Orphan Reunion - American Story with Bob Dotson

12/28/1993, Cottage Grove, OR (Also shot in Alexandria, VA) - Life turns on the tiniest things. Jimmy Stolp and Andy Stalp were raised side by side in the same orphanage. Never knowing they were brothers. “70 years,” Andy says. “Pure loneliness.” In 1926, the clerk at the Tennessee Home for Friendless Babies misspelled one brother’s last name. The mistake was never discovered. “They told me both of my parents were dead.” They were not. His mother was simply too young and too poor to care for him. Andy was the first to be given up. Three years later, she dropped off Jimmy at the orphanage. And disappeared. “It was like I was dropped out of a space ship,” Andy says. “I had nobody.” So, the Navy became Andy’s family. He was a good son. Andy Stalp saved his shipmates during World War Two. Tossed burning gasoline tanks over the side during a Japanese bombing attack at Guadalcanal. He earned a silver star. There were no medals for the battle his brother fought. “I couldn’t hear,” Jimmy insists. The other orphans bullied Jimmy. Thought he was retarded. But he was deaf until 1961. When doctors operated, they found rice, papers and other things children had stuffed into his ears. Some nugget of strength prompted Jimmy to endure. He married on an Easter weekend. So did Andy. Both still wondering if somewhere, they might have a family of their own. The two wore out a lifetime looking. In every new city they checked phone books. Andy calling Stalp’s. Jimmy ringing up Stolp’s. They never found each other, but Andy discovered a third brother, Stanley, in Oregon. He too had been searching half his life. “I know we were probably 25 miles from Andy, several times,” Stanley says. “I called Andy and said, ‘You have two more brothers out here.’” Jimmy heard of that reunion and now, at long last, has one one of his own. “Andy,” he hugged his brother. “We were so close once. What happened.” Their father had remarried. Moved west. And started a new family. On holidays, the old man would talk about the boys he left behind. “Now I’ve got aunts and uncles,” Jimmy glows. “Brothers, sisters. I’m rich now.” In most every family there is a tale of hardship and hope. This family held fast to a dream, despite a lifetime apart. A lifetime that began with a misspelled name. The difference between an “a” and an “o” was 70 years. “I’m somebody. I’m James Stolp!” One of the family. Bob Dotson is the author of four books, including the New York Times best-selling “American Story: A Lifetime Search for Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things.” (Penguin/Random House) https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo... The latest edition of his classic, “Make It Memorable: Writing and Packaging Visual News with Style” became Amazon’s best-selling journalism book. It is being studied on 26 campuses and in newsrooms around the world. (Roman & Littlefield.) https://www.amazon.com/Make-Memorable...