Newspaper notice connects long-lost siblings

WINTERPORT – Fifty-nine-year-old Odessa Smith never got to know her siblings after her parents divorced when she was an infant.

Over the years she’s tried to find them, wanting to know more about them and to make a family connection. But until recently, those attempts had been unsuccessful.

Her search was made difficult as her family had a complicated history. Both parents were married twice and some of her step- and half-brothers and sisters were placed in foster care or adopted. Smith, too, spent some time in a children’s home in Atlanta, although her mother later reclaimed custody of her.

A McLaughlin by birth, Smith wrote to every McLaughlin in the Bangor area telephone book about seven or eight years ago in hopes of finding family members. She had no luck and set aside efforts to find her siblings, although she didn’t give up.

Late last year, while surfing the Internet, she saw the Family Ties genealogy column in the Bangor Daily News, the parent publication of The Weekly. The column by Roxanne Moore Saucier regularly publishes queries from people looking to find their roots.

Still wanting to make that connection, Smith submitted a request asking to hear from anyone who knew her father, Bert George McLaughlin, and the query ran in the Jan. 26 issue of the NEWS.

Frances Wescott, 69, was sitting at home in Winterport waiting for her husband to finish up reading part of the newspaper when she noticed the McLaughlin name in the Style section of the paper.

Wescott leapt to her feet, excited. She told her husband, “I know where Odessa is.”

Wescott wrote Smith at the e-mail address included in the column, telling her that she had known Smith’s father and, in fact, Smith’s father was her father as well. They were sisters.

Smith went from being shocked to crying after reading the e-mail. About a week later, Wescott made a phone call to Marietta, Ga.

The way Smith tells it, she was watching television about 6 p.m. when the phone rang. On the other end was a woman with a distinct northern accent. Smith said she was astonished to find out that her long lost sibling was on the other end.

The miles and years that had separated them seemed to melt away.

“We just talked like we knew each other forever,” Smith said.

And it wasn’t just one sibling she found, but several others, as Wescott had located and maintained contact with the others.

Smith’s half sister, Ethel Lange – at 71 years old she’s the oldest – lives in St. Petersburg, Fla., while Donna Wilson lives in Illinois and Donna’s twin brother Donald McLaughlin lives in Tampa, Fla. Smith’s half-sister Stella Marshall, whom Wescott found five years ago, lives in Dedham, while Smith’s stepbrother, Frank Blanchard, also lives in Florida.

Since their first contact in decades, the long-lost family members have stayed in contact with each other by phone and e-mail. Some have even exchanged photographs of themselves and of their children and grandchildren.

All because one of their number refused to give up.