For more than 80 years, Eileen Wagner kept a secret from her children. She thought it was the best way to protect all of them — not only the two kids she raised with her husband, but also a third child, whom she had given up for adoption in 1933 when she was a teenager. 
 
 Then, last month, 99-year-old Wagner sat alone in the front window of her home in Monroe, Wis., her eyes blurred by glaucoma, her legs weak from knee replacements, but her mind and memory intact. The phone rang, and Wagner picked up the call she had all but given up on. 
 
 "Hello, Mother," the long-lost daughter, Dorien Hammann, 83, recalls saying. 
 
 Wagner said her eyes filled with tears of joy and relief to hear the voice of her baby, now a retired senior who spends most of the year living two hours away from Wagner on the other side of Wisconsin. 
 
 "I thought this day would never come," Wagner told Hammann. 
 
 Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune Dorien Hammann, who was given up for adoption by her mother, is seen in a photo from her childhood. Hammann, now 83, recently reconnected with her birth mother, 99. Dorien Hammann, who was given up for adoption by her mother, is seen in a photo from her childhood. Hammann, now 83, recently reconnected with her birth mother, 99. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune) (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune) 
 
 Weeks later, the birth mother and daughter reunited in person when Hammann and her husband drove from their winter residence in Florida to visit Wagner in Monroe, just north of the Illinois border. They enjoyed their time together so much that the pair came together again on Mother's Day, when Hammann's half brother and sister welcomed her to the family with tears and hugs. 
 
 And when Wagner blows out the candles for her 100th birthday over Memorial Day weekend, she will be surrounded, for the first time, by all three of her children. 
 
 National adoption advocates say it's the longest span of time between adoption and reconnection they've heard of, despite how the Internet and attitudes about open adoptions have dramatically changed the way birth and adoption families connect today. 
 
 "What you usually hear is the tragic side, when people begin their search on their biological parents just a little bit too late," said Chuck Johnson, president and CEO of the National Council for Adoption, an adoption advocacy organization based in Washington. 
 
 Neither Wagner nor Hammann expected, in their twilight years, to find each other. But now that they have, they are determined to make the most of the time they have left. 
 
 "I almost gave up on ever finding her," said Wagner, who added that she has thought about the baby girl she had given up every day "from the day she was born." 
 
 "It is still so hard to believe that at my age, my birth mother is still alive," Hammann said. "I get chills and goose bumps all at the same time when I think of this." 
 
 Secret past 
 
 Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune Eileen Wagner, 99, who was raped at age 16 and recently reconnected with the daughter she had given up for adoption more than 80 years ago, sits at her home in Monroe, Wis., on May 13, 2016. Eileen Wagner, 99, who was raped at age 16 and recently reconnected with the daughter she had given up for adoption more than 80 years ago, sits at her home in Monroe, Wis., on May 13, 2016. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune) (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune) 
 
 More than eight decades after it happened, Wagner can recount details of the circumstances that she said led to her pregnancy. 
 
 It was 1932. Wagner, then 16, and a girlfriend were walking home from the library in De Pere, Wis., the Green Bay suburb where she grew up. Just after crossing a bridge, the friends bumped into two young men. Her girlfriend knew one of them, she said. The teens walked together until the other boy suggested that he and Wagner take a shortcut through the park to get her home before her 10 p.m. curfew. She agreed, and he sexually assaulted her, she said. 
 
 Wagner, who never saw the young man again, became pregnant and hid it from her parents as long as she could. When they eventually found out, they sent her to a home in Milwaukee that took in pregnant girls planning to give up babies for adoption. For three months, with only a handful of visits from her father, Wagner cleaned, worked in the nursery and washed sheets as chores while waiting to give birth, she recalled. 
 
 "In those days, it was such an embarrassment," Wagner said. "It was a lonesome time." 
 
 On April 15, 1933, Wagner delivered a baby she named Beverly Ann because she thought the name was beautiful. For nearly two years, the baby was in the custody of Children's Home & Aid Society of Wisconsin. Wagner saw her daughter again briefly in the Milwaukee County Court when the toddler was adopted by George and Dorothy Schmidt, according to a document provided by Hammann and verified by the Tribune. 
 
 The experience made such an impression on Wagner that she was inspired to go to nursing school to follow the example of the nurses who cared for her. Yet she shared her story with only one person — her husband, Richard, whom she met in nursing school and married in 1938. 
 
 "Everything is so open now, but years ago, that was taboo," explained Wagner, who said it was difficult to hide the past from her close-knit family. 
 
 But she guarded the secret because she always worried about how its disclosure would affect each of her children. 
 
 "A couple of times, I was about to say something and I thought, 'Well, I better well let it be left alone,'" Wagner said. "If the Lord wanted things like that, he'd take care of it for me." 
 
 Happy childhood 
 
 Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune Dorien Hammann, 83, was given up for adoption by her mother, who had her after a rape at age 16. Hammann, seen May 13, 2016, at her home in Plymouth, Wis., recently reconnected with her birth mother. Dorien Hammann, 83, was given up for adoption by her mother, who had her after a rape at age 16. Hammann, seen May 13, 2016, at her home in Plymouth, Wis., recently reconnected with her birth mother. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune) (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune) 
 
 The baby, meanwhile, completed the family for the Schmidts, a civil engineer and homemaker who lived in a Milwaukee suburb. The family, which at the time Hammann was adopted also included a 3-year-old boy the Schmidts had adopted previously, lived in a three-bedroom house on three-quarters of an acre not far from the Milwaukee River, Hammann said. 
 
 Hammann has fond memories of spending days with her brother skipping stones along the river. At home, her mother and a neighbor took turns visiting over a pot of hot coffee as they prepared home-cooked dinners and baked desserts, including German stollen cake, her mother's specialty. 
 
 From the time she and her brother were old enough to understand, the children knew they were adopted. 
 
 "I was told I was special," Hammann recalled. "Because other people got to take what they got, but they got to choose me." 
 
 Hammann attended two years of college, paid for by her adoptive parents, then worked in various jobs, eventually retiring as a health unit clerk at a hospital in Sheboygan. She married three times, and had three children and three grandchildren. In 1979, she married her third husband, Fred, with whom she celebrated her 37th anniversary this year. 
 
 Her adoptive father died in 1978, and her adoptive mother died two years later. 
 
 Through it all, Hammann never felt the desire to find her birth family. She was happy with her life. 
 
 "There are good stories and there are bad stories, and I never wanted to open a can of worms and spoil anything," she said. 
 
 In the 1930s, adoptions were not culturally accepted and typically kept confidential, said Johnson of the National Council for Adoption. In the 1940s and '50s, adoption agencies and advocacy groups fiercely fought for laws to keep adoption records closed, citing concerns about how the parties involved would handle reunions. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, research began to show that open adoptions could be positive experiences if all parties had matching expectations, Johnson said. States gradually began opening up adoption records and today, 93 to 97 percent of adoptions have an element of openness. ||||| After more than 70 years of separation, an Italian woman and the daughter she had with a German soldier during the Second World War have finally been reunited. 
 
 The Italian woman, who is now 91, moved to Germany voluntarily during the war to work in a factory in Heidelberg and there fell in love with a soldier. 
 
 She became pregnant and in October 1944 gave birth to a baby girl, but the child was soon taken away from her by the soldier’s family. 
 
 After the war the Italian woman returned to her home village of Novellara in the northern region of Emilia Romagna, believing that the baby had probably died of illness or had been killed in an Allied bombardment during the last, desperate days of the war. 
 
 But unknown to her, the infant had been adopted by the soldier’s parents, who raised her as Margot Bachmann. 
 
 As she grew up, the little girl was told that her birth mother was Italian but that the family had no idea of her whereabouts, and was forbidden from searching for her. 
 
 Mrs Bachmann, now aged 70, always wondered what became of her mother, and last year, when her father died, decided to redouble efforts to track her down. 
 
 Encouraged by her own daughter, who was curious about the family saga, she managed to find her mother with the help of the Italian Red Cross and the International Tracing Service, a centre based in Germany which works on reuniting families torn apart by the war. 
 
 With the help of the Red Cross, the ITS discovered that Mrs Bachmann's mother was still alive and living in Novellara. 
 
 After more than seven decades, the two had an emotional encounter at the weekend, crying and toasting their reunion with a bottle of sparkling wine. 
 
 “I started out doing some research, hoping to know a bit more about my mother,” said Mrs Bachmann. “But I would never have imagined that I would be able to embrace her once again. I’m so happy to have found her still alive, despite her advanced age. 
 
 "My father had forbidden me from looking for her, and I began to do so only after his death.” 
 
 Before their encounter, Mrs Bachmann sent her mother a letter. “Dear Mum, my name is Margot Bachmann and I am your daughter, born on Oct 25 1944 in Heidelberg. All my life I asked my family about you, without being given any answers. I want to come and find you so that I can hug you once again. I’m immensely happy to be able to finally know you.” 
 
 Their story has raised uncomfortable questions about the extent of the collaboration between Italians and their Nazi occupiers, reviving memories of women having their heads shaved after being accused of sleeping with the enemy at the end of the war. 
 
 Her mother has refused to be identified, mindful of the lingering resentment towards Italian women who had romantic liaisons with German troops. 
 
 “I can understand her position,” said Elena Carletti, the mayor of Novellara. “In this village, people have not forgotten [the war]. Even my generation knows the names of those who, during the war, were for or against the Germans. These stories still weigh heavily on many families. This encounter between a mother and daughter reminds us of a complicated chapter of history.” 
 
 One local, Dilva Daoli, now aged 94, said she could remember seeing local women who had fraternised with the Germans being abused and spat at after the village was liberated by Italian partisans and Allied troops. 
 
 “The partisans cut off all the hair of the girls who had danced, dined and then spent the night with the Germans and the Fascists,” she told La Repubblica newspaper. “Those poor girls understood nothing.” 
 
 Laura Bastianetto, of the Italian Red Cross, described the reunion after so many years as “a small miracle”. 
 
 "It is rare for a mother and daughter to find each other after 71 years. We were lucky because in all these years, the mother had not moved away from her home town. We were able to trace her fairly quickly. We hope that the mother, who believed she had lost her daughter forever, can now make up for lost time.”
– Eileen Wagner kept a secret for over 80 years—and it was a big one. As a teenager living in a Green Bay suburb in 1932, she was raped by a boy, sent to a home for pregnant girls, and forced to give up the child for adoption. "In those days, it was such an embarrassment," the 99-year-old tells the Chicago Tribune. "It was a lonesome time." She never hoped to see her daughter again, but a phone call she received in her Monroe, Wis., home last month brought tears of joy. "Hello, Mother," said her long-lost daughter, 83-year-old Dorien Hammann, on the line. The way it happened is an astonishing testament to how modern attitudes and technology have revolutionized adoption reunions. As for Wagner, she admits to thinking of her daughter every day but says she only told the true story to her now-deceased husband, Richard. "Everything is so open now, but years ago," experiences like hers were "taboo," says Wagner. Meanwhile, Hammann was raised by a civil engineer and homemaker in a Milwaukee suburb and told about her adoption—but never felt the need to reconnect. Then states began revealing adoption records after research in the 1980s and '90s showed that adoption reunions were often positive experiences. Eventually Hammann's daughter-in-law Googled names from the adoption document, contacted Wagner, and a reunion was in the works. It turned out to be a happy one, with mom and daughter talking and comparing similarities for hours. "I thanked her for giving me up because I did have such a good home," says Hammann. But not everyone is so happy: In Canada, unwed mothers who were forced to give up their children for adoption decades ago are demanding that the government acknowledge their trauma, the Globe & Mail reports.