For the 23rd year, Gallery of Diamonds, which will soon be moving to a larger facility in Santa Ana, CA, will award diamonds to two students who best express in writing, Why Mom Deserves a Diamond. Gallery of Diamonds jewelers is the original sponsor. The deadline is January 9, 2015. The new facility will accommodate thousands of kids to come and read their letters of love to their mothers.
The grand prize is an unmounted quarter-carat diamond. Many other kids will receive other genuine gemstones.
Being adopted, I searched my birth mother for nearly twenty years. I was born in Indianapolis and made my first 100-mile drive to the courthouse as soon as I received my drivers license. The judge gave me a copy of the court summary which stated my birthmother, Betty Price, relinquished me because “she knew nothing of the father of this baby and I was conceived after too much to drink.” The document also said, “it was felt that Betty was not telling the truth and she was told what to tell our agency.” She said she married a Carl Price at the “age of only seventeen” and, “they divorced because he was never true to her.” My search led to a dead end because the various towns and cities she mentioned were thought to be lies.
Nearly twenty years later, I discovered a wedding license application that told of Carl Price being married to a Betty Stewart. The dates coincided from that of the original court summary. It said the name of Betty’s mother, Hattie Stewart, from Coatesville, Indiana. I located the telephone number of Hattie, who was still living in Coatesville. She said that Betty had died years before and that Betty told the family I was still born. She said she didn’t know I was alive! She also said I had many aunts, uncles, and siblings!
After sharing the news with my adoptive parents, my adoptive mother and grandmother had been secretly communicating to have a surprise reunion at my home in New Albany. I am so glad that my adoptive parents had the chance to partake in this joyous event. For the first time at the age of thirty-six, in what I still remember as a wonderful dream, I had met several relatives who shared my DNA.
I created the contest to give kids the opportunity to show their appreciation for their own mothers, especially while they are living. Winners are required to come and recite their writings and place their prizes into the palms of their mothers. The contest prepares kids for a lifetime of success.
More information can be found at www.WhyMomDeservesADiamond.com.
Diamond Mike Watson is a gemologist from the Gemological Institute of America and the owner of Gallery of Diamonds. He is the author of Moon Over Mountains – The Search for Mom, The Legend of Why Mom Deserves a Diamond, Tales of Imagination – Everything Is Real, Adopted Like Me- Chosen to Search for a Birthmother, and In Search of Mom- Journey of an Adoptee.
That ingthsi’s perfect for what I need. Thanks!