No one knew where his father was. That led me to conjecture that my father had been a war baby and that there was a tragic story there. He listed no religion or occupation. At the age of 30, in the time it took to read a few hundred words, I learned more about where I came from than I had ever known before. But I still knew next to nothing.
Adoptees are at the whim of social workers when it comes to getting non-identifying information.
In adoption circles, these gatekeepers have been bestowed almost mythical personae. There are stories of villains, those who refuse to give any information, and heroes, sympathizers who, when meeting with an adoptee, will pretend to get called from the room and leave the adoption file open on the desk. In 1993, months after I got my non-identifying information, Washington state passed a law designed to give uniformity to the information an adopted person could receive by creating a detailed list. Oregon had passed a similar law in the same year. I wanted to know my mother's and father's first names.