Family Reunion : Man, Daughter Have Plenty to Talk About After 20 Years

It was a good sign.

The young deaf woman from Pennsylvania waiting Tuesday to meet her father for the first time didn’t have a chance to wring her hands nervously. She was using them to talk.

“Will he recognize me?” wondered Goldie Kassouf, 21, her fingers flying. “I’m very excited. I was just a little baby the last time he saw me. I remember nothing,” she said.

Suddenly, Sid Kassouf stepped out of the crowd at Los Angeles International Airport with his arms outstretched.

“Dad! Dad!” she exclaimed, this time talking out loud as she threw her arms around 39-year-old Kassouf of Montrose. “I love you!”

Tears welled up in Kassouf’s eyes. He had not seen his daughter since his divorce from her mother in 1971. At the time, he sailed off for Vietnam War duty in the Navy and his ex-wife moved away with their 7-month-old baby. She remarried, and the pair lost contact.

It was not until last year that Kassouf, a tile-layer who also produces training videotapes, learned through a distant relative that his daughter might be attending a school for the deaf in Pennsylvania. Kassouf remembered that his baby daughter’s hearing seemed to have been slow to develop.

After locating the school, Kassouf was able to determine his daughter’s address. Nervously, he sat down and wrote her a letter. To his surprise, she responded.

This year, the pair have talked regularly through Teletype, which allows deaf people to communicate by telephone. After receiving a Father’s Day card from his daughter last month that he said “made me cry like a baby,” Kassouf mailed airline tickets to her and her 6-month-old son, Aaron.

Until Tuesday afternoon, however, when father and daughter rushed into each other’s arms, Kassouf wasn’t certain the reunion would take place. There were earthquakes and riots, after all. And there was that awkward 20-year gap in their lives.

“The big thing is to let her know I did think about her all those years and did love her,” he said. “Probably a lot of dads who have separated from their children feel this way. It’s important that they know that they can do the same thing.”

Kassouf brought a tile-laying buddy who is fluent in sign language along for the airport reunion. Ray Lockary of Montrose translated as Goldie Kassouf explained that she had often dreamed of meeting her dad.

“I’d been wanting to meet my real father many, many times growing up,” she said. “I didn’t know he was here.”

Sid Kassouf said Lockary began teaching him “a crash course in sign language” when he learned his daughter was coming for a three-week visit.

“I’m afraid I haven’t learned much. But Goldie wrote me just to have a lot of paper and millions of pencils and we’ll do fine,” he said.

With that, the pair headed for home and wife, Becky Kassouf, and five other daughters.

There was no time to waste. There was 20 years worth of talk to catch up on.