‘So grateful’ for ‘beautiful souls’

Cassie Ralston was born Oct. 4, 2002, but her birth was bittersweet as her young mother relinquished her to a family hoping to grow theirs.

“Honestly, I really didn’t want to, but I was 15 when I got pregnant, 16 when I had her. I was scared,” said Krystle Dunlap. “When everyone says, ‘Do it, do it, do it,’ I did.’”

Cassie was adopted shortly after her birth by Bill and Kathy Ralston.

Of her search for parents for Cassie, Dunlap said her parents helped her enlist the assistance of an agency and they combed through profiles of parents. When she read the Ralston’s, she said she knew they were the ones.

“There wasn’t a question in my mind,” said Dunlap. “I said, “This is it. This is them. I love them.’”

At the time of Cassie’s adoption, the Ralstons had a 2-year-old son, Isaac, they had adopted previously. Isaac, who is biracial, was a deciding factor for Dunlap.

“Because Cassie is mixed, I wanted a mixed family,” she said. “I figured they could bond over that. I figured she would have Isaac.”

Dunlap and her mother met the Ralstons, including Isaac, and loved them even more in person.

“They were great,” said Dunlap. “They were just like, ‘No matter what, you’re not stepping on toes, we want you to stay in contact with her. We want you and your family to be a part of her life and I think that was really nice.’”

Cassie

Over the course of her life, Kathy and Dunlap provided updates to each other through the agency.

Cassie said she always knew she was adopted, not just by the color of her skin, but because her parents welcomed her questions and supported her decision to meet her biological family when she was ready.

The Ralstons went on to have two more children, Zoe and Claire. Cassie said she learned from her mom she was worried how Cassie and Isaac would react, but it wasn’t an issue. The desire to know more about her heritage would exist with or without her new siblings.

“Of course we still fight over the remote and take each others’ seats just like normal siblings do,” said Cassie. “The only difference is we look different.”

Cassie recalled her upbringing as one full of love and equity, feeling just as valued and important as Isaac, Zoe and Claire. But their differences also made her more curious.

“Kids would always ask, ‘Hey, your parents look different than you. Why?’” said Cassie. “Once I was able to understand the way genes work and that I was adopted, that desire to know who my parents were grew.”

Wanting to meet

Cassie said she learned through Kathy she had some delay in forming an attachment to her, but around the age of 3, things took a shift. As she grew, so did her love for Bill and Kathy, but as the years wore on she also felt a deep yearning to meet the woman who birthed her. She described the feeling as having an “emptiness.”

“My adoptive family, that’s who I grew up with. I will always love them,” said Cassie. “But even though I’ve never met my biological family, I’ve always felt this desire to find them and had this weird love for someone I never met.”

In Minnesota, Dunlap was feeling the same. An emptiness. Through the years, the Ralstons and Dunlap periodically kept in touch through letters and photos. But after each other their families moved, they lost contact for a number of years. Dunlap often wondered what became of the daughter she birthed nearly two decades earlier.

Only able to communicate through the adoption agency, a letter Dunlap wrote was returned as no forwarding address was on file. But her mother, a “super sleuth,” combed the internet. Cassie’s lack of social media presence made the search difficult, but her mother stumbled across a 2019 Creston News Advertiser article about Isaac and recognized Kathy.

“So I wrote her and she wrote back,” said Dunlap. “It was, ‘Whenever she is ready, of course I want to meet her.’ It took some time, but finally I got a letter, or maybe a Facebook message, from Kathy saying she was ready. She was ready to meet us. And I think it was the next weekend. It was like, ‘Let’s gather the troops and let’s go. I’m taking off work, I’m calling in sick, I don’t care. Let’s go!’”

Dunlap notified Cassie’s birth father John Coffer, now living in Waterloo. Coffer was 17 and still dating Dunlap at the time of Cassie’s birth. Despite their relationship, he didn’t have a say in Cassie’s adoption.

“I was angry, I was hurt, I felt betrayed, I felt robbed,” he said. “I was young and didn’t understand how to go about trying to get her back. I very much wanted to the opportunity to be her father.”

Coffer never had the contact with the Ralstons like Dunlap did, but got periodic updates from her. Upon finding out Cassie was interested in meeting him, Coffer said he felt overwhelmed, but was excited, anxious and nervous.

“I was just hoping that she would be accepting of me,” he said. “I was hoping she would be understanding to the fact that I tried to be there, but as a young father I just didn’t have any direction or know how to go about the situation. It was a whirlwind of emotion.”

Coffer said his family was equally excited to meet Cassie.

“My kids have always known about their long lost sister and have always wanted to get to know and create a relationship with her,” he said.

First meeting

Coffer said he met Cassie for the first time in September, after Dunlap invited him. He brought his wife, who he started dating in high school, and their three children.

For their first meeting, Bill Ralston drove his daughter to Minnesota to meet her birth mother and birth father for the first time.

Dunlap described the anticipation as ‘terrifying.”

“I was so nervous. I was so scared, but when we met, everything was just smooth. It seemed so normal,” she said. “Once we all sat down and started to talk, everything just felt kind of right.”

Dunlap doesn’t remember the entire conversation but remembered Bill walking ahead with her parents while she and Cassie talked.

“We just kind of fell into a conversation,” she said.

After their meeting in a restaurant, Dunlap retreated to her hotel, where Cassie joined her for another visit in her hotel room.

“We just hung out and watched a movie. She’s just so lighthearted it’s just hard not to just kind of flow with the conversation with her,” Dunlap said.

Upon meeting Cassie, Coffer said his initial reaction was to grab and hug her.

“My love language is touchy feely, so I’m that dad that always grabs and hugs, so that was the way I wanted to approach her,” he said. “But I wanted to kind of respect how she may or may not feel, or may or may not be.”

As they began to talk, Coffer compared it to cracking a dam.

“There was just so much I wanted to just drop in her lap, like, ‘There’s so many people I want you to meet. There’s so much I want to tell you. There’s so much about where you come from I want to explain,’” he said. “It was a lot, but there was just as much I wanted to take in, as well.”

Coffer said Cassie talked about her experiences growing up.

Coffer said he understood Cassie’s feelings.

“I just wanted to kind of reaffirm her of who she is and present to her a strong Black man,” he said.

Growing a family

Since their first meeting, Dunlap and Coffer have each met visited with Cassie a number of times, introducing her to more family and friends. Eager to catch up on lost time, they’ve celebrated birthdays, a New Year and even attended Cassie’s graduation.

When asked if she had any regrets, Dunlap simply said, “Yep.”

After a couple of minutes, she said she knows Cassie went to the right family and everything worked out, but life feels “a little unfair.”

“The one baby I could of had, not that I haven’t tried, but the one baby I could of had I gave away. And that’s not fair,” she said.

Even though he feels robbed of an opportunity to have raised Cassie, Coffer agreed Bill and Kathy were the right choice.

“I think Bill and Kathy are amazing people. They are beautiful souls,” he said. “The love that they give to Cassie and the life they have given her, I feel, in a sense, indebted to them. They did a good job. But on the other side that, you know, wishing I could have done it myself.”

Dunlap said it feels as though her family has expanded, now that she has met Cassie and is proud of the woman the Ralstons raised.

“I couldn’t imagine her being better than she is. Could she be better? I don’t think so,” said Dunlap.

After reading an article about Cassie speaking about her high school experience before the school board, Dunlap said she felt a sense of pride.

“Like, what high school kid does that? You have to be so strong and so self aware to do something like that,” she said. “Now she’s in college and doing so great. She’s so bubbly and so beautiful. She’s just an amazing human being. I’m so grateful.”

Coffer feels the same.

“She’s so smart. She’s so talented. They put a lot in to her. She’s strong,” said Coffer. “When I see the scars, the battle scars, of the things she’s been through, I admire that in her. When I look at her, I just know Bill and Kathy did everything they could to weather those storms with her and I’m sure they gave her the realest love that any parent would give any child, even their own. I very much applaud them in that way and I love them for that.”