32-year quest ends

By Thomas Lake, Times Staff Writer
Published February 27, 2008

Maxine Schleisner of Tampa will be reunited with her daughter, Daliah Baynard, on Thursday for the first time in 32 years, since Daliah was 2 or 3 years old. Schleisner says Daliah was kept from her by Daliah's father, a former boyfriend.
	[Carrie Pratt | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Special to the Times] Maxine Schleisner's infant daughter, Daliah Baynard, as she looked when she was 6-8 months old. [Special to the Times] Daliah Baynard, 35, will meet her mother in Tampa on Thursday for the first time in more than 30 years.

Thirty-six years ago in New York, a young woman walked into a bar and ordered vodka with an orange juice chaser from a bartender who reminded her of Robert Goulet. If her life were a movie, that could be the opening scene. The script calls for a happy ending. It takes place Thursday at Tampa International Airport. The young woman is now a middle-aged woman, and she waits with arms wide open and tears on her cheeks. A younger woman walks into the frame. They hug. The women are mother and daughter. This is their first meeting in 32 years.
Back in New York, in the early '70s, the young woman and the bartender moved in together. She had fled Wisconsin to escape her stepfather. She and the bartender were in love.

The baby was born at 8:50 p.m. Sept. 14, 1972. The birth certificate said the mother was Maxine Emma Lautenbach, 18, and the father was Richard B. Myer, 23. They were not married. They named the baby Daliah Michelle Myer.

Mr. Myer did not return a reporter's phone calls Tuesday afternoon, but Maxine says they had a falling-out, and she left with Daliah a few months after the birth.

In 1975, she was called back to Wisconsin because her mother had cancer. She made an agreement with Myer: he would keep Daliah until she got situated. But when she went to retrieve the baby, Myer's mother called police and had them send her away, she says.

Myer moved, and Maxine could not find him.

Maxine returned to Wisconsin. Every year she went to the library to comb through the newest New York City phone book in the hope that Myer or a relatives had listed a number. Around 1981, she found one. She believes it was for Myer's father.

This is Daliah's mother, she said. Don't hang up. I just want to know if she's alive.

Yes, she's alive, he said. But when she tried to call back the next day, the number had been disconnected.

Years passed. Maxine found a husband and took his last name: Schleisner. They had two children and moved to Tampa. But every year, on Sept. 14, she wept for Daliah.

Along came the Internet, and Maxine renewed her search. She posted a message on a military Web site, seeking information on Myer. Eventually, a man e-mailed her. Daliah had married and moved to Delaware. Maxine looked up the phone number. But she was afraid.

"I didn't know if he had told her I deserted her," she said.

She called anyway.

"Hi," she said. "I'm Maxine. I'm your mother."

"I know," Daliah said.

They talked for hours, and the story of Daliah's life poured out. She now had a husband and two children. She had grown up with Myer and a succession of stepmothers, but his mother had been her primary caregiver.

Her childhood was neither horrible nor especially happy.

She knew Maxine's name but little else. She was curious.

"Little things," she said. "What's her favorite thing to eat, what does she watch at 5 o'clock. Little things. What kind of hair spray does she use. Silly things. But it's stuff I want to know."

Now she will. AirTran Airways Flight 724 is scheduled to leave Baltimore at 3:21 p.m. Thursday and touch down in Tampa at 5:34. Daliah will be on board. Her mother will be waiting.

Times researchers John Martin and Angie Drobnic Holan contributed to this report. Thomas Lake can be reached at tlake@sptimes.com or 813 226-3416.

[Last modified February 26, 2008, 23:18:59]