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Four-year-old Dominic McCracken-Bruce and his 2-year-old brother Tyson only asked for one thing for Christmas -their Mommy. Army Reserve Capt. Dawn McCracken-Bruce was deployed to Iraq and Kuwait for the past nine months. When she came home for the holidays, she and her husband decided to surprise the boys during their visit with Santa Claus at the Mall at Robinson in Pittsburgh. See the video at WTAE. Link -via Fark
Members of the Army’s 84th Infantry Division who served together in World War II have been meeting annually for 66 consecutive years. Every year there are fewer survivors among the veterans, who are mostly in their late 80s. Marie McDonald, who attends each year with 85-year-old veteran Brownlee Bush, says traveling has become difficult for many, and the final reunion comes as a relief.
The 84th Division’s 16,000 men began basic training in January 1943. They entered combat on Nov. 18, 1944, with an attack on Geilenkirchen, Germany, fought in the Battle of the Bulge and crossed the Rhine River on April 1, 1945. Within two weeks, the unit had reached the Elbe River, where it halted its advance and patrolled the banks until the war’s end. The men spent 170 days in combat and earned seven distinguished unit citations.
“These guys fought a war,” McDonald said. “We won a war in four years, when now the area they’re fighting in is no bigger than Texas, and they’ve been there 10 years, and it’s sad. We had a reason to fight. We wanted to be free.”
The group held its first stateside reunion in Cincinnati in July 1946, just months after returning home. About 700 showed up.
Last year, only about 100 veterans attended, quite a few of them in wheelchairs. That’s when they decided that this year’s reunion will be the last one. Link -via Fark
(Image credit: David Carson)
Rick Hill of Lunenburg, Massachusetts went on vacation to Hawaii and took an unplanned visit to Waikiki Beach. There he met resident Joe Parker, who went on an unplanned errand to the beach as part of his job. Parker recognized Hill’s accent and made an offhand remark that led them to a discussion about how they both grew up in the same area of Massachusetts.
And then the name game began. Parker threw out several, including Dickie Halligan. Hill responded, “That’s my father!’’
Standing in the glistening white sand, Parker lowered his sunglasses, squinted at Hill, and declared, “That’s my dad, too!’’
A flood of emotion hit everyone like the high-arching waves crashing nearby, they said. Tears flowed down Howe’s cheeks as the two men studied each other’s face and hugged.
“I can’t really put it into words,’’ Parker said yesterday in a telephone interview from Hawaii, describing the feeling of meeting his half brother for the first time, some 6,000 miles from where they grew up. “If I had to, I would say it was chilling, paralyzing, and an out-of-body experience all at once.’’
The two men spent a week becoming acquainted. Link -via reddit
Police responded to a report of a man trying to break into a house in Bloomington, Illinois last weekend. It was determined that 21-year-old Christopher Kunder was trying to get into his own house to surprise his mother who didn’t know he was on leave from military service in Afghanistan. The problem was that his mother was not home.
“Hey!” said Christopher, “could you call my mom, tell her there’s an emergency and she needs to come home immediately?”
Officer Martin said, no, he couldn’t do that.
He is a police officer, after all.
Instead, he asked for Christopher’s mom’s phone number and called with nothing but the truth.
“Mrs. Martha Sternickle?”
“Uh, huh.”
“This is Officer Martin of Bloomington Police. We’ve had a report of somebody trying to enter your home. It was unsuccessful but you might want to come home to make sure there’s no problem.”
When Sternickle arrived, Officer Martin led her to the police car to identify the “suspect” in the back seat. A joyful reunion followed. Link
(Image credit: Officer Fred Martin/Bloomington Police)
Richard Lorenc never knew his biological mother, and began searching for her at age 33. The Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services provided him with a name six weeks later: Lorenc’s mother is 62-year-old Vivian Wheeler.
It also informed him that both his mother and his maternal grandmother had hypertrichosis, known as werewolf syndrome. Each had facial hair, even as children. The letter further stated that his mother was born a hermaphrodite, with both male and female reproductive organs.
Wheeler’s facial fuzz had appeared at birth with an inch and a half of light hair covering her cheeks and chin. She says her mother wanted a daughter, and doctors were instructed to remove the male parts.
Wheeler claimed her father was humiliated by his bearded little girl, but it didn’t prevent him from capitalizing on her condition. She began working in sideshows at an early age, earning money to send home to her family.
Wheeler is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the woman with the longest beard -11 inches! Lorenc was reunited with his mother, and learned the story of how they were separated all those years ago. Wheeler is considering leaving her home of Bakersfield, California to live closer to her son in Kansas. Link
Remember the heartwarming reunion between Christian the Lion and the men who raised him? A similar encounter happened when Damian Aspinall went looking for a gorilla, Kwibi, he had raised and released into the wild.
Kwibi grew up with Damian at his Howletts Wild Animal Park in England. When he was five, he was released into the forests of Gabon, West Africa as part of conservation programme to re-introduce gorillas back into the wild. Now Kwibi’s 10 years old, much bigger and stronger. Will Damian find him? Will Kwibi attack him?
Discover more about his work at The Aspinall Foundation. (via Bits and Pieces)
When Tommy Larkin went looking for his long-lost brother Stephen Goosney, little did he knew how far (or in this case, how close) the search would take him:
“She gave me his name and asked me four or five times if I knew him,” Larkin said, referring to the person at the adoption agency who assisted the search. “I said I didn’t, and she kept asking me, if I was sure I haven’t met him.
“She told me, if I got the paper signed and back to her right away, she was sure she could have us meeting by the end of the week. I was like, ‘OK, well he is in Newfoundland.’”
Then, as he was pacing the living room, talking on the phone, he was given the address.
“I said: ‘No … I am looking at the house right now,” he said.
Turns out that the long-lost brothers had been living almost across the street from each other: Link
What have Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine (from Seinfeld – if you don’t know that already, stop reading now. It wouldn’t make sense to you) been doing over the past 11 years?
Jimmy Greenfield of Chicago Now’s Arts & Entertainment has the summary from the Seinfeld reunion from Curb Your Enthusiasm:
We learned that George made millions from an iPhone app called "iToilet," which uses GPS to direct the user to the nearest acceptable toilet.
We learned that George invested all his money with Bernie Madoff and is now broke.
We learned that George was so broke he had to move in with Jerry.
Get out! Link – Thanks Mu!
Who hasn’t hesitated about going back to their high school reunion? Andrea Wachner decided that she’s going to do something different. Instead of going herself, she sent a stripper to go as her!
Even better, she set up filmed the event for all of us to enjoy …
– via nontt
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by non.
Chris Walker, a police sergeant with the Petersburg police force, was shocked to find out the man listed on his birth certificate was not his father. After his mother gave him the name of his real father, Clayton Hamilton, he thought about a 53 year old police detective who had recently joined the suburban Petersburg police unit.
Although the two men are spitting images of each other, Walker thought he had hit a dead end when chatting with Hamilton, who informed Walker that his name was short for Claiborne, not Clayton.
Still, Hamilton’s age matched with what Walker’s mother had told him, and Hamilton told Walker he once dated a woman who went by the name of Billie Joe Walker.
Walker called his mother, but she was insistent that her son hadn’t found his real father, because the names didn’t match. Then Walker asked his mother if she knew a woman named Billie Joe.
“There was a pause on the phone, and she said, ‘That’s your dad,’ ” Walker told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. It turned out his mother’s teen nickname was Billie Joe, based on a hit song of the time, “Ode to Billie Joe.”
One DNA test later, Walker had found his father.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.
