REUNITED: PERRYVILLE MAN FINDS HIS FAMILY AFTER 28 YEARS OF UNCERTAINTY

PERRYVILLE -- Bill Ritch thought his life had taken a dramatic turn a month ago when he was reunited with the brother he hadn't seen for 28 years.

Little did he know his story would continue to unfold in an unexpected way.

"One day you're an orphan, the next day you have a family," said Ritch, 35, of Perryville. "I'm still trying to get used to it."

But Ritch's story isn't simple or complete. He still harbors resentment against the mother he remembers only as the woman who abandoned her family more than 30 years ago. And he's still getting to know the stranger he now calls a brother.

Ritch's father had been dead about one year when his mother Frances walked out on her children. It was 1958 and he was 2.

"She took the oldest girl and said she was going to the store and didn't come back. The next day when the older kids figured she wasn't ever coming back, Bobby, who was 14, walked to our oldest brother's house and told him she had left. We had a 6-month-old baby in the house," he said.

The oldest brother, Glenn, was married, and his wife was pregnant. He tried to care for his younger siblings, Ritch said, but when his baby was born with heart problems, Glenn could no longer afford to support two families.

That was when the Ritch children, ranging in age from 6 months to 14 years, left East Prairie and were separated.

Carl, the 6-month-old, was quickly adopted, but Bill, his sister Martha, 5, (who he calls Marty), and brother Charlie, 8, were sent to live in an orphanage in St. Louis. Bobby, the 14-year-old, lived with various relatives and stayed in East Prairie.

Only Bill, Marty and Charlie stayed together. Ritch said he was well taken care of in the orphanage, but he missed being part of a family. Another blow came when he was 8 and Charlie, who was declared a troublemaker in the orphanage, was sent away to a boys' home. Now he had only his sister.

"I found out that when Charlie was 17 or 18, he called the orphanage, but whoever was in charge wouldn't let him talk to me or Marty, even though we were still there," Ritch said.

After 11 years in the orphanage, Bill and his sister went to live with foster parents in St. Louis. He had given up on ever seeing his other siblings again.

Losing her family was especially hard on Marty, he said.

"When Charlie left, I promised him I'd take care of her. So when I left to join the Marine Corps at 17, she was real upset. She was scared to death she was going to lose me too," he said.

After Bill had settled in California, Marty left her foster family in St. Louis to go live with him. She stayed in California even after Bill returned to Missouri. They lost touch soon after.

Despite efforts to contact her, Bill hasn't seen his sister since the day he left California. And phone calls ceased soon after he got back. His sister didn't leave forwarding addresses and changed jobs often, he said.

"I heard she had been in trouble out there, and once I tracked her down to the Orange County Jail. But because of privacy laws, they couldn't tell me much," he said.

As years passed, Ritch went through phases when he'd try to locate Marty or Charlie, whom he'd given up for dead.

In early February, he decided to visit the orphanage once more to see if they had any records on Charlie or the other siblings he knew about.

They didn't have anything that could help him, but he left his name in case something came up. He didn't know Charlie and his wife Rosa, who now live in South Sioux City, Neb., had been contacting the orphanage off and on for years in case information turned up on any of the Ritch kids.

In late February, Rosa called the orphanage again, expecting only to hear as she had so many times before that nothing had turned up. But the person who answered the phone at the orphanage told her nothing had turned up since her husband had visited two weeks earlier.

Since it wasn't her husband who had visited, she figured it must have been one of his brothers. Ritch said the woman at the orphanage called him the next day.

"She said my brother wanted to contact me and gave me his number," he said. "I called him right away. I couldn't wait."

Charlie was at work, and Rosa told Bill he'd be back in three hours.

"It was the longest three hours of my life. I thought of everything I wanted to tell him. And I was real scared and nervous. I thought he'd be mad because I'd lost contact with Marty," he said.

When Charlie finally called him, both were speechless. For a few minutes, they fought tears, he said. Then, they talked for two hours.

Charlie said he was afraid Bill would be angry with him.

"I was scared there may some animosity," Charlie said in a telephone interview from his Nebraska home.

"I really didn't know what to expect," he said. "After 28 years, you kind of give up hope."

The two were soon reunited in person when Bill and his fiance Robbie Franklin drove to Nebraska to see his brother.

They discovered that Bill's twin sons, now 15, look like Charlie, and Charlie's younger son is "the spitting image" of Bill. Bill asked Charlie to be the best man at his June wedding.

"I think that's a real honor," Charlie said. "It's something I never thought I could be a part of."

About a week after Bill had returned to Perryville, he was reading the Southeast Missourian when an obituary for Bobby Ritch caught his eye.

In reading the obituary, he saw his own name, and the names of Carl and Johnny Ritch, two brothers he didn't know he had.

"There was my life, in black and white," he said. "It's what I had been looking for my whole life."

Bobby Ritch had lived in East Prairie, Glenn was in Florida, Johnny in Tennessee, and Carl's address was still unknown. At the funeral, Ritch said he found out his mother and oldest sister Willie had lived in Washington state. His mother had already died.

Ritch said now that he and Charlie have been reunited, his "family" will be complete when they find Marty. He's trying to get his story on television's "Unsolved Mysteries" in the hope she may see it.

Bill has kept in touch with his brother Glenn since Bobby's funeral, and he hopes to visit him in Florida.

"As for Carl, if he knows he's adopted and wants to find us, I'd love to hear from him. But if he doesn't know, I don't want to ruin his life," he said. "He could have a completely different name."

Bill said he would have liked to talk to his mother before she died, if only to ask her why she walked out on them.

"I know I had been dumped, and I still feel angry about that. But I had some questions too," he said.

Bill said he and his brother have a lot in common, even though they grew up mostly apart. They both like omelets with maple syrup for breakfast and they share many of the same mannerisms.

He said they'd also like to live closer together.

"We've both been searching most of our lives for our family. Now that we found it I think we want to be closer together. And if we ever find Marty, I think that will put an end to the story."