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DanielLB
Immortal
Jun 30 2014, 12:46pm
Post #1 of 15
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Have you ever been reunited with a long lost friend or family member?
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With the baby arriving in 3 months time, I've decided to track down a long lost friend of ours - she had been such a good friend and big part of our lives while we knew her.
To cut a very long story short, while we were both at University we had a friend that was on the same degree as my partner. Due to family issues, she left the course before completing her degree. We stayed in contact with her for about 6 months, but as real life took over, contact became less frequent, to the point where it stopped altogether.
The last time we heard from her was in 2009, maybe 2010. She was living in London with her ill mother and had gotten a job completely unrelated from her degree. Since that last phone call, we have left one or two voice-mails on her mobile, but we now suspect she has changed her number. 5 years later, we've not spoken to her since.
So this month I've started the rather arduous task of tracking her down. If successful, I am hoping it will be a surprise for my partner (so shhh, it's just between us). I'd love to find her in the next 3 months, but it isn't looking hopeful. They had been best friends, and my partner has always said she would love to see her again.
So, mainly to keep me hopeful, have you ever been reunited with a long lost friend or family member? Did you track them down, or did they track you down? What avenues did you take - adverts, social media, records? We're people willing to pass on information or details? How long did it take?
I am probably over-optimistic that I'll be able to find her. I have tracked down other old University friends on Facebook, but they're unable to give me a phone number that I don't already have. There are two people I am really interested in talking to on Facebook, both share her surname, but live abroad. I haven't as of yet, mainly because of privacy. There's a niggle at the back of my mind saying "what if she doesn't want to be found?", and even worse "what if something has happened to her?". I've contacted the University to see if they have any previous records available. Confidentially will more than likely be an issue, but even if they can confirm that they have records available for her, then it's better than nothing. I have their university tutors name, he might also be able to help. The next step is to look in phone and address directories, and possibly birth, marriage, and death certificates. She will be in her 50s now. I'm unsure if those records would be available yet.
Hopefully this story has a happy ending, and I'll keep everyone updated with progress (or lack of ...)
(This post was edited by DanielLB on Jun 30 2014, 12:54pm)
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DaughterofLaketown
Gondor
Jun 30 2014, 8:29pm
Post #2 of 15
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I met a third cousin I never knew existed when I was twelve
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We spent a fun day together. I met her at a family reunion.
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Dame Ioreth
Tol Eressea
Jun 30 2014, 9:02pm
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I was on the recieving end - I was found
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Suffice to say I didn't want to be found by this particular person. The contact was just about what I expected after the fake niceness of the first overture wore off. It turns out they were getting old and wanted something from me that they couldn't get any other way. If they hadn't been wanting I probably wouldn't have heard from them.
Because of that experience, I guess I'd say that you need to be very honest with yourself why you are looking and what it is you want out of the situation.
Where there's life there's hope, and need of vittles.
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
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Aunt Dora Baggins
Immortal
Jun 30 2014, 9:12pm
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I recently connected with a first cousin I'd lost track of for fifty years.
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I actually met his sister first; she tracked down the family when she found their father. Their parents were divorced when they were very young, and their mother told them our family was awful and dangerous and they should stay away from us. Turns out their father was kind of awful and dangerous (possibly involved with organized crime) but he was definitely a black sheep. He stole my grandmother's life savings and then disappeared, at which point his wife cut off all contact with us. Anyhoo, I met the older brother when he was a baby and I was seven. Now, fifty years later, we've connected through his sister and through facebook. I'm not sure how the younger sister found us.
My sister-in-law also reunited with a daughter she had given up for adoption thirty years earlier, but again, the daughter found her, and I'm not sure how.
I've had pretty good luck with facebook, tracking down old classmates I had lost track of for 35 years. I just do a lot of searching and looking at friend-of-friend lists. Usually there's some kind of connection I can exploit.
Good luck!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"For DORA BAGGINS in memory of a LONG correspondence, with love from Bilbo; on a large wastebasket. Dora was Drogo's sister, and the eldest surviving female relative of Bilbo and Frodo; she was ninety-nine, and had written reams of good advice for more than half a century."
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"A Chance Meeting at Rivendell" and other stories
leleni at hotmail dot com
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(This post was edited by Aunt Dora Baggins on Jun 30 2014, 9:13pm)
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entmaiden
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Jun 30 2014, 9:18pm
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although the circumstances were surprising. One of my mom's sisters had twins out of wedlock in the 1940s and put the babies up for adoption. She was in Chicago at the time the babies were born, although her family lived in Ohio, where I grew up. She never told anyone, and married a man who was not the father. My aunt and uncle never had their own children, and they took turns having us for overnight visits.
The twins were raised by a wonderful family, but after their adoptive parents died they started a search for their birth family. They found one of my mom's brothers (their birth mother had passed away) and were reunited with my mom's family.
We don't keep in touch with the "new" cousins much - they had different lives - but it was great to meet them and see the family resemblance. Fraternal twins run in my mom's family - between my mom and her five siblings, three of them had fraternal twin children, and there's a set of twins and triplets each in the next generation.
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Escapist
Gondor
Jun 30 2014, 9:24pm
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not by effort, but by chance, and very brief
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That's the thing with the university, in my experience. It was sort of disillusioning when it dawned on me, really. The first inklings of it stole into my mind after my first year of school making what I thought were such close and awesome friends - who then didn't come back for a second year. And that was that! Nothing meaningful about it, just people shuffling in and out all the time.
I quickly learned that it would be key to continuously meet new friends and contacts if I wanted to stay socially lively at the university. While I did at one point dig a lot of those folks up on FB, I have since grown a bit leery of FB and haven't posted there for quite some time. To be frank, I got a bit tired of the numerous stories in the news about privacy breaches. I also became a little alarmed by stories about employers demanding FB logins and various ridiculous judgments made about an individual that someone never met - just based on their FB page ... and the pages of their friends, even!
I haven't been real communicative with the few attempts that have been made to contact me, and in turn, others haven't been real communicative when I tried to contact them (with one exception - a valiant lady who pursued old university friendships like no one I have ever witnessed before and even devised a contact list for all of us - which I have never used or been looked up with, myself).
I guess it comes to two words: moving on
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Annael
Immortal
Jun 30 2014, 10:26pm
Post #7 of 15
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My BFF in junior high school moved away in 9th grade, and although we stayed in touch for a while, by college we'd lost contact.
30 years later I moved to the town I now live in and ran into her - she'd moved here a couple of years prior to me!
To be sane we must recognize our beliefs as fictions.
- James Hillman, Healing Fiction
* * * * * * * * * *
NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
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sevilodorf
Tol Eressea
Jul 1 2014, 2:36pm
Post #9 of 15
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As family archivist, I get a lot of pictures "dumped" on me... recently my youngest brother gave me a box from about 25 years ago. Among them are photos of his first wife. They divorced long ago (it was a really short marriage and she never met any of our family in person because we are west coast based and at that time they were stationed in New York). My brother passed on the news that she died about eight years ago of a brain aneurysm leaving two daughters.
Through internet sources (obituary and facebook), I have the ability to contact her family (sisters and her daughters).... should I?
Should I contact them and offer to send the photos? Some are vacation photos, some are photos of her in her Naval uniform. I wouldn't send those of them as a couple but the ones of her might be something her daughters would want.
My brother says he won't contact them but that he doesn't mind me doing it..... I'm feeling very Elvish about it....
Fourth Age Adventures at the Inn of the Burping Troll http://burpingtroll.com
Home of TheOneRing.net Best FanFic stories of 2005 and 2006 "The Last Grey Ship" and "Ashes, East Wind, Hope That Rises" by Erin Rua
(Found in Mathoms, LOTR Tales Untold)
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Alassëa Eruvande
Valinor
Jul 1 2014, 2:56pm
Post #10 of 15
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If they don't want the photos they can tell you, or ignore you. No harm in that.
But I would suspect that they would want them, especially the ones of just her, and the ones of her in uniform. Since the photos were in your brother's possession, they might not even know they exist.
If you didn't contact her family, what would you do with the photos? I'm assuming she and your brother had no children who would want these photos, since you said it was a really short marriage. If these are photos that would probably otherwise end up in the trash or tucked away to be forgotten, I would definitely make the effort to get them to someone who might actually want them.
I am SMAUG! I kill when I wish! I am strong, strong, STRONG!
My armor is like tenfold shields! My teeth like swords! My claws, spears!
The shock of my tail, a thunderbolt! My wings, a hurricane! And my breath, death!
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Alassëa Eruvande
Valinor
Jul 1 2014, 3:11pm
Post #11 of 15
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I wasn't "reunited", but I was contacted.
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My mother's biological father divorced her mother when my mother was a toddler. She never knew him, and heard that he had died around the time she was a teenager.
Anyway, a cousin from that branch of the family contacted her as he was doing geneology research. My mother handed him off to me. Since my family had zero contact with his family over the years, I wasn't interested in forming a family tie. My mother's bio father was basically just the sperm donor in her eyes. My mother told me that her mother said he was not a nice man. So I gave the cousin some general info on marriages and dates and that was it. He knew I had one son, I suppose from public records, but didn't know about my second son. I didn't tell him, either.
As for your situation, Daniel, I would definitely contact the old friend. But, don't be upset if she has moved on. There are plenty of college friends I had that I haven't seen since graduation, 25 years ago. Doesn't mean I don't like them anymore, it just means I have moved on. I'm not the same person I was back then, and they aren't either. I haven't sought out anyone, other than the ones I have kept in contact with.
If I knew then what I feel now, I would be surprised. I thought my college years were the best years of my life and couldn't imagine my life without those friends in it. But those years were also a very intense time. Growing up, being independent of my parent, raging hormones, living away from home, college stress, you get the picture.  
I have found that the best years of your life are the ones you are living right now. 
I am SMAUG! I kill when I wish! I am strong, strong, STRONG!
My armor is like tenfold shields! My teeth like swords! My claws, spears!
The shock of my tail, a thunderbolt! My wings, a hurricane! And my breath, death!
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Donry
Tol Eressea
Jul 1 2014, 11:15pm
Post #13 of 15
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Both - family and friends -...the family members were tracked through Ancestry.ca and have been able to chat with them and catch up. The friends have been through Facebook and a friend's wake. While the wake was horribly depressing, it was a great chance to catch up with a few long lost friends.
What's the matter, James? No glib remark? No pithy comeback?"
Twitter - @DonryFetor
FB - https://www.facebook.com/donryfetortheouthouse
Instagram - donryfetor
Blog - donryfetorsouthouse.wordpress.com
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Meneldor
Valinor
Jul 2 2014, 2:45am
Post #14 of 15
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Just a few days ago, the air force pilot from the last crew I was assigned to found me on FB. That's how I found out that our navigator, my roommate for four months in Iraq, was killed two years ago in a firefighting plane crash.
L-R, our two loadmasters, me with flight suit unzipped (hey, it's freakin' hot!), pilot, copilot, and the nav is in front. RIP, Meat, you were one of the good guys.
They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep.
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sevilodorf
Tol Eressea
Jul 3 2014, 2:11pm
Post #15 of 15
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Those were pretty much my thoughts too.
We have a substantial family tree site and also are working steadily on organizing photos and other documents. Hopefully someone in the next generation will maintain it all.
Fourth Age Adventures at the Inn of the Burping Troll http://burpingtroll.com
Home of TheOneRing.net Best FanFic stories of 2005 and 2006 "The Last Grey Ship" and "Ashes, East Wind, Hope That Rises" by Erin Rua
(Found in Mathoms, LOTR Tales Untold)
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