Arkansas Judge Joseph Wood Discovers Biological Parents Who Left Him in Shoebox in 1965

Arkansas Judge Joseph Wood has been trying to put the pieces of his life together as a child in foster care who was left in a shoebox in the dead of winter as a baby in 1965.

In November 2021, Wood appeared in a digital program on Fox News to discuss his young life in a Chicago orphanage facility for National Adoption Month. In that interview, Wood also relayed in public that he's been trying to search for his biological parents.

The Arkansas judge said that his only lead was his original birth documents, which he was able to access in 2010 after Illinois allowed adult adoptees to apply for the unsealing of their adoption records. In these documents, Wood learned he was a "founding," meaning his biological parents abandoned him at birth.

Wood also learned that his parents left him in a shoebox in front of an apartment building. He was found on March 20, 1965, which he thought all along was his birthday.

"It was the first time, as a 45-year-old man, that I was reading...'no, that date was the date you were found," Wood said. The name Ceasar Johnson was also on his founding certificate as he was the man who found and turned him over to the doctors.

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Discovery of His Biological Parents

After that interview, CeCe Moore, a sought-after genetic genealogist, reached out to Wood to offer her help. She considered his situation a "cold case" because his adoption records did not provide the exact details of his parents. Thus, the only way to proceed with his search was to get a DNA test.

Wood accepted Moore's offer and realized they could be racing against time because his biological parents might not have more years to live. Two days before Christmas last year, the judge received a call from Moore's team informing him of a DNA match.

However, that match led to an unfortunate discovery that his biological mother died at 36 years old in 1978 while his biological father died in 2007 at 68. Wood also learned that he lost one brother in 2013 while his grandfather on his mother's side died in 2020 at 98 years old.

Wood has two other siblings, a brother, and a sister, whom he has yet to meet. He's also looking forward to getting to know more than a dozen aunts and uncles from both sides because his parents came from large families.

Meeting Ceasar Johnson

Wood has also personally met the man who found him in the shoebox. Johnson was a Korean War veteran who reassured Wood that his mother clearly loved him because she took care to place him in a shoebox on a site where he can be easily found, according to the New York Post.

The judge, who has been struggling to find out why he was abandoned, felt he might not get all the answers he needs because his biological parents are no longer around. Specifically, he wants to know what could have been so horrible that his parents gave him up. He's still looking forward to putting the pieces of his life together through the eyes and stories of his other family.

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