'Don't give up hope': Adopted Derry man's emotional meeting with the Canadian sister he never knew existed
A Derry man who was adopted as a baby has spoken of his joy after meeting up with a sibling he never knew existed until last year.
Billy Scampton’s birth mother Moya Beckett, originally from Omagh, had been forced to give him up for adoption when she was a teenager. After giving birth in Newry, mother and child were taken to Marianvale Mother and Baby home and the baby was later transferred to another home in Fahan in Inishowen. Moya would later go on to emigrate to Canada.
Upon making contact with his sister Shannon last year Billy found out that his mother never forgot him, and that he also had a brother in Canada.
Billy - who was adopted by his “incredible” Derry family as a three month old baby - met Shannon for the first time when she flew into Dublin Airport with her husband a few weeks ago.
Describing how it came about, he told the Journal yesterday: "Shannon put a post on Facebook this day last year looking to trace anybody who knew her family or graves or anything like that. Her and her husband had been going through her mother’s stuff and she found a photograph of the family shop in Omagh and said she was looking to try and trace anybody who knew them. It had my birth mother’s name on it and that was her mother and it was the first time I learned that my birth mother had passed away. But it was a bitter sweet moment because it also gave me a contact to go forward.”
Billy did a bit of research and traced the message back to the original page where it had appeared and tried messaging. “My wife came bursting into the room one morning to say this woman I had been trying to contact had contacted her because apparently you had to join the group and I hadn’t. So I did and sent a message on July 1. On July 2 this woman, Shannon came back to me and she said, ‘I understand we have a common connection’, and I said ‘yes indeed we do’. She said, ‘Oh, I am intrigued’. I asked her what she knew about her mammy’s time in Ireland and she told me that shortly before she had passed away with dementia she told her she had given birth to a baby boy in Ireland and was force to give him up for adoption. All the pieces of the jigsaw fitted together. I told her: ‘I am your mammy’s little boy’.
"There was silence for about 30 or 40 seconds and she came back and said, ‘Oh my God, I am so happy and so teary and so pleased to meet you’. And about 30 seconds later we messaged on FaceTime and the we spoke for the first time ever. And she said, ‘I can tell you better than that, you also have a brother over here, David’. It was incredible, we spoke for about 40 minutes and we rang each other the following week and then the following Sunday night, the third Sunday on July, we spoke for six hours via FaceTime with my wife Moira and Shannon’s husband. We got to know one another. We have been in touch ever since and she flew in two weeks ago and we had a very emotional reunion in Dublin and it was just fantastic to be with her.”
The siblings spent the weekend in Dublin. “Before we left to go back up to Derry Shannon - and it blew me away - she had brought some of my mother’s ashes back for me to have in a beautiful carved box. They went on around Ireland – there was another five of them accompanying them- and Shannon and Cyril and a lady with them then came to Derry and we had a fantastic week, we were received with the Mayor Patricia Logue, we did the Bogside, the Walls, Giant’s Causeway. We did loads last week, it really was a lovely occasion.
"Last Sunday week we went up to Omagh to meet with cousins living there and we met up with an old aunt, a marvellous lady aged 91, Moya’s sister. Moya’s ashes were in two small containers – and we took one of the boxes to the bridge at Omagh because Moya went to school across from the bridge, her father worked at the bus depot and the family had a wee shop across the other side of the bridge. We sprinkled the ashes into the Strule river. Basically what we did was we brought our mother home. Then we threw in bunches of carnations each and then three red roses - one for Shannon, one for me and one for my brother David back home in Canada. When they came under the bridge and out, two of them were crossed over and one was just tucked in behind them.”
Billy was adopted as a baby by ‘two wonderful people’ Ben and Vera Scampton and their daughter, his beloved sister Michelle and he considers himself extremely fortunate. “I could not have wished for better folk. I carry my birth mother’s DNA, but it was Ben and Vera that forged me. They were two of the most remarkable people you could ever meet. Everybody has one mother, I am blessed to have two mothers.”
The enforced separation didn’t mean that Billy’s birth mother ever forgot him, and Billy said ‘it meant the world to me knowing that’. “It stayed with her and her words were, ‘I gave birth to a baby boy in Ireland; I was forced to give him up for adoption’. It stayed with her her and had a huge impact on her throughout her life.”
Billy said that one of the reasons I had previously become involved in the Mother and Baby campaign was the lack of family history and medical background for the children affected. “Their ‘Ground Zero’ is from when they are adopted. They don’t know any previous history and as people get older they are more prone to life-limiting, life changing illnesses whereas otherwise that can be identified through previous records, family history,” he said, while stressing: “It was never hidden from me that I was adopted and I was told they would never stand in my way from going looking. And I said I would never go looking while Ben and Vera were alive. I didn’t really start looking until after 2010. When I got married in 2007 I had to get my birth lines and that was when I discovered who my birth mother was, the first time I seen her name, but I didn’t go looking at that time.”
The Derry man paid tribute to fellow Mother and Baby home adoptee Terry Doran who has done so much for those affected.
Billy, now aged 62, is now looking forward to planning a trip to Canada “sooner rather than later”, and said he hopes his own incredible story will help others.
“If this gives anybody encouragement, an incentive to start or keep looking, don’t give up hope. This time last year on 20th May I knew nothing about this so even if it is the slightest lead, you should follow it.”