Walter and Alan sat together for the first time in sixth grade in Honolulu. They were 11, played football side by side, and called each other “uncle”. That friendship lasted 60 years. And both carried a wound in silence: Walter never knew his father, and Alan, who was adopted, had lost his only known sibling at 19.
Decades later, each set out on his own to search for his roots in DNA databases. Neither expected the results to point to the same place: the same mother.
On December 23, 2017, at their annual Christmas get-together, they told everyone. Alan had believed his whole life that he was alone in the world, never knowing that the brother he had dreamed of finding for so long had been by his side for six decades.
