Article online about man's disappearance prompts him to contact his family decided to do t... Mother reunited with son after 23
On April 16, 2003, Helkenn - fearing she would pass away before learning what ever became of her son - sat down and penned a letter to Humbard in the event he ever turned up again.
His wife occasionally nudged him to make contact with his parents, but Humbard feared the emotional repercussions - until he sat down in front of his computer one evening last July and went online.
"I went on Google and typed in my mother's name," he said. "(The) Herald article came up. I read it and read what my mom was saying ... She thought that I was dead."
Humbard said the article - and seeing his mother's picture on the Internet - didn't coincide with how he imagined she'd been living her life.
"I've always been a control freak. I knew once that Pandora's box opened, I'd no longer have control over the situation," he said. "I didn't know what to expect. I think I expected the inquisition."
"Ed wrote back to me and said his main concern was the well-being of my mother," he said. "He didn't want this to be a prank, and he didn't want to get her hopes up."
"My husband had gone for a physical that day," Helkenn said. "He called me and said, 'I'm coming home early - I have to tell you something.' I thought he'd been told he had cancer."
"He grabbed my shoulders and said, 'John's alive,'" she said, her voice breaking. "We both hugged each other and cried. I said, 'Are you sure it's him?'"
There was much said and many questions asked. To confirm the man she was talking to was actually her son, Helkenn asked Humbard a question to which only he would know the answer.
Helkenn and her youngest son, Gene, 41, have visited Humbard in Argentina. Families have gotten to know one another, and new friendships have been made.
Humbard's birth father recently passed away, but not before seeing a son he believed had been lost to time. Humbard was in the states this past week to attend the funeral.
Now, mother and son are concentrating on making up for lost time. Humbard has aged gracefully and looks very much like the pictures of the young man who vanished so many years ago.
"Some people might expect me to be angry," she said. "But I got what I wanted. I know that's a skewed way to look at it. I made my family promise that if John ever returned, we wouldn't be angry. This has happened the way I wanted it to. I always hoped that he had just turned his back on us, because then that would have meant he was still alive."
"Believe me, I've had some talking to," Humbard said. "But I made a decision I was going to do this. Even if there'd been a firing squad waiting for me at the airport, I would have got off the plane to do this."
"We all made promises to greet John with open arms and resolve the hurt and the 'whys,'" Helkenn said. "For more than 20 years I've had the hurt and the worry of looking. But when I think of other families who've gone through what we have - well, I have a lot more than what some other families have."
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