ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 9, 1997 TAG: 9701100116
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: N-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHARLES STEBBINS STAFF WRITER
THERE will never be another Christmas like this one.
Even though it's January, Christmas is still being played out for two Roanoke-area sisters and their families - Beatrice Saunders of Roanoke and Lillian Hale of Wirtz in Franklin County.
And also for a Lansdale, Pa., woman, Mary Swope, who said she was overwhelmed by the whole experience.
The "experience" was a first-ever meeting of Beatrice and Lillian with their long-lost half sister Mary.
They had a recent tearful but joyful meeting in Roanoke, thanks to the efforts of a private investigator who followed a half-century-old paper trail through two states to find Swope.
"We're going to stay in touch," Swope said. "It took 51 years to find me, so we're not going to let it go easily."
"This has really made my Christmas," said Dee Vest, the private investigator, who is from Greenville, Tenn.
"This has been my most merry Christmas," said Saunders. "I've been bubbling."
"He's been our Santa Claus," Hale said of Vest.
Ruth Janney, Saunders' daughter, called it a "miracle."
Vest will always be dear to the hearts of the family, she said. "We've adopted him into our family," she said. "He's a part of us now."
* * *
This story dates back to the late 1940s, when the four children of the Hundley family of Salem - two girls and two boys - were put into foster homes. Their father died in 1944, and their mother could no longer care for them.
Beatrice, who was a teen-ager, went into a home in Roanoke County. Lillian, about age 10, went to a home in Patrick County.
The two brothers, William and Joseph, also were put into separate foster homes.
The next year, 1945, a third daughter - Mary - was born in Sprague, W.Va.
She, too, went to a foster home, and when she was 3 years old was adopted by a family in Pennsylvania.
Mary knew nothing of her sisters and brothers, but Beatrice said she heard a vague report that their mother had given birth to another girl - but a girl who was "lost."
The other four children were able to stay in touch, but the two brothers died in the 1970s.
Beatrice said that over the years, she thought many times about the baby sister and wondered what had become of her.
She and Lillian thought many times about trying to track her down, but never attempted to because they thought it would be too difficult and expensive.
"We didn't have anything to go on," Lillian said.
* * *
A major turning point started late in the summer when Saunders' daughter, Janney, of Roanoke, met Vest through a business acquaintance.
Vest also met Ruth's younger sister, Hazel Lester of Rocky Mount, and in time they mentioned their mother's missing sister.
* * *
Dee Vest took up private investigating after 25 years as a public schoolteacher and administrator.
He retired from the public schools after a bad traffic accident that left him with a long recuperation. When he was able to work again, he took up investigations because it seemed the kind of job in which he could work at his own pace.
Vest said his interest was aroused in the missing sister case because it went back a half-century and would require following a paper trail. He had never done a case like this, and he looked upon it as a challenge. He decided to take the case without his usual $1,200 fee.
It turned out that the date on the contract he signed with Saunders and Hale, Nov. 7, 1996, was later discovered to be Swope's 51st birthday.
Vest began his search for Swope in West Virginia, because the one thing the family knew about the lost sister was that she was born there.
There, he ran into a rather complicated trail of birth and death records and property settlements. Eventually, this led him to Pennsylvania, where he was able to find an address where the sister had once lived. But at some point she had married and changed her name.
A check of people in that neighborhood, however, finally led him to Swope's son and to Swope herself.
His first contact with Swope was by telephone one night a little more than a month after he began his search.
Swope said she almost went into shock when she heard the news from Vest.
"I knew I had some family somewhere," she said, "but I didn't know how to go about finding them."
* * *
When the sisters came together recently, Swope revealed that over the years she had wanted to change the shape of her face where the corners of her mouth and cheeks meet. She has dimples there that become more pronounced when she smiles.
"But when I met my two new sisters," she said, "I saw that they have the same face."
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: NHAT MEYER STAFF. 1. Private investigator Dee Vestby CNBbrought together sisters (from left) Lillian Hale of Wirtz and
Beatrice Saunders of Roanoke with their half sister, Mary Swope of
Lansdale, Pa. color. 2. Mary Swope of Lansdale, Pa., met her
great-niece, Shawn Mills, 15, for the first time in December.