U.S. families celebrate children's ties to Romania

U.S. families celebrate children's ties to Romania

Ruxandra Giura - Fall 2003 December 9, 2003 1:00 am

WASHINGTON -- Five-year-old Laura Robak kept running up and down the stairs at the ornate Romanian Embassy. Every now and then she stopped to ask her mother: "When is Santa coming?"

Soon she was playing with some of the other 80 children at the Christmas party Saturday. Like her, they had all been adopted by American families who traveled to Romania to find and adopt children over a dozen years.

“When I first saw her, I thought she was very beautiful,” said Linda Robak of Wilton, Conn., who adopted the little girl she calls Lala in May 2001 from the Romanian town Sfantu-Gheorghe, following a six-month legal adoption process.

Many of the American families who adopted about 8,000 Romanian children from 1990 to 2002 try to keep the children's cultural heritage alive by attending events bearing a Romanian touch, such as the 12th annual embassy Christmas party.

Robak said she initially tried to adopt a child in the United States but could only find older children. She wanted a toddler and chose to adopt internationally, she said.

“I wanted a country I could go back to again and again,” Robak said. “Romania is a beautiful country, so ultimately I chose Romania, and I am happy I did.”

Laura was referred to Robak, a single mother, when she was 2 years old and living with a foster family.

“When I came to pick her up, I had to climb five flights of stairs," Robak said. "The door was open. … I was flabbergasted. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I was ecstatic she was mine.”

Robak keeps in touch with the Romanian foster family through e-mail, giving her someone to ask about Romanian history, culture and traditions. She is planning a trip to Romania so Laura can see where she was born and meet her biological mother and her foster family.

Loredana Ribera was 16 months old when an American family adopted her from the Romanian town of Ramnicu Valcea in 1991. She took her first trip to Romania in 1997 to visit her birthplace and her biological family, she said.

“I've always been curious. I wanted to know – where did I come from?” said Ribera, who is now 14 and lives in Seattle. Her family, including a sister who is her parents' biological child, flew to Washington to attend the party.

Her trip to Romania came as a culture a shock, she said. “It was really different from anything I have seen in United States. It was fascinating.”

Ribera and her family returned to Romania in May and “it was a lot easier to understand things,” she said.

“It hit me a lot harder. It was a big realization of what Romania is – the importance of Romania to my life. Everything started to make sense.”

Although the Robaks and Riberas' experiences have been positive, some families have less happy stories to tell.

When Katherine Klimowicz of Largo, Fla., turned 13 in 2002, she decided she hated everyone and everybody and wanted to go back to her birth country Romania, said her adoptive U.S. mother Celina Klimowicz.

“I don't know what happened,” Celina Klimowicz said. “Her self-esteem just sank because she didn't know who she was.”

Klimowicz, a single parent, went by herself to the Romanian town of Targu Mures to adopt a child in June 1991, following the extensive television coverage of children abandoned in Romanian orphanages.

When Katherine left Romania, she was a 25-month-old "sickly girl" who weighed only 19 pounds, her mother said.

“I have always kept Romania in her heritage alive in this house, always,” Klimowicz said. "She was always had a very large [Romanian] flag hanging in her bedroom. I have all the books I could ever find about everything about Romania. Everything was always here.

“But then, I guess when they reach that age of identity then there are a lot of answers that aren't there.”

Klimowicz said she believes things will return to normal in time.

Dan Bonham adopted an 11-year-old boy from Romania in November 2002, just before the country placed a moratorium on international adoptions.

Bonham promised the Romanian social workers that he and Andrei Vasile and the rest of the family would spend vacations in Romania every other year.

Before the adoption, Bonham vacationed with Andrei at Constanta, a seaside town.

“I visited with him in August last year. We spent a week down on the beach, swimming and just had a good week,” said Bonham, of Cincinnati. “I asked him at the end of the week – are you sure this is what you want, and he said absolutely. I went back to get him on Dec. 13.”

While they waited for the paperwork to be completed, Bonham called Andrei every day for four months and hired a tutor to help him become fluent in English. In return, Bonham started learning Romanian. Andrei and his 7-year-old American brother are now “inseparable,” the father said.

The Bonhams remain in touch with the Romanian social workers and Andrei's friends in the orphanage.

“He is a Romanian a boy, and I can bring him to America, and I can make him an American citizen, but he is always going to be an Romanian boy,” Bonham said. “And if I ever hope to understand who he is and help him understand who he is, I have to know that. And after 10 years, it's not a part you just cut off and leave behind.”