The meet-up may never have happened if William’s daughter, Sue Advey, had not started exploring her family tree via Ancestry.com in April and found a branch close to home so quickly and easily.
Advey learned that the father of both men followed his initial “quick teenage marriage” that produced William with a second marriage that produced Carl and a daughter, Carol, 69, of Nashville, Tennessee.
With that information in hand, Advey wrote a letter to both of her father’s half siblings.
“They were very excited to hear this news, so we started comparing notes and everything was legit,” she said. “The nicknames that they call aunts and uncles and his dad (all matched) and so it was for sure that this was his half brother.”
William and Carl started talking to each other several weeks ago via phone but a planned Memorial Day meet-up almost didn’t come to pass. William said he initially felt like someone in the family should have contacted him over the course of the many decades and Carl said he harbored suspicions that the whole thing was a scam.
But during their Saturday meeting, the two men talked the entire length of the six-hour visit in Carl’s bedroom because he has been bed-ridden for five years after having a stroke several years ago and putting on “a humungous amount of weight” due to steroids, Carl said. He lost the weight, but now is “nothing but bones.”
“My bones won’t support me much and I’ve only got 30% of my lungs left,” he said. In addition, he has heart problems and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD.
Advey said the two men talked non-stop about their father, about their childhoods and “anything they could think of.”
William even gave Carl a wooden plaque that reads “If I had my life to do over again, I’d find you sooner so I could love you longer.”
“I’m very happy that they were able to connect like that,” Advey said. “When you’re sick and you’re bed ridden, this gave him (Carl) something to live for.”
Carl said while he’s excited to connect with his older brother, calling it “a miracle,” he also is sad that it took so many years to do so.
“I believe everything happens for a reason ... the only thing I can’t get in my mind is why now? Why so late?” he said. “That’s the part I can’t get figured out. All I can do is think of what it could have been like if I would have known him for the 70 years.”
William said he met with his father three times before he died in his 50s but never heard him utter a word about any other children.
“I wish it would have happened sooner,” he said of the visit, echoing his half-brother’s sentiments.
Advey, who is 67 and lives in the Cleveland area, said a “weird” part about finding a new family member was learning that she lived almost walking distance from where her father’s half-brother lived.
“My ex-husband was in the Air Force, so we moved to Dayton in 1974 and we lived there nine years,” she said. “I lived on Travis and he lived on Eastman and they’re just down the road from each other.”
Advey and Carl also learned they shared a mutual acquaintance who had worked with Carl.
“I just felt like this was remarkable,” she said, her voice rising with emotion. “Not only did I live nearby, but my best friend was working with my dad’s half-brother at the time.”
Now that they’ve met, both Carl and William say they will definitely make up for lost time and call each other regularly.
“I’m just glad that we got to talk,” said Carl, who is under hospice care. “I may not be here tomorrow, he may not be here tomorrow, but at least we got to meet and I hope we get to meet more often. I hope we can make a family.”
About the Author
