For Essie Hembree, 51, of Middletown, R.I., today will be a different kind of Mother’s Day.
Mrs. Hembree will telephone her biological mother, Gaynell “Jimmie” Rowland, in Fort Worth, Texas. The last time she was on the line with her mother on Mother’s Day, the “line” was an umbilical cord.
The two were reunited after 50 years last summer – the culmination of months of detective work by Mrs. Hembree, a Chattanooga native who now works as an office manager in Providence, R.I.
“It’s overwhelming, actually, to think about what’s happened in the last year of my life,” Mrs. Hembree said in a telephone interview last week.
Mrs. Hembree grew up in Chattanooga. She was born at Erlanger hospital in January 1959.