Man reconnects with long-lost relatives after letter is printed in the Grantham Journal
A man has reconnected with long-lost family members after a letter printed in the Journal - with an amazing stroke of luck helping to connect him to one in America.
Alan Shepherd, 74, has had contact from three different relatives that he has not seen or heard from since the 1960s after submitting a letter which was printed in the Journal back in September.
The original letter by Alan, who currently lives in Southampton, was written with the intention of tracking down his cousin, Irene Caunt, whom he had not seen since 1968.
Alan lived in Leicester back in the 1950s and '60s and said that he saw his cousins "occasionally" but "many years had passed" since they last spoke to one another.
His letter explained that Irene also had older siblings in Ron, who moved from Grantham to Detroit, Michigan, in the 1960s, and June who moved from Grantham to Nottingham.
Their shared grandparents, Thomas and Ethel Shepherd, lived in Grantley Street, Grantham.
Alan said: "I received three responses to the letter. One was from the son of my cousin Irene, who was the person I was seeking.
"Unfortunately she is not very well at the moment and so I have only been able to talk to her son, which was a delight in any case.
"A second response was from another cousin, Michael Rollins, who lives in Bourne, but who saw the letter and made contact with me. That was such a lovely and unexpected surprise.
"The third response is the most amazing."
Irene's older brother Ron, who left Grantham for America over half a century ago, was the third to respond to Alan's letter, thanks to a bizarre stroke of luck and good timing.
Alan continued: "Ron is a lot older than me, so I had assumed that, leaving aside the difficulties of locating someone in the United States, he may not still be alive.
"As fortune would have it Ron’s wife, Joyce, was visiting Grantham in the week the letter was published. She is well into her 80s.
"She saw a copy of the Journal, with the letter, and as she told me, it shook her to her core.
"When she returned home to Waterford, which is a town about 40 miles north of Detroit, she showed Ron, who is now 87, the letter, and he contacted me by telephone and we have also communicated by email."
Ron has since sent Alan a photograph of his grandfather, Thomas Shepherd, which meant a lot to Alan.
He said: "I did not have a photo of him and therefore had not seen him since he died in December 1956. That photograph is so important to me and I have now been able to show it to my children and grandchildren.
"My son and his children live in New York and my daughter and her children live in Southampton, so the Journal letter has spread far and wide."
