Zella Jackson Price, 76, a gospel in singer in the St. Louis suburb Olivette, says she was told 49 years ago that her daughter had died in a hospital hours after being born. But on Thursday, Price met that very alive daughter, Melanie Diane Gilmore. A nurse had told Jackson-Price that her baby, who was three months premature and weighed less than one pound, died shortly after birth. "She came up to me three hours later and said your baby passed," Jackson-Price told the NYDN.
Gilmore was subsequently adopted by another family, and believed that her birth mother gave her up. When she was 20, Gilmore's adoptive mother died, and she moved to Oregon to live with a relative. There, she began searching for her biological mother.
Gilmore's son and twin daughters helped search for their grandmother last year, using Facebook to track Jackson-Price down and a DNA test to confirm the match. Results came back in March, and it was "a 99.9997% match," Gilmore's daughter wrote in the description section of a YouTube video documenting the reunion.
Gilmore, who's been deaf since the age of 3, was given the news by her children via sign language. Then she was introduced to her mother for the first time in a video message
"God has given me everything the devil has taken from me," Jackson-Price said "I'm getting it back. I'm getting my baby back."
"I'm still kinda in shock. I don't know what we'll find out, what error, what was done, I don't know what we'll find out," she told the Daily News. "As soon as we get over the excitement of being together and everything, I will seek a lawyer."
Homer G. Phillips Hospital closed in 1979, and was converted into senior living apartments in 2003.
Source: New York Daily News/Mashable.com
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