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278 15 The GreatAmericanTragedy I have seen tragedy every day of my life in this work. . . . The only way I have been able to do this is by a combination of actions: Do what I can, try to love as many people as possible, broaden my perspective constantly . . . , study continuously, communicate honestly and openly. —Jean Paton, 1995 During her last decade, Jean Paton’s life continued very much in the same path as always. She read widely in subjects connected with adoption reform and fought hard for the cause she had dedicated her life to for the past forty years. She made new intellectual discoveries, altered her reform focus while continuing to champion the opening of adoption records, and focused on new causes. She made new friendships and new enemies. None of these activities deviated much from the way she had always lived her life. What did change was how Paton assessed her life’s work. She grew bitter, prompted in part by the fact that her poverty, caused by her long-term service to the adopted community, worsened even as the income of adoption search consultants and therapists grew,and in part by her belief that few, if anyone, appreciated her past service or valued her counsel. Nothing hurt Paton more than the fact that no one listened to her. With some exceptions—a few members of Bastard Nation and leading reformers in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia—a new generation of American activists barely acknowledged her existence, which led Paton to look to history to ultimately vindicate her pioneering role and give her the recognition and respect that she believed she deserved. A striking illustration of the new generation of reformers’ amnesia, bordering on callousness, and Paton’s growing bitterness and alienation from the American adoption reform movement was her breaking off from the American Adoption Congress, the organization she helped create more than twenty years earlier. The Great American Tragedy 279 Her relationship with the AAC hit bottom in the early 1990s over the question of registering for a conference. At the start of the new decade, Paton confided to birth mother Carol Komissaroff that the AAC “only used me for my name”and that she attended the national conferences“not be a real part of them” but to socialize:“to meet people and be met by people.” Paton declared that she was not going to attend any more conferences.1 Nevertheless, a year later, she couldn’t resist the camaraderie and emotional uplift of attending a conference and requested a table in the book room–exhibit area at the April 1991 AAC national conference in Garden Grove, California.2 Gayle Beckstead, a Simi Valley , California, search consultant and the AAC conference registrar, informed Paton that requests for table reservations must be accompanied by a paid conference registration. She explained that the room where the book exhibit was being held that year was small and had filled quickly, and thus it was necessary to procure another book room on the second floor. Beckstead would await Paton ’s instructions.3 Beckstead’s letter angered Paton. She replied that that she was“astonished” by it. She had no plans to register. Consequently, she half threatened and half observed that since she had been invited to attend a book-signing party, she would be forced to carry her own books around the conference in a knapsack. The injustice of demanding a paid registration from the mother of the movement overwhelmed her: “After the many years during which I subsidized the development of the movement, and thereby impoverished myself, I had no thought of creating paid employment for so many people in the adoptee population .” She deduced from their action that she was “not exactly wanted,” but informed Beckstead that she planned to attend anyway for the benefit of those people who wanted to talk to her. She ended the letter with a threat that when people asked her why she was carrying her books on her back, she would reply that it was because the AAC had denied her a table.4 Beckstead referred Paton’s angry missive to Pat Sanders, the AAC conference chair, who replied to Paton, expressing the conference committee’s own “astonishment” on learning that she did not plan to register for the April conference .5 The committee members, Sanders wrote, had thought Paton’s failure to register was an oversight. She punctiliously informed Paton that every person who attended, in whatever capacity, had always registered...

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