To Whom It May Concern,
This holiday season, I would like to be able to give my mother the gift of finding out if any of her immediate family members are still alive. She came from the island of Leyte, in the Philippines, and left when she was 14 years old. She had a younger brother, Samuel, and her father, whose name was Ferdinand. He was a fisherman on the island. She ran away against her stepmother's wishes in order to find a better life, and promised her brother Samuel, who was 8 years of age at the time, that she would one day come back and take care of him and her father. Unfortunately, she never did return due to the fact that she left to live in Manila, and then headed for the US in 1972. Due to lack of technology and ignorance, as well as financial difficulties, she never did find out what happened to her family. She has 8 children of her own, I'm #4, and raised most of us as a single parent. She still works very hard, and most of the children are grown. The eldest is 35 and the youngest is 12. She now gets lonely sometimes because the house is not as noisy as years ago, and I feel that she needs closure on what has happened to her own family. Personally, I think she had so many kids in order to try and make up for the emptiness of not knowing where her father and brother are. Can anyone help me? My mother was born on November 21, 1947 in a part of the island of Leyte called Takloban,(I think that's how it is spelled), which in turn is one of the islands of the Philippines. Her father's name was Ferdinand, or maybe Fernando, and her mother's name, who passed away when giving birth to a child when my mother was a little girl, her name was Carmen. Her brother's name was Samuel. Please contact me if anyone can help out. She doesn't know I'm doing this, so that way I don't disappoint her if my search is unfruitful.
Sincerely,
Lilli Labuen