It's truly a day to give thanks in one Cypress home. A little brother, now in his 50's, will get to sit down with a sister he never knew he had.
Pulling up for Thanksgiving in Cypress after a two-day drive is a sister Bob Ward Jr. never knew he had. After five decades, he's finally able to embrace his older sister, Carolyn Huelsing.
Their parents divorced at a young age. And due to tough circumstances, they were each raised by different sets of grandparents.
Being two years apart, he had no recollection of her. But Huelsing always knew of him because of a picture of Ward as a toddler that she was given as a young girl. The back shows it was taken in 1961.
"My grandmother had it and she raised me. When Bob was born, she had told me I had a baby brother and he went his father," Huelsing said.
Knowing he was out there, she tried for years to find him but was unsuccessful.
Luckily, Ward's sister-in-law Tara Calhoun began working on her own family tree.
"That was the motivation was that here I have a family member, he is family to me, who only has half his story and how unfair, because family is so important," Calhoun said.
Once she found her, she sent a Facebook message. Huelsing couldn't believe it.
"God, my God, my husband says 'what's wrong, something happen?' I go, 'Someone is contacting me, they found my baby brother.' They've got my mother's name, his name, it's gotta be him," Huelsing said.
Big sis also gave him a picture of their mother, whom he had never seen. And little brother says laying eyes on your sister for the first time is a one-of-a-kind feeling.
"Maybe the pride that a parent has when they see their child for the first time. I mean it's a live-changing experience," Ward said.
As you can imagine, conversation at Thanksgiving dinner should be interesting with fifty plus years of catching up to do.
