Korean War Vet Reunited With Woman Whose Life He Saved Nearly 60 Years Ago

***

http://youtu.be/H25HYh-j6Uk

From Stars & Stripes on line:

Korean War vet reunited with woman he helped nearly 60 years ago

by Jon Rabiroff

SEOUL — Retired U.S. airman Richard Cadwallader finally got to hug the woman who earned his lifelong admiration for the way she bravely dealt with severe burns almost 60 years ago.

Since leaving South Korea in the wake of the Korean War, Cadwallader had always wondered what became of the young girl he did his best to help after she was brought to his base in December 1953 with third-degree burns from her chin down to her waist.

On Monday, the 81-year-old was reunited with the woman he knew only as the “burned girl” — Kim Yeon-soon, now 72 — at a Seoul hotel.

With two dozen members of the Korean media looking on, the two came together in a warm embrace. Kim, whose scars from the accident were easily seen Monday around her chin, seemed to take every opportunity during the half-hour proceeding to hug or hold onto Cadwallader and members of his family.

The two exchanged gifts: Cadwallader gave Kim a watch to remind her of their time together decades earlier, and she gave him and his wife, Nancy, hanboks, traditional Korean garb.

“I’m feeling very excited, very proud [and] very happy for Miss Kim,” Cadwallader told a news conference. “It’s just a marvelous, marvelous experience, and I’m so appreciative of what the Korean government has done to bring us back together again.”

Through a translator, Kim said, “I could never have imagined that I would have the opportunity to see him again. I’m very excited and very happy.”

It was just months after the end of the Korean War when Kim said a young relative accidentally knocked over an oil lamp, setting her on fire and leaving her in agony.

Kim said her mother carried her on her back about five miles to the nearest U.S. military installation, a remote base on the edge of the Yellow Sea, west of Suwon.

There, Cadwallader — an airman second class and radio mechanic — looked on in awe as the base medic tended to the young girl, peeling off a tar-like substance someone in the girl’s village had applied to the burn that had adhered to her flesh.

“The process was slow and agonizingly painful,” he told Susan Kee, who is working on a book about the personal stories of U.S. Korean War veterans. “She endured extreme pain in silence and without any tears.”

On Monday, Cadwallader said, “I can’t tell you what a brave young lady this woman was 60 years ago, in terms of recovering from her burns. They were very, very severe.

“She and her mother were two examples of the most courageous people I’ve ever known, so this is a monumental day for me.”

Cadwallader has said previously he did all he could to help the girl and make her comfortable then, and when she returned to the base for follow-up treatment in the weeks that followed. But, it was clear she needed more extensive treatment on the infected area, and to minimize scarring and facial disfigurement.

That opportunity came with the arrival of three helicopters from a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital.

Cadwallader said he was able to talk the major in charge into flying the girl to a burn unit in Pusan, which prompted the airman to lead a high-speed recovery mission via Jeep over muddy and washed-out roads to find the girl at her village and get her back to the base before the choppers left.

As he prepared to leave South Korea three months later, Cadwallader had a chance encounter with the girl, who waved at him from a passing military vehicle and gestured that her wounds were healing well.

Nevertheless, the Scottsdale, Ariz., resident said he wondered for decades how life turned out for the girl and, with the help of Kee and the South Korean Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, she was located earlier this year. The ministry paid for the trip to South Korea for Cadwallader and his family.

His daughter, Dawn Girard, said her father often told her stories as she was growing up about the courageous littled burned girl.

“She’s had an impact on my life that she’s not even aware of,” Girard said. “She’s taught me a lot.”

Cadwallader and Kim were scheduled to be the guests of government officials at a number of ceremonies in the days ahead. The retired airman was also expected to visit Kim’s hometown and hit a number of tourist attractions during his five-day visit.

Ministry officials have said they hope to stage similar reunions in the future between allied servicemembers who helped the South during the Korean War and locals they want to see again.

Kim — who went on to marry, have three children and work in a variety of jobs, including farming and clam digging — has said she often thought about Cadwallader and the other Americans who helped her.

“If it were not for the U.S. troops … I might have died,” Kim said previously. “Richard helped save my life. He was heaven-sent.”

http://www.stripes.com/news/korean-war-vet-reunited-with-woman-he-helped-nearly-60-years-ago-1.214494

***

NRA Wins as Thousands of Americans Die

***

How the NRA won

Most Americans support tougher gun control measures. Too bad the gun lobby has so many politicians in its pocket

By Joe Gandelman | 6:24am EST

Wayne LaPierre, head of the National Rifle Association, at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 15.

There's no denying it: The National Rifle Association has won — again. Even though more than 3,000 Americans have died via gun violence since 20 children and 6 adults were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary in December, the NRA has somehow managed to triumph. The victims' families and gun control advocates have lost. Forget an assault weapons ban — or any other serious gun regulation. It's not happening. 

The Washington Post notes that not only have the NRA's tactics cowed politicians and beaten back substantive national gun control efforts, but in some instances, they've actually led to moves to make guns easier to get. Meanwhile, at least a dozen GOP senators have signed on to Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's call to filibuster any gun control measure.

This is just one more issue where polls show Republicans at odds with mainstream America. A Morning Joe/Marist poll found six in 10 respondents — including 83 percent of Democrats, 43 percent of gun owners, and 37 percent of Republicans — believe that the laws covering gun sales should be stricter.

Here's the problem: The NRA has a lot of money, and NRA donations go overwhelmingly to Republicans. They are unsurprisingly blocking tougher gun control.

Writes The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky: "I have never seen a situation in which a Congress, terrified of a particular lobby, has behaved in such open contempt of American public opinion as it's doing now on guns." [emphasis added] 

The brutal truth is that the 20 little kids who perished in Newtown in a terrifying massacre involving 154 rounds fired in 5 minutes was NOT enough to significantly move the dial on gun control. These kids are now (more) collateral damage in the decades-long political gun-control ballet involving lobbying money and the way American politics truly functions. Poll numbers alone won't enact change.

Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein writes: "See, the problem here is equating '90 percent in the polls'" — polls show that 9 in 10 Americans support universal background checks — "with 'calling for change.' Sure, 90 percent of citizens or registered voters... will answer in the affirmative if they're asked about this policy. But that's not all the same as 'calling for change.'...Action works. 'Public opinion' is barely real... At best, public opinion as such is passive. And in politics, passive doesn't get results."

We know the pattern: (1) a massacre; (2) intial shock, media saturation, and noble-sounding rhetoric from politicians about change; (3) statements of regret or lawyerly type statements with loophopes from the gun lobby; (4) mobilization of the NRA and ideological echo chambers to go on the attack and wield political clout. 

I was one of many staffers on The San Diego Union who covered James Huberty's July 18, 1984, San Ysidro McDonald's massacre. Huberty fired 250 rounds and killed 21 people from 8 months to 74 years old. He wounded 19 more before being shot dead by a sniper. There was outrage in the immediate aftermath. Then reform efforts failed.

For real gun control to triumph, it must get through a huge maze of institutional, political, and ideological media obstacle courses. 

Gun control advocate Matt Bennett told the Washington Post that if there was a secret ballot on gun control it would "pass overwhelmingly, because from a substantive point of view most of these senators understand that this is the right thing to do." Politics hold them back.

President Obama recently expressed dismay over these sad truths, and reminded America about the first-graders butchered in Newtown: "The entire country was shocked, and the entire country pledged we would do something about it and that this time would be different," he declared. "Shame on us if we've forgotten. I haven't forgotten those kids. Shame on us if we've forgotten."

Shame on us, indeed. Because in American power politics — as the long battle for gun control stymied by big money, cowardice, and lack of organized-for-action public outrage shows — there is no change. Just more and more cases of collateral damage. 

http://theweek.com/article/index/242411/how-the-nra-won

***

How Long is an Hour? Ask the Law Firms

***

The Tyranny of the Billable Hour

by Steven J. Harper

March 28, 2013

“THAT bill shall know no limits,” wrote one DLA Piper lawyer to another in 2010 in what the firm is now calling “unfortunate banter” between associates about work for a client. But what is truly unfortunate is the underlying billable-hour regime and the law-firm culture it has spawned.

Lost in the furor surrounding one large firm’s current public relations headache are deeper problems that go to the heart of the prevailing big law-firm business model itself. Regrettably, as with previous episodes that have produced high-profile scandals, the present outcry will probably pass and the billable hour will endure.

It shouldn’t. The billable-hour system is the way most lawyers in big firms charge clients, but it serves no one. Well, almost no one. It brings most equity partners in those firms great wealth. Law firm leaders call it a leveraged pyramid. Most associates call it a living hell.

In a typical large firm, associates earn far less than the client revenues they generate. For example, a client receives an invoice totaling the number of hours each lawyer spends on the client’s matters, multiplied by the lawyer’s hourly rate, say $400 for a junior associate. Most big firms require associates to bill at least 1,900 hours a year, according to a survey last year by NALP, the Association for Legal Career Professionals.

In 2009, DLA Piper announced that it had eliminated associates’ billable-hour requirements in favor of a performance-based reward system. However, the firm’s submission for the association’s current NALP Directory of Legal Employersreports that it has a “minimum billable hour expectation.” In 2011, DLA Piper’s “average annual associate hours worked” (both billable and nonbillable) was 2,462; the billable average was 1,831.

At $400 an hour, a hypothetical 2,000-hour-a-year associate generates $800,000 a year for the firm. But the firm typically pays the salaried lawyer one-fourth of that amount or less.

For associates, the goal is simple: meet the required (or expected) minimum number of billable hours to qualify for annual bonuses and salary increases. Billing 2,000 hours a year isn’t easy. It typically takes at least 50 hours a week to bill an honest 40 hours to a client. Add commuting time, bathroom breaks, lunch, holidays, an annual vacation and a little socializing, and most associates find themselves working evenings and weekends to “make their hours.” Most firms increase financial rewards as an associate’s billables move beyond the stated threshold.

For partners, billable hours are a key measure of associate and partner productivity. More is better. The resulting culture pushes everyone harder. Meanwhile, each partner strives to maximize individual client billings that he or she controls. Those billings in most cases determine a partner’s annual share of the firm’s profits. Their clients also become tickets to other firms. That makes partners reluctant to share too many important client responsibilities with their associates and fellow partners.

For clients, the consequences of the billable-hour system can be absurd. Fatigue through overwork can produce negative returns — the critical document missed during a late-night marathon review; the error in the draft of a corporate filing that goes unnoticed.

Why do clients tolerate this perverse system? Periodically they rebel, especially during economic downturns, but those revolutions have been short-lived and unsuccessful. A 2011 survey by ALM Legal Intelligence, an online data service, found that alternative fee arrangements accounted for only 16 percent of revenues at the nation’s largest law firms in 2010. Despite outcries for reform, the billable hour remains entrenched and the barriers to change are formidable. In many practice areas, including large and lucrative bankruptcy cases, prior court rulings (including the United States Supreme Court’s 2010 opinion in Perdue v. Kenny A.) essentially require lawyers to use the billable-hour approach if they want to assure approval of their fee petitions.

There’s a way out of the mess. But it requires clients to press harder for alternative fee arrangements, courts to back away from policies that embed the billable hour, law firm leaders to stop rewarding excessive associate hours and senior partners to consider the deleterious consequences of their myopic focus on short-term profit-maximizing behavior.

However it comes out, DLA Piper isn’t the first law firm to endure a client billing controversy. While at a big firm, Webster Hubbell, a former Arkansas Supreme Court justice and associate attorney general for President Bill Clinton, was caught billing clients for time that he never worked. He went to prison. A partner in a prominent Chicago law firm got into trouble when someone wondered how he could bill almost 6,000 hours annually over four consecutive years. He couldn’t.

In fact, a cottage industry has now developed in auditing outside law firm invoices to clients. Even so, as the deceit associated with the billable hour continues undetected, equally insidious consequences of the entire system endure. The episodes of public embarrassment will remain infrequent, and the triggers producing them will be idiosyncratic. DLA Piper’s current notoriety began when a former client refused to pay his roughly $675,000 bill. The firm sued him last year, and its internal e-mails about the matter became subject to discovery. Before long, they landed on the front page of The New York Times.

DLA Piper said that the comments of its lawyers were “an inexcusable effort at humor.” What’s really not funny is the toll that the flawed system is taking on a vital profession.

Steven J. Harper, a former partner at the law firm Kirland & Ellis and an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, is the author, most recently, of “The Lawyer Bubble: A Profession in Crisis.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/opinion/the-case-against-the-law-firm-billable-hour.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130329&_r=0

***

Will Portman on Coming Out (Yale Daily News)

***

PORTMAN: Coming out

by Will Portman – Guest Columnist

March 25, 2013

I came to Yale as a freshman in the fall of 2010 with two big uncertainties hanging over my head: whether my dad would get elected to the Senate in November, and whether I’d ever work up the courage to come out of the closet.

I made some good friends that first semester, took a couple of interesting classes and got involved in a few rewarding activities. My dad won his election. On the surface, things looked like they were going well. But the truth was, I wasn’t happy.

I’d make stuff up when my suitemates and I would talk about our personal lives. I remember going to a dance in the Trumbull dining hall with a girl in my class and feeling guilty about pretending to be somebody I wasn’t. One night, I snuck up to the stacks in Sterling Library and did some research on coming out. The thought of telling people I was gay was pretty terrifying, but I was beginning to realize that coming out, however difficult it seemed, was a lot better than the alternative: staying in, all alone.

I worried about how my friends back home would react when I told them I was gay. Would they stop hanging out with me? Would they tell me they were supportive, but then slowly distance themselves? And what about my friends at Yale, the “Gay Ivy”? Would they criticize me for not having come out earlier? Would they be able to understand my anxiety about all of this? I felt like I didn’t quite fit in with Yale or Cincinnati, or with gay or straight culture.

In February of freshman year, I decided to write a letter to my parents. I’d tried to come out to them in person over winter break but hadn’t been able to. So I found a cubicle in Bass Library one day and went to work. Once I had something I was satisfied with, I overnighted it to my parents and awaited a response.

They called as soon as they got the letter. They were surprised to learn I was gay, and full of questions, but absolutely rock-solid supportive. That was the beginning of the end of feeling ashamed about who I was.

I still had a ways to go, though. By the end of freshman year, I’d only come out to my parents, my brother and sister, and two friends. One day that summer, my best friend from high school and I were hanging out.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” I finally said. “I’m gay.” He paused for a second, looked down at the ground, looked back up, and said, “Me too.”

I was surprised. At first it was funny, and we made jokes about our lack of gaydar. Then it was kind of sad to realize that we’d been going through the same thing all along but hadn’t felt safe enough to confide in each other. But then, it was pretty cool — we probably understood each other’s situation at that moment better than anybody else could.

In the weeks that followed, I got serious about coming out. I made a list of my family and friends and went through the names, checking them off one by one as I systematically filled people in on who I really was. A phone call here, a Skype call there, a couple of meals at Skyline Chili, my favorite Cincinnati restaurant. I was fortunate that virtually everyone, both from Yale and from home, was supportive and encouraging, calming my fears about how they’d react to my news. If anything, coming out seemed to strengthen my friendships and family relationships.

I started talking to my dad more about being gay. Through the process of my coming out, we’d had a tacit understanding that he was my dad first and my senator a distant second. Eventually, though, we began talking about the policy issues surrounding marriage for same-sex couples.

The following summer, the summer of 2012, my dad was under consideration to be Gov. Romney’s running mate. The rest of my family and I had given him the go-ahead to enter the vetting process. My dad told the Romney campaign that I was gay, that he and my mom were supportive and proud of their son, and that we’d be open about it on the campaign trail.

When he ultimately wasn’t chosen for the ticket, I was pretty relieved to have avoided the spotlight of a presidential campaign. Some people have criticized my dad for waiting for two years after I came out to him before he endorsed marriage for gay couples. Part of the reason for that is that it took time for him to think through the issue more deeply after the impetus of my coming out. But another factor was my reluctance to make my personal life public.

We had decided that my dad would talk about having a gay son if he were to change his position on marriage equality. It would be the only honest way to explain his change of heart. Besides, the fact that I was gay would probably become public anyway. I had encouraged my dad all along to change his position, but it gave me pause to think that the one thing that nobody had known about me for so many years would suddenly become the one thing that everybody knew about me.

It has been strange to have my personal life in the headlines. I could certainly do without having my sexual orientation announced on the evening news, or commentators weighing in to tell me things like living my life honestly and fully is “harmful to [me] and society as a whole.” But in many ways it’s been a privilege to come out so publicly. Now, my friends at Yale and the folks in my dad’s political orbit in Ohio are all on the same page. They know two things about me that I’m very proud of, not just one or the other: that I’m gay, and that I’m Rob and Jane Portman’s son.

I’m grateful to be able to continue to integrate my two worlds, the yin and yang of Yale and Ohio and the different values and experiences they represent in my life. When you find yourself between two worlds — for example, if you’re navigating the transition between a straight culture and a gay identity — it’s possible to feel isolated and alone, like you don’t fit in with either group that makes up a part of who you are.

But instead of feeling like you don’t belong anywhere, or like you have to reject one group in order to join another, you can build a bridge between your two worlds, and work to facilitate greater understanding between them.

I support marriage for same-sex couples because I believe that everybody should be treated the same way and have the same shot at happiness. Over the course of our country’s history the full rights of citizenship have gradually been extended to a broader and broader group of people, something that’s made our society stronger, not weaker. Gay rights may be the civil rights cause of the moment, but the movement fits into a larger historical narrative.

I’m proud of my dad, not necessarily because of where he is now on marriage equality (although I’m pretty psyched about that), but because he’s been thoughtful and open-minded in how he’s approached the issue, and because he’s shown that he’s willing to take a political risk in order to take a principled stand. He was a good man before he changed his position, and he’s a good man now, just as there are good people on either side of this issue today.

We’re all the products of our backgrounds and environments, and the issue of marriage for same-sex couples is a complicated nexus of love, identity, politics, ideology and religious beliefs. We should think twice before using terms like “bigoted” to describe the position of those opposed to same-sex marriage or “immoral” to describe the position of those in favor, and always strive to cultivate humility in ourselves as we listen to others’ perspectives and share our own.

I hope that my dad’s announcement and our family’s story will have a positive impact on anyone who is closeted and afraid, and questioning whether there’s something wrong with them. I’ve been there. If you’re there now, please know that things really do get better, and they will for you too.

Will Portman is a junior in Trumbull College. 

http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2013/03/25/portman-coming-out/

***

12 Year Old Boy Dies After Bullying Attack

***

[Also see below: “To This Day”]

12-year-old boy who was victim of bullying attack dies after weeks in hospital

By David Chang, NBCPhiladelphia

March 4, 2013

PHILADELPHIA -- A young boy who was the victim of bullying has died, according to his family. Bailey O'Neill, who turned 12 on Saturday, was in a coma after suffering several seizures. His family told NBC10's Katy Zachry that he died at the hospital on Sunday. 

Bailey's family says he was jumped by two classmates during recess at Darby Township School last January and suffered a concussion as well as a broken nose as a result.  He then began to suffer seizures the next day, forcing doctors to put him into a medically induced coma. Joy Fecanin, the boy's grandmother, told NBC10's Katy Zachry that he had to have a blood transfusion after getting pneumonia.

On Sunday, the following message was posted on the Building Hope for Bailey Facebook Page:

I would like to thank everyone who has prayed and supported Bailey and his family!! Bailey has been the strongest toughest boy I know. He has fought this battle long and hard. There just wasn't a way to fix this. I wish I could say he will get better but I can't. Bailey has gone to be with God today :( I love you Jina Risoldi with all my heart and I will help you through this. Bailey I love you!!! Please keep Baileys family in your prayers!!!

While the students who jumped Bailey were suspended for two days, police have not yet revealed whether they will be criminally charged.

“I would like to see these kids punished,” said Fecanin when she spoke to Zachry last month. “Something has to be done. I don’t know what’s taking them so long.”

Delaware County District Attorney Jack Whelan says investigators are trying to determine if the injuries Bailey received in the fight caused his seizures. Investigators interviewed kids and recess aides who were on the playground when the fight broke out.

“We can assure them that we are going to continue with our investigation,” said Whelan.

Bailey’s younger brother was taken out of the school because his parents were worried that he'd also be the victim of bullying. 

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/04/17174389-12-year-old-boy-who-was-victim-of-bullying-attack-dies-after-weeks-in-hospital?lite=

***

"To This Day" – the lasting impact of bullying

***

“To This Day” – a riveting spoken word poem by Shane Koyczan addressing the profound and lasting impact of bullying. Animated by the “To This Day Project”.

http://youtu.be/ltun92DfnPY

The poem itself along with just the audio track is here:

http://tothisdayproject.com/listen

***

We Found Our Son in the Subway

***

We Found Our Son in the Subway

By Peter Mercurio

The story of how Danny and I were married last July in a Manhattan courtroom, with our son, Kevin, beside us, began 12 years earlier, in a dark, damp subway station.

Danny called me that day, frantic. “I found a baby!” he shouted. “I called 911, but I don’t think they believed me. No one’s coming. I don’t want to leave the baby alone. Get down here and flag down a police car or something.” By nature Danny is a remarkably calm person, so when I felt his heart pounding through the phone line, I knew I had to run.

When I got to the A/C/E subway exit on Eighth Avenue, Danny was still there, waiting for help to arrive. The baby, who had been left on the ground in a corner behind the turnstiles, was light-brown skinned and quiet, probably about a day old, wrapped in an oversize black sweatshirt.

In the following weeks, after family court had taken custody of “Baby ACE,” as he was nicknamed, Danny told the story over and over again, first to every local TV news station, then to family members, friends, co-workers and acquaintances. The story spread like an urban myth: You’re never going to believe what my friend’s cousin’s co-worker found in the subway. What neither of us knew, or could have predicted, was that Danny had not just saved an abandoned infant; he had found our son.

Three months later, Danny appeared in family court to give an account of finding the baby. Suddenly, the judge asked, “Would you be interested in adopting this baby?” The question stunned everyone in the courtroom, everyone except for Danny, who answered, simply, “Yes.”

“But I know it’s not that easy,” he said.

“Well, it can be,” assured the judge before barking out orders to commence with making him and, by extension, me, parents-to-be.

My first reaction, when I heard, went something like: “Are you insane? How could you say yes without consulting me?” Let’s just say, I nailed the “jerk” part of knee-jerk.

In three years as a couple, we had never discussed adopting a child. Why would we? Our lives were not geared for child rearing. I was an aspiring playwright working as a part-time word processor and Danny was a respected yet wildly underpaid social worker. We had a roommate sleeping behind a partition in our living room to help pay the rent. Even if our financial and logistical circumstances had been different, we knew how many challenges gay couples usually faced when they want to adopt. And while Danny had patience and selflessness galore, I didn’t. I didn’t know how to change a diaper, let alone nurture a child.

But here was fate, practically giving us a baby. How could we refuse? Eventually, my fearful mind spent, my heart seized control to assure me I could handle parenthood.

A caseworker arranged for us to meet the baby at his foster home in early December. Danny held the fragile baby first, then placed him in my arms. In order to protect myself from future heartache, I had convinced myself I could not, and would not, become inextricably attached. I didn’t trust the system and was sure there would be obstacles. But with the baby’s eyes staring up at me, and all the innocence and hope he represented, I, like Danny, was completely hooked.

The caseworker told us that the process, which included an extensive home study and parenting classes, could take up to nine months. We’d have ample time to rearrange our lives and home for a baby. But a week later, when Danny and I appeared in front of the judge to officially state our intention to adopt, she asked, “Would you like him for the holiday?”

What holiday? Memorial Day? Labor Day? She couldn’t have meant Christmas, which was only a few days away.

And yet, once again, in unison this time, we said yes. The judge grinned and ordered the transition of the baby into our custody. Our nine-month window of thoughtful preparation was instantly compacted to a mere 36 hours. We were getting a baby for Christmas.

We spent that year as foster parents while our caseworker checked up on us and the baby’s welfare. During that time we often wondered about the judge. Did she know Danny was a social worker and therefore thought he would make a good parent? Would she have asked him to adopt if she knew Danny was gay and in a relationship? At the final hearing, after she had signed the official adoption order, I raised my hand. “Your honor, we’ve been wondering why you asked Danny if he was interested in adopting?”

“I had a hunch,” she just said. “Was I wrong?” And with that she rose from her chair, congratulated us, and exited the courtroom.

And that was how we left it, as Baby ACE became Kevin, and grew from an infant to a boy. That is, until 2011, when New York State allowed Danny and me to legally marry.

“Why don’t you ask the judge who performed my adoption to marry you and Dad?” Kevin suggested one morning on our walk to school.

“Great idea,” I replied. “Would you like to meet her?”

“Sure. Think she’d remember me?”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

After dropping Kevin off, I composed a query letter and sent it to the catchall e-mail address listed for the Manhattan family court. Within hours, a court attorney called to say that, of course, the judge remembered us, and was thrilled by the idea of officiating our marriage. All we had to do was pick a date and time.

When we ventured back to family court for the first time in over 10 years, I imagined that the judge might be nervous to come face to face with the results of one of her placement decisions — what if Kevin wasn’t happy and wished he had different parents? Kevin was nervous too. When he was a toddler, Danny and I made him a storybook that explained how we became a family, and it included an illustration of the judge, gavel in hand. A character from his book was about to jump off the page as a real person. What if she didn’t approve of the way he turned out?

Kevin reached out to shake her hand.

“Can I give you hug?” she asked. When they separated, the judge asked Kevin about school, his interests, hobbies, friends and expressed her delight that we were there.

When we finally remembered the purpose of the visit, and Danny and I moved into position to exchange vows, I reflected on the improbable circumstances that delivered all of us to this moment. We weren’t supposed to be there, two men, with a son we had never dreamed of by our side, getting married by a woman who changed and enriched our lives more than she would ever know. But there we were, thanks to a fateful discovery and a judicious hunch.

Peter Mercurio is a playwright and screenwriter whose latest screenplay is “Found (a True Story).”

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/we-found-our-son-in-the-subway/#more-140555

***