The Nation - News from Jan. 7, 1985

Four years after James J. Walker resigned as mayor of New York amid charges of corruption, the flamboyant mayor made headlines again in 1936 when he adopted a boy and a girl. Newspapers gave the story so much publicity that Walker almost canceled the adoption, for fear the natural mother might try to reclaim her child. Now, nearly half a century later, Walker’s children are trying to get their adoption papers to learn the identity of their real parents. On Tuesday, Walker’s son and daughter will ask the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, to release their adoption decrees.