2017 A to Z Challenge ~ All About Me ~ Letter A

My friend and fellow blogger, Jeanne Bryan Insalaco of Everyone Has a Story started a fun blogging challenge about writing about ourselves. You can find her first post Letter A... All About Me here. The 2017 A to Z ~ All About Me Challenge is her twist to the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. The idea is to post bi-monthly posts about ourselves and completing all 26 posts by 31 December 2017. I am accepting Jeanne's challenge and I hope she won't mind if I add my own twist to it as well. My twist is that I will be using these posts to tell my birth siblings about my life. 

History has always been my favorite subject so it is no wonder that I fell in love with genealogy. With genealogy I can step back in time and discover who my ancestors were. I tell their stories here one my blog. Now I am going to step back into my memories and write my life so that my birth family will learn about me and my life. 

The letter A makes me think of being Adopted and Alabama.

Adopted

I have always known I was adopted. I can remember a set of books that my parents used to read to me about being adopted and how special I was because I was chosen. As far as I am concerned being adopted was like winning the lottery. My birth mother didn't have a lot of choices in 1962 and I believe she made a great choice in choosing my adoptive parents, Bill and Nina. I say choose because my adoption was arranged by the obstetrician who not only delivered me but treated both of my mothers. As a matter of fact, this same doctor delivered all of my siblings too. I have a great life, and I love my family.

 Dawn Marie Williams (personal collection)

Alabama

After graduating from high school on 4 June 1980, my husband Marc and I left for Montgomery, Alabama to begin our life as a married couple. He had been living and working there since shortly after we were married three months earlier. He was working for his brother, Lester at a motorcycle dealership. We lived in a two bedroom apartment in an area that was mostly open space. Now that area is filled with housing developments and shopping areas. 

We spent our time going to Lamaze classes as we awaited the birth of first child who was due on 21 September 1980. It was the hottest summer ever! To keep from going stir crazy in our apartment I would go to the Alabama State Archives where I began my journey in the world of genealogy. Finally on Friday,  10 October 1980 our son, Kenneth George Kitts was born at 12:50 p.m. We left the hospital the next day but two days later Kenny had to be admitted to the children's hospital because he was severely jaundiced. Then in November I was admitted to the hospital for anaphylactic shock from penicillin. 

By December the company my husband was working for was closing and we were heading home back to North Carolina. It was a 500 mile trip with a two month old baby but pulling up in front of my parents home just a few days before Christmas was homecoming I will never forget.

My son, Kenny. The best thing that happened in Alabama. (personal collection).