Landmark adoption ruling a bittersweet victory for Falcon man

On the day Jeffrey Hannasch’s daughter was born, a nurse came to him with a long questionnaire on his family’s medical history.

“I won’t waste any time or any trees,” he said, handing her back the paperwork. “I’m an adoptee.”

“Oh, you’re one of those,” the nurse said.

One of those.

Encounters like that hospital conversation six years ago have always left Hannasch, who lives in Falcon northeast of Colorado Springs, wondering about his origins.

Two years ago, he set out to do something about it. He went in search of his birth parents. His search produced more than he expected.

In April, the 44-year-old plumber’s legal battle for his adoption records led to a landmark Court of Appeals ruling. As a result, some 8,000 people adopted in Colorado between July 1, 1951, to July 1, 1967, will have an easier time obtaining their previously sealed adoption records.

The case has led several agencies to revamp the way they process records requests for people adopted in that 16-year slice of time.

He’s heard from several people who’ve found their birth parents because of the ruling. Hannasch is pleased at the ripple effect the ruling is having, but he was hoping for so much more.

“I wanted a tsunami.”

Back when he was a ninth grader at Air Academy High School, Hannasch did a classroom assignment on his family’s genealogy.

He loved his adoptive parents and knew all about their history. His father was an accountant. His mom was a nurse. They had adopted him two week after he was born in a Denver hospital.

Hannasch knew how their ancestors had homesteaded near Cheyenne Creek in the 1870s.

But he also felt he was living a lie. The family tree he created was just names on a piece of paper to him.

Two years ago, he came into possession of a piece of paper that would change his life.

His father had died. As executor of the estate, he found his adoption decree from 1965. For the first time he saw his birth mother’s name.

Finding her was a relatively easy Google search. The next step was not so easy. Who would he find? What would her reaction be? What if she wanted nothing to do with him?

His search took him to a small town where his birth mother had grown up. He went into a public building to ask about her and was led to a room that had his mother’s picture.

His wife and daughter had been waiting outside. He called them in.

“There she is,” he told them. The woman in the picture was the spitting image of his daughter.

In January 2008, he sent the woman a vague letter. He got no reply. He tried again, this time being more explicit about the fact that he was her son.

In May, she wrote him a cordial, if somewhat reserved letter. Hannasch described her reaction as friendly, but somewhat shocked that he had found her after so many years.

He asked her about his father. She said she could not remember his name. All she knew was that he had been stationed at Denver’s Lowry Air Force Base in the mid-1960s.

Over the next three months, Hannasch contacted about 250 airmen who were stationed at the base during that period. His calls had the unintended effect of enabling some of them to reunite. But none could help him find his dad.

Meanwhile Hannasch took his search for his father to El Paso County Juvenile Court, where he filed a request for his adoption records.

The magistrate turned Hannasch down, contending that the records he sought were confidential and directing him instead to use a confidential intermediate service, that acts as a link between adoptees and birth parents. A 4th Judicial District judge upheld the denial.

However, when Rich Uhrlaub, a volunteer coordinator with Adoptees in Search —The Colorado Triad Connection, heard about Hannasch’s case, he helped bring in lawyers from Holland and Hart, who agreed to take the case on appeal on a pro bono basis.

On April 16, Hannasch had stopped in a friend’s store in Calhan when his cell phone rang. It was his lawyer calling. They had won the case in a unanimous decision.

“I just about passed out,” he recalled.

Two months later — after the ruling had gone uncontested — Adoptees in Search held a victory celebration. The state Registrar agreed to come and present Hannasch with the documents he had been seeking for so long.

Hannasch remembers going on stage to accept the manila envelope as the crowd burst into a prolonged standing ovation.

Then he stood at one side of the stage and opened the envelope. He stared at it for a long, long time. There was his father’s name.

That night, Hannasch and his wife got home late. She went to bed. He sat down at his computer. Fifteen minutes later, he found something that stopped him cold.

His father was dead. He had died in 1973 in another state.

Hannasch had prepared himself for this possibility. But there it was staring him in the face.

He turned off the computer and lights and went to bed.

What did it all mean? Was it worth all that effort? Has Hannasch’s daily life changed all that much?

Not a lot. But in some ways, the differences are profound.

He now has three binders full of his birth family’s history. Among the surprising discoveries: he is a third generation Coloradan. His blood relatives are buried about 20 miles from the old homestead of his adoptive family.

He now knows he was 4 pounds, 12 ounces and 17 inches when born.

He gets calls now and then from people who’ve found their birth parents thanks to the precedent his case established. This makes him feel good.

Perhaps most important, he no longer has that feeling of uncertainty that the maternity room nurse’s question hit upon when his daughter was born.

“I just have a different outlook now. I have stopped wondering about the past.”

“Adoption just doesn’t stop with me. That’s what I realized when my kids were born. Not having a point zero was becoming increasingly more difficult to bear.”

Now he won’t have to pass that uncertainty on to his children.

Then he choked up for a moment.

“I’m fortunate enough to have two moms and two dads.”