Back in the mid-1930s, there was a man who lived in Belt. He and his wife had a baby girl who many years later became my awesome mother-in-law. This man, for whatever reason, bailed on the relationship and headed to Alaska within a couple of years, leaving the girl to be raised by her mother and, eventually, her mother’s new (wonderful) husband, who raised the girl as his own and loved her dearly.
My mother-in-law eventually married an amazing man – US Air Force pilot, later a Pan Am pilot – and they had a two daughters. One of those daughters is now my wonderful wife. But she always wondered about her grandfather that abandoned the family back in Belt decades earlier.
Well, a little over a year ago, we found out. That man went on to marry a woman in Alaska, and they had a daughter. That daughter grew up and married a man who was also an airline pilot, and she and her husband also had two daughters.
How do we know? Because of genealogy testing! My wife stumbled across a blood relative on a genealogy site a while back, and eventually made contact with her. That woman – who was my mother-in-law’s half-sister from the Belt man – came to visit us in Great Falls about a year ago from where she has been living for a while in another state, and brought one of her daughters. It was wonderful to meet them! My mother-in-law passed away several years ago, so she never got to meet her half-sister, but it was an amazing connection for my wife to have a new aunt. We’ve stayed in touch – she is a delightful woman, full of good cheer and lots of stories about growing up in Alaska, and becoming a bush pilot herself.
And here’s another interesting angle: this aunt, as noted above, had two daughters – and one of those daughters has a son who is an EMT in Missoula…and my daughter worked in the Emergency Department at a hospital in Missoula for seven years, and she and the grand-son of my wife’s new-found aunt actually know each other!
So…is there a point to this story? I don’t know – but it is amazing, and happy.
