November 14, 06

NEWS / After nearly 70 years, siblings meet for the first time

Bob Price doesn??™t usually spend his mornings pacing around the front porch of his home in a north Napa mobile home park, but Friday was special. On that day Price, 69, was expecting to come face-to-face for the first time with the brother he had never met.

His brother??™s name is Charles Aney, 71, and he lives in Oregon.

Price was born James Morris Aney and was the fourth child of Irene Broughton and Ralph Aney, both of Wisconsin. Around the time of his birth, Price??™s parents split up. His mother, then 24, gave Price up for adoption.

???She just couldn??™t raise four kids by herself,??? Price said.

Years later, when Price was 21 and serving in Beirut as a U.S. Air Force air policeman, he discovered that he was adopted. He asked his adoptive mother for a birth certificate, which was required for him to enter Saudi Arabia.

The certificate revealed the name of his birth mother and father, and also showed he had three siblings.

???I didn??™t know nothing about them at all,??? he said.

But Price didn??™t attempt to track his family down. ???At the time, I didn??™t care,??? he said.

Life went on for Price, as it did for the Aney siblings.

Price grew up in Vallejo and Napa while the rest of his sister and brothers Barbara, Richard and Charles Aney settled in Oregon and Sacramento. Though he didn??™t act on it at the time, curiosity about his family did not completely escape Price.

In the early ??™90s Price signed up with U.S. Search, an Internet site that helps locate people. The Web site provided Price with a list of 100 or more possible relatives living throughout the country, and Price wrote to each of them. Fourteen Aneys responded, he said, but none were his kin.

He gave up the search for a bit. Then in June 2006, after surviving a heart attack, the desire to connect with his kin rekindled.

???I thought, ???If I??™m going to find my family, I better do it now,??™??? he said.

About a month and a half ago Price teamed up with his friend Dolores Hibbert, former librarian at the Napa Valley Genealogical Society, and embarked on a new search for his loved ones. Hibbert, who has been researching her own family??™s genealogy for the past 30 years, went to work.

???I got on the Internet,??? she said. ???I knew his mother and father??™s name. On (the birth certificate) it stated that there were three older children. I found his father in the 1930 Census.???

Using U.S. Census records, death-record databases and Web sites such as www.ancestry.com, Hibbert traced the Aney family to Price??™s great-grandfather. She also discovered that Price??™s brother, Richard, died in Sacramento at the age of 35.

A huge break in the Aney genealogy hunt came when Hibbert found the family tree of John Rector, who is a descendant of the Aney family, on an Internet site.

She got in contact with Rector and things began to happen.

???John Rector e-mailed a relative by the name of Dennis Aney, who still lives in Wisconsin and seems to be the authority on the family, and at that point the e-mails flew back and forth,??? she said. ???Bob Price ... has a sister (who was born in) 1930 and (died in) 1994, the brother Richard who died in Sacramento and a 72-year-old brother, living in a small town in east Oregon, named Charles Aney.???

Filled with the joy of her discovery, Hibbert contacted the long-lost brothers and set up a reunion at Price??™s home in Napa.

A reunion 70 years in the making

Price began the vigil for his brother at 8 a.m., Friday morning. With every car that slowly rolled past his home, Price asked himself, ???Is that him????

The moment that Price had been waiting for came around 2:30 p.m.

As Charles Aney got out of his truck, his brother was there to embrace him. The two men, who up until two weeks ago were strangers, instantly bonded.

???He looks like me,??? Price said.

???We have the same smile,??? Aney said. ???I feel so excited. I don??™t have the words for it.???

Inside Price??™s home, the two brothers sat down alongside Aney??™s son, also named Charles, to talk about the family and comb through old pictures.

The older Charles Aney, a country-gospel musician, and Price, a retired electrician, found that they shared more than just their looks.

Aney plays guitar for his Nashville-based band and Price once played piano alongside country star Jimmy Dean while the two were in the Air Force together, Price said. Price also learned that his birth mother lived at one time in the Sacramento area and that his mother??™s sister, Irene, is still alive. Besides his brother, nephew and aunt, Price also discovered that he had other kin still living in Sacramento, Wisconsin and other areas.

Price said that he doesn??™t have any bitter feelings toward his mother for putting him up for adoption, or toward his adoptive parents for keeping his adoption a secret until he was 21. He said he has lived a good life and is now interested in getting to know his birth family.

What??™s next for the two brothers?

???I want to take him home with me,??? Aney said jokingly.
By CARLOS VILLATORO
Register Staff Writer

Tags: birth certificate, birth certificat,