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Last Updated: Feb 16th, 2008 - 17:39:39 |
Article published May 27, 2007
Reunited mother and child enjoy his graduation
By Jennifer Jefferson
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
In October, Barbara Secorsky was watching Oprah Winfrey talk about the social networking Web site MySpace.com.
Secorsky, of Hastings, told her daughter, Teresa Morse, 20, “I bet Ben's on there somewhere.” Ben was the son Secorsky gave up for adoption 17 years ago.
Morse replied with a revelation - she thought she already found her brother on MySpace. The family knew his adoptive name was Benjamin John Clark, and that his parents were Tim and Deena Clark of Tallahassee. Secorsky was concerned about upsetting his adoptive parents, but she asked Morse to send him a message, including a phone number to call.
The phone rang.
“Hi. I think you know who this is,” Ben said.
Secorsky was shocked.
“Every day of your life I have loved you,” she told him. “Everyone that has ever been close to me knows about you.”
They decided to meet, and on Saturday before he graduated from Leon High School, Secorsky and Clark reunited at his home on McGuire Avenue.
“I can't believe this is happening,” she said. “I am so freaked out.”
Secorsky showed him her high-school yearbook, pictures of her family and her dressed up as a clown. Ben showed her a picture of his graduating class, which totals more than 400.
“Wow,” Secorsky said. Her graduating class in Ore City, Texas, had only 32.
Secorsky kept touching him to see if he was real. “Have you been working out?” she asked him.
Ben is 5 feet, 11 inches and muscular from playing almost every sport imaginable.
“God has blessed us with a great child,” Deena Clark said. “He's a good kid. He's a good man.”
Secorsky was unmarried and only 18 when she became pregnant. She was already raising Teresa, who had just turned 1. She didn't tell anyone until she was in her eighth month. She decided to have the baby.
“God doesn't make mistakes,” she said.
The Clarks, meanwhile, had completed training required by an adoption agency. They got a call confirming that Secorsky had chosen them as the new parents for her unborn baby boy. Days later, Deena Clark was in the delivery room of the Sanford hospital. The baby was born Dec. 10, 1988.
“He wasn't 24 hours old, and we were taking him out of the hospital,” Deena Clark said. “I felt very special that we would be able to do that. We felt very honored to have this child.”
Before he left the delivery room, Secorsky wanted to hold him.
“I needed to tell him I loved him,” she said.
The families kept in touch through the agency up until he was 6 years old, when the agency closed.
When Clark got the message from his sister he had never met, he ran to his parents asking, “What do I do?” They ended up talking on the phone for an hour and a half.
Clark plans to go to Santa Fe Community College and later transfer to the University of Florida. He wants to study biomedical engineering. He said he wants to make technology that saves people.
Clark said he invited her to his graduation because “I know that she needed that.”
“It was very painful (for her),” he said. “I didn't want her to feel like that because of me."
© Copyright 2008 by AdoptionDesk.com
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