Audrey (Steward) Ray never knew her father, but thanks to an Internet search and social media, on June 19 she got to meet brothers, cousins, nieces and a whole host of family members she had previously only heard about.
Ray's parents - the late Ella Steward and Garland M. Steward III - divorced in 1964 when she was only 2 years old, and her father left and never came back. While her three older brothers could remember their father, Ray had no memories of him.
Ray's only connections to her father were the stories her mother told her - including that she had older brothers and a sister from her father's previous marriage - and one of his friends from Ft. Leonard Wood who would come check on her and her brothers periodically to report back to him.
"I always wanted a dad like my brothers or my (younger) sisters. I wanted to know where I was from, who I looked like," Ray told the Fulton Sun on Friday. "It kept nagging at me, until I finally decided, "I'm going to do this.'"
With help from Jeff Young, a coworker at Presbyterian Manor in Fulton, Ray recently did a search of her father's name on the genealogy site Ancestry.com where she found his obituary and discovered he had died seven years ago.
The obituary also provided her with the names of the three siblings she had never met: Ramon, Maurice and Lindale.
Armed with that information, Ray joined Facebook and soon tracked down someone she believed was her brother, the Rev. Ramon Steward. He was her first friend request.
Ramon accepted Ray's request and things progressed quickly from there. There were text messages back and forth. When Ray sent a photo of herself, she received a call back immediately.
According to a typed story about her recent reunion, it was Ramon on the line telling her, "You are my sister."
When Ray asked who she looked like, Ramon said she bore a strong resemblance to her sister Lindale (who died 12 years ago) and that she looked exactly like Lindale's niece.
Although Ray's mother had always told Ray and her brothers about their older half siblings, Ray said Ramon, Maurice and Lindale had no idea about them - despite being in contact with their father until his death.
"They were really surprised and shocked," Ray said.
Despite that, arrangements were quickly made to get together. Ray's half siblings all live in Texas - as does her older brother, Garland Maurice Eugene Steward IV - so she and her husband drove to Texas to meet her newly-discovered siblings on June 19.
"It was just wonderful and overwhelming because they were so welcoming and just as excited as I was," Ray said. "They really embraced me. There were cousins and great nieces and friends - it was like a mini reunion."
Ray also noted she had finally found where she gets her features from: "I look like my dad's side."
She said there is a Steward family reunion in Texas on July 4, which her brothers will be attending, and she and her three grown sons have plans to visit in September.
Although Ray's quest did not end with meeting her father, she said making the connection with the rest of her family has filled the hole in her heart.
"It helps a lot because now I know more about my dad and what he was like," Ray said. "I just feel complete now. I know where I'm from now."
Katherine Cummins can be reached at (573) 826-2418 or [email protected].