Lena was forced to place her baby for adoption when she was a young teenager. But after 82 years, she finally had the chance to look into her daughter’s beautiful eyes again.
Betty Morrell never knew her biological mom. And at the age of 82 years old, she thought that meeting her mother would be close to impossible…until it actually happened.
Betty, who hails from Spring Hill, Florida, started searching for her mom after her adoptive parents passed away in 1954. She was determined to meet her, so she was tirelessly looking for ways to track her and get to know her.
She did everything she could. She even hired private detectives to find more leads on her biological mom’s location.
“I hired private detectives, called adoption agencies and wrote letters to anyone that might have been able to help me,” Morrell tells PEOPLE. “I believe in fate though, and I think we were meant to meet, when we were meant to meet.”
And truly, Betty and her biological mom were meant to meet each other.
After decades of various efforts that ended with negative results, Betty finally made huge progress and found out about the identity of her birth mother. She instantly set for them to meet.
For the first time since her birth, Betty got to gaze at the eyes of her birth mother, Lena Pierce, who was 96 years old.
Back in 1933, Lena gave birth to Betty in Utica, New York. She was only 13 then. She was a ward of the state, and when she brought Betty into this world, the name she gave her child was Eva May.
Lena got to be with Betty for six months until the state gave the baby away to Betty’s adoptive parents. Under their care, Betty was an only child, but she had no idea her parents were not her biological parents.
Betty was curious about her roots and wanted to find out who her birth parents were.
The first thing she did was to go back to the New York adoption agency that handled her case and from there, she did various efforts to get more information. She eventually got hold of her birth certificate and a letter that told her about her mom.
She had very little progress from there on because her adoption papers were all sealed, preventing her from getting crucial information that would lead her to Lena.
It was a good thing that Betty never gave up because the reunion she thought would never happen finally became a reality.
The moment they finally embraced each other was decades in the making. Betty could not believe that it was actually happening.
Truly, this is a reunion of a lifetime. It only proves that good things really come to those who wait. And even though Lena passed away months after their reunion, we all know that she was happy because she was able to meet her first baby girl before she said goodbye.What an amazing story! Find out more about this incredible reunion by watching the video below.