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Lost in silence, then found

The search began with the first name of a niece who was working in the Pentagon when it was attacked on Sept. 11.

By JODIE TILLMAN
Published July 5, 2006

HOLIDAY - Because of a fight she never fought and a resentment she never felt, Leslie Todd knew only one fact about her niece: Her first name was Marisa.

Beyond that, Todd had only some conjectures about the daughter of her half sister: That her last name might be Phoolpol. That she had been raised in Thailand. That she joined the military and was working at the Pentagon on Sept. 11.

This is what happens when severed ties turn relatives into strangers.

Todd was only 12 years old when her half sister, Simone, called home for the last time from California. Simone, who had a baby daughter named Marisa, needed money. Todd's mother said she did not have it.

Simone never called again.

By the time she turned 20, Todd could no longer bear not knowing: Where was Simone, with whom she shared a father? What was her daughter like?

Nine years later, Todd learned the answer to the first question: Simone had died of a heart problem in California, in 1989. But she found out little about Marisa, only bits and pieces from Simone's stepfather.

Nearly 15 years went by. And then one day this summer, Todd's husband, Don, was mowing the yard when a couple drove by.

* * *

Paul and Tami Scheele of Keller Williams Gulf Coast Realty were looking around the Todds' neighborhood for potential sellers.

As it happened, insurance costs had caused the Todds to think about selling their home. Don Todd figured he would see what these real estate agents thought.

"I threw my hand up," he recalled, "and they stopped."

The three talked for a moment and agreed to meet at the Todds' home a few days later.

The Scheeles showed up for the 7 p.m. appointment, but Don Todd was running late. Instead, they found Leslie Todd, making dinner and talking with her daughter, Maria, who was home on leave from the Navy. All four stood in the kitchen, making small talk while they waited for Don.

Tami Scheele, noting that Maria was in the Navy, mentioned she had two brothers who worked at the Pentagon and were there on Sept. 11.

Leslie Todd said she had a niece she had never met who was also apparently working at the Pentagon on Sept. 11.

It was the most recent piece of information she had wrested from the man who married Simone's mother.

This man, said Todd, had honored the wish of Simone's late mother to keep the two families separated. That desire, she said, was rooted in the woman's bitter split with Todd and Simone's biological father.

Tami Scheele later called one of her brothers. He did not know the name but sent her the address of a military personnel Web site.

Maria logged onto the site. She found three e-mail addresses for a Marisa Phoolpol.

"Hi Marisa, My name is Maria Rose," Todd's daughter typed in one e-mail. "I'm the daughter of Leslie ... Leslie is your aunt."

* * *

Marisa Phoolpol could not remember her mother. She lived with her father in California. "He told me everybody on my mother's side had passed away," she said. Phoolpol had no evidence to the contrary, but she had always held out hope.

She watched Unsolved Mysteries and reunion stories on daytime talk shows. She vowed to keep her maiden name when she married, just in case somebody was looking for her. "There was always this void. Like something was missing," she said.

Now 31 and living in North Carolina, Phoolpol is married, with two children and a third on the way. She is a stay-at-home mother and no longer serves in the Army. Her husband, Jerry Bruggeman, is a sergeant in the Air Force. When she got the e-mail, she said, she was stunned. She picked up the phone and called the family she never knew.

The reunion was on Father's Day at the Todd home, a white brick ranch-style house with turquoise trim in Holiday. They gathered near the corn simmering in the crock pot and deviled eggs glistening on the kitchen table.

The aunt and niece were the talkers in a room of mostly quiet men, including their husbands and Richard Gonzalez, who is Todd's father and Phoolpol's maternal grandfather. It was the first time granddaughter and grandfather had met.

Phoolpol spoke about Sept. 11, when she felt everything shake, when she saw people covered in blood and dirt, when she wondered if she would die that day, too. She was two corridors away from where the plane hit the building and escaped injury.

"To hear that everybody on my mother's side had passed away and come so close to being the last one." Her lip started to tremble, and Todd quickly grabbed a tissue.

"That's my side," Todd observed. "We all cry at the drop of a hat."

Their biggest obstacle to knowing each other sooner was the silence of others, from Simone to Phoolpol's father to her stepgrandfather.

It was a deep resentment born of a family's internal disputes. But both women say they are past the point of resentment. "I understand everybody grows up with their secrets they want to keep. It's kind of a lesson learned," said Phoolpol. "I wouldn't want to keep things from my children. It's too late to be upset. I'm sad that it took so long."

Todd said she is grateful for a new certainty about her niece: "She's a lovely young woman, and I've enjoyed the heck out of her."

[Last modified July 4, 2006, 23:23:52]