Father, son celebrate after 58 years apart

LEADWOOD, Mo. — The father kept the photos of his son tucked in a drawer, fading reminders of the smiling baby he last held in his arms nearly 60 years ago.

Bill Iahn had few memories of his only child besides the pictures: one showed him as a young soldier with a dimple-chinned baby in a high chair, another was a portrait of his son on a rocking horse with the inscription, "To My Daddy, Dec. 25, 1945."

The little boy had been spirited away by his mother when the couple divorced soon after that and she had pledged he'd never see his son again.

Iahn (pronounced YAHN) tried to prove her wrong. Many times.

Over the decades, his family made calls, pored over phone books and scoured the Internet for clues that would lead him to his son. Nothing panned out.

At age 87, Iahn had given up on seeing his son's face again.

Then one day this fall, Iahn's great-nephew, Denny Huff, was chatting with a friend in this tiny town where secrets are as rare as strangers. He mentioned his Uncle Bill's long-lost son.

The friend happened to be a genealogy buff and, with some quick Internet research, she produced a name and phone number in Arizona, where Iahn's son had been born.

Huff looked at the name and it wasn't familiar, but all the details seemed to fit. Amazed and excited, he rushed over to Iahn's house.

"Uncle Bill, guess what?" he said, clutching the papers.

"I think we found Billy."

The father couldn't believe it.

"When you wait that long — 58 years — you just don't think it's going to happen," Iahn says, his voice filled with wonder.

A lifetime had passed since he was the young soldier in the Army's horse cavalry when he met his first wife, Thelma, in Phoenix, Ariz. Iahn was dispatched to Europe during World War II and ended up in the Battle of the Bulge.

He and his wife divorced around war's end. Iahn says he doesn't remember precisely what stirred her angry, unforgettable pronouncement:

"Take a good look," he remembers her saying about their son. "It'll be the last time you ever see him."

Iahn remarried and worked construction in the St. Louis area most of his life. After he retired, he and his second wife, Dot, moved 60 miles south to Leadwood, an old mining town (population 1,160) where he had grown up.