Brothers reunited after 66 years apart
Published: November 6, 2006
The tears welled up in the eyes of Alfred Klipping, much as they did on that day so long ago when he left behind his brother to come to North Iowa and live with his adoptive parents.
“They tell me that the first night I was adopted, I cried myself to sleep saying ‘where’s Dale?’ And to think, after all these years, I found him.”
Klipping paused, removed his glasses and wiped away the tears. The Corwith man who works part-time at the Forest City Ace Hardware store had indeed found Dale.
“It’s unbelievable. … God was with us, wasn’t He?”
The two brothers - who had last seen each other in 1939 when they both lived in an orphanage in Toledo - met on Oct. 21 at an aunt’s house in Washington, their hometown so long ago. And almost immediately, they began bridging a 66-year gap.
“Oh boy, was it a long time coming,” Jacobs said in a phone interview from his Ottumwa home. “I wish we lived closer to each other, but right now, just to know he’s alive and well … it’s just great.”
The separation
George was 5 and Dale was 7 when they were taken from their home in Washington to the orphanage in Toledo.
“We still don’t know why we ended up there,” Klipping said, “but I remember it was kind of scary and I remember being real glad that my big brother was there with me.”
But in the 1930s and 1940s, adopting just one sibling was a common practice, and in early 1940, George and Lillian Klipping came to Toldeo to adopt Alfred and bring him back to the Forest City area.
Dale, meanwhile, stayed in Toledo, and in the early 1940s, his mother and stepfather came back for him.
“Mom never really did say what happened,” Jacobs said. “I’d ask her but she’d get real emotional. After a while, I realized she just didn’t want to or couldn’t talk about it.”
The two brothers grew up, eventually married and had children.
Alfred and his wife, Doris, had four children and farmed in the Thompson-Buffalo Center area until 1985. He then went to work at Southtown Lumber in Forest City until he semi-retired a few years ago. Dale, meanwhile, had four daughters and a son, and he worked as an electric-motor repairman.
Dale and his second wife, Margaret, moved to Arizona in 1969, but when Margaret passed away, Dale moved back to Iowa a year ago so he could be closer to his children.
“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it,” Klipping said. “If we had started looking earlier, we probably wouldn’t have found him. And then who knows? Maybe we would have given up. God must have decided now was the time.”
The search
For years, Jacobs wondered what happened to his brother. He wanted to find him, but he admits he didn’t have a clue where to start.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, but [the adoption] happened so long, I just couldn’t remember anything. A lot happened and it was in the 1930s and I was just a little kid. Not knowing … that’s what was so hard.”
About a month ago, Klipping decided the time was at hand to find his brother. He and his wife went to a grandson’s birthday party in southern Iowa but left a day early to begin the search.
A daughter, Jennifer, picked up the proverbial ball from there. She drove to Washington, found Dale’s birth certificate and then by chance, searched for Dale Jacobs on the Internet.
She found him in Ottumwa and placed the call to the uncle she never knew. A few minutes later, she dialed her father.
“She said, ‘I think I found him’ and I didn’t say anything,” Klipping said. “So she said it again. ‘I think I found him.’ … And I just cried.”
As he talked, the tears of joy returned. Sixty-six years later, the search had ended.
Reunion day
They met at their Aunt Velma’s house in Washington, and the embrace was long and tight.
“It was wonderful,” Jacobs said, “and I’ll tell you, I’m not ashamed to say it but the tears came.”
“We’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” Klipping said, once again trying to hold back the emotions, “but God looked after us all these years. You know, at our age, one of us could have been gone, but He kept us here so we could find each other.”
Dale Jacobs turned 74 on Sunday. And for the first time, Al Klipping can send his big brother a birthday card.
“It’s a little thing maybe to some people,” Klipping said, “but it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time.”
Many questions remain unanswered, but the brothers find comfort in the one that has been answered. Where is my brother? They now know.
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