Mother’s Day came a few days early for a 90-year-old woman in Lafayette, Louisiana, who finally met the baby girl she had given up for adoption seven decades earlier.
On May 6, Elizabeth Pullen and her 70-year-old daughter, Lynne Wray, got together in a local park. Wray flew from her home in North Carolina for the big meet.
The reunion was put into motion in December when Wanda LeBlanc, Pullen’s grandchild by another daughter, took a DNA test and noticed a name she didn’t recognize in her relatives’ list, according to Lafayette station KATC. The profile posted by Wray said: “I am adopted, and I have never met my birth family.”
LeBlanc reached out immediately. “I just emailed her right away. I had to know who she was,” LeBlanc told the station.
The two exchanged contact information and started chatting on the phone.
“[Wray] told me that all she knew was her birth city and that her mom was part Indian,” LeBlanc told Inside Edition. “And I was told all my life that my grandmother was part Indian, and so I — that’s where my mind went right away.”
When LeBlanc asked her mother and grandmother about Wray, Pullen explained that she placed the baby for adoption at birth and never even saw her.
“A part of the adoption process in the ’40s is if a woman is giving birth and was giving the baby up for adoption, they were not allowed to see the baby. So my grandmother actually never saw Lynne when she delivered Lynne,” LeBlanc told Inside Edition.
LeBlanc, a professional photographer, also arranged exactly how her grandmother and her previously unknown aunt met for the first time. They stood back to back and then turned to face each other.
“I typically do first-looks for brides and grooms [in her photography business], and so I just thought this would be a really unique way for them to see each other for the first time,” LeBlanc told the Daily Mail, adding that Pullen was very nervous and had a hard time waiting to turn around.
It took 70 years, but Pullen said she always knew she’d be reunited with her baby girl.
“When you give a gift, you know someday it’s going to return. I knew I’d find her. I knew that was in God’s plan. I knew that I would see her someday,” Pullen told Inside Edition.
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