Siblings Are Reunited After 74 Years

Irene Spitko was 8 years old on the cold February day in 1926 when her 13-month-old brother was taken away to be adopted.

“I ran after him crying,” said Spitko, who turns 83 today. “Many days didn’t go by that I didn’t wonder about him and if he got a good home.”

Her questions were answered Saturday, when the Reading woman was reunited with her brother Jim Beatty, 74 years after tragedy pulled their family apart.

Murmuring “after all these years,” Jim Beatty fell into his sister’s arms, crushing the bouquet of roses he was carrying.

“I can’t believe it,” Spitko said. “My last memory of you was of a strange lady carrying you out the door.”

The reunion at the Schnecksville home of Arthur Spitko, Irene’s son, happened after four years of research by Beatty’s son, John, and his wife, Karen.

The couple started their search after Jim Beatty received his adoption papers when his father died.

The papers named Beatty’s birth parents and said he was born in Bethlehem. Beatty, who lives with his wife, Dorothy, in Barnegat, N.J., told his son he wanted to see a photograph of his birth mother, Erma Waters.

John and Karen Beatty headed to Bethlehem to sift through county records, church listings and newspaper archives for clues. In census records from 1920, five years before Beatty was born, they discovered Erma Waters had lived in Bethlehem with a son and daughter. It seemed Beatty had a brother and sister.

“There was a lot of detective work,” the younger Beatty said. “But things were beginning to fall into place like someone was guiding us.”

It took a few more trips to Bethlehem, but the couple found Beatty’s parents’ marriage certificate. That led him to the name Spitko, and searches through phone books finally led to his long-lost sister.

“I was in shock,” Spitko said. “I start to cry every time I think of it.”

The two then made plans for their meeting Saturday, when the brother and sister clung tightly to each other and marveled at the coincidences.

“I’m a statistics teacher,” said Jim Beatty, a math professor at Burlington County Community College. “What’s the possibility of this happening?”

Spitko said she had tried to find her brother but was stopped cold by the sealed adoption records. She said her mother had given Beatty up for adoption because she had him out of wedlock--her husband had been dead five years when she became pregnant--and she discovered she was dying of cancer after Jim, then called Neal, was born.

“She was sick and couldn’t take care of a baby,” Spitko said.

Seven months after the adoption, her mother died and Spitko went to live with her grandmother.

On the chances of being reunited with her brother, Spitko said, “Every year it seemed less likely it would happen,” adding, “but I never gave up hope.”