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LOST CONNECTION from page 35

"My Fifth Third
CMA keeps
my interest
peaked."

And soon the whole story unfolded. My
father remarried several years after he
and my mother split up, and Beverly
was the child of that marriage. My father
never told his second wife or daughter
that he had been married before or that
he had a son from that marriage.
He made his brothers swear never to
tell any of this to his wife or daughter as
long as he lived. It wasn't until his death
in 1989, at 84, that his younger brother,
Johnny, felt he was finally free to tell
Beverly about the earlier marriage and
about me.
Beverly was floored, but after the
shock wore off she began thinking about
how she could get in touch with her
brother. She turned to her cousin,
Diane, who has an interest in genealogy
and knows how to track down family
information. But she was pretty much
stumped about locating me. •

"Secret" Sibling

The problem was that the search focused
on Detroit, which I had left many years
earlier for California. But apparently, the
idea that she had a brother continued to
nag at Beverly as the years passed. Like
me, she had always thought of herself as
an only child, and she wanted to know
more about her "secret" sibling.
Last fall, in a last-ditch effort, cousin
Diane gathered all the information she
had and contacted the Jewish News,
which ran an article headlined, "Looking
for Relatives of Jacobs, Raskin." And it
worked.
During that first phone conversation,
Diane gave me my sister's phone num-
ber, and I called her. She laughed, cried
and was obviously overjoyed to finally
locate her long-lost brother. As we
talked, Beverly told me she and husband
planned to spend Thanksgiving with
one of their sons in Laguna Beach, an
easy drive from where I live. We agreed
to meet in Laguna Beach on the
Saturday after Thanksgiving.
As the night was dissolving into the
first foggy hours of that Saturday morn-
ing, my wife, Kathleen, and I left the
Los Angeles area for our journey of
familial discovery to meet a sister who
for 58 years I didn't know existed.
Our meeting was a warm, joyous
experience. Within minutes, it was like
we were good old friends who had not
seen each other for a while and were able
to pick right up where we left off.
Beverly and I and our families are
planning a reunion in New York in
June, where my wife and I, daughter
Michelle and two sons, John and
Michael, will meet my sister's two sons,
Jon and Michael.

❑

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ECUAL
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4/18

2003

37

