The search for a son and a lost love

EVERETT — He held his son only once, in a sterile office at Catholic Children's Services that November day in 1977.

Bart Stokes gazed into the eyes as blue as his own, and covered his boy's cheeks in kisses.

"You're coming home with me soon, son," he whispered. "Daddy loves you. We're going to all be together soon."

He was still a child himself, a junior in high school with shoulder-length hair and a lanky teenage frame, hardly the picture of a father.

But a father was all Bart dreamed of becoming. That, and a husband to his girl, Brenda.

He had it all worked out in his head. He cherished Brenda Litzo, had even proposed before they ever learned she was pregnant. His mother would get a bigger apartment, with a room for them and the baby. He worked after school at a gas station and could make enough for them to get by until he graduated and found a permanent job.

The most important thing was keeping his family together.

Yet even the best intentions can fall by the wayside when those older and wiser have other plans in mind. Brenda's parents had already made adoption arrangements, and she was too scared to fight them.

A few weeks after seeing their son, Bart and Brenda found themselves in the same sterile office, adoption papers spread on a table.

They were told the family was Catholic and lived somewhere in metropolitan Seattle. They had one other child, a 13-year-old boy.

Brenda signed her name and slid the document over to Bart. He stared, speechless, then stormed out.

"We can have more kids," Brenda promised him. "We'll always be together." She begged him to just get it over with.

Knowing it was the biggest mistake of his life, he signed.

"I just lost my son," Bart thought, never imagining he could lose her, too.

He called her "my Brenda," and from the first moment, she had been. They'd met a year earlier at Edmonds High, north of Seattle.

Soon, they were flirting in biology class and going for rides on his motorcycle along the shores of Puget Sound. They exchanged letters, always signing off "Love Forever & Longer." Their song was Bread's "Make It With You."

Bart adored Brenda's eyes and her smile, she his long, reddish hair. He ran track, she was on the swim team. He played the tuba, she the flute. And in every way, they were each other's first love.

The next Valentine's Day, while out to eat, Bart placed a box in Brenda's hand with a simple gold ring and diamond and asked her to marry him. She accepted immediately, though they agreed to keep the engagement from their families. They were just 17 years old.

TED S. WARREN / AP Brenda Litzo plays with her daughter, Madisyn, as Bart Stokes watches at right in their home in Everett.

Then the stomach cramps started.

Thinking it was just gastrointestinal problems, Brenda went to the doctor with her mother. After the tests were done, the doctor walked over to her mother and pointed at a slip of paper with the word "positive" on it.

"Positive for what?" she asked.

"Pregnancy," the doctor said.

Abortion wasn't considered because her family was Catholic; it never entered Brenda's mind anyway. "The best thing to do is put this baby up for adoption," her mother said upon leaving the doctor's office.

Brenda's parents sent her off to a school for girls to finish out the pregnancy, and yet even as the adults moved forward with the adoption scenario, Bart and Brenda talked in secret about keeping their child and starting a life together.

But Brenda was torn. Wanting to do right by her parents, she finally came to believe she had no choice but to give the baby up.

At night, alone in her bed, she talked and sang to her unborn child. All the while she kept thinking, "I want to be pregnant forever," because giving birth meant saying goodbye.

Bart was hunting the morning she went into labor but arrived at the hospital within hours of his son's birth on Oct. 25, 1977. They named him Michael.

Bart never understood why Brenda went along with the adoption, but once their baby was gone, the couple argued endlessly. Bart dropped out of school and, by Christmas, Brenda had stopped returning his calls.

The snapshot of the tiny baby, one the hospital provided of Michael at three days old, never left Bart's wallet.

It remained after he met another woman and got married in 1983, after they had a son together, Bartley Jr., and long after they divorced in 1988. It remained after the birth of his next son, Austin.

Several times through the years, Bart tried to locate his firstborn by contacting various adoption-rights groups, but he was told little could be done unless the child registered with them.

He wondered what Michael looked like, if he acted like him, whether he knew that he was adopted.

He also wondered about Brenda. They'd lost touch, but he kept a high-school picture of his first love.

Through friends, he learned she had married, had other children — three boys — and moved to California. He didn't know, however, that she had also divorced.

Now and then, he'd search her married name on the Internet. He once found four Brenda Wilcoxes in California and called each one, but none of the numbers was hers.

Then, in 2001, he registered his name on Classmates.com, a Web site that allows people to contact former schoolmates. Brenda had registered, too. He e-mailed but got no response.

In November 2003, following the death of one of Brenda's old friends, Bart tried writing again. Still, nothing.

One month later, Bart went in to work at Boeing, where he assembles jets, and sat down at a computer. A message popped up in his inbox: "You've received a Classmates Email!"

Brenda, living in Placentia, Calif., had been between jobs, with no access to a computer. But as soon as she received Bart's note, she responded.

"I think of you every year on October 25," she wrote.

They had a long exchange about life, work and their children. At the end, she wrote, "I think of you often."

When he got home that day, Bart found a phone message waiting. He called Brenda back, and they talked for hours. Within days, all the things they'd never said were pouring out.

"I've loved you all my life," Bart told her. "My dream of dreams is to have you — and to search for our son together."

In the waiting area of Sea-Tac airport, Bart paced. Finally, her flight arrived, and he saw her coming up the escalator. "Oh my God," he said. "It's my Brenda!"

She ran into his arms and cried.

It was January 2004, and she had arranged to stay for 10 days, so they could get to know each other again. They would also finish the paperwork to petition a court to open Michael's adoption file.

Then a chance conversation with a stranger accelerated the search for their son.

While Bart was at work one day, Brenda spent the afternoon with an old friend. They stopped by a car dealership in Tacoma, where the friend had a meeting, and Brenda struck up a conversation with a saleswoman.

Brenda told her story: that she was in town to reunite with her high-school sweetheart and they were hoping to find the son they had put up for adoption.

How old was the child? asked the woman, Michelle Abbott.

Twenty-six, said Brenda: born Oct. 25, 1977.

What a coincidence, Abbott told her. She had a cousin born the very same day. And he was adopted.

Brenda started asking questions.

Where was he raised?

Kent, said Abbott.

What religion is he?

Catholic, she said.

Finally, Brenda asked: Does he have any brothers or sisters?

Just one, Abbott said. A brother, 13 years older.

The young man in the picture had Bart's nose and chin, and those same blue eyes that Bart remembered, though they were shaped just like Brenda's.

Bart and Brenda were looking at a high-school yearbook photo — of a student named Andy Fenkner. Michelle Abbott had called her mom, who contacted Abbott's aunt — Michael's adoptive mother. The families quickly put two and two together.

Andy had known he was adopted since he was 16 but hadn't searched for his biological parents. Now, word reached him of the strange meeting between his cousin and this woman. Andy, living in Scottsdale, Ariz., phoned Abbott, who in turn told Bart and Brenda their son was waiting to hear from them.

On Feb. 6, 2004 — less than a month after their own reunion — the couple arrived in Scottsdale.

They arranged to meet outside a bookstore. As Bart and Brenda rounded the corner, they saw him: a handsome young man with a wide smile and beautiful blue eyes. Together, they took him in their arms.

For the first time in more than 26 years, Bart and Brenda held their child.

Their second night together, Brenda told Andy she had something to ask. On Oct. 1, 2005, the anniversary of when the high-school sweethearts started dating, Bart and Brenda plan to finally marry. Andy said yes, of course, he would walk his mom down the aisle.

This past November, the three piled into the car on the way to the hospital. They stopped first to buy some film, and Bart couldn't contain his excitement.

"We're gonna have a baby today!" he gushed to the store clerk.

Andy had flown in just to be there. In the hospital room, he sat to the side, filming everything.

"Unbelievable," Andy murmured, as Bart urged Brenda and their baby girl on.

As the infant's cries suddenly filled the room, Andy called her by the name his parents allowed him to choose.

"My little baby sister, Madisyn."

Bart cut the umbilical cord and placed the newborn in the arms of her mother, who said, "She's so beautiful."

Brenda and Bart beamed at their daughter, at their son, at each other — their family, finally together.

And it was so very beautiful.