ADOPTEE DISCOVERS MOM IS BEARDED LADY
BELIEVE IT OR NOT
Adoptee Discovers Mom Is Bearded Lady
A 33-YEAR-OLD ADOPTED KANSAS MAN SET OUT TO FIND HIS BIOLOGICAL MOTHER. She turned out to be a bearded "werewolf" lady featured in Ripley's Believe It Or Not.
Richard Lorenc's father took him from his mother shortly after his birth. He was reunited with his mother this past spring. Through his research he discovered that both his mother and maternal grandmother had "werewolf syndrome," and that is mother was born a hermaphrodite, with both male and female reproductive organs.
"My whole life growing up, I thought my mom was Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane, but that was just my fantasy,'' Richard Lorenc said of his mom Vivian Wheller. "This is kind of better."
Wheeler's own father was embarrassed by his daughter's beard and sent her to work in carnivals. She used to shave but stopped in 1990 shortly after her mother died.
"I let it grow back to be myself," she told AOL Contributor Marc Hartzman. "Without my beard, I'm not me. I'm pretending to be someone I'm not."
Tags: Ephemera
