By Elizabeth Cloutman

Siblings separated for 60 years celebrate at LAH home

May 14 was a day Los Altos Hills resident Shirley Pruitt, her older sister and two brothers had waited for most of their lives. The four siblings went to San Jose International Airport to welcome their youngest sister, Carolanne Moore, whom they had last seen 60 years before.

The five Blaikie siblings were born during the Great Depression to alcoholic parents. Badly neglected, the children were removed from the home when Carolanne was not quite 2 years old and Shirley almost 8. The children were sent first to foster parents. Carolanne was soon adopted, and the other children went to live in an Oakland orphanage. Within the next year or so, all were adopted by different families. Except for Shirley and her older sister, Suzanne “Sue” Reese, they lost contact with one another.

Their story is filled with years of the siblings often wondering about one another and searching official and informal records and on the Internet. There are also some remarkable twists of fate. For all the siblings, especially for Shirley, a woman of deep faith, their story is also one of many answered prayers.

The three-day mid-May reunion in Shirley and Bruce Pruitt’s Los Altos Hills home was joyous - filled with talk, shared photographs, laughter and tears. “It felt like the circle was finally complete,” Shirley said. “We kept touching each other just to reassure ourselves it was real … Carolanne said, ‘I’ve never felt so loved.’”

Because she was so young when she was adopted, Carolanne had no memory of her biological parents or her siblings. In fact, she was not told she was adopted until she was 20 years old.

Sue, the eldest, was the next sibling to be adopted, by the McDonald family of San Francisco. Bob and Frank were adopted by the Gosses. Shirley, the second eldest, had no idea where her sisters and brothers were or what their adoptive names were. “I was devastated,” she said. “One by one, they were just gone.”

Shirley was the last to leave the orphanage, at age 8, but found a happy and loving home with Jim and Mary Arnott. “They were what agape love is - love that wants nothing in return, even though I was probably the most impish of us five.”

Amazingly, at a May Day festival in Stern Grove, Sue and Shirley were reunited. While their adoptive fathers knew each other through business - McDonald was an electrician and Arnott a builder - and each knew that the other had recently adopted a little blond girl, they were unaware their young daughters were sisters. Unfortunately, because Sue’s adoptive mother feared the two sisters might want to live together again, neither set of parents encouraged a close relationship during the girls’ younger years. It was only after the sisters grew up and each had three young daughters of her own that they were able to build a strong relationship.

The sisters were hesitant to search for their biological parents, fearing they might still be struggling with alcohol. However, the two often wondered about Frank, Bob and Carolanne.

Bob was also searching. Through Bob’s lawyer, Sue and Shirley in 1966 learned Frank and Bob’s adoptive surname, Goss, and that the brothers had been raised somewhere on the Peninsula.

Then, about four years ago, Sue began searching in earnest for the brothers. She worked at Woodside High School and looked through old yearbooks from Peninsula high schools, hoping to find her brothers. Ultimately, Sue was able to locate the address of the San Mateo home where the boys had grown up. She visited the home in October 1998, and while the current owners were sympathetic, they knew nothing about the Goss family. Even so, on an impulse, Sue sent the family a Christmas card, asking them again to contact her if they ever learned the whereabouts of the Gosses.

Coincidentally, Bob and Frank’s sister by the boys’ adoptive family, Ramona, also visited the former Goss family home soon thereafter. The homeowners gave her Sue’s contact information, and Ramona sent Sue a letter with photographs and addresses.

The four siblings were reunited in April 1999 and stayed in close contact. The sisters learned Bob had also located their biological father, but sadly, as the sisters had feared, their father had remained an alcoholic and died in the 1970s. They have never located their biological mother.

The family longed to see Carolanne again. Sue searched adoption records in Sacramento, but since it was a closed adoption, the family had reached a dead end.

Then, less than three months ago, Bob found two separate entries, with two different e-mail addresses, on the Internet under the Blaikie family name from a Carolanne Moore searching for her brothers and sisters. Carolanne had discovered the information she needed only after her adoptive mother’s death. The siblings’ e-mail to the first entry’s address was returned to them. Apparently it was not a valid address.

Fortunately, their second e-mail reached Carolanne. The Blaikie brothers and sisters were finally reunited when Carolanne flew in from Arizona late in the afternoon of May 14.

The brothers and sisters ended their reunion by worshiping together at Foothill Covenant Church May 16. They shared their story and their joy with the congregation that morning.

Shirley said they didn’t mourn the decades of separation, but instead they all believed that their reunion occurred at the time God had planned. She recalled two favorite Old Testament verses that have sustained her through the years.

The first is Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

The other is Isaiah 49:15: “Can a woman forget her suckling child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I (God) will never forget you.”