THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 23, 1995 TAG: 9511230744
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA MCNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ISLE OF WIGHT LENGTH: Long : 149 lines
For years, John T. Edwards and his wife, Virginia, spent holidays alone or with friends. They have no children.
This year, Edwards is sharing a Thanksgiving with a sister. And by Christmas, his family circle will have multiplied to include a brother, two nieces, several nephews and all their children.
It took 61 years, but Edwards has found his family.
``This has been so important to me,'' he said in his home near Smithfield, as he sat with the sister and brother he missed growing up with. ``I've always wanted to know these people. For the last three or four years, it's been nagging at my heart.''
Their story starts in 1934 in Newport News. Edwards was 6 weeks old when his father was killed in an accident. It was during the depths of the Depression, he said as he held his sister's hand and gazed at his brother, sitting next to her.
Their mother couldn't care for three children - his brother was 22 months at the time - so the boys were put up for adoption. Their sister, Mary Etta Hyder, now 67, stayed with her mother.
She was only 6, but she remembers well how she missed her baby brothers.
``These boys have been a part of me for my entire life,'' said Hyder, who lives in Nevada. ``I used to lay awake at night, wondering if they were all right, hoping they had been adopted by people who loved them.''
They were finally reunited after Edwards asked a friend, an amateur genealogist from Carrollton, to help him find his sister.
And they found her.
Edwards picked up Hyder at the airport a week ago today.
After the story about their reunion ran in a local newspaper, it didn't take long for their brother, living in Utah, to hear about it from several Newport News-area people.
And by Saturday morning, George Powell, 63, was on a plane to Norfolk.
``My phone rang at 4:15 in the morning,'' Powell said, chuckling. ``I paced the floor until I thought it wasn't too early to call Virginia. We'd already called about plane reservations.''
The telephone rang at Edwards' home in rural Isle of Wight at 7:30 a.m.
The family was complete.
``I turned around to my wife and said, `Go get Mary Etta. Our brother is on the line.' ''
Edwards was fighting tears.
John Edwards was adopted by a family living in Newport News who later returned to their native Isle of Wight County to work their family farm. He remembers a happy childhood. Raised as an only child, he didn't know he was adopted until his parents told him when he was about 10.
``We wish we could have taken all three of you,'' they told him.
His brother, meanwhile, was close by, adopted by a Newport News police officer and his wife. They had a child of their own, a sister who Powell said died of leukemia at 15.
For Powell, the revelation came on the playground, when a childhood friend whispered to him that he was adopted.
``At first, my parents denied it. When they finally admitted it was true, they still didn't want to tell me anything. There was a code of silence about adoption back then. It was a confusing time.''
And all those years, while their sister worried about them, both men worried about her.
``Somehow, I knew that she would have the roughest life,'' Edwards said.
Edwards' instincts were right. Hyder recalls that she spent much of her young life in boarding houses and working as a mother's helper in various homes. She and her mother never were close, she said. She clung to the memory of her little brothers.
``I was afraid to look for them. I didn't know if they'd been told they were adopted. I didn't want to disrupt their lives.''
Edwards started searching for his sister about a year ago, four years after his adoptive mother died. A friend, Jean Helms, an amateur genealogist living in the Isle of Wight community of Carrollton, had just completed her family tree, and she was looking for another project.
Edwards asked her to help with his own search.
She started with microfilm files at local newspapers. She found an account of the death of the siblings' father, William Ernest Llewellyn, and she found his obituary.
She had help with the search from The Adoptees and Natural Parents Organization, a Yorktown search and support group for adult adoptees and birth parents. Her search finally led to a cousin who knew about a half-sister - one neither brother knew existed - living in Florida. The woman had kept in touch with Hyder. Helms made the initial contact.
``When I called Mary Etta, I got the answering machine at first,'' Helms recalled. ``Then she picked up the phone. I said, `How much did you hear?'
``Finally, I said, `I have your baby brother standing here in my kitchen.' ''
During that first phone call, in September, Edwards and Hyder talked for about 15 minutes. Hyder remembers she remained calm through the conversation.
Then, 61 years of waiting erupted into an hour of tears.
``I went and sat down in the living room and fell to pieces. When I finally stopped crying, I called my daughters, and they started crying. None of us slept that night.''
The following day, Edwards called again. He said, ``Mary Etta, this is your brother, John.''
The two made plans to spend Thanksgiving together. Edwards met his sister at Norfolk's airport with a dozen red roses. In the center of the bouquet was a single yellow rose, signifying a promise to his sister, he said, that they would continue searching for their brother.
George Powell also had been searching. Like Edwards, he waited until his adoptive parents were gone. He, too, started with his father's obituary. From there, he went to the funeral home, which is still in business.
``I found out that funeral homes keep very good financial records. I discovered who paid for my father's funeral. Since that woman was dead, I went to the people who had paid for hers.''
Powell's search led him to many of his relatives, including those aware of ties to two Civil War soldiers named Llewellyn. That information led him to attend a reunion of a Warwick County Civil War unit. And the woman who had organized that reunion was one of the first who called to tell Powell about his sister and brother getting together.
``It's so wonderful,'' Hyder said, wiping tears. ``We all had this deep desperation to find one another.''
Powell and his wife, Dixie, joined the family last weekend. Over just a few days, they discovered they share many likenesses, plus a good sense of humor.
And they discovered that their paths probably crossed several times during their lives.
Powell, who has his own business in Utah, and Edwards, an insurance executive, have mutual acquaintances. And Hyder lived in the same town in Utah where Powell and his family still live. In fact, she gave birth to one of her daughters there.
The Powells know the doctor who delivered the baby.
One of Powell's childhood friends, a woman he still keeps in touch with, also knew Edwards. She always suspected they were brothers because they resemble each other, but she never said so.
Powell and his wife flew back to Utah on Tuesday to spend Thanksgiving with their four sons and daughters-in-law and 10 grandchildren. John and Virginia Edwards plan to fly to Nevada to spend Christmas with Hyder. From there, they'll all go to Utah.
And that's when the real reunion will happen.
For Edwards, as well as his brother and sister, it was a long, emotional journey.
``After being separated for 61 years, you don't know if you will even like these people. But there has been an instant bond. We liked and loved each other right away.''
``It's so wonderful,'' Hyder said, smiling at her brothers.
Even Helms, who engineered the reunion, has a deep feeling of satisfaction.
``I have no doubt that these people will be together now until the day they die.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
JOHN H. SHEALLY II/The Virginian-Pilot
Together with help from a genealogist friend: George Powell of Utah;
Mary Etta Hyder of Nevada; and John Edwards of Isle of Wight. In
1934 their widowed mother put the boys up for adoption, unable to
support all three.
by CNB