How I spent 20 years searching for my birth parents

FOr more than half a century, Peter Arundel had wondered about his birth mother.

The 58-year-old from West Yorkshire knew from an early age that he had been adopted at six weeks old, but it wasn’t until his adoptive parents died 20 years ago that he felt he could start the search for his birth mother, Elsie.

But the two-decade search proved fruitless as every avenue Peter took ended in a dead end with no sign of Elsie.

“I had started to resign myself to the fact that I would never find her and that time was really running out for us.”

But in March this year Peter’s dreams were realised and he was eventually reunited with Elsie.

The emotional reunion is being screened on ITV1 tonight as part of the Long Lost Family series which reunites families.

“I contacted the programme last year,” explains Peter – himself now a father and grandfather.

“I was running out of options and thought they might be able to help.”

The moment Davina McCall told him Elsie had been found is etched in his mind forever.

“Davina came to the house with the cameras but you don’t know what she is going to say, She could be about to say that they couldn’t find her or that she was dead, but then, after a long build up, she said they had found Elsie in Stamford.

“I remember looking over her shoulder as she hugged me and looked at the clock. It was 4.20pm on Thursday, March 8, and I thought ‘This time will stay in my mind forever.’”

Peter grew up in Lofthouse Gate, a small mining village in West Yorkshire.

He can remember being told he was adopted at an early age, but it was rarely discussed after that. When Peter became a teenager, the fact he was adopted had a major impact on him.

He excelled at cricket and was invited to trial for Yorkshire County Cricket Club.

The prospect of being picked for his county was a dream come true but a major sticking point was that you had to be born in Yorkshire, something Peter’s adoptive mum knew didn’t apply to her son. He had been born in Lincolnshire. The club would not bend the rules and Peter’s sporting ambitions were shattered.

“I felt it unfair an accident of birth could have such an impact. I was shattered. The letter they wrote was so cruel, they could have just told me I wasn’t good enough and let me down gently. At 17 it was difficult.”

Out of loyalty to his adopted parents, Peter only started the search for his birth mother in the early 1990s, once both his parents had passed away.

But with no one left to ask, all he had to go on was a copy of his adoption order containing his birth mother’s name – Elsie Bourne. Despite years of trying, he could find no further trace of his adoption.

“I thought that because I had an official piece of paper it would be pretty straightforward but everywhere I went they just had no record of it. It was 1954 and there were a lot of people in a similar position to Elsie’s and a lot of private adoptions went ahead. It turns out that my family knew Elsie. My birth parents couldn’t have children and so I suppose it seemed the natural thing to do.

After a complicated search, Long Lost Family eventually traced Elsie, alive and well and living in Lincolnshire.

“She had been married and widowed and married again. She’d also lived abroad a lot. Without the programme, I would never have found her.”

As for Elsie, she had lived in hope that her son would get in touch one day.

“I’d always hoped it would happen, I just wish he could have found me sooner,” she tells tonight’s programme. “He was lovely, ever such a good baby,” remembers Elsie.

She goes on to explain what it was like to have a baby out of wedlock at 17 all those years ago. “It was hard, small village, tight community, I was the one who got pregnant, nobody wanted to know you then. In those days, it was a terrible stigma to get pregnant before marriage.”

Elsie recalls Peter’s father. “He was an American air man and we were going out for quite some time. I discovered I was pregnant so I told him and he said ‘that’s wonderful, we’ll get married.’ But I never saw him again because he was married and had two kids back in America.”

With strict parents who offered no understanding of Elsie’s predicament, she was left with two choices. “It was abortion or the ‘naughty girl’s home’ – the mother and baby home. That’s where I stayed until I had him.”

Elsie vividly relives the day she gave Peter up. “My dad was with me the whole time, he would not leave, he wanted to make sure that I gave Peter away. It was a hell of day it really was.”

Elsie would have no contact with Peter from that day on, with not even a photo to remember her son by.

The pair were eventually reunite after more than half a century at the Mother and Baby home in Lincoln where Elsie gave birth to Peter.

As they hug for the very first time, Peter tells Elsie “Stay there, just don’t move. I’ve waited 58 years for this.”

“Meeting Elsie felt like the most natural thing in the world,” says Peter, who travelled to Lincoln with his wife Carol, daughter Ruth and grandson tow-year-old Oscar.

“I thought she may as well meet all of us.”

The pair are now in daily contract via phone and text and Peter is now looking forward to meeting the rest of his ‘new’ family , including a half brother and sister he has never met,

“We are planning to all get together in May. It will be strange walking into a room full of family strangers. But Elsie has always been very open about me to them,” says Peter.

“She always hoped I might try to find her. It is a shame that it has taken so long, but things happen for a reason. I understand why she did what she did. She felt she was giving me a better life.”

Elsie tells the programme: “It’s amazing, I’ve never know anything like it. Giving birth is magic but to be given a second chance is wonderful. I’ve got my family back.”