During the past year, I was reunited with my long lost family as a result of an article Leonard Amari wrote about me that was published in Fra Noi. The following describes how this happened. My parents were divorced when I was a baby. My mother and her parents raised me. My father, Denphon (“Danny”) remarried and had three more sons, my half-brothers, Mark, Chris, and John. Due to our father’s premature death at the age of 36, none of us had the chance to know him very well.

I was only 13; Mark was 7, Chris was 4 and John was 2. After he passed, we never had the opportunity to know each other. While I always knew my half-brothers existed, I never bothered to find them, not knowing whether they’d want to have a relationship with me. Their mother, Frances, remarried and had another child, Jill Hagl-Kuffner, my stepsister. It’s a good thing she did since Jill is the one who found me and brought me to the attention of her mother and my brothers.