Louisville siblings welcome sister
February 16, 2006

In 1959, racism was tearing at the nation — its cities, its neighborhoods, and in some cases, even its families.

Lillian Rose Thompson was a happy white woman with three children when she fell in love with Everett Board, a black man.

When she became pregnant with his child, her family disowned her, and his reacted the same way toward him. When their baby was born that June, they caved in to the pressure and gave their child — Edna Michelle — up for adoption.

Yesterday, that child — now 46-year-old Kathy Michelle Briscoe of Tucson, Ariz. — found her way back to a family who had always kept her in their minds and hearts.

Twenty-five relatives — including her five sisters, two of her three brothers and many of her 32 nieces and nephews — gathered at Louisville International Airport to welcome Briscoe home.

The moment Briscoe came into view, a collage of balloons, flowers and tear-streaked faces pushed past airport security signs and surrounded her, drawing attention from airport personnel and everyone else nearby.

At first speechless, Briscoe then managed to proclaim: "I'm so glad to be home. For 46 years I've been away from my family, and now I'm home. There are no words to tell what it's like to be with your blood."

Briscoe described herself as a normally private person, but yesterday afternoon she looked more like a pageant winner as she left the airport in a limousine with bouquets of flowers.

And all the attention was fine with her, she said.

"I've been hidden for 46 years," Briscoe explained.

Her search for her family began four years ago, after her adoptive mother, Louise Miller, died. Briscoe wanted to find her biological mother, not even knowing that she had any siblings, much less eight.

A number of routes led mostly to dead ends or to agencies that wanted too much money. For a time she stopped trying. Then one day at the post office where she is a safety coordinator, a woman began talking to her out of the blue.

The woman also had been adopted and had just found her biological family.

The encounter gave Briscoe new leads to try, and eventually she hired "Given Right," an adoption search agency that put her in touch with her family on Jan. 30.

Unfortunately, both of her biological parents had passed away, she was told. But then she was informed of the siblings.

Three of them — Sandra, Joe and Eddie — her mother had with a white man. After Briscoe was put up for adoption, her mother gave birth to four more children — Tammie, Serita, Judy and Regetta — all of whom have the same father as Briscoe. Brother David came along later and has a different dad. Yet another brother, Michael, died at age 2.

It's a lot to keep track of, but the family has drawn up a family tree to help her. They also made photo albums to provide some family history.

Yesterday the family went from the airport to sister Tammie Wright's home, where Briscoe will stay for a week before returning to Arizona. At the house, her sisters gave her an envelope containing photographs of her parents.

"Wow," Briscoe said as she studied each photo. One was a black and white picture of her mother as a teenager. Another showed her mother and father shortly after Briscoe was born. The last was of her mother just months before she died.

Briscoe, who first tried to find her parents in 2002, said she believes one reason she tried so hard — even though she couldn't have known — was that they didn't have long to live. Her father died in 2003 and her mother in 2004.

Over and over, the family commented about how much Briscoe resembles their mother.

"You would have been proud of her. She was a good mom," said Sandy Jacobs, Briscoe's oldest sister.

"I wished I'd have known you all were here," Briscoe replied sobbing as her sister embraced her. "I didn't even know you were here. I thought I was by myself."

While Briscoe was searching for family members, they also were looking for her. Tammie Wright, who was born one year after Briscoe and is the first biracial child her mother kept, had tried using the Internet and other resources, but was making little progress.

Finally, her mother asked her to stop the search.

"She said, `I can't face her knowing I kept all you all and I gave her up,'" Wright said, adding that her mother feared that the woman born Edna Michelle would harbor resentment.

But Briscoe said she has no hard feelings. She understands the racial tension of the time and knows how hard it was for her mother to give her up.

Besides, she was adopted by a "strong, smart, beautiful black woman."

Briscoe said her only regret is not having met her many relatives sooner.

"That's a lot of catching up to do," she said. "I've never had sisters. I can see myself in each one of them. I look at them and think, `What have I missed?'"

She is already planning to return to Louisville in September, bringing her son, two daughters and two grandchildren.

Seeing her Louisville family helps fill an emptiness she's lived with all of her life, Briscoe said.

Standing at the stove in Wright's kitchen, sister Judy Board stirred a huge pot of baked beans as the throng prepared to follow a long tradition of gathering for a family meal.

Children ran around the house as adults talked and laughed. Business as usual, except for this new, celebrated guest.

"It's an ending to a long, long, long story and the beginning of another one," Board said.

The group gathered to sing "Happy Birthday" to their youngest sibling, David Thompson, 29, and although there was a cake, the words on top were not for him.

They said, "Welcome Home Edna."

Briscoe said she's getting used to being called by that name.

"I just feel complete. I'm home."