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San Clemente Woman Reunites with Daughter After 77 Years
Image by flickrPrince via Flickr
Minka Disbrow's name has been making the rounds in local and national news for the past few days, and for good reason -- the 100-year-old San Clemente woman is opening up about meeting her daughter for the first time, 77 years after giving her up for adoption.
Disbrow's story, as told by the AP, starts with violence: at age 16, she and a friend were raped by three men while walking home from a picnic in their native town of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Disbrow was impregnated, and gave birth at a Lutheran home for girls nearby. Her parents decided the baby should be put up for adoption, and Disbrow never saw her again, despite her pleas to the adoption agency for information in the years that followed.
But six years ago, Disbrow got a call from a man in Alabama. He was her grandson, he said, and his mother was the baby Disbrow had named Betty Jane, now called Ruth Lee. At the time of the call, Disbrow was 94 years old.
Now 100, Disbrow has developed a relationship with her daughter, her six grandchildren and several great-grandchildren. She told the AP that meeting her new family was like seeing people she had known all her life.
"It was just like we had never parted," she said.
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