Day 11: I meet my Bergendorf Family

 Well, there are not quite words to express what today meant to me. How do you describe what closure feels like for myself and as I realized, for my Bergendorf family as well? 

Yet closure is what we realized today. We met at Fremont Park. We all arrived at about the same time for a potluck picnic. Instantly, I felt like I had come home. We met, we hugged, we shared what we knew about my mom and her four brothers. We shared stories about our own lives. I took lots of pictures. 

Harley and I had connected a few years back on ancestry but at the time I was looking for Lois Hutchings (my mother's first marriage name) He didn't know that name but he thought she might be a Bergendorf that the family had lost track of after WWII. Come to find out, her brothers looked for her their whole lives, never finding out what happened to her. Keri, who is the daughter of one of the brother' Harry's son, Craig, reached out to me on Ancestry as she was looking for her Aunt Lois. 

Fast forward to today. 




My first cousins: Craig and Natalie. My Uncle Harry's children. 

And Craig's children included here: Scott, Jeanette, Keri and Brandon. Craig's wife Lorna is next to me. 
Third generation down:)

Chris and Natalie. 

Jeanette  and I have the same eyes.

Harley and I. 

We lingered at the picnic until after 3:00 then we went to the cemetery to see Florence Feldsted Bergendorf and family gravesites. Florence, my mother's mother...



I have a sense of completeness now. I hope that my Bergendorf family now have come closure around my birth mom as well...Lois Bergendorf...



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