Family Reunites After Woman's Disappearance Half a Century Ago

by Andrew Colgrove, WSAZ NEWS 3, September 15, 2011

If one of your family members disappeared, how long would you keep looking for them?

One family's persistence and unwillingness to give up hope finally paid off after their loved one vanished more than half a century ago.

Emma Dartey remembers the last day she ever saw her big sister Shelby.

"I remember her going up the street, taking the bicycle saying she was going to deliver the mail to somebody, and that's the last time I saw her," Emma said.

They say Shelby ran away on May 26, 1958 when she was 19 because she was in a bad marriage. She never came back.

"It was sad wondering if she was dead or if someone had hurt her," Emma said.

"It was hard,” Shelby’s other sister Linda Davis said. “I think she knew one day we'd find her. We never gave up."

The family, from Westwood, Kentucky, searched for decades with no success, but they recently hired a private investigator who was able to track Shelby down. She’s been working as a waitress in Phoenix, Arizona.

A few weeks ago, Linda flew out to see her at her restaurant.

"She didn't recognize me,” Linda said, “so she sat down at the table. She said, “Hun, I don't believe I know who you are,’ so I just got up and put my arms around her, told her I loved her, and I was her baby sister, and she broke down and cried."

Wednesday, for the first time in more than half a century, Shelby came home. She flew into the Tri-State Airport, where more than a dozen of her family members greeted her with kisses and hugs.

"I prayed every night that one of these days God would let me see them again,” Shelby said. "That empty feeling in my heart, it finally was filled."

Shelby says as the years passed, she wanted to return home, but was too afraid.

"When I left I was young,” she said. “I thought if I come back now, they have their own life, their own family, and they probably won't accept me, but I was wrong."

"I’m really happy to see her,” Emma said.

Now the family is adamant they won't let another half a century go by without being together again.

Shelby also had two children of her own here before she left. They were 3 and 2 years old at the time.

Her son is driving up from Alabama to reunite with her, and she'll be traveling to Georgia to see her daughter