(L-R): Alan, Emily, Terri, G, Beth, Conner
A Needle in a Haystack
Feb 11, 2019 | Soccer
After many years of uncertainty, Coach G Guerrieri finally met his birth mother.
For most of his life, G Guerrieri wondered who he was, who he really was. Sure, he answered to G, Coach G or Coach Guerrieri, and he knew he was born May 15, 1963, in Chicago.
The rest was a mystery.
What was his family medical history? What was his ancestry? Why did his birth mother give him up?
"I always knew I was adopted," the Texas A&M soccer coach said. "My parents always told me that my birth mother had given me up for adoption to give me an opportunity for a better life. That's really as much as they ever really told me. I would always ask. I remember asking as a 5- or 6-year-old, 'How much did I cost?'
"It was always hard for me to wrap my head around it. It was never any kind of controversy, because it was never a hidden fact. It was just I didn't have any details at all, so I always wondered what the story was, who she was and the circumstances that would have led to it."
Guerrieri recently shared his story of discovering his birth mother on Facebook.
Beth Hardman was a 20-year-old flight attendant for Eastern Airlines, living in Chicago, when she became pregnant in 1962. After her engagement was called off, Hardman knew she couldn't raise a child as a single mother.
Hardman and her father hid her pregnancy from the rest of the family, including Hardman's mother, arranging adoption for Hardman's child through an attorney.
"I knew I couldn't take care of him," Hardman said. "Chicago was not a good place by myself at 20 years old, so that made a big difference. I just knew he would have a better life with someone else.
"A lot of people didn't even know I had G. In my family, only my dad knew. So it does my heart good to be able to talk about him, because for 45 years I couldn't say anything, or I didn't. Only a few people ever knew I had a baby."
Hardman never married and never had any other children, but she always wondered what happened to Baby Boy Hardman.
That's what she saw on the birth certificate, and the only reason Hardman knew her child's gender.
She never got to hold him or see him for almost 50 years. Hardman, though, always wondered about him.
"Every place I went, I would say, 'Is that my son?'" said Hardman, who is diabetic and recently had her left foot and lower leg amputated. "When I finally saw him, I knew I had never seen him before, because he looks just like us."
Hardman never expected to see her son. Guerrieri wondered if he'd ever meet his birth mother.
A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK
Guerrieri's interest in finding his mother always ended out of respect for his adopted mother. She requested he not look for his birth mother until she died.
"I always kind of feared the worst," Guerrieri said. "Maybe she's dead. Maybe she is in jail. Maybe she's a drug addict. All kinds of stuff. Your imagination runs wild when you don't know. Then, fears of just I didn't want to do anything that was going to jeopardize anything for my kids of what could happen. Really, I just kept it in the back of my mind for a long time."
Guerrieri's adopted mother, Kay, died in 2001. After that, Guerrieri once talked to private detectives, who were parents of a former player, but didn't take the search any further until an email arrived in 2011.
A former neighbor who once was Guerrieri's babysitter had a dream she was Guerrieri's sister. As it turned out, she wasn't, but it prompted Guerrieri to give his wife, Terri Markham Guerrieri, the OK to renew the search for his birth mother.
Terri had minimal information – a birth certificate that told her the birth mother's last name and Guerrieri's vague memory that his adopted mother once told him his birth mother was from the Indianapolis area. They discovered another document that revealed the birth mother's first name was Beth.
"What I learned pretty quickly was that in 1963, adoptions were very, very different," Terri Guerrieri said. "There was hardly any such thing as an open adoption, and a lot of times, especially in that region of the country, they would change birthdates to prevent people from finding each other.
"I went to a lot of message boards for adoptees seeking birth parents and birth parents seeking children that they gave up for adoption. It was amazing to me. How on earth do people find each other? I posted on them several times and looked often and never had any luck there. I gave up a couple of times."
Terri called every Beth Hardman she could find in Indiana and Illinois. More than a dozen times she struck out. She often considered Beth Hardman had married and changed her name.
"It's amazing how many Beth Hardmans there are," Terri said. "They were all very nice, but none of them were the right Beth Hardman."
Then, one day, Terri came across an obituary that listed Beth Hardman among the survivors. But Terri still couldn't find a phone number for that Beth Hardman. Among the other listed relatives, though, were Richard and David – Beth's brothers -- so Terri began calling every Richard and David Hardman in the area.
"I don't remember how many David Hardmans I called, but I finally reached Judy, Dave's wife," Terri said. "I asked her whether Beth had lived in Chicago in May of 1963 and had a child. She said, 'Oh, my God,' and then something like, 'It all makes sense.'"
Beth Hardman was living in Mitchell, Indiana, in her mother's house. Terri called and began her husband's story, asking Beth if she had given up a child for adoption in Chicago in May 1963. After a long pause, Beth confirmed it was her, began hyperventilating and asked Terri to call back in 10 minutes.
"I just couldn't even talk," Beth Hardman said.
A DIFFERENT LIFE
It was seven years ago that Terri interrupted Guerrieri at practice with the news.
"I found her!" Terri screamed into the phone more than once.
Guerrieri grew up in Chicago before his adopted father's job took the family, including Guerrieri's adopted sister, to Richardson when Guerrieri was starting the third grade. He became a star goalkeeper at J.J. Pearce High School and then the University of Tulsa before starting his coaching career.
Guerrieri, the only head coach in the 25-year history of Aggie Soccer, now is the longest-tenured coach at A&M and one of the winningest coaches in the history of NCAA Division I soccer.
All of that went through Guerrieri's head the first time he visited Mitchell, Indiana, the home of astronaut Gus Grissom, with a population of 4,300.
"My uncle Dick said, 'My father took that secret to his grave. He never told my mother about you. Never,'" Guerrieri said. "He said, 'I could never figure that out because they were so close that he would never keep any secrets from her.' He goes, 'But then it hit me. If he had told her about you, she would have raised you right here.' We're in the middle of Mayberry R.F.D., and I remember I lost my breath. I leaned back against the outer wall of the hardware store. That's when my life flashed in front of my eyes, all of the things that would have been different if I had been raised there. 'You would have gone to that school; you would have been in this church.'
"In my mind, I'm going, 'Well, if I'm in this small town, I never would have played soccer. Obviously, I never would have met my wife since we went to high school together. I never would have had this career. We never would have had our kids. I never would have come to A&M. All the girls I recruited to come to A&M, 90 percent of them wouldn't have come here, which means most of them wouldn't have met their husbands and wouldn't have had their kids.' So all these kind of ripples start going through my head."
Guerrieri has thanked his birth mother, whom he calls by her first name, more than once for her "selfless decision." Hardman has thanked him for finding her, giving her a whole new family, including three grandchildren, she otherwise wouldn't have known she had.
Guerrieri now has family who looks just like him, with the same forehead, the same personality and the same taste in clothes. He knows he's German-Scandinavian and not Irish-Italian, which explains his dislike of pine nuts and zucchini.
"I thought I'd been abandoned my whole life, and come to find out, I have this great family that I never even knew about and am still discovering," Guerrieri said. "It has confirmed in my mind that God has a course for me and purpose for me, and I'm in the right place, at the right time, doing the right things, making the right impact on people and striving to continue on this path that he's set me on. It's been just that much more rewarding.
"I think a lot of times we go through life wondering if I'd done this, my life would have been so much better, or I should have done that. To me, it's the opposite. Life is this way – better -- because of this really unselfish decision she made when she was 20 years old. The opportunity she gave me was what set my path and put me on this track and obviously continues to have impact on young people's lives to this day."
The rest was a mystery.
What was his family medical history? What was his ancestry? Why did his birth mother give him up?
"I always knew I was adopted," the Texas A&M soccer coach said. "My parents always told me that my birth mother had given me up for adoption to give me an opportunity for a better life. That's really as much as they ever really told me. I would always ask. I remember asking as a 5- or 6-year-old, 'How much did I cost?'
"It was always hard for me to wrap my head around it. It was never any kind of controversy, because it was never a hidden fact. It was just I didn't have any details at all, so I always wondered what the story was, who she was and the circumstances that would have led to it."
Guerrieri recently shared his story of discovering his birth mother on Facebook.
Beth Hardman was a 20-year-old flight attendant for Eastern Airlines, living in Chicago, when she became pregnant in 1962. After her engagement was called off, Hardman knew she couldn't raise a child as a single mother.
Hardman and her father hid her pregnancy from the rest of the family, including Hardman's mother, arranging adoption for Hardman's child through an attorney.
"I knew I couldn't take care of him," Hardman said. "Chicago was not a good place by myself at 20 years old, so that made a big difference. I just knew he would have a better life with someone else.
"A lot of people didn't even know I had G. In my family, only my dad knew. So it does my heart good to be able to talk about him, because for 45 years I couldn't say anything, or I didn't. Only a few people ever knew I had a baby."
Hardman never married and never had any other children, but she always wondered what happened to Baby Boy Hardman.
That's what she saw on the birth certificate, and the only reason Hardman knew her child's gender.
She never got to hold him or see him for almost 50 years. Hardman, though, always wondered about him.
"Every place I went, I would say, 'Is that my son?'" said Hardman, who is diabetic and recently had her left foot and lower leg amputated. "When I finally saw him, I knew I had never seen him before, because he looks just like us."
Hardman never expected to see her son. Guerrieri wondered if he'd ever meet his birth mother.
A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK
Guerrieri's interest in finding his mother always ended out of respect for his adopted mother. She requested he not look for his birth mother until she died.
"I always kind of feared the worst," Guerrieri said. "Maybe she's dead. Maybe she is in jail. Maybe she's a drug addict. All kinds of stuff. Your imagination runs wild when you don't know. Then, fears of just I didn't want to do anything that was going to jeopardize anything for my kids of what could happen. Really, I just kept it in the back of my mind for a long time."
Guerrieri's adopted mother, Kay, died in 2001. After that, Guerrieri once talked to private detectives, who were parents of a former player, but didn't take the search any further until an email arrived in 2011.
A former neighbor who once was Guerrieri's babysitter had a dream she was Guerrieri's sister. As it turned out, she wasn't, but it prompted Guerrieri to give his wife, Terri Markham Guerrieri, the OK to renew the search for his birth mother.
Terri had minimal information – a birth certificate that told her the birth mother's last name and Guerrieri's vague memory that his adopted mother once told him his birth mother was from the Indianapolis area. They discovered another document that revealed the birth mother's first name was Beth.
"What I learned pretty quickly was that in 1963, adoptions were very, very different," Terri Guerrieri said. "There was hardly any such thing as an open adoption, and a lot of times, especially in that region of the country, they would change birthdates to prevent people from finding each other.
"I went to a lot of message boards for adoptees seeking birth parents and birth parents seeking children that they gave up for adoption. It was amazing to me. How on earth do people find each other? I posted on them several times and looked often and never had any luck there. I gave up a couple of times."
Terri called every Beth Hardman she could find in Indiana and Illinois. More than a dozen times she struck out. She often considered Beth Hardman had married and changed her name.
"It's amazing how many Beth Hardmans there are," Terri said. "They were all very nice, but none of them were the right Beth Hardman."
Then, one day, Terri came across an obituary that listed Beth Hardman among the survivors. But Terri still couldn't find a phone number for that Beth Hardman. Among the other listed relatives, though, were Richard and David – Beth's brothers -- so Terri began calling every Richard and David Hardman in the area.
"I don't remember how many David Hardmans I called, but I finally reached Judy, Dave's wife," Terri said. "I asked her whether Beth had lived in Chicago in May of 1963 and had a child. She said, 'Oh, my God,' and then something like, 'It all makes sense.'"
Beth Hardman was living in Mitchell, Indiana, in her mother's house. Terri called and began her husband's story, asking Beth if she had given up a child for adoption in Chicago in May 1963. After a long pause, Beth confirmed it was her, began hyperventilating and asked Terri to call back in 10 minutes.
"I just couldn't even talk," Beth Hardman said.
A DIFFERENT LIFE
It was seven years ago that Terri interrupted Guerrieri at practice with the news.
"I found her!" Terri screamed into the phone more than once.
Guerrieri grew up in Chicago before his adopted father's job took the family, including Guerrieri's adopted sister, to Richardson when Guerrieri was starting the third grade. He became a star goalkeeper at J.J. Pearce High School and then the University of Tulsa before starting his coaching career.
Guerrieri, the only head coach in the 25-year history of Aggie Soccer, now is the longest-tenured coach at A&M and one of the winningest coaches in the history of NCAA Division I soccer.
All of that went through Guerrieri's head the first time he visited Mitchell, Indiana, the home of astronaut Gus Grissom, with a population of 4,300.
"My uncle Dick said, 'My father took that secret to his grave. He never told my mother about you. Never,'" Guerrieri said. "He said, 'I could never figure that out because they were so close that he would never keep any secrets from her.' He goes, 'But then it hit me. If he had told her about you, she would have raised you right here.' We're in the middle of Mayberry R.F.D., and I remember I lost my breath. I leaned back against the outer wall of the hardware store. That's when my life flashed in front of my eyes, all of the things that would have been different if I had been raised there. 'You would have gone to that school; you would have been in this church.'
"In my mind, I'm going, 'Well, if I'm in this small town, I never would have played soccer. Obviously, I never would have met my wife since we went to high school together. I never would have had this career. We never would have had our kids. I never would have come to A&M. All the girls I recruited to come to A&M, 90 percent of them wouldn't have come here, which means most of them wouldn't have met their husbands and wouldn't have had their kids.' So all these kind of ripples start going through my head."
Guerrieri has thanked his birth mother, whom he calls by her first name, more than once for her "selfless decision." Hardman has thanked him for finding her, giving her a whole new family, including three grandchildren, she otherwise wouldn't have known she had.
Guerrieri now has family who looks just like him, with the same forehead, the same personality and the same taste in clothes. He knows he's German-Scandinavian and not Irish-Italian, which explains his dislike of pine nuts and zucchini.
"I thought I'd been abandoned my whole life, and come to find out, I have this great family that I never even knew about and am still discovering," Guerrieri said. "It has confirmed in my mind that God has a course for me and purpose for me, and I'm in the right place, at the right time, doing the right things, making the right impact on people and striving to continue on this path that he's set me on. It's been just that much more rewarding.
"I think a lot of times we go through life wondering if I'd done this, my life would have been so much better, or I should have done that. To me, it's the opposite. Life is this way – better -- because of this really unselfish decision she made when she was 20 years old. The opportunity she gave me was what set my path and put me on this track and obviously continues to have impact on young people's lives to this day."
Weekly Press Conference: G Guerrieri
Thursday, October 23
The Aggie Soccer Hour (Ep 7)
Wednesday, October 22
Mizzou Postgame: G Guerrieri, Bella Yakel, Kaylee Noble
Thursday, October 16
Highlights: Texas A&M 2, Missouri 1
Thursday, October 16
