By Sarrah Peters/News Editor
Fifty-seven years ago, five children were put up for adoption in South Carolina. Various members of one family adopted Doris Thompson, Art Pollard, Wayne Pollard and Andy Pollard, but one child was separated from the others.
Thomas Veach went to live in Minnesota, while most of the others were raised near Gadsden. One lived in Atlanta with family.
With the separation of the children, the four left in the South stayed close and didn’t lose contact. However, they could not find Thomas.
Doris Thompson, the only girl, was only six when she was adopted and wanted to find her slightly younger brother. However, she had none of the adoption paperwork. Because the records were sealed, she was unable to get the adoption papers, or even her original birth certificate. She was issued an Alabama birth certificate after the adoption.
With no success through paperwork, Doris’s daughter posted a Facebook status about her mother’s search that included what little information Doris had in 2008. For six years, they still had no response.
Then, in early 2014, Thomas Veach’s son began looking online for his father’s family.
He ran across the Facebook post, and contacted Thompson’s daughter for a phone number.
Veach called Thompson and gave the startling proclamation, “I think I might be your brother.”
Thompson was suspicious at first, so she gave Veach the phone numbers of her brothers.
Upon calling Art Pollard, Veach was first told that the family didn’t have money because they were suspicious of the strange caller’s motivations. Upon further conversation, Veach disclosed information from his adoption papers, which matched the information that the Pollard brothers and Thompson already knew, including their mother’s name.
Veach was only expecting to find one sibling, instead he found four.
The siblings discovered that Veach lived in Georgia now.
“It was fantastic,” said Veach. “They were only 100 miles away all this time.”
Three of the siblings and a friend went to meet Veach at a Cracker Barrel halfway between their homes.
Thompson confessed that she was nervous.
“My girlfriend told me that I would know if he was our brother,” she said. “I did. He’s got our eyes.”
As the friend recorded the meeting, the siblings went through the paperwork and pictures they had, confirming that Veach was definitely their brother and sharing what they remembered about the adoption.
After 57 years, the family was almost reunited. The siblings are still searching for the last two siblings, only babies at the time of the adoption. The family speculated that they may be twins, but it is more likely that the two were just close in age.
A little while later, all the siblings met in Georgia.