'You Become Complete': Separated Siblings Share Story Of Reunion
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- The beginning to her story made headlines across Minnesota more than 50 years ago, a baby discovered in a cardboard box outside a hospital on Christmas Eve. But, it's the unbelievable ending you likely haven't heard.
Tammy Makram started searching for answers when she became a mother herself. Her quest led her to a new family and a set of circumstances she never could have imagined.
Her earliest memories involve a childhood spent in southwest Minnesota, life as the oldest of four adopted children on a farm near Luverne.
"It was sort of the norm for our family. We didn't think really anything different about it," Makram said.
Makram never thought much about her past until she had a son of her own 27 years ago.
"It became part of my mission I guess to try to find my birth mother to tell her that things turned out great for me," she said.
That mission first took her to her adoption file at Children's Home Society in St. Paul.
"It was this little clipping that said if you've been following the story of Baby Jane Doe who was left on the doorstep of Miller Hospital on Christmas Eve she was adopted by a family in southwest Minnesota," she recalled.
It was that short news story that lead her in search of more at the Minnesota History Center.
"I put the first reel of microfiche down and let it go and right in front of me on the screen was a picture of a nurse holding me in her arms," Makram said.
Makram was less than two weeks old when she was wrapped in a blanket and left in a cardboard box on Christmas Eve in 1961.
"I couldn't believe my eyes," she said.
Her story again made the news for days in the '90s, this time as a plea to find her birth mother. Makram went to the press again in hopes new stories might find her.
"I got a lot of really great responses but never anything from the person I was hoping to hear from," she said.
More than 20 years would pass without any progress until the advent of genealogy websites. Makram ordered a DNA kit from Ancestry.com and posted her results. A year ago, things fell into place in a way no one could have predicted.
Another woman happened to be in the middle of her own search.
"I was found on December 30, 1965. We're the same story," Liz Kellner said.
Kellner was left in a basement laundry room of a Minneapolis apartment building at 3900 Minnehaha Avenue.
"We were born four years apart, but it's somebody that is the same," Kellner said.
"It was unbelievable for the first time to see someone who looked just like you," Makram recalled.
The reunited sisters' family tree doesn't stop there, another sister, Abbie Greene, lives in Florida and it only becomes more mind-boggling.
There are four siblings from the same mom, all abandoned or put up for adoption. Five more sharing the same dad.
"Abby's the oldest. Abby is 67, then we have another sister who is 64, a brother that would have been around 61, another sister who is 57, another brother who is 56, then myself and I'm 54, another sister who is 52. The baby of the family is Liz and she is 50," Makram said.
There are nine brothers and sisters altogether.
They now know their birth father lived two lives. While raising some of the children, he had the others with another woman. It's why not everyone in the family wants to broadcast their new connection.
"I think I was in shock. I don't know how else to explain it," Makram said.
In the past year, there have been reunions and trips to different states, trying to make up for lost time.
Discovering a part of themselves they never knew was missing.
"You become someone complete is what happens. You become complete," Makram said.
Makram met her birth mother. She has dementia and hasn't been able to fill in the blanks. Makram is convinced there are even more siblings they haven't located. Years before her, a baby boy was left in a box on the doorstep of the same hospital in 1957. They think he's another brother.
They know their mother was also pregnant in Chicago at one time and called adoption agencies in that city, as well.
Anyone with information on the family is asked to call the Children's Home Society of Minnesota.
To learn more about abandoned children, visit the Safe Place for Newborns from the Minnesota Department of Health and Human Services.
