SALEM — Families marked life-changing moments at the Essex Probate and Family Court’s National Adoption Day celebration on Friday.
It was a day that Judge Frances Giordano called “one of the most meaningful and uplifting moments of our entire year.”
Across the country, courts use National Adoption Day each November to finalize adoptions and raise awareness about the thousands of children waiting in foster care. Locally, seven families gathered in a festively decorated courtroom to make official what, for many of them, had felt true in their hearts for years.
“This occasion stands as one of the most meaningful and uplifting moments of our entire year,” Giordano told the crowd, calling the event a chance to witness “the formation of new families, the strengthening of existing ones, and the promise of a brighter future.”
For Stephanie and Edgar Oliva, the morning marked the end of what Stephanie described as a “long, tedious, but worth it” process. Edgar was adopting Sebastian, Stephanie’s 9-year-old son, in a stepparent adoption.
“We have three boys — 9, 3, and 2 — and Sebastian is the one getting adopted today by my husband,” Stephanie Oliva said. “It makes us feel complete… fulfilled. I don’t even know what other words to use.”
Sebastian needed fewer words.
“I feel great,” he said.” Pressed for more, he added simply, “Excited!”
Stephanie said courthouse staff in both Lawrence and Essex County buoyed them throughout the process.
“Every person in every courthouse was so resourceful, so helpful,” she said. “Never once did we feel like giving up. They always made sure that we continued to push and continued to instill hope in us. Especially Debbie, she’s amazing.”
“Debbie” is adoption clerk Deborah Noyes, whom nearly everyone at the celebration credited with bringing the day to life.
For Ryan Cruz and Joe Brown, the day was both an ending and a beginning. The couple was finalizing the adoption of their almost 10-month-old son, whom they’ve cared for since birth.
“It’s exciting to be at this stage and get everything final and official because adoption is such a long journey,” Brown said.
Cruz added, “It just feels really exciting to finally be at this part.”
They were present at their son’s birth and spent time with his birth mother, an experience they described as “really beautiful.”
“We’re just so thankful that he’s in our life and thankful for his birth mom,” Brown said. “We’ve had a lot of incredible support along the way… We look forward to someday, when he’s older, to tell him about today and show him all the people who came to show him love and support. It’s something you kind of imagine for so long, and then it’s really happening. It’s a dream come true.”
In another row sat Alice Hoebeke, beaming beside her granddaughter Jade, the “first girl” in the family and, as Hoebeke put it, the reason she “straightened herself out.”
“This is the last and final adoption,” Hoebeke said, referring to the adoption that would make Jade her legal daughter after years of ups and downs.
Jade was previously adopted, Hoebeke explained, after Hoebeke and Jade’s biological father were both going through difficult periods and were unable to care for her. When that placement began to unravel, Hoebeke stepped back in.
“She was having trouble with [her] adoptive mom. I just straightened myself out and… for her,” Hoebeke said. “She’s my first girl in the family.”
Now a student at Frederick Douglass Collegiate High School, Jade is thriving.
“She’s doing amazing in school, straight A’s,” Hoebeke said proudly. “She wants to be a lawyer… She’s got her mind set and she’s going for it.”
For some, Saturday was less about change and more about recognition of what already existed.
“I’m being officially adopted,” said Tieg McHenry, who attended with parents Monique and John Drumheller. “We’ve always been a loving family, but now it’s something that’s official.”
“I feel great,” McHenry said.
Monique Drumheller said, “I’m just very thankful that they gave us an opportunity to represent our family and show others how important [adoption is].”
Several families came to the courthouse for what’s known as second-parent or stepparent adoption, legal recognition of a parent-child relationship that already exists in practice.
One mother explained she was completing a second-parent adoption of her young daughter, whom her wife had carried.
“She had her biologically, so I’m just doing the second-parent [adoption],” Maryanne Rivero García said, “just for security purposes with everything that’s going on.”
The couple worked with Family Health’s program for same-sex couples, which strongly encouraged them to formalize the relationship through adoption.
“I feel good, like security-wise,” she said. “It doesn’t feel any different, but just to know that nothing can change… we are safe.”
Their daughter, Jazeleen, still little, “doesn’t understand” the legalities, they said — but she has never known anything except two parents.
“This has always been her mama,” Jessica Rivero García said.
The festivities were framed by two speakers whose careers have been steeped in adoption — one as an adoptee, one as a longtime social worker.
Probation case specialist Brittany Pantone shared a deeply personal story about her own adoption by her stepfather, Joe, who sat in the front row. She described a childhood of weekend trips to Old Orchard Beach, bike rides with cousins, and the mundane but meaningful acts of parenting: teaching her to drive, buying the “hot” sneakers or jacket, giving rides to the movies, and the money for tickets.
“Looking back after two decades, I can see that decision shaped who I am,” Pantone said. “It gave me stability, a sense of belonging. It gave me someone who believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. It gave me a father, someone who earned that title through love and action long before any paperwork.”
“To my dad,” she continued, “thank you for choosing me, for showing me that family is not about shared blood, but about love and commitment.”
Then came Lori Hannaford, a quality assurance supervisor with the Department of Children and Families’ Northern Region, who has worked in child welfare for 27 years in roles from ongoing social worker to adoption worker and supervisor.
“Standing here today on National Adoption Day is one of the greatest honors of my work,” Hannaford said. “We feel joy and pride, relief, and the deep meaning behind the moment when a person gains their forever family, regardless of the route it took to get there.”
Hannaford highlighted kinship and stepparent adoptions, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, and partners who step up when a child they love needs them.
“Kinship adoption matters deeply,” she said. “Instead of losing their identity, their culture, and their memories, [children] get to grow within the family that already carries those pieces of them… You’re giving these children and young adults history, roots, and continuity.”
She closed by reading a poem titled “Roots and Wings,” emphasizing that family begins not with papers but with “open hands” and “someone saying, ‘Stay with me, when life shifts its plans.’”
Much of the day’s warmth pointed back to adoption clerk Noyes, who has worked in the court since 2012 and helped launch its first National Adoption Day celebration in 2017.
Since then, she’s transformed the courthouse each year with community-made art: a “family tree” with hand-cut leaves made from soda bottles by students at the Clark School in Rowley; four hand-crafted rocking horses built from donated materials and painted by students; and, more recently, origami installations and new leaves created by students and parents from Shore Country Day School.
“This day is the happiest day of the year,” Noyes said. “I’m with the families from start to finish. I meet the families. I help them with their paperwork. I schedule the cases. It’s just so special… This is about the families and the family court. What a day to start off our holiday season.”
Judge Giordano publicly thanked Noyes for “working tirelessly each year” to make the event “memorable and extraordinary” before calling her up for a token of appreciation.
Sen. Joan Lovely, who represents the 2nd Essex District, has attended the celebration for years and called it “the most special day of the year.”
“National Adoption Day is the most special day of the year,” she said. “Whether it’s infants with young parents or older children being assimilated into a new family, it just doesn’t get any better than today.”
