JERRY PROGNER AND HIS DAUGHTER, DIANE CROSSFIELD, HAVE BEEN REUNITED AFTER 44 YEARS. GAZETTE PHOTO BY JILL BALLINGER As a high school graduate in 1965, probably some of the worst news he could have gotten was that his teenage girlfriend was pregnant. Mariposa resident Jerry Progner now says that perceived tragedy so long ago is a blessing.

Progner and his family got a special delivery this summer, in the form of Diane Crossfield, her husband and children. Crossfield is the daughter that Progner and his girlfriend put up for adoption in Kentucky so long ago.

Flashback to 1965, when the world was a very different place. Progner joined the Navy and saw the world. He said he never looked back. “I walked away,” he said. “Sometimes you just have to change your life.”

At six days old, Crossfield had a new family and an amended birth certificate that showed her adoptive parents as her birth parents. She always knew she was adopted and was always curious about her roots, but birth certificates were sealed at adoption at that time.

JERRY PROGNER (SECOND FROM LEFT) IS PICTURED WITH HIS FAMILY. THEY ARE, FROM LEFT, GRANDDAUGHTERS GRACE CROSSFIELD, ALEXA AND KYLEE MORROW, SON-IN-LAW MATT CROSSFIELD, DAUGHTER DIANE CROSSFIELD, GRANDSON TULY ATKINS AND DAUGHTER COURTNEY PROGNER. NOT PICTURED IS SON RYAN PROGNER AND WIFE, LIZ DARCY. GAZETTE PHOTO BY JILL BALLINGER All Crossfield knew was that both her parents were 18 years old at the time of her birth and “appeared to be healthy.” There was nothing else to go on. She endured questions about her heritage, never knowing the answer

to simple

questions like “Are you Italian?”

When she was in her early 30s, Crossfield decided she

needed to know more about her birth parents. Kentucky has an elaborate system of hoops to jump through to get that information. Unfortunately, Crossfield said, even that system “leads to nothing.”

After she turned 40, Crossfield became politically active in trying to change the rules for adoptees. She helped form the Adoptee Rights Coalition and worked with legislators to change the law about sealed birth certificates.

While working with the organization, she met someone who discovered a loophole. Even though the birth certificate information changed at adoption, the number remained the same. Thus began a search of Kentucky’s “birth books.” Crossfield had some 70,000 records to go through.

She poured through the books, finding her birth certificate at number 67,209.

Crossfield began trying to contact her birth mother. “I wrote the ‘are you my mother?’ letter,” she said in February, 2009. “We began a very tentative correspondence. She has not been ready to meet me yet.” Crossfield’s birth mother lives just 70 miles from her. The woman, however, did provide Progner’s name and address.

Crossfield Googled the address. All that came up on the satellite picture were the trees that are on Progner’s Midpines property. “I thought he was either some crunchy granola or Ted Kaczinski,” she said last week. Still, she finally had a lead. “It’s a very scary thing to be faced with finding your origin,” she said.

It took her several weeks, but she finally found the courage to write the “Are you my father?” letter. Before she could receive the certified delivery slip back, she got an email from Progner.

In a house full of teenage boys, Crossfield screamed when she read it. “My heart just stopped,” she said. She recited Progner’s words from that email. “Dear Diane, the first word that comes to mind is epic. I’ve been waiting 44 years to get this letter.”

Progner’s formally eldest child, Courtney, said her dad was just as excited. “Dad was ready to get on a plane the next day,” she said. He didn’t, but his wife and children started a Facebook search to connect with their new family member.

Meanwhile, Crossfield was still stunned. “It was so awesome,” she said of finally meeting her family. “Right from the beginning, the whole family opened their arms. It’s an adoptee’s dream. They said, ‘we want you in our lives.’”

It was a dream come true for Courtney, too, who had never had a sister. She was the only girl, the oldest child. Now she is the “middle child.”

Crossfield said that once she and her family were in Mariposa, it was like they always had been. “It feels like I have known them all my life,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like we’re strangers. It feels like we have a history, even though it just started. It’s been amazing.”

Courtney agreed, talking about how they had a huge sleepover when the Crossfields arrived. “Everything fit right into place,” she said.

From here, the family plans to spend a lot of time figuring out travel plans. “There will be a lot of frequent flier miles,” Crossfield said. “It’s going to be a lot of back and forth until they can convince us to move out here.”

Progner is thrilled to have his daughter and grandchildren join Courtney and his son Ryan as part of the family. Remembering how difficult the situation was 44 years ago is easy now. “The best news today is that the 44-year-old daughter is here,” Progner said.

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