Oskaloosa Family Reunited After Decades Apart

Siblings reunited – Alex Hunt (left), Dan Spigle (center), Leah Cisse (right). (submitted photo)

Oskaloosa, Iowa – There were many surprised individuals this past week, and many of them shed more than a few tears from the experience. Thankfully, those tears were tears of joy as a local family was reunited with a long lost brother.

The day leading up to all those tears started off about 4 years ago, with a quick post on a Boston area Reddit page, when a simple picture lead to a life-changing experience.

The parents of Alex Hunt, age 28, and his sister Leah Cisse, age 30, made one of the most heart wrenching decisions of their life when they gave up their third child to be adopted.

One letter a year would arrive from the adoption agency, telling them how their son was now, what sorts of things he was now doing, such as walking or what grade he was attending in school. Each informational update also included an updated photo of their adopted son, so that they could see how he was growing up.

Alex’s parents kept those yearly updates, so graciously sent by the parents who adopted their child, and the letters kept coming until Alex’s parents passed away, and the letters stopped.

“The letters were just beautifully written,” says Alex. “You could see his life, even though we weren’t there, you could see progress with pictures of him.”

Alex says the adoptive parents didn’t have to send the letters. “Dad kept every one of them and every picture. His dad “kept his [Dan’s] birth certificate with his foot prints on it.”

“When Dad passed away, we even put his initials “DJ” on my dad’s headstone. “They had to give him up for adoption, but they never stopped loving him.” says Alex.

“They never stopped looking for him [Dan],” explained Alex, who said that his mother would break down crying that she had to make that decision. “You could definitely tell it was something she wishes she didn’t have to do.”

“The same thing with my Dad,” says Alex. “Sometimes you’d catch him crying when the letters would come. He would say ‘Just look at him Alex, just look at him. Look how big he’s getting.’ He looks exactly like my dad.”

“They never stopped,” says Alex of his parents desire to find their son. “That’s the saddest thing, is he [Dan] never got to meet them, and they never got to meet him.”

The two siblings were left wondering about Dan, their brother, who was out there somewhere, but they had no way to reach out to their brother.

Alex’s sister Leah then took to the social media site Facebook, looking for information about her brother Dan. After 4 years of looking and asking, with no success, Alex made that fateful post to Reddit.

Reddit is a news aggregation and discussion website where its members rate the content.

Alex posted one of the last photos they had of their brother Dan to the subgroup of Boston on the Reddit site. The users there rated the content high, and eventually someone recognized the person in the photo because of a college shirt Dan was wearing.

The post took only 20 minutes to get results, and before long, Alex was verifying to Dan who he was and how he had his picture.

“I can’t imagine what it was like for him [Dan], when some random guy on the Internet was sending him pictures of his life,” says Alex. “How weird would that be?”

Dan Spigle, age 26, was always aware that he was adopted, but he wasn’t aware that he had a brother and sister out there. This all changed from that Reddit post.

Alex shared with him all of the letters and pictures the family had so graciously received from Dan’s adoptive family.

For nearly 4 years, the family kept in touch via Facebook, and an occasional telephone call, but that was about to change.

While at work this previous Tuesday, Alex was helping his cousin Amanda Hunt with some furniture at Slumberland Furniture where Alex is employed.

Alex walked to the sofa that Amanda was “looking at”. Another person was sitting on the couch with their back toward Alex. As Alex got to the sofa, he turned and saw his long lost brother. “My jaw dropped,” and I said “Holy #%&@!”

“I just hugged him. I just teared up. And he hugged me and it was great,” says Alex.

About a half-hour later, Alex and Dan, along with their cousin Amanda, went to visit Alex’s grandmother, Shirley Hunt, who would often say she was going to die before she would get a chance to meet Dan.

Amanda lead the way into the home, followed by Dan and Alex, who was recording the entire moment to video. “Oh my God,” says Grandmother Shirley from across the living room as Dan is revealed to her.

She quickly jumps up and heads for Dan, giving him a tearful hug. “I’m so happy to see you. I didn’t think I was going to live long enough,” Shirley said to Dan.

Then, Dan and Leah hugged for the first time, as a family was now reunited in person, reconnecting a family that had been split by financial hardship.

The family went out for dinner together where, “we got caught up,” says Alex.

During the week, the three siblings then went and got matching tattoo’s that signified something important for each one of them.

Alex already had a tattoo, but Dan didn’t have one. Dan’s Boston family is fairly reserved, and Alex asked him, “Are you sure? Because tattoos are permanent.” Alex then said that “He [Dan] followed through with it, and he loves it.”

While that bonding moment of the tattoos was taking place, Alex described that moment, “Just to be sitting there, just to be in that room with my brother, that feeling is indescribable. Just knowing that my parents looked for so long.”

Those feelings continued during the week-long reunion. “Even the smallest thing, like his sitting next to me and us watching Netflix together, it was just unfathomable.”

“Me and him are into the exact same stuff,” says Alex. “We’re nerds about Star Wars and video games. It’s crazy how much him [Dan] and me are alike,” says Alex.

“It just feels so great to have him there, to talk to him,” added Alex. “I couldn’t even probably describe how he felt walking into a room full of 10 to 12 people he didn’t even know. Love just flowed out of us to him, and that was probably so overwhelming for him.”

One of those most touching moments was when the three siblings took their picture together. “That’s when he started crying,” says Alex. “When he got between me and my sister, and we put our arms around him, that’s when he was tearing up.”

Alex and family took Dan to the headstones where their parents are buried, and Dan told Alex he feels as though he has some closure now.

According to Alex, Dan’s mother back in Boston is happy for her son to be reconnected with his biological family, but she’s probably not really happy about the tattoo.

Dan had already been to Oskaloosa once when he was younger, looking for his birth parents. A wrong name prevented him from finding his biological parents, who were still alive at the time.

Alex is saving money now for a trip to the Boston area to visit his brother there, and there are plans in the works for Dan to visit once again around the holidays.

Until they meet face-to-face again, the family will stay in contact with things like Facebook and phone calls.

Those long distance conversations now seem different, since they have now had an opportunity to meet, hug, and bond together face-to-face. “It feels way more personal now, because before, it was just a voice or some chat with someone you don’t know.”

“Yeah, we definitely hugged him as much as we could, and we tell each other we love each other,” said Alex of the Hunt family tradition. “Before you hang up, before you leave, I love you, just in case you never see them again. We make sure to let him know we love him [Dan].”