Mother, Son Reunited After More Than 40 Years
Published: March 2, 2006
Every year, hundreds of children are kidnapped by one of their parents and forced to live a new life, leaving the other parent to wonder if they will ever see their child again.
One mother and son reunion took place in Birmingham 40 years after they were separated.
“The last time I saw him he was leaving to go to day care. His father was taking him to day care and I went to work,” said Margie Tillotson-Cost, a mother whose son disappeared.
Margie Tillotson’s youngest child of four disappeared on August 1964, along with her husband of five years.
When asked if she ever got any leads on her son’s disappearance, she said, “No, it was like they had dropped into a black hole.”
She plastered missing signs across the country, searched for clues and followed every tip even, the most gruesome ones.
“We had to go to Mississippi, to a morgue one time to view a dead child that they thought might be him,” Margie Tillotson said.
All the while, 3-year-old Anthony Tillotson was tucked away in Rasoria, Texas, with his father.
“He changed my name and I didn’t know it until I was 20 years old,” Anthony Tillotson said. “He told me that my mama had hemorrhaged and passed away three days after I was born.”
Anthony Tillotson had grown up thinking his last name was Harris. When he was 20, he found a Social Security card with his name listed as Tillotson. His father admitted that his name was really Tillotson, but continued to tell him his mother had died.
The only connection Anthony Tillotson had to his past were old pictures of people he never knew.
His mother moved on with her life and remarried, but never gave up on finding her missing son. Two weeks ago while checking for reverse information on phone numbers on the Internet, she found what she had spent the last four days looking for.
“And it come up with several Anthony Lee Tillotsons in Rasonia, Texas, and there he was,” Margie Tilloston said.
The father died in 1998 with his son by his side, never telling him the whole truth.
“I really didn’t think I had any family,” Anthony Tillotson said.
The reunion has left mother and son with more than 40 years of catching up to do.
Anthony Tilloston now not only has found a mother, but two older brothers and a sister he never knew existed.
One point of irony in the Tillotson’s story is that Anthony Tillotson is a semi-truck driver by trade. His travels have brought him to within a few miles of his long-lost family over the years and he never knew it.
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