DORIS PETRE, 84, of Brunswick and her brother, Richard Watrous, 87, of Connecticut, chuckle during a Dec. 3 reunion at Petre’s home. The siblings had not seen each other since being separated in 1931.
DORIS PETRE can be seen Oct. 26 holding a picture of her brother, Richard Watrous, taken in the 1950s.
Undeterred, the siblings’ family and friends stepped forward to make sure that the much-anticipated reunion took place, albeit under different circumstance than originally planned.
Petre’s granddaughter called Watrous to let him know about his sister’s situation. He called Petre right away to tell her he would come to see her in Maine the following Saturday. After three weeks of physical therapy at the Bath facility, Petre checked herself out and was home for a day resting before her brother’s long-awaited arrival on Dec. 3.
“I wasn’t going to let a little thing like that stand in my way. Here I’ve been waiting to see him and I’m in the hospital,” Petre said Wednesday. “I’m stubborn if nothing else.”
David and Lisa Nilsson, church elders at Watrous’ church in Connecticut, drove Watrous and his wife, Betty, from their Nutmeg State home to Maine on Saturday, Dec. 3. On that date, Watrous and Petre reunited — after eight decades apart.
Knowing her brother was on his way, Petre said she worried he wouldn’t like her.
“I was sort of holding my breath,” she said. “But when I saw him, I just felt comfortable.”
The two embraced as soon as Watrous arrived at Petre’s home.
“It was a nice face I was looking at,” Petre said. “First, I made sandwiches and we had a snack. … and (Richard) just sat in the rocking chair and rocked and talked.”
Watrous said he shared the same fear as his sister and agreed the meeting went well. Asked Wednesday how he felt when he was able to talk to her in person after 80 years, he said, “Those kinds of things are really hard to explain, and it’s hard to put into words.”
The day after the longawaited reunion, Betty and the Nilssons attended church, while Richard stayed with his sister so the two could spend Sunday morning by themselves. They talked of Petre’s plans to go down to Connecticut to visit next spring, when Watrous hopes his children can meet his sister.
They also talked some about early memories — including the day the siblings parted ways shortly after their mother died. She was 4 and he was 7. It was during the Great Depression, and the family members responsible to care for the children couldn’t afford to keep them all together.
“All I really remember specifically is: She is standing in the yard and I’m in the back seat of a car and I’m waving goodbye to her,” Watrous said of that long-ago farewell. “I didn’t know that I was going away forever. I just thought they were taking me somewhere for the day. I didn’t know they were taking me to my grandmother and we were splitting up. I was waving bye to her as far as I could see and she was waving bye to me.”
The state took Watrous away from his grandmother and placed him in an a small orphanage, a place where he stayed temporarily. He went to live on a farm with six other boys for the next nine years before joining the Navy at age 18.
He did chores and attended schools and said it wasn’t too bad — but he never felt part of a family. The boys had no supervision and so “we came up on our own, us boys. We just wandered around and did what we wanted to do.”
He married Betty at 18, and “I made a family.”
But since he waved goodbye to his sister that day in 1931, “I always wondered where she was, or what happened to her, and I had no idea,” Watrous said. “I knew what her maiden name was, but had no idea what her married name was, so that’s why I couldn’t trace her down or have someone find her on the computer … I had no idea where to start looking.”
Petre’s cousin helped locate an address for Richard Watrous Jr. early last summer. Taking a chance, Petre wrote a letter, not knowing if it would find her brother.
“It did end up in the right hands,” Watrous said, because it went to his son, and when his son read the letter to him, he said, “Oh no, that’s my sister.”
During a phone interview Wednesday, Watrous described how anticipation about meeting his sister increased as he and his friends drove northward.
“I kept looking, waiting and waiting,” he said. “What surprised me,” was Petre’s daughter, Lee, waiting there “with television people.”
Watrous described his reaction as, “Holy mackerel.”
The meeting wasn’t what he expected, he said, only because, “I really didn’t know what to expect, or how it would go. But it went very good. She is a very pleasant girl.” Watrous’ wife, Betty, 86, said the reunion was beautiful and the visit made for a great 69th wedding anniversary, which the coupled celebrated Dec. 5. As she talked Wednesday, Betty mentioned that her husband survived a kidney blockage two years ago.
Doctors didn’t think he was going to pull through, but he did — a miracle in her eyes and for the friends and family who were at the hospital.
Pondering it Wednesday she asked herself, “‘What did God send him back for?’ And I thought, ‘Ahhhhh. It must be to see his sister.’”
Petre agrees that with both in their 80s, she and her brother have opened new chapters in their lives. On Wednesday, she concluded that the visit was “like a culmination of all things that you’re feeling. I was mostly worried he wouldn’t like me. Now, I’m not worried at all. I boss him around already.”
dmoore@timesrecord.com
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