Thursday, August 2, 2012

The Internet ... You Can Run But You Can't Hide

Having just a brief bit of old information can oftentimes help you find people from your past.  It's a bit scary if some wacko is trying to find you but quite exciting if you are the wacko trying to find someone   : )   My husband & I at one point during our many, many moves lost touch with his birth mother & her family.  A little over a year ago I sat down at the computer & thought I'd try once again to find one of them.  I had tried this many times in previous years & had no luck ... but this time I found the son of a half-brother with a phone number listed.  We called, had some nice phone conversations, & now we all know where we are   : )

I posted the other day about finding my old tatting friend by just Googling her name & being led to her old website on which she had posted a link to her Etsy shop.  I went to her Etsy shop & found nothing for sale but I did find her contact info.  I dropped her a line & we are now catching up   : )

Over the years John & I have often wondered what happened to some very good friends we used to have when our children were younger.  (For the purpose of this posting I'll call them Harry & Betty & their children George & Monica.)  We met them when we lived in Florida.  John & Harry both worked for the VA where they met & really hit it off.  It wasn't long before we got together as couples & Betty & I also hit it off.  Time went by.  We shared many meals, visited many fun places, & played cards every weekend.  Children were born & played together.  After a few years John & I moved to Montana & Harry & Betty moved to Oklahoma.  We visited them in Oklahoma once while we were living in North Dakota & had a fun visit but then suddenly life went every which way & we lost touch.  We tried many times over the years to find them but never could.  I was thinking about them again yesterday & decided to type their names into Google to see if I might have any luck.  I didn't ... at least not at first.  I first tried Harry's name, then Betty's name, then the names of the children.  At one point I came across several Bettys & one had the middle name Kay.  A light bulb lit up above my head & I remembered that this was my old friend's middle name.  I searched some more.

Let me stop here to say that there are sites you can stumble across when you are searching for someone & these sites will give you a wee bit of info ... like the name of the person & the name of a town where this person has lived ...  but then they want you to pay money to get further info.  I never do that ... I just keep hunting & pecking around.

As I continued my search I found a site that listed Betty Kay's name & a few of her "associations" which were the names of Harry & the children.  I then played around some more & found a link to an attorney in Oklahoma with the same name as Harry & Betty's son.  When I clicked on the link, I knew immediately that I had found George.  His photo was on the site & he is a dead ringer for Harry & Betty   : )   I emailed him via the law firm's contact link explaining who I was & asked that if he was indeed Harry & Betty's son would he would please give them my contact info.

This morning I received an email from George confirming that yes, he is the son of Harry & Betty & that he would pass along my contact information to Betty saying that he was sure his mom would be thrilled to give me a call   : )

3 comments:

cucki said...

Such a nice and happy day for you..
It is so true that old friends are The best.
Big hugs xxx

Peggy Lee said...

The internet sure is handy that way! That's so great that you found your old friends.

TheCrankyCrow said...

And I've already read how this turns out....wonderful ending.... :o))) Robin