PORT ANGELES — Jim Maynard received an unexpected phone call two months ago that transformed his sense of self and family.
Steve Draper, a man Maynard had never heard of before, called to inform him that they are probably half-brothers.
It turns out they are.
They met face-to-face for the first time at Maynard’s home in Port Angeles in a brief — but heartfelt — reunion.
“It was wonderful,” said Maynard, who retired after a long teaching career in Port Angeles and Joyce in the 1980s.
“It’s kind of like having a void that you’ve had your whole life filled.”
To Draper, it was a similar experience.
“It’s been a bizarre situation that at 57 years of age, I learn I have an older brother and a whole family I didn’t know anything about,” said Draper, a retired schoolteacher who lives in Arizona.
The history
Maynard, 67, and Draper share the same father and different mothers.
When Maynard was an infant, he and his mother were abandoned by their father.
Because Maynard’s mother received no financial help from her husband, she had to enter the work force.
As a result, Maynard spent much of his youth in a Seattle orphanage.
Meanwhile, Maynard’s father remarried and bore three more children.
One of these was Draper.
