Columnist Susan Snyder: Mom, 77, has reason to celebrate

Friday, May 7, 2004 | 3:41 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

WEEKEND EDITION

May 8 - 9, 2004

Today Louise Hodges celebrates her first Mother's Day with her daughter.

Hodges is 77.

She was 15 and living in Chicago with her mother and older sister when she gave birth to Margaret Ann.

"In those days you were nothing if you had a baby," Hodges said.

The "baby" is now 62, and her last name is Phelps. An 11-year search led her to Hodges, who told her story the last week of April just before she left the Las Vegas Valley and moved to Ohio to live with her newfound daughter.

Hodges said her financially strapped family had no means to take care of a baby. A friend of her mother's adopted Margaret Ann.

"I felt funny about it. But I couldn't do anything about it," she said. "She (the friend) would take good care of her. She wouldn't want for anything."

Maybe not at first. Phelps said she was about 10 when a cousin finally told of her adoption. She then longed for someone she'd never met.

"Each day I woke up thinking about her, and each night I went to sleep thinking of her," Phelps said. "I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere."

Hodges kept track of her daughter from a distance for a couple of years, but the adoptive family moved out of state and left no forwarding information.

"As you get older, you just get on with your life," she said. "I thought about it a lot and was very sad. Mother's Day, especially, I'd cry a lot."

She married, had a son and tried to suppress the memories of her first child. Phelps said she started searching for her birth mother about 11 years ago.

The hunt seemed impossible, until she discovered the Internet. She joined chat groups with others also searching for birth parents.

The big break happened early in 2003 with the help of a "search angel" from www.adoptiondatabase.com. The woman lived in Illinois and could dig through archived adoption papers and other records.

She found the address of the home where Hodges lived when Phelps was born and the names of Louise and her mother, Ethel, among voter registration records.

"I knew the names because when I had my youngest daughter, my adopted mother said, 'Why don't you name her Ethel Louise?'," Phelps recalled.

It took a few more months to track Hodges to the Las Vegas Valley. It took 24 hours for Phelps to work up the nerve to call Hodges just before Christmas. She pretended to be a relative asking about family history, but finally blurted it out.

"I said, 'I'm your daughter! You're my mom!' And we both just broke down," Phelps said. "I handed the phone to my husband, saying, 'It's her! It's her!' "

That call lasted five hours. Phelps hit the Internet again the next day -- for a plane ticket to Las Vegas. After a couple of visits and telephone calls almost daily, the pair decided Hodges would move.

She has regained her daughter and is now meeting her five grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and 11 great-great-grandchildren.

"I feel whole now," she said a few days before the move. "I used to be a shell."

"We act so much alike. I just love her," Phelps said in a telephone call Thursday. "It just goes to show you that God does work in good ways."

A little help from computer angels doesn't hurt.