Grace Cottage's Newsletter and Website Reunite Family…
an incredible small-world story in which truth is indeed stranger than fiction!

Liz, Art and Leona Avery are reunited.

"I really couldn't believe it," said Art Avery, about finding his long lost sisters through Grace Cottage's newsletter and website.

Art Avery was born in Hackensack, NJ in 1932; his father, Arthur, was an ambulance driver and his mother, Marion, was a dietician. In 1938, Art's parents split up, and Art saw his father just one more time, but he later learned that his father had remarried and that he and his new wife had three daughters before his father died in 1965.

A graduate of Seton Hall University, Art became a physical education teacher in Hackensack, where he and his wife raised their three children. In 1968, the family moved to Vermont. Art worked at Brattleboro High School, became the principal of Dummerston Elementary School for 11 years and, subsequently, the principal at Castleton Junior High. Art and Janet are now retired and living in Dummerston.

Leona Avery was born in Manhattan in 1943, the oldest of three sisters. Her father, Arthur, was a wholesale produce vendor and her mother, Evelyn, a dietician. Leona's father had a picture on his bureau of a young boy he called "Sonny Brother," whom the girls knew was his son and their halfbrother, but the girls also knew that this was a subject not to be discussed. Leona married William Tabell and became a teacher on Long Island. Bill and Leona bought a vacation home in Newfane in 1975, and visited as often as they could until they retired to Vermont in 1999. Leona's sister Liz became a teacher in California, and her sister Mary is an accountant in Maryland. The three often wondered about "Sonny Brother" and how they might find him.

This is where Grace Cottage enters the story. In July, 2004, Art had finally been able to obtain a copy of his father's obituary through a cousin, and found printed there the married names of his three half-sisters. "I typed the name of one of my sisters and her husband into the search engine Google on the Internet," Art recalled. "I couldn't believe it when their names came up on the Grace Cottage Hospital website, in the Cottage Door newsletter, published in June. They had just made a donation for a laryngoscope for the ambulance, and their names were in a list of people being thanked for their gifts. I ran to the local phone book, and there they were, listed in Newfane. I really couldn't believe it."

Art called the Tabells, got no answer, and left a message. Leona, Bill, and Leona's sister, Liz, who happened to be making her once-every-five-year visit from California, listened to the message when they got home. Leona called Art back, and got his answering machine, but left a message confirming that they indeed were children of the same father.

When they finally spoke, Art, Leona and Liz agreed to meet the following day at a Brattleboro restaurant, where Art and Leona immediately remembered that they had already met briefly when Art and his wife had attended the Newfane Congregational Church, Leona and Bill's church, three months prior. "At the time, we'd had no idea that we were related," laughed Leona. "But when we met in July, it seemed so obvious. I see my father's face in his. We can't believe that both our mothers were dieticians, we both got married at age 20, and we both chose to live in Vermont. I'm just glad that Cottage Door brought us together - if Bill and I hadn't made that particular donation to Grace Cottage, Art would probably still be searching, never knowing that one of his sisters lived just one town away!"