Remembering Lauren | Adoption Support Center (Indianapolis, IN)

Chris, Lauren and Khayman Deeds, September 2004

Adoption Support Center remembers...
Lauren Ann Hamilton Deeds

Lauren was adopted at 3 days old. She came to us through a private lead that was a friend-of-a-friend. The Adoption Support Center was started when Lauren was two years old - solely because of the joy she brought to all our lives. She was a bubbly, funny, busy little toddler. The agency began in our home and she used to run into the office, naked, most mornings.

One of our Lauren adventures centered around her name. When I was born, I had no middle name. In fourth grade I chose one that was very special to me. Lauren and her sister were not given a middle name either. Lauren went through so many over the years. Her first one was just a sound “Huh!” It sounded like part of an Elvis Presley song. The second one was “Do-Do” from “The Land Before Time” movie. Lauren discovered the bird in a McDonald's Happy Meal. She insisted it be put on her Kindergarten graduation diploma. When they announced her name “Lauren DoDo Hamilton” the crowd gasped and looked at me with distain. Next came more logical choices like Elizabeth, then Lilly.

As Lauren grew up, adoption was always important to her. She was very curious about her beginnings and asked lots of questions. I always knew she would be the type of adoptee who would want to find her birth family, and sure enough, she did. Lauren's birth mom was 40 when she placed her for adoption. Lauren always said she was afraid she wouldn't meet if she waited until she was 21 and her birth mom was 61. She would tactlessly say she was “old” when she placed her. When she was 15, we needed medical information and I searched for them. They are wonderful people who had married a year after Lauren was adopted. She and her birth mom had a nice relationship for nearly four years when she died at age 60. Lauren's instincts were right, they would have never met if she had waited. Meeting her birth family was very fulfilling for her. One of her first questions for her mother was “What is your middle name?”

It was Ann.

Lauren had finally found her middle name. Lauren Ann Hamilton.

Lauren struggled through her teen years, and even co-authored a book about those struggles with Sherry Eldgridge called “Twenty Steps for Adopted Teens.” Lauren had her own way of doing things...sometimes a bit unorthodox. As a young adult she fell in love with Chris, had a baby, came to work with me at the agency, bought a house, then she married. Again, her name was very important to her. She immediately did a name-change everywhere, even Jiffy Lube and Blockbuster. At work, as she wrote us phone messages, she'd sign them “Lauren Ann Deeds”, as if, in our small office, we didn't know who she was!

Her son, Khayman, came to work everyday with her...we were his day care, Lauren and nine loving “aunts.” I had always told our staff that they could bring their babies or toddlers to work with them. I had never benefited from this rule until my grandson was the baby! It was wonderful. Lauren was invaluable on the phone with our clients. As a young lady who had turned her life around, she empathized with the birth moms who called in crisis. As a loving mom, she understood their desire to parent and gave them hope. As an adoptee, she was an advocate for birth mother correspondence, visits and sharing. She had become involved in a twelve-step program as a teen and never hesitated to offer a birth mom the group's meeting schedule; she even bought a program book for several birth mothers struggling with addiction and offered to go with them to their first meeting. She was hoping to stay on forever and take over the agency when the time came. How appropriate...the agency existed because of her.

Lauren was a proud wife and loving young mom. Her instincts as a mother with Khayman were amazing, her goals clear, her marriage secure, and her life happy. She died suddenly when she fell asleep at the wheel driving home from Indianapolis after a special dinner with Chris. They had both commuted to Indy that day and had to drive both cars back to Muncie. We struggle along without her, both at work and in our lives. Chris continues to drop off Khayman and he comes to work with me each day. At this writing, Khayman is the same age Lauren was when I started Adoption Support Center.

The third generation is here.

~Julie Craft