September 18, 2000
After 31 years, Buckner reunites
Texas twins with birthmother
___By Toby Druin
___Buckner News Service
___SUNSET--Labor Day weekend was special for Helen Hall and her sons, Jimmy and Timmy, as they gathered at the Hall home in Sunset, north of Fort Worth on U.S. 287.
___Hall had a three-day holiday from her job at Bell Helicopter and also got to host a family reunion--and her first birthday party for the boys.
___Never mind that James and Timothy Hope--Jimmy and Timmy--turned 31.
___They had spent the other 30 birthdays with their parents, Sherman and Ann Hope of Brownfield. The Hopes had adopted the boys into their family in 1969 when Hall, as a teenage mother, made the decision to place them for adoption.
JIM AND TIM HOPE show their biological mother, Helen Hall, a photo album of their lives.
___Hall and the Hope twins were reunited July 22 at the offices of Buckner Adoption and Maternity Services in Dallas, the same location where she went to give birth to the boys after a four-month stay in a maternity home operated by Buckner.
___They spent the day getting to know each other and poring over a photo album of the twins' lives prepared by Mrs. Hope for the occasion. She and her husband, a retired Brownfield physician, supported the boys in their inquiries about their birthmother.
___"We had no qualms about it; we were not fearful of it at all," said he said. "We were glad to cooperate."
___The Hopes already had five biological children--three daughters and two sons--when in 1969 they inquired about adopting another son to complete their family.
___"We thought the best thing we could do for the kingdom of God was to raise Christian children," Hope explained. They are longtime members of First Baptist Church of Brownfield.
___Jim, who operates an electrical and irrigation service in Brownfield, served in the Marines and is married. He and his wife, Melissa, have a son and a daughter.
___Tim, a staff sergeant with the Marines at Camp Pendleton, is married, and he and his wife, Cathy, have three sons.
___The twins "pretty much knew from the start" that they were adopted, Tim said. When they were about 11, the Hopes sat down with them and explained everything.
___They had a great home life with the Hopes, they said, but the interest grew over the years to find their birthmother.
___"My goal was to find her and tell her I love her and to thank her for thinking of our welfare first," Jim said.
___When he visited Six Flags Over Texas as a teenager, he added, he often would sit and wonder if his mother was there in the crowd.
___Early this year, the twins inquired at Bucker Adoption and Maternity Services about the process. Adoption counselor Carol Demuth took the request and wrote a letter to Hall.
___Hall said she had made the decision to place the twins for adoption after seeking counseling at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth and discussing it with the birth father.
___"What we had wasn't love, and we felt the marriage wouldn't last," she said, "And although I didn't want to do it, adoption seemed to be the best thing to do at the time."
___She came to the Buckner maternity home immediately after graduating from high school in May and gave birth on Sept. 2, 1969. She didn't find out until the last month of her pregnancy, she said, that she was going to have twins.
___She later married Ronnie Hall and told him while they were dating that she had placed the twins for adoption. They now have a daughter and a granddaughter.
___Hall, too, had often looked for her sons in crowds and examined the faces of any twin boys she encountered.
___Although she had some fear that the boys might be angry that she had placed them for adoption, they had nothing to fear about her wanting to be reunited with them, she said.
___"How could any woman not want to be rejoined with her children?" she asked.
___So she had them with her on Labor Day weekend, and all her family and friends were invited. The Hopes also have invited the Halls to visit them in Brownfield, where the boys grew up.
___Hall said she was asked if she had ever expected a letter like the one she received from Demuth.
___"I expected either a letter or a knock on the door," she said.
___"It would have been two knocks," said the twins.
___
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