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"When I held him in my arms that first moment, I made a promise to him that I would be the best dad I could possibly be. Windle brought his son, whom he named Jordan, home to the United States in June 2000, five months after he began the adoption process. "I sent a photo of me and asked them to give it to him in a necklace and explain to him that I was his daddy and was going to be coming to get him." "It was done the second I opened the envelope and saw that photograph," he said. When the adoption agency sent a photo of the boy, at the time named Pisey - Cambodian for "little darling" - Windle said he knew he was looking at his son. Shortly after applying for adoption, Windle said he learned about a boy in Cambodia who was in an orphanage and available for adoption. "I got a packet of information and an application about a week later and I took probably three days and filled out every single document, got fingerprinted, filled out my background information, I did everything." "I called the agency and just said, 'Is it possible for a single person to adopt?' and they said, 'Yes,'" Windle recalled. While waiting at a doctor's office in Florida, he said he began reading a magazine that profiled a single dad who adopted a son. That changed when Windle, after the death of his mother, switched careers and moved from California to Florida when he was in his mid-30s. "I got a little bit sad and depressed about the fact that I could never have a child," he said.
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Windle is also gay, which at the time, two decades ago, he thought would prevent him from ever fulfilling his dream of fatherhood. "From a very young age, I always knew I wanted to be a dad," Windle told "Good Morning America." "That was something just innately part of who I was."