Except... I remember that when I was a kid, I was over at my grandparent's place (on my father's side) and my cousins were there visiting. They were several years older than I was. One of them told me that my father had been married before. They had had a kid, a little girl I distinctly remember being told, and then they got divorced and neither the mom or the kid were ever seen again.
I didn't believe them...but at the same time, I sort of did believe them.
Years and years later, I brought the subject up to my aunt (my father's sister). She and I were very close and we were both estranged from my father. She told me that it was not a little girl, but a boy. The story was that my father had gotten his then-girlfriend pregnant in the backseat of his car. They hastily married and, once the baby was born, my father was served divorce papers in the hospital right after the birth.
My aunt said she saw the baby at that time, but never again. The baby had been named Scott Lane, she said, after the street (Scott Lane) that they had conceived the child on. (I'm not making this up. Really.) She said that my father's first wife married someone else right away and this man adopted the child and raised him as his own.
When I later asked my mother about it, she didn't remember much---just that they had to wait for my father's divorce to go through before they could get married (much to her parent's disapproval) in 1963. My mother apparently never met his first wife or child.
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| My father circa 1963 |
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| My parents at my baby shower in 1965 |
I came along in 1965. Not having a birth date to go on, I figured the baby would have had to have been born in 1962-ish, making the guy at least 3 years older than me.
I did a search for "Scott Lane" on the internet in its early days. I did not have a last name, so I was hoping the first and middle name alone would be enough. I found a few possibilities that could NOT be him, but I could not find any Scott Lane that fit the bill. The closest I could find was an actor/model named "Scott Layne". He was the right age and, from what little information I could glean from the internet in those days, he was from California (This later turned out to be not true. He is from Indiana originally.) I figured "Layne" could be a theatrical / Hollywood version of his true name...and he didn't use his last name to protect his identity. Especially since he had also been a (Gasp!) Chippendale's dancer. Ha! The more I researched him, the more it made sense to me at the time. Was this my brother?
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| Scott Layne |
I eventually wrote Scott Layne a long letter, explaining who I was and why I was contacting him (YES! I really did). I never heard back from him. And then my possible-brother Scott Layne ended up in Playgirl magazine in 1997...and became their Man of the Year in 1998. When that happened, a little more background information trickled out and I realized he was not the one. (But o' how funny it would have been had my long-lost brother turned out to be a g-string wearing male stripper. Ha!)
I wish I had thought to look up Scott Lane again in the 2000s. By then, EVERYTHING was online--public records, news articles, etc. Maybe he had a MySpace (back BEFORE Facebook)? After the debacle and embarrassment of thinking Scott Layne might be my brother and knowing I had crashed and burned with my elimination of other possible "brothers" back in the mid-90s, it never dawned on me that I would have better luck later on.
No one in the family ever mentioned him. My sister (well, half-sister, if you must be technical, from my father's third marriage) asked me a while back if the "Scott Layne" I had found ever responded. I told her he wasn't the one.
Yesterday, she sent me this text:
"OMG so did the Ancestry DNA test and connected with Aunt Joyce's (Grandma Bessie's daughter) daughter Melinda and long story short, I finally found our bother Scott. Sadly, he passed away from cancer in 2010, but he has a daughter Madison living in San Jose. I think she wants to contact Dad and other family so I gave Melinda my contact information to pass along. Crazy and kinda sad all at the same time. "
She sent a link to his obituary as well. I blacked out his adopted last name in case his family/friends were not aware of the situation or don't want it publicized. (Although I discovered that both his birth last name and his adopted last name are listed on Ancestry.com.)
The only other photo I could find of him is the photo below, posted by a lifelong friend, Todd, in the remembrance section of his obituary. Taken in 1978 after a fishing trip, Scott is in the middle and the man who seems to be his adopted dad, Tony, is on the right.
I also found mention of him in an article written about a year before he died. It was actually part of a larger article on a charitable organization that helped Scott and his family when cancer hit. Here is the excerpt about Scott:
Down and almost out
Scott M is 47 and lives in south San Jose with his wife, Candy, their young daughter, Madison, and a teenage niece, Lindsey. The working-class couple met on the job and married in 1986.
Last November, doctors discovered cancer in his stomach. When they opened him up, they found another, more vicious form of cancer in his abdomen. He would need aggressive treatment, including chemotherapy, for months.
A short time later, in February, the damage-restoration company where the couple had worked for years shut down for a lack of business. Candy M found part-time work, but their income dropped to about $23,000, roughly a third of what they once brought home.
“I felt like I was down and somebody was kicking me over and over again,” Scott M says, “and I didn’t know if it would ever stop.”
Fortunately, he was able to keep his health insurance, but paying ordinary expenses was another matter. In stepped Families Can. The charity has covered a few months rent for their home and gave them a $600 supermarket gift card for groceries. It’s sending their daughter to a camp that teaches the children of cancer patients to understand and cope with the disease.
“After a lot of crying and feeling panicked, we have piece of mind,” Candy M says.
But ironically, piece of mind is running out for Jackie Whittier and Families Can. Its endowment took a hit in the stock market crash, and a bounce-back isn’t going to happen soon. The options are grim.
“We can run out of money early, cut grants or deny some applications,” Whittier said. She already has canceled the charity’s annual holiday dinner and replaced it with a simple gathering over ice cream and pie. “It would be too hard to determine who not to fund. They are all equally needy.”
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He was only 48 when he died, younger than I am now. It is really strange that after all of these years of knowing that I had a brother somewhere, that I now find he is dead. I never knew him. I don't really now how I feel about it all. It's just weird...
Down and almost out
Scott M is 47 and lives in south San Jose with his wife, Candy, their young daughter, Madison, and a teenage niece, Lindsey. The working-class couple met on the job and married in 1986.
Last November, doctors discovered cancer in his stomach. When they opened him up, they found another, more vicious form of cancer in his abdomen. He would need aggressive treatment, including chemotherapy, for months.
A short time later, in February, the damage-restoration company where the couple had worked for years shut down for a lack of business. Candy M found part-time work, but their income dropped to about $23,000, roughly a third of what they once brought home.
“I felt like I was down and somebody was kicking me over and over again,” Scott M says, “and I didn’t know if it would ever stop.”
Fortunately, he was able to keep his health insurance, but paying ordinary expenses was another matter. In stepped Families Can. The charity has covered a few months rent for their home and gave them a $600 supermarket gift card for groceries. It’s sending their daughter to a camp that teaches the children of cancer patients to understand and cope with the disease.
“After a lot of crying and feeling panicked, we have piece of mind,” Candy M says.
But ironically, piece of mind is running out for Jackie Whittier and Families Can. Its endowment took a hit in the stock market crash, and a bounce-back isn’t going to happen soon. The options are grim.
“We can run out of money early, cut grants or deny some applications,” Whittier said. She already has canceled the charity’s annual holiday dinner and replaced it with a simple gathering over ice cream and pie. “It would be too hard to determine who not to fund. They are all equally needy.”
****
He was only 48 when he died, younger than I am now. It is really strange that after all of these years of knowing that I had a brother somewhere, that I now find he is dead. I never knew him. I don't really now how I feel about it all. It's just weird...
As for his daughter possibly reaching out to Scott's bio-dad and other family members, I am receptive to her contacting me and my siblings. But our father? I hope she doesn't. I have nothing to do with him and I have my reasons for this. I hope if she does reach out to our father that she doesn't get caught up in his crap. He has been married 6 or 7 (or 8?) times, had a "secret" son and was never a father to any of the children he did acknowledge. He flat out lied about his sister and turned his family against her for years (to cover up for having to pay years and years of back child support once the Deadbeat Dad law was enforced). When my aunt died without a will, he got half of her estate---which she never would have wanted. (They had not spoken in decades.) He even once tried to convince me to date a family friend of his who was a "virgin" . (Really? Who does that? Pimps for their son?) There are so many other unforgivable black marks against our father. I just hope she doesn't get too carried away or involved and is sucked into the tar pit of his obvious charisma (He didn't marry as many times as he did without it. Ya know?).
He did a favor staying out of his first-born son's life. I hope he does the same favor for that son's daughter.
Farewell, Scott. It would have been nice to know you.
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