by JANET ST. JAMES / WFAA-TV
DALLAS — A Dallas woman has found her family — 50 years after being adopted. The clues all came together recently — online.
“Looking for Egola Crenshaw from Greenville, Alabama. Had a child in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1959.” That’s the message posted on the Internet four years ago.
Kharon Gibson, now 51, grew up an only child, well-loved by her adoptive parents. When they died 10 years ago, Gibson began searching in earnest for her birth mother.
“I had a void, something was missing and I just wanted to know if I had brothers or sisters,” she said. “I was starting to give up hope, because I’m getting older.”
But 800 miles away, near Atlanta, Georgia, 22-year-old Lauren Crenshaw found Gibson’s Web posting when she typed in her grandmother’s name using a popular search engine. It was Crenshaw who made the connection to her own grandmother, who had told the story of being unwed and pregnant in the 1950s.
“I couldn’t, at that time, take care of the child,” Egola Brown said in an interview with an Atlanta TV station. “And my mother, you know, wasn’t in no shape to take care of the child. So I did the best thing that I thought was possible, and that’s give up the child for adoption.”
“I’m excited,” said Heidi Adams, whose daughter made the online connection. “I’m excited for my mother. And I’m just so happy that — for once, we’re all going to be together.”
A month later, January 12 — on Gibson’s 51st birthday — she traveled to the Atlanta suburb of Lawrenceville to meet the family that had before existed only in her dreams.
It turned out that Gibson has a large family, with four sisters, a brother, neices and nephews.
She also has a mother,, who now has a void filled in her heart.
“I felt really alone, but I’m not any more,” Gibson said. “I’ve got my family, and I’m so happy.”
