A lifelong divide

The phone call of your life is generally not expected to come when you are 77 years old, but it did nine days ago for John Dils.

The surprise call came from Dils' relatives, who had tracked him to his Grass Valley home after 75 years of separation. Dils will meet with 11 of them at his house this weekend, and there will be plenty to talk about.

"We'll probably roll over the history," Dils said Tuesday. "I'm still trying to understand it all, and I don't know what to expect."

Dils and his relatives still have a lot to piece together, but they do know this: He was 2 years old and living in New Mexico with his divorced mother, Stella, when she got tuberculosis.

Dils' mother sent him to his grandparents ranch near Mountainair, N.M., and when she neared death, her brother came to get him. Uncle Harry Mack took Dils back to Columbus Ohio, and then did two things that largely erased Dils' trail.

Mack changed his own name and then decided as a single man that he should let a couple raise Little John Lawrence, as Dils was known then. Mack gave Dils to a fellow post office employee and his wife in Columbus, Mack and May Pilcher.

Although they weren't his blood relatives, they were fine people, Dils said, "and I call them my parents." He grew up with a foster sister and then enlisted in the Navy for World War II when he was 17.

While enlisting, he thought it best to use his legal name of Dils instead of Pilcher. If he had not done that, he might have stayed divided from his family forever.

Dils served in the Navy and saw the war in the Pacific. He was involved in the bombardment of Pelilu and the task force that bombed Tokyo.

At the end of the war, his destroyer went to Tokyo Bay to be a part of the occupation force. On Sept. 2, 1945, his ship ferried Japanese officials out to the USS Missouri to sign the nation's surrender. It was Dils' 19th birthday.

The war over, Dils returned to the United States, went to school and ended up in Los Angeles. As an electrical engineer, he was involved in the computer and defense industries.

He also married Betty, who came with two sons from a previous marriage. They raised the boys and retired to Grass Valley in 1994. Betty died in 1996. Dils had established a family and a full life, and because of that, he never really had a hankering to find his roots.

"I'd been told by my uncle that my father (Harry Dils) abandoned me and I was raised by my parents, so I didn't care," Dils said. "Once, I went back East and thought about going back to New Mexico, but I said 'Nah.' "

During a couple of visits, his uncle talked to him about his blood ties and gave him some pictures and a baby book. What his uncle did not know or did not tell him was that his real father, Harry Dils, remarried and had six more children.

They knew about John Dils and tried to find him through the years. But telecommunications were not what they are now, and the search was unsuccessful.

That started changing about three years ago, said Joyce Dils, a half-sister-in-law living in Dolores, Colo. She and her husband, half-brother Charley Dils, had a daughter named Tammy who began a family tree search and tried to find John Dils, at first to no avail.

That spurred another half-niece, and she found a John L. Dils on the Internet in California. Charley Dils took all the information they had, ran it through the Internet again and came up with John L. Dils in Grass Valley. They called information and got his number.

When Dils answered his phone Oct. 20, "I thought it was a salesperson I didn't want to talk to."

It was Joyce and Charley Dils, who quickly established they had found their long-lost relative when Dils confirmed that his blood mother's name was Stella.

"He was pretty bowled over," Joyce Dils said. "He kept saying 'How did you find me?' "

"Both Charley and Joyce were on the phone," Dils said. "He said, 'You're my half-brother. Your father was my father.' I was overwhelmed, unbelievable."

Dils called Charley every night last week. They will resume their conversations Saturday and find one more definition for homecoming.