NEAH BAY — Fifty years ago, a young Deanna Buzzell-Gray stood with her teenage brother in California and watched as their younger brother left to live with a new family.
The girl handed her brother some black and white family photographs taken on the beach at Neah Bay.
“You’re not to forget us,” she told him. “Someday we’ll see each other again.”
On Saturday, that promise came true as Nicholas Morgan returned to Neah Bay for the first time to be reunited with Buzzell-Gray and a brother and sister he had never before met.
“This is a miracle,” Buzzell-Gray, now 59, said. “It truly is a miracle.”
Morgan, 56, of Highland Park, Calif., is the last of his siblings to return to Neah Bay since they were separated in 1953. He has always known of their existence and knew their mother was from Neah Bay, but he didn’t know how to find them.
Chance reconnection
When he got the first phone call about two weeks ago from his older sister, and later from younger brother Vernon “Cotton” Soeneke, 52, their reconnection was by chance.
Morgan’s daughter was tracing the family’s ancestral lineage and had called Makah tribal enrollment with questions about her grandmother, Genevieve (Peterson) Morgan.
Word got to Buzzell-Gray through her daughter, Jessica Buzzell, that someone had asked about Genevieve Morgan and left a phone number. Buzzell-Gray called the number, reached Nicholas Morgan’s daughter and set the wheels in motion for their reunion.
As Soeneke, Morgan and Buzzell-Gray gathered with younger sister Gina Vanderwind, 48, in Soeneke’s Neah Bay home Tuesday morning, they all talked with smiles, and some tears, as they described their separation so many years ago.
Days after giving birth to Soeneke in the early 1950s, Mrs. Morgan gave the baby to his adoptive parents, Bob and Irene Soeneke, and left with her husband and four older children for California to work in the borax mines, Buzzell-Gray said.
A year later, the couple separated and Mrs. Morgan took daughter Jennifer Simon, now 53, with her to New York.
The children’s father couldn’t take care of them and found new homes for Buzzell-Gray, Morgan and older brother Montgomery “Monty” Morgan.
A few years later, Monty Morgan met a boy from Neah Bay at a science fair and asked him about his “Uncle Bob.”
Returns to state
The boy directed him to the Makah Tribal Center, and Bob Soeneke, then a tribal councilman, and his wife flew to California and eventually brought Monty Morgan and Buzzell-Gray back to Neah Bay.
The children’s mother returned to Washington and lived in Snohomish for many years until her death from cancer in 1983. Simon still lives in Snohomish and was reunited with her brother on Friday.
Buzzell-Gray, Soeneke and Vanderwind live in homes next door to each other near the Neah Bay waterfront. None of them know of Monty Morgan’s current whereabouts.
Nicholas Morgan grew up knowing his background and had a copy of his birth certificate with his mother’s name, but could not locate her or his siblings.
“I always wondered where they were, and I tried to get ahold of them,” he said.
Vanderwind, who was born after Morgan left, searched for her brother on the Internet using his adoptive last name, not realizing he kept his birth name.
In 1981, Morgan wrote to Makah tribal enrollment asking about “headrights” through his mother. The office confirmed his mother was enrolled but did not know where she was, he said.
That same year, Morgan was living in Tacoma and set out one weekend for Neah Bay, but made it as far as Bremerton before turning around.
“I was sort of scared to come over here,” he said of that trip.
False starts
That same anticipation slowed Soeneke just two weeks ago when his sister told him she had talked with their long lost brother.
Soeneke programmed Morgan’s phone number into his cell phone and pushed the button several times, but quickly hung up again.
“It took me about six hours to get the nerve up,” Soeneke said.
When they finally talked, their conversation was emotional, he recalled.
“We cried,” he said. “It took us 20 minutes to get through the first 20 words.”
They spoke on the phone daily until seeing each other last weekend.
Buzzell-Gray said their 50-year absence from Morgan is more like a long blip in time that has quickly closed since they have become acquainted.
Many of their similarities are apparent — the way she, Soeneke and Morgan all take a spoonful of sugar and a little bit more in their coffee, Soeneke’s and Morgan’s interest in hot rods, and the identical laughs Soeneke and Morgan share, so much so that Soeneke’s daughter has already confused her uncle for her father on the phone.
Felt at home
Morgan said he immediately felt at home when he returned to Neah Bay, and people in the village greet him and welcome him home when they see him.
After hearing from his siblings, Morgan wasted little time in recruiting a friend and driving straight from Southern California to Western Washington, though his daughter thought they could make the trip in February.
“I had to go,” Morgan said. “I couldn’t wait any longer. I waited 50 years.”
He will leave Neah Bay before Christmas but plans to return “as soon as I can,” likely joined by his wife.
Morgan’s siblings are all enrolled Makah, and Morgan will also enroll. They are descendants of hereditary Chief Peter Brown, Buzzell-Gray said.
The reunion has brought peace-of-mind to Buzzell-Gray and Morgan, who both said they had felt usually depressed in recent months.
It has also added some happiness to a pall that has lingered in Neah Bay since the recent deaths of two tribal members, the siblings said.
“There’s so much sad going on in the world, and everyone I told this story to was happy for us,” Soeneke said.
Added Morgan, who returned to Neah Bay carrying the photos from his childhood: “There’s always light at the end of the road. You never think there is.”