Positivity: “Deceased” father and son are reunited after 37 years
Hideous lies from the past that separated the two were overcome as a father and his son met in Mesa, AZ:
….. “It’s a little scary. I prayed, ‘Dear God, let me find him before I die,’” said Larry Krieger, 62, of Gilbert, whose medical history includes a bout with cancer and two heart attacks.
Mike Higley, 43, of Leonardtown, Md., said he was 5 years old in 1969, living in San Diego, when he last saw Krieger. He had no memory of what his father looked like beyond a high school picture he saw 25 years ago.
“I remember riding in a (Chevrolet) Corvair,” he said. “I was a wreck on the airplane. Once I got off the airplane, the nerves went away. It was the right thing.”
The separation was the result of a divorce and deception by family members, who told each man that the other had died in a car accident, a story neither completely bought.
Higley said he has tried to find his father for about eight years and called 35 to 40 other Larry Kriegers.
The big breakthrough occurred when Higley asked for a police report of his father’s supposed Mesa traffic fatality in 1976. Mesa police records administrator Karen Wolf found a routine traffic accident and a vehicle burglary involving Krieger in 2005 and notified Higley.
Higley, his wife and his daughter are visiting for the weekend, thanks to the generosity of Southwest Airlines and the Phoenix Marriott Mesa hotel.
Krieger and Higley beamed non-stop as they sat on a couch, surrounded by cameras and reporters, with Krieger’s arm draped around his long-lost son.
Both men said they are focusing on getting to know each other’s families and catching up on each other’s lives, not on the lies that drove them apart.
“You know what anger brought? It brought a 40-year separation. Put it aside,” Hig-ley said.
Krieger said he remembers telling his son that he was going to be gone for “quite a while,” working on and driving race cars in Mexico and South America.
“We just didn’t think it was going to take so long,” Krieger said.
