For more than three decades Mason had no other choice but to accept her son was gone.  Then, in 1996 when her kids were grown she began the search for her son.  She has been looking ever since.

According to the Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative, founded by Karen Wilson-Buterbaugh, Mason is part of a period from 1940 to 1970 where millions of unmarried women had children given up for adoption to married couples.  Many mothers were unaware of their rights, and with little support from their families, they felt as if they had no choice.  

Mason also had no support from her father, and her mother died five years ago.  Her father physically and sexually abused her.  In the spring of 1964 when Mason of Easton, Pennsylvania first found out she was pregnant, her worst fear was telling her father.

“I was scared to death,” said Mason of telling her father.  “I knew I was going to get a beating.”

Mason found solace in a friend the night she found out she was pregnant, and decided to stay with her until she gathered the courage to tell him.  Her friend persuaded her to call her father. 

“I don’t care what she does, just as long as she gets married,” Mason’s father told her friend.

Even though prune juice was the only item in their refrigerator, and Mason and her sisters slept on the floor taking turns sharing the heater, and she wore shoes she found in a dumpster, Mason decided not to marry.  Her father decided to put her in a foster home.  She stayed there until the last few months of her pregnancy.

Mason went from the foster home to Booth Memorial Hospital, a maternity home no longer in existence that provided services for unwed mothers and was operated by The Salvation Army.

“When I got pregnant, this was a horrible, horrible, horrible thing,” Mason said.   “I was the first girl to get pregnant at 15 in Easton.”

On December 19^th, Mason gave birth to her son, not realizing she wouldn’t get to keep him.

“I thought we were going to [separate] foster homes,” Mason said.  “When you’re in a situation like that and you have no family you worry about today.”

Mason hoped she and her son would eventually stay with her older sister and brother-in-law in Fort Dix, NJ.  Instead, her father gave permission for her baby to be adopted. 

Two months after the birth, Mason and her father went to court, though Mason wasn’t sure what the court date was for and was unaware of what was going on.  She said she wasn’t informed of a revocation period, the six month grace period until the adoption could be legalized and she could reclaim her son.

 “I didn’t want to give him up,” Mason said.  “I looked at every baby carriage that walked past me.”

Mason wanted to look for her son throughout her life, but was unsure of the situation she would be walking into if she did find him. 

“My husband and I every now and then would discuss it,” Mason said.  “We felt it wasn’t the right time because the kids were little.”

Mason decided to wait until her children were grown to find her son because if she found him, she didn’t know if their family would be ready to take him in. 

Now 61-year-old Darlene Mason lives in a quiet neighborhood next to her daughter, Tammy Fenstermacher. 

“I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter,” Mason said.

Mason told Fenstermacher she had another brother when her daughter was 11.

“I didn’t want her to think her mom slept around at 15,” Mason said.  “What she thought meant more to me because I didn’t want to hurt her.”

But Fenstermacher hopes to find her brother someday too, and has joined her mother in the search.

Fenstermacher printed a list of everyone born in the U.S. the same day her brother was born in hopes of writing those people.  The list was thousands of pages long, so she narrowed the search and printed a list of everyone born in Pennsylvania then.  She posted an advertisement in the lost and found section of Craigslist, and joined groups in search of loved ones.    

 “You’re banging your head against the wall because you don’t know if he was given his real birth date, you don’t know if he knows he’s adopted, or if he’s alive,” said Fenstermacher.

Mason contacted all branches of the military, and got a copy of the voter’s registration for Northampton for everyone who was born the year her son was born.  Fenstermacher and Mason would sit at her kitchen table with their coffee and call the names on the registry one by one.

“I know this is going to sound crazy, but I’m trying to find my son,” Mason would say.

They called every name on the list.

Deputy City Solicitor Craig Alston, from the Department of Human Services, said if an adoptee doesn’t know they’re adopted, or doesn’t want to find their biological parents, there is nothing they can do until the adoptee decides to find them.

“[The parents] are sort of fish swimming upstream,” said Alston.  “The child, when they become adults, has the right to go back and find out who their parents are, the parents typically don’t.”

In Pennsylvania, adoption files are closed, meaning that both parties have to consent for the file to be opened, something Mason has already consented to.

 “He can walk into the courthouse and get the adoption file opened immediately,” Mason said.  “He has to be the one to do it.”

But Fenstermacher and Mason continue their search.  On December 19 this year, Fenstermacher will even post “Happy Birthday” on Craigslist in hopes that he might find the post.  Still, the relentless search is taking a toll on Fenstermacher.

“I honestly believe with all my heart that if I’ve exhausted everything, I’m not sure I’m supposed to find him,” Fenstermacher said.

Mason said one reason she wants to find her son is to let him know her medical history.  There is no cure for the hereditary kidney disease prevalent in her family.

If Mason is reunited with her son, she also wants her son to know he wasn’t unwanted.

“I want him to know the truth before I die, that he just wasn’t thrown away,” Mason said.  “It’s been 46 years and he’s still in my heart.”

Dr. Sajeesh Thomas, a surgeon at PSPCA, sometimes operates on 90 animals in a month.

Twenty years before Michael Vick was signed to play for the Eagles, and Sticky the cat was found duct-taped, and a Port Richmond woman was found with 20 cats and dogs living in inhumane conditions, Sajeesh Thomas was just a 10-year-old when the pet dog he grew up with died.  Thomas and his brother built a tomb for the dog, buried him in the back yard, and marked the grave with a flower.  The experience had a great impact on his life.

“It was an emotional feeling,” Thomas said.  “I still have that in my mind.”

Thus began Thomas’s life-long pursuit to help sick, abused, and abandoned animals.  Now he is Sajeesh Thomas, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine.

Thomas’s veterinary career began at the College of Veterinary Science in Khanapara, India.  During college he developed an interest in horse riding, and eventually represented his college in a national riding competition.

“I would ride from 4 a.m. to 7 a.m. every morning,” Thomas said.  “I enjoyed it and it gave me confidence.  It’s also good physical exercise.”

Thomas received his Bachelor of Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry in 2003, and his Master of Veterinary Science in 2005 in India.

Thomas now provides veterinary care to abused animals at the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PSPCA), some weeks working 50 hours.  Abused animals found in Philadelphia are taken to PSPCA.

A surgeon at PSPCA, Thomas sometimes operates on 90 animals a month.

“The most difficult part is putting animals to sleep,” Thomas said.  “That is a very sad part of the job.”

His work starts at 7 a.m.  For two hours he admits animals for surgery.  This includes any blood work they need, vaccinations, and making sure they are fit for surgery.  From 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. he does clinical work, tending to animals that have fevers, fractures, and other problems.  He may have a few minutes to spare for lunch, but most of the time he’s too busy and skips lunch and starts the cycle over again, ending his day with paperwork.  Three times a month he spends the entire day operating on animals, usually 30 in one day.

“If you work here, you get to serve people in a better way,” Thomas said, adding that PSPCA provides low-cost veterinary services for pet owners.

Thomas grew up in a middle class home in north east India surrounded by pets, mainly cats and dogs, fostering his passion to help animals and especially their indigent owners.

His mother, a school teacher, taught him to respect all living creatures.

“It is important to understand that there are other living things that cannot talk but have the same emotions we do,” Thomas said.  “They show love.”

But Thomas’s family is rare, and in many cases in India, pets are not given the care they need.

“There is a huge contrast of animal care in developed and undeveloped countries,” Thomas said.  “Here, the pets are like your children.”

In India, healthcare for pets is a luxury that many cannot afford.  Only the wealthy are able to spend the money needed to properly care for their pets.

“In India proper veterinary care is mostly in the cities,” Thomas said.  “Most have pets but they don’t get the attention they need because of the lifestyle.  It’s a tropical country so animals live outside.”

However, Thomas said people in India are becoming more aware of the need for veterinary care for animals.  Thomas even worked as a veterinarian at the Humane Society in Assam, India for two years.

At the Assam Humane Society, Thomas’s job was to help find animals new homes, conduct spay and neuter clinics for dogs and cats, perform surgery, and treat animals for diseases all at a low cost for pet owners.  During that time, Thomas also participated in the Captive Elephant Health Care Program (CEHCP).

Through the CEHCP, Thomas, along with his colleagues, provided free healthcare and education on proper elephant care for elephant owners.  The elephants were once used for logging.  During that time the elephants received the healthcare they needed to keep them healthy enough to continue logging.  Restrictions on logging forced the elephants and the owners who drove them out of work.  The owners wanted to help their elephants, but were poor and could not afford their healthcare without the logging operations.  Because the elephants were captive for so long, release into the wild was no longer an option.

Thomas said he was fascinated by the elephants because of their enormous size, but he was never scared and remained calm when he worked with them.

“Animals are really sensible,” Thomas said.  “If you show your fear, they will try to scare you more.  They have a tendency to scare you if they know you’re afraid of them.”

After working at the Assam Humane Society and with CEHCP, Thomas moved on to work for Milgram Milk Specialties in Kerala, India for two years.  Milgram is a dairy farm with the objective of providing Kerala with their own milk supply rather than rely on other states.  Milgram also had a veterinary center were Thomas did many surgical procedures like cesarean operations for cats, dogs, goats, cattle, and buffalos.

“It was 95 percent large animals, and 5 percent small animals,” Thomas said.

At the time, Thomas had no plans to come to the U.S., and thought he would eventually open a private practice in India.  His plans would soon change though when he met his soon-to-be wife at the wedding of his cousin in India.  Six months later, they married.  In 2007 the couple moved to Philadelphia.  Born and raised in Philadelphia, Sandy Thomas helped her husband acclimate to life in Philadelphia.

“I think where he was it was somewhat western, but I did help him in terms of general knowledge,” Sandy Thomas said.  “There was a slight adjustment, but once he started working he blended pretty well.”

When he moved to Philadelphia, Thomas continued the trend in working for agencies devoted to providing low-cost veterinary services and helping abused and abandoned animals.  He volunteered at the Philadelphia Humane Society, and started working for PSPCA in May of 2008.

For almost two years, Thomas worked 60-hour weeks at PSPCA as a veterinary technician, using his free time to study for his veterinary certification exam so he could practice in Pennsylvania.

“When I was working 10-hour days and preparing for exams, that was a tough time for me,” Thomas said.  He received his certification in June.

Dr. Eric Jacobs, a former surgeon at PSPCA, performed several surgeries with Thomas while he was still studying for his certification.

Under Jacobs’s supervision at PSPCA, Thomas performed his first amputation.

“It was a shelter animal with non-reparable damage on the knee,” Thomas said.  “It wasn’t treatable so there was no other option.”

Thomas said doing his first amputation was a little scary, but with Jacobs there he knew he had someone to help him.

“[Thomas] is an incredible, pleasant person,” Jacobs said.  “He’s a very nice human being and I found him to be a very conscientious person.  He ended up being one of my favorite people to work with.”

Thomas’s work is also being recognized in his country.  The Global Society for Health and Educational Growth in New Delhi nominated him for the Chikitsak Ratan Award, also known as the National Gem of Physicians Award.  He eventually won the award.

The win surprised Thomas.

“I don’t know how they got my name,” Thomas said.

Thomas is unable to receive the award in person, so his mom may receive the award in his place in India.

Though Thomas said it was easy for him to adjust to life in America, he still sees a future in India.

“I want to go back and do volunteer services,” Thomas said.  “There are so many animals suffering.”