An adopted past

Colin Brewer is a regular Chico guy—raised in the Bay Area, the 24-year resident is an Oakland A’s fan and a Duffy’s Tavern regular. But there is something that sets the 46-year-old tile-setter apart: He was adopted before he was even born and knows very little about his birth mother and absolutely nothing about his father.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only 2.5 percent of Americans were adopted and of those about half were adopted by a relative. What’s more, 65 percent say they would like to meet their birth parents. But not Brewer, who didn’t know he was adopted until he was in the third grade.

“As a kid growing up I had no idea about any of this,” Brewer recalled during a recent interview. “Nothing had been said. When I was in third grade there was something coming up in school and they needed to find some information off of my birth certificate, something my mom couldn’t remember.

“We were looking through the filing cabinet and all of a sudden she felt that it was time, that I was old enough and that I should know what was going on. She started to explain, in the best way she could to a guy my age, that I wasn’t from her. I remember being kind of upset and confused and wondering, ‘What’s this mean?’”

He learned that his adopted mother had suffered a miscarriage during her first pregnancy but was successful the next time around, giving birth to a daughter. She then suffered another miscarriage. So his parents decided to adopt. At the time, they were living in Waukegan, Ill., where his grandmother, who was Irish, worked in the hospital’s maternity ward.

“She knew this doctor—Dr. Dowd—a big Irish guy. He had set up adoptions before and apparently he OK’d everything through his good name and reputation. My grandmother, who was very close to him, told him how my mom and dad were looking to adopt and they wanted an Irish baby.”

Dr. Dowd knew of a pregnant teenager, Brewer said, who had come to Waukegan from Ohio to stay with relatives until she gave birth, which was expected in about three weeks. The teen was also of Irish descent.

“Back then, having an illegitimate kid was kind of frowned upon, especially in the Irish community,” Brewer said. “So her parents had her leave Ohio and go to Illinois. Then she went back to Ohio and told people, ‘Oh, I was at school,’ or something like that to try to get a clean slate.”

By the time Brewer was born he’d already been adopted by his parents.

“It was all set up and if everything went smoothly and I didn’t die, then this is their kid,” he said. “They didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl. But I was born Dec. 26, 1967.”

He was a tiny baby, just over 5 pounds, but just big enough to be released from the hospital and go home with his adopted parents.

“I was so small that they kept me in my sister’s doll crib for the first few months,” Brewer said. “I later found out that my biological mother was a very small woman and that she was 16 or 17 at the time of my birth. Nobody knows anything about the father, but I just kind of laugh to myself: Maybe it was a one-night stand. Who knows?”

He said it took him a while to accept the truth.

“I would say by the time I was a freshman in high school I finally started coming to grips with it and saying, ‘I’m good with this.’”

His high school girlfriend was also adopted, he said.

“That really helped me open up and say, ‘This is all right.’ As for my mom and dad, they were the only parents I’d ever known.”

His father died in 1989.

“I never have had a desire to know who my birth mother was,” he said. “My mom asked me that for the last time three or four years ago. She said that if I was interested we could find out if she was still alive and so on. But I said, ‘No, you’re my mom. That’s it.’”