Amid tears, they’re together again
Long-separated brothers reunite, thanks to Troy hospital staff
There was a hint of a smile on Will’s face Tuesday as he left Samaritan Hospital in Troy with his big brother, from whom he had been separated for 31 years.
Walt and Will, now 56 and 54, are set to embark on a multiday Amtrak ride to Colorado
Springs, where Walt owns an 88-acre property.
Nurses and staff clapped and wiped away tears as the reunited brothers walked out the door.
Will, who has schizophrenia, had been living in a tent in Westerlo before he was picked up by an Albany County mobile
crisis team on April 18. The brothers, who asked to be identified by their first names only to maintain their privacy, hadn’t seen each other since 1991.
When the medics brought him in, Will only mumbled inaudibly and the nurse assigned to him, Renee Schepisi, initially struggled to elicit information about his relatives.
“From the very beginning, I just had a really strong gut feeling he was a missing person,” Schepisi said.
Schepisi stumbled across an obituary for the patient’s mother that noted she was survived by another son, Walt, who matched Will’s description of his brother.
Schepisi enlisted her colleagues, psychiatric nurse Abigail Belarge and patient care technician Sarah Haddawi, to find Walt’s number via Google and social media.
“I don’t know how they did it, because I tried to keep my internet security squared away, but they found me in a short time, so clearly I didn’t do a good job of it,” Walt said Tuesday.
When his phone rang on May 10, Walt was already having an emotional week, having just traveled to Tacoma, Wash., to reconnect with his estranged son and meet his granddaughter for the first time.
“I know this is a strange question but do you have a brother named William?” Schepisi said she asked Walt.
At first, he was incredulous and then overcome with emotion, Schepisi said.
“He just started bawling, and then the patient started crying, and we all started crying — it was super-emotional,” Schepisi said.
It was an unexpected outburst from Will who, due to his condition, doesn’t initiate conversation, the nurses said.
According to Walt, “It was too much. I couldn’t process it. There was so much happiness.”
As boys in northwest Montana, the brothers were inseparable, according to Walt. Just 18 months apart in age, their childhood was filled with hunting, fishing, camping and skiing.
“I never had to protect him. He was a very tough character on his own,” Walt said.
Will followed his brother into the U.S. Air Force and became a crew chief, serving for two and a half years before mental illness consumed him. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 22 and quickly spiraled, his brother said.
“He described it as a hundred voices in his head ... as walking into a room and a hundred people talking to him at once,” Walt said.
Over the years, Walt had filed missing person reports in multiple states and spent hours on the phone with churches, homeless shelters and hospitals in the hopes of finding his brother. But his brother refused to accept help.
“The police would contact me every once in a while and say, ‘we got your brother here,’ and close out that missing person report, and I’d start another one,” Walt said.
His brother “was like a ghost,” Walt said.
When Will arrived at Samaritan, an affiliate of St. Peter’s Health Partners, he was soaked from the rain but in surprisingly good health given the time he spent on the street, staff said. His belongings were meticulously organized, an apparent remnant of his Air Force training, staff said.
Will is believed to have walked from California to New York over three decades before landing in Albany. The brothers were never very “huggy” growing up, according to Walt. Today, Will still prefers handshakes over hugs. When they met in person on May 16, Will stuck out his hand as if no time had passed, Walt said.
Will is on medication for the first time and Walt plans to set
up his brother in a camper near his home to monitor him and help him continue treatment in Colorado Springs.
The brothers are still processing the emotional chain of events and are looking forward to going home, they said. While Will has been found, at last, the family encountered setback after setback in their efforts to find him.
“The whole (mental health) system sucks,” Walt said. “No one wants to talk about it, no one wants to fund it ... You feel alone when you are dealing with it.”
But Walt said he never gave up on his brother and has kept their childhood photos close.
“It ended up that he found me,” Walt said.