mother and family just before her 50th birthday in August.

It was good to learn how close and supportive DeSanto’s family has been.

“I think it would have been a lot harder for her if she didn’t have that family,” Rich said.

Victoria and Mary Beth continue to talk and text and get to know each other.

“If I had seen this in a movie, I wouldn’t believe it and would roll my eyes. It’s too corny. It wouldn’t happen. But it did happen,” Rich said.

The PBS episode about their meeting can be seen on the network’s YouTube channel, PBS Voices, on the PBS Facebook page, at PBS.org and on the PBS Video app.