Remembering my alcoholic adoptive father on Father’s Day

I am hiding, intentionally, the identities of my adoptive father, left, and his two younger brothers, and their father. (Date and location of photo unknown; mid-1940s or a bit later?)

The past week and a half saw different stories of my adoptive life joining together.

The first was the death of the last surviving brother of my adoptive father at the end of May 2024, and news of his death reaching me in early June 2024.

The other story is what this man hid and shared with me about my adoptive father, his older brother.

My adoptive father died in 1985 after long bouts of health problems, including the impacts from decades of alcoholism. Ultimately his addiction took his life, cruelly even, after barely six decades alive. He died separated from many who knew him early in his life. It was a bad ending.

I remember him still, to this day, as a very unhappy but smart man. I also cannot calculate the incalculable harm he dealt to my adoptive mom, my adoptive sister, and me. Alcohol was his demon, and those ensnared in his cage of self-destruction were us.

My adoptive father had three brothers. They were raised in a very strict German-American family in the Cleveland suburbs, when it was a bustling city with many thriving industries. The oldest died a ruptured appendix when he was 13 years old. This likely led to an enormous burden of German family pressure thrown on my adoptive father’s shoulders, as the next oldest son. My adoptive grandfather was big and domineering, and I can barely remember him. He likely pushed my adoptive into the Lutheran seminary, at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, when my adoptive father was right out of his Lutheran boarding school.

There were also two other brothers. The youngest of the four died in 2017 at the age of 86. The brother between them, who peacefully passed away in late May 2024, died at the age of 97.

As I was writing my book on my adoption story between 2015 and 2018, this last dying brother agreed to provide some background to my adoptive father’s life. I had to push him for this information. After receiving my request and knowing that he had stories to tell hidden inside, he sent me two well-written, but carefully framed pages describing my adoptive father’s extremely troubled life.

At last the dark secrets
I learned things never shared with me before, held from me for more than five decades.

Many might say a “dirty secret,” especially from an undeserving adoptee who should just be grateful for being taken into a “loving family,” is best kept hidden.

I shared that dark secret in my book. In my book, I describe how my adoptive uncle told me my adoptive father was already an alcoholic before I was placed for adoption. In fact, my adoptive father had been in a treatment program before I was placed with him and my adoptive mother.

As to whether the social workers who did the home study visits of my adoptive parents’ west Detroit house knew about his treatment remains unknown.

That two-page summary I still have finally revealed this long-hidden chapter in my adoptive father’s life with other revelations I won’t share. He likely should never have been given charge of children because of his substance abuse problem. (My adoptive sister had been placed with them two years before me.)

Within eight years of me being placed with my adoptive parents, and after years of my adoptive father’s physical abuse of my adoptive mother and other events I won’t share, they divorced. I also was obligated to see him for about four more years or more, which exposed me and my sister to nearly being killed when he was driving us in a drunken stupor with us as passengers.

None of these tales are new. I have shared them very publicly.

My book explored my father’s troubled past, only slightly
In fact, in the introduction to my book, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are, made clear the reality of what my youth was like living in the shadow of a violent, alcoholic father and failed adoptive parent: “At times, when he was drunk, he could have killed my sister and me on more than a dozen occasions—when he would drive us in a total stupor. My adoptive family’s struggles were not pleasant, but they are also things no one could have predicted, and their meaning and purpose may still not even be clear to me. However, the way I confronted these challenges was uniquely my own, and I own how I addressed my reality and the conditions of my life. No one else is responsible for that.”

I am glad my adoptive uncle who just passed away lived a long, healthy life, with many children and some biological grandchildren of this own.

But I will never know why he chose to keep my adoptive father’s dark secrets hidden from the people most harmed, for half a century.

I think he may have felt the “past was the past” and that my father’s early death was punishment enough.

But I also think that he simply was incapable to genuinely considering me and my sister as being worthy about the truth of what happened to us, changing our lives forever, in very painful ways for my adoptive sister and my adoptive mother. I was resilient, but at a high cost. 

We were never my adoptive uncle’s biological kin. We were “relinquished” babies, and perhaps he thought we should just be grateful our entire lives and accept our fate, including the violence and chaos that came our way. I don’t really know.

In my book, I also describe forgiving my adoptive father. I decided to do that when I was 18 years old and started my life living away from home, forever. It represented one of the most mature and smartest things I ever did. I had the power to act with forgiveness. In that sense, I became the master of my destiny, not bound by the harm of the past.

When the past comes back, like it does now with my adoptive uncle’s death, it’s a good time to recount the story. We need to be honest about what adoption truly is and who is impacted by it.

As for the holiday celebrating “dads,” you’ll forgive me for not pausing to acknowledge the day as something meaningful.

This corporate marketing day has a different meaning for many who have stories like me. On this so-called “Father’s Day,” we’ll also give most of you celebrating this day a free pass too, for not recognizing the many in our camp with a “father” like my own.

Maybe one day you’ll care enough to truly acknowledge us too.