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Filed: 10/29/2000

By CHRIS RAMIREZ
Californian staff writer
e-mail: cramirez@bakersfield.com

It was a hug Pauline Drury waited decades for. Mark Drury had been almost as patient, holding on 44 years without his sister's embrace.

But the wait ended Saturday at the Bakersfield Amtrak Station.
"I'm relieved," said Drury, moments after stepping off the 9:15 a.m. bus from Oxnard to meet his biological sister for the first time. "All those feelings I had from all those pictures are now complete."
Ms Drury was able to reunite with Drury only after years of self-motivated
detective work and some high-tech sleuthing on the Internet.
The search began in 1997 when Ms Drury began researching the family of her stepfather, six years after he died.
In doing so, Ms Drury found gaps as she began looking into her mother's family.
She said she realized her own identity wouldn't be complete until she found her biological father, Wendell George Drury.
Wendell Drury divorced Ms Drurys' mother whenMs Drury was 1 1/2 years old.
The only reminders she had of her biological father were three photos her mother gave her.
Then there were clues in baby books and stories about Drury passed down in earlier years by Ms Drurys' aunt and grandmother.
But little else was tangible.
In January, Ms Drury enlisted the help of an insurance investigator, who was able to dig up Drury's Social Security number and his last-known address, a home in Aurora, Colo.
He also uncovered a short list of relatives, which included Mark Drury.
Finally, she got another hot lead, one that turned her to more detailed searches on the Internet.
She was able to get the death certificate of her grandfather, Paul Drury.
The document also provided her information that eventually led to facts about her family from the turn of the century as far back as the 1600s.
"I knew I was on the right track, but I didn't want to stop there," she said.
In September, Ms Drury posted information about her family on the Internet and got a response from Anita Goodrick, a second cousin by marriage living in Lompoc CA.
Goodrick had access to a copy of Ms Drurys' great-grandparents' wedding photo, and ultimately helped her contact Mark Drury, a landscape designer in Oxnard.
Ms Drury said she was at first hesitant about contacting him.
"I kept thinking, 'What if he doesn't want anything to do with me?'" Ms Drury recalled. "I just didn't have the nerve to call."
But eventually, on Sept. 23 to be exact, she did get up the nerve.
She called Drury and the two talked for 90 minutes. The next night he called her, they talked for 31/2 hours.
"We talked about everything: our father, what we've been doing, what he's
been doing. Everything," Ms Drury said.
They began to exchange mail, some of which included photos and stories about what their father was like.
It turns out Mark Drury had been in a search of Ms Drury since 1990.
He had the same clues asMs Drury — three photos in an album from 1948 of a girl who family members identified as his sister.
But, unlike Ms Drury, he didn't have a computer, so he couldn't track her down using the Internet.
He had no clue how to find her. Her mother had remarried & changed her last name. Then they moved to Fresno CA.
Mark Drury recovered the photo album and the Drury family bible when he went to Colorado to settle his father's affairs after his death in 1994.
The pair believes their father carried the album around with him wherever he went.
For Mark Drury, the final pieces to his own identity have fallen into place.

"A void has been filled," he said. "Now, I want to spend my life trying to get to know her and love her."

We also made the local CBS news twice 6: pm & 11: pm. They came
to the house & filmed a great story about us & did such a good story that all my friends that saw it call & told me they were in tears after watching it.
I didn't tell Mark that I was doing it either. 2 days before he kept asking
how I was feeling & I said excited & nervous,but didn't want to
spoil the surprise, I finally told him why I was nervous, after the newspaper showed up at the station.
He hugged me harder & said I was a little stinker but wasn't made
at me.
It was quite an emotional moment Saturday morning.

Lilly Pauline Drury


Pauline

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