Media meet Huntsmans' newest addition

Published: Friday, Dec. 22, 2006 3:06 p.m. MST
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Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. knew what was coming when he reached out his arms to his newly adopted baby daughter just hours after the family arrived from her native India on Friday.

Sure enough, tiny Asha Bharati scrunched up her sweet face and began to wail.

"It's such a humiliating experience," Huntsman joked to the reporters and photographers gathered to meet the newest member of Utah's first family in the parlor of the Governor's Mansion.

But as soon as 1-year-old Asha was handed back to one of her big sisters, she slipped her thumb in her mouth and settled down. So far, only Liddy, 18, can soothe her. "I guess I look like a nun," Liddy laughed.

The Huntsmans — the governor, first lady Mary Kaye, Liddy, 14-year-old Will, and the family's other adopted child, 7-year-old Gracie Mei from China — traveled to a remote Catholic orphanage in western India to bring Asha home.

Eagerly waiting to meet their new sister were Abby, 21, and Mary Anne, 20, who are attending school in the east. "It was hard. We saw the pictures of her in the newspaper and we just wanted to hold her," Abby said.

The governor and his wife have spent much of last year attempting to finalize her adoption, planning and cancelling several trips to the Matru Chhaya orphanage run by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Anne in Nadiad.

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E-mail: lisa@desnews.com

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 - Gov. Huntsman and family introduce their newest daughter, Asha Bharat Huntsman, at the Governor's Mansion in Salt Lake City. (Laura Seitz, Deseret Morning News)
Laura Seitz, Deseret Morning News
Gov. Huntsman and family introduce their newest daughter, Asha Bharat Huntsman, at the Governor's Mansion in Salt Lake City.