After 55 years, love brought them back together!

Gen Woodward longed to find the baby she’d given up for adoption. But because of a misunderstanding, she was told her daughter, Nicole Claypool, wanted nothing to do with her...but they finally discovered the truth

- Bill Holton 

Gen Woodward dabbed the last bit of frosting on the chocolate cake, then placed and lit a single candle on top. “Happy birthday,” she sang quietly to herself, fighting back tears.

It was November 15, and like every year on this day for decades, the Concord, New Hampshire, mother of three boys was celebrating her daughter’s birthday— the little girl her parents had made her give up back in 1967, when Gen was just 17 years old.

“Put it behind you,” they’d demanded.

But while Gen did build a happy life—after high school, she opened a dance studio, got married and had three sons—her heart just couldn’t forget her baby girl.

I hope life is treating you well, she silently wished, blowing out the candle.

A search gone awry

Saying goodbye to her baby was the hardest thing Gen ever had to do. And she decided early on that she wouldn’t disrupt her daughter’s childhood, but she promised herself that when her baby girl turned 18, she would try to make contact. And in November of 1985, Gen asked the adoption agency to reach out to her.

In nearby Manchester, Nicole Claypool had long known she was adopted, and though she was loved and always made to feel special, she wondered about her birth parents. But when the call from the adoption agency came, she’d just been in a near-fatal car crash. Her body was mangled. “I can’t meet my birth mother now!” she tearfully told the agent on the phone.

Gen was heartbroken, but she clung to the hope that maybe someday her daughter would change her mind.