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Mother and son making up for 44 years of lost time

Jim Dwyer found his biological mother more than four decades after being put up for adoption.

PHOENIX — It was a different time in a much different place when Nancy Anderson had to choose between raising a child alone, or putting him up for adoption. 

"My mom said, 'It's really hard being a single parent,' and that really stuck with me," Nancy said, recalling a childhood in which her father died young. 

A doctor in Nashville suggested Nancy use an adoption program in Phoenix, freeing her from the possible judgement of friends and family in the South. 

"I was here five months before he was born, and everybody at home thought I was here teaching," Nancy said. 

This idea allowed her to hide the pregnancy as well as the adoption, but it also meant her son would be given to a foster family in Arizona.

"It was the hardest thing I ever had to do," Nancy said. "I cried the entire way home."

Fast forward 44 years, when now Scottsdale firefighter Jim Dwyer received an Ancestry DNA kit as a gift. Dwyer had no idea that across the country, his biological mother was also getting the same gift from her two daughters. 

"I had a feeling and an inclination when I got the Ancestry Kit," Jim said, knowing his biological mother had to be out there.

Meanwhile, across the country, Nancy was realizing she would need to have a difficult discussion with her two daughters who were about to learn they had a brother. 

"They just didn't know," she said.

"Dear Jim, Where to start..." Nancy's first email to her son said. Soon thereafter the entire family decided to meet in Phoenix. 

Nancy would be meeting her son, while Jim would be meeting his mother and sisters. 

"It's a bit overwhelming, in the best possible way," Jim said. 

"For us to sit here and say we're going to try and make up 44 years is unrealistic, you can't, but what we can do is continue to grow together and learn about each other and make the most of it," Jim said now two years after meeting Nancy for the first time.

They already have three scrapbooks worth of memories. A trip to Disneyland, rounds of golf with the in-laws, dinners with cousins they never thought they had, and the love between a mother and son neither person ever expected to find.

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