That law in fact had been enacted in December 2013, affecting Ohio adoptees adopted during the state’s only closed-records 30 ShAKerONLINE.COM | SUMMER 2015 period – between January 1, 1964 and September 18, 1996. (Adoption Network Cleveland was also responsible for the earlier law that opened the records from 1996 forward.) After a 15-month implementation period, “opening day” finally came around. Norris and hundreds of supporters staged a celebration at the Crowne Plaza in Columbus. A landslide of media attention followed, including features on National Public Radio and ABC’s “Nightline.” By the end of April, Adoption Network Cleveland’s happily overworked communications manager, Linda Schellentrager, had tracked more than 100 stories – local, state, and national. Norris received Smart Business magazine’s Women Who Excel Entrepreneur Award, the Virginia Colson Award for Service to Families and Children from the Ohio Association of Child Caring Agencies, and the Eleanor R. Gerson Leadership in Social Justice Award from Greater Cleveland Community Shares. “As long as I’ve worked on this and as much effort as I’ve poured into this, seeing it all play out has been incredible,” says Norris. “It’s been incredible to watch people’s journeys, as they’ve been receiving their birth certificates in the mail.” Above, L–R: Betsie as a newborn at Cleveland Clinic in February 1960 being held by her birthmother Edie Boyer Nelson, then 21 years old. | Summer 1960, Betsie and her adoptive mother Lois Norris in their backyard on Southington Road. | Betsie in 1962 at Torch Lake in northern Michigan where the Norrises spent summer vacations. | Parents William B. (Brad) and Lois, brother Todd, and Betsie in 1962 at Torch Lake, Michigan. | Betsie and her birthparents Edie and Bob Nelson shortly after their 1988 reunion. Photos courtesy of Betsie Norris
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