Welcome home

"Annie Douglas waited 78 years for the moment her long-lost brother Henry Yabah walked up the stairs to her house Saturday and greeted her with a hug.

As they embraced, Douglas was so overcome with emotion that she began hyperventilating.

Yabah, 80, was reuniting with his older sisters, Douglas and Pat "Patsy" Ann Rose, for the first time since he was orphaned at age 2.

Henry Yabah was featured in "Looking for my family" (June 25, 2009), about an elderly Navajo who returned to the reservation to look for the family he lost when he was placed in the Good Shepherd Mission orphanage in Fort Defiance.

"We read the story in the Navajo Times and I thought about it because she used to talk about two brothers being taken," said Annie's daughter Joanne. "I asked her, 'Could this be your brother?' She got emotional. As soon as she saw his picture, there was an immediate connection. She knew it was him without a doubt.

"She used to talk about him, wondering where he was at and if he was still around," Joanne said. "You remember when they had that wall (traveling Veterans Memorial Wall) come to Window Rock?"

Joanne said her mother figured her brother had probably served in the military and may have not returned, and if so, maybe his name was on the wall. It wasn't.

"I told her then, 'Maybe he's still around,'" Joanne Douglas recalled.

It turns out that Henry did have family on the reservation, and far more of it than he ever expected. On Saturday he learned that he is a brother, uncle, clan grandfather and great-grandfather to a large family that resides west of Gallup amid the rolling, sagebrush-studded hills south of Interstate 40.

As Annie, the matriarch, grew light-headed with emotion, family members rushed to her side to make sure she was OK.

"I thought we would've had to rush her to the hospital," Joanne said.

"K'adstaa' nasiigo' (I almost fainted)," Annie said after a few minutes.

Then she began to weep and looked at Henry, asking if this was a dream.

On the small patio of Douglas's home, they sat side by side, embracing one another as family members looked on, some with tears in their eyes.

Annie and Henry look so much alike that, sitting next to one another, they could be twins. Not only are their features similar, their gestures and facial expressions echo each other's.

Once Annie calmed down the two began to chat.

"There's some land over there. You can build a hogan and you can stay there," she teased.

Henry chuckled at the suggestion and asked how she's been doing.

"I remember you used to pull my hair," Annie said. "You used to pull my hair, and then you got taken away. I thought it was for pulling my hair. So I'm going to pull yours now."

Jokingly she reached up and tugged on his braided hair. Family members watched every move as the two sat together and reconnected. All the while their sister Patsy sat quietly by, her face full of emotion.

Questions about family

Henry soon began asking questions about his birth, his mother and father and relatives.

Annie gave what answers she knew, but had very little information about their parents or the old trading post that had been nearby. Family members say the interstate destroyed all traces of it.

The rock formation that gives the area its name, Rocky Point, was also demolished during the I-40 construction, they said.

"Does she know where I was born?" Henry asked his niece Joanne, who translated the question into Navajo for her mother.

"I don't know, shí doo shil bééhozinda," Annie responded.

"From what I know, the father didn't take good care of them," Joanne said when Henry asked about his father.

He pulled out pictures of his life after leaving the orphanage, showing his sisters.

"You look like a Naakaii (Mexican) with your mustache," Annie teased, looking at a photo of Henry in military uniform.    "Yeah, I did look like a Mexican, but I don't have my mustache anymore," he agreed.

"I wonder how long it would take for me learn Navajo?" mused Henry, whose accent reflects the many years he has lived in south Texas. "You think I can learn?"

"Well, what do you want learn first?" asked his nephew, Eddie Douglas. "You probably will learn the bad words first."

Family members chuckled as Henry smiled.

Then Annie held her brother's hand, cleared her throat, and asked, "I wonder where our little brother is at?"

"I don't know," he replied, a little uneasy. "I'm just lucky to have found you two."

Annie was 4 years old and Patsy was just 3 when Henry and their baby brother, Jackie, were taken to the orphanage.

On Saturday Henry also learned that he had two half-sisters, Mary Yazzie and Lucy Spencer, both deceased, and an older brother, Lee Wylie, also deceased.

Lee's family attended the gathering. His granddaughter Venora W. Crayton, who lives in Phoenix, had gotten in touch with Henry soon after the original story ran and even flew to Texas in July to meet him.

"We had fulfilled a dream for Lee," Crayton said. "We all knew about (Henry) because Lee would talk about him. He would tell us, 'You need to find him,' and when we heard the news we called (Henry) without hesitation. Lee is happy now."

Henry learned that Lee, the oldest of the siblings, died in 2003 and wanted to visit his grave. Crayton and the rest of the family gently discouraged it, telling him that in Navajo tradition, it wouldn't be a good idea.

Like so much of his cultural heritage, this was new information for Henry, who also learned his clans for the first time that day.

He is Haltsooí Dine'é (Meadow People Clan), born for Naakaii Dine'é (Mexican People Clan).

"What does a clan do for me?" he asked as Crayton explained to him how important the clan system is to Navajos.

No longer alone

Henry also took time to get to know his nephews, who asked questions about his time in the military and his trip from Texas, as well as introducing him to the younger generations of his family.

"It's hard to believe," said Henry, who never had children of his own. "Always just thought it was just my wife, my two (step) daughters and my grandchildren."

Henry and his wife Robin met while he was stationed in Corpus Christi, his last posting in a long military career. Robin had two daughters from a previous marriage whom he raised as his own.

"He's been 'Dad' to me since I was 8 years old," said his stepdaughter Sharon Neff, 40, who accompanied Henry to the reunion.

He appeared at the Navajo Times office in June, seeking assistance in finding his family. He was 2 when his mother died.

Annie filled in details, recounting that the Rocky Point Trading Post owner, called Hastiin Neez by locals, reported to authorities that Henry and his younger brother, who was about 6 months old at the time, were not being cared for properly following their mother's death and were starving.

Henry and his baby brother were taken to Good Shepherd. From there he attended school at Fort Wingate and then dropped out to follow other Navajos to California, looking for work. He didn't know where his baby brother was sent.

He enlisted in the Army at 19 and was stationed in many places before finally arriving to Corpus Christi. He confided in Robin that he would like to find his family, but didn't know where to start.

Robin helped him make the trip back to Dinétah in June, but had a hard time adjusting to the 6,500-foot elevation. This time, she stayed in Corpus Christi and let Sharon accompany Henry to the reunion.

Surrounded by the affection of all these strangers who are somehow not strange to him, Henry absorbed the realization that a big piece of his life's puzzle is now found.

"I just don't know how to describe what I'm feeling," he said.

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