Family is reunited with adopted son
Published: October 3, 2005
He runs around screaming giddily, a big smile on his face and a cowboy hat on his head.
He loves to play with cars and likes eating bagels.
He’s also quick to say, “No,” just like many other 4-year-olds.
It’s hard to imagine that only weeks ago, Thomas Sony McElroy was sleeping on the floor of a Cambodian orphanage that offered no clean running water and little access to proper medical care. He was seemingly stranded, while a Wappingers Falls family waited anxiously to finalize their adoption of him, a process that began more than two years earlier.
With American families barred from adopting children from Cambodia since December 2001 — when the U.S. government, in effect, put a moratorium on adoptions from the country — their wait seemed to be in vain. The suspension was put in place amid fears Cambodian children were being illegally bought and sold, or kidnapped from their birth families.
Brian and Kathy McElroy had already adopted 5-year-old Anna Theary, whom they brought home from Cambodia in March 2001. They also have two older daughters, Kelly, 23, and Kristen, 18.
When they filed the paperwork needed to adopt Anna, they also were approved to adopt a second child, but when the moratorium was put in place, everything was put on hold.
Things began to change quickly after the couple visited Cambodia in April. During the trip, they met with officials at the U.S. embassy to plead their case, and for the first time, got to see the boy they only knew through photographs.
The next move was a painful one. They had to return to the U.S. and leave young Tommy, as they call him, at the orphanage.
Then in late April, they got word from Washington they would be allowed to finalize their adoption and bring him home.
“We were close to devastated thinking it would never happen,” Brian McElroy said of the couple’s feeling after their trip. “I’m pretty convinced if we didn’t take the trip, this wouldn’t have happened.”
Brian McElroy traveled to Cambodia in late August to finalize things. Tommy joined the family in their Wappingers Falls home Sept. 9.
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