In the foreword of Lee Klose’ book “Late for the Buss: An Adoption Story,” Johnny Buss wrote, “It was just like out of the news stories of long-lost family members reunited. You never think it would happen to you. Only a few people in the world knew the truth and amazingly kept it secret for so many years. I can attest that I had no idea my mother and father had a child before me and never once mentioned even the possibility.”

Buss is one of six children — with full siblings Jeanie, Jim and Janie and halfsiblings Joey and Jesse — of the late Jerry Buss, Ph.D., and JoAnn Mueller. Buss owned the Los Angeles Lakers, which is now owned by his children.

Lee Klose, a Sedona resident, says that she grew up between the cacti and the palm trees, traveling between Phoenix and Los Angeles on Interstate 10. Her parents, Jimmy and Mattie, kept moving, and by the time she was 15 she had lived in 15 different residences and attended 12 different schools. Life seemed normal to Klose.

In the third grade, Klose said she got in trouble and was told to stand outside the door. Another teacher came into the room, and she happened to overhear their conversation.

“One of my teachers said, ‘Well, you know, she’s adopted.’ And that was the moment in my life that everything changed,” Klose said. “Because I went, ‘What does that mean? You know, what’s wrong with me? Why did she say that?’ And from that moment, it was a wound.” “I felt more shame than anything else,” she said. “I think the ’50s were full of shame. And, if you gave a child away, it was shameful. You kept it secret,” Klose said.

Klose asked her parents questions and there were times she would pretend she looked like her mom.

“They were 40 when they adopted me — they always seemed older,” she said. “Eventually, I tried to do just about everything I could,” Klose said. “I was rebellious. And I think a lot of it was just searching. Why, why did this happen to me?”

Klose began searching for her roots. In 1990, she visited the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Sacramento, Calif., to find her birth certificate, which was sealed.

On Jan. 4, 1991, Klose received the non-redacted information, which infuriated her: The letter stated that her parents were married; her father had earned a bachelor’s degree in physical chemistry but wrote “that he was too busy getting an advanced degree and had neither the time nor the finances to keep her.” Her mother wrote that “she wanted to be a mother and keep her but went along with her husband’s wishes.”

“When you’re adopted, your birth certificate is the first lie that you’re asked to live with,” Klose stated. “Your birth certificate is not true. It lists your adoptive parents as though they gave birth to you. That’s a lie. I never had any bad feelings toward my adoptive parents at all. But I always wanted to know who my real parents were.

“My adoptive sister didn’t care. It never bothered her … she didn’t have the same kind of curiosity and longing of the human heart like I did,” she said.

Klose still had no idea who her real parents were. The results of a DNA test provided her with information that led to an aunt — her birth father’s younger sister.

“When I found my aunt Susan, Jerry’s younger sister, oddly enough, she lived right here in Arizona, and we agreed to meet,” Klose said. “She didn’t know I knew. And once we met, she was the first person to utter my birth name — ‘Marie.’”

“Marie” had also been given to her two sisters as their middle name, so that she would never be forgotten.

“I pulled out the non-identifying information, and I started reading it off, and it all fit. All the puzzle pieces fell into place,” Klose said. “We were holding hands, and she said, ‘You’re Marie. Oh, my God, you’re Marie.’”

“It’s very important to also say that I have no legal claim to the Buss family’s wealth. They gave me away properly at birth and they did everything correctly,” she said. “That was before Jerry made any money at all. So, I have no legal claim and I need that to be very clear.”

“I wanted to meet my family, so I wrote a letter to Jeanie asking if I could meet my birth mother and tell her I’m OK,” Klose said. “I missed meeting Jerry by five years. I always thought about [my mother] every year on my birthday.”

Jerry Buss died in 2013.

Klose wanted to meet her siblings. She saw them all over newspaper articles and on television. She noticed that they all looked just like her. The resemblance was one thing, but the family’s wealth and notoriety was another.

“I was given away. I was the eldest, the firstborn, and it was before they had anything, so that never really crossed my mind [about their wealth],” Klose said.

“Intellectually, of course, it crossed my mind. It was like, dang it. I come from a family of multi-millionaires. I believe that if I ever needed help, they would help me because they’d been very sweet and very kind,” she said.

Klose met her birth mother, who lived in Las Vegas and was in the last stages of Alzheimer’s. Her sister Jeanie was by her side as she showed her mother her baby pictures.

“I did get to meet my birth mother and tell her that I love her and that I lived a good and peaceful life and she never had to worry again,” Klose said. “It was love at second glance, because that was only the second time in 65 years that we had seen each other. We connected right away,” she said.

Klose’s mother died in December 2019, eight months after the day that she met her. Klose says that she has hope for the future and all her questions have been answered.

Writing her book has been a liberating experience.

“As soon as I finished writing my story, all the struggles for all these years to find somebody I look like, was a long, hard haul … and now I know who they are,” Klose stated. “I got to meet my birth mother and every time I’m around [my siblings], I feel like I grew up with them. “I think they’re still trying to figure it out. They weren’t looking for me. I was looking for them … It just doesn’t matter — we’re together now.”