Tears form in Harald Stoelting's eyes as he listens to James Yancey, a first cousin, sing at Spanish Grove Baptist Church. rls

Harald Stoelting (right) talks with some of the relatives he met at Spanish Grove Baptist Church, including (from left) his first cousin James Yancey, first cousin Char McCargo Bah, Maxine Coleman and her mother, Fannie Coleman. Bah helped Stoelting find his family. rls

Harald Stoelting stands and claps as he is overcome by the music at Spanish Grove Baptist Church during a service he attended with his cousin Char McCargo Bah (center) and her aunt Mary Medley. Stoelting's father grew up in the church. rls

Harald Stoelting (left) walks down a hill with his first cousin James Yancey and third cousin Solomon Perkins (right) during a visit to his father's childhood home in Scottsburg. rls

German-born Harald Stoelting spent his whole life looking for his African-American family. At 57, he found them, through a Stafford genealogist he'd hired to help--who turned out to be his cousin.

By KRISTIN DAVIS

Date published: 4/24/2005

The plane landed three hours late.

But they were waiting for him, with smiles and cameras and four shiny helium balloons.

At 57, Harald Stoelting was finally coming home, to a family he'd never met.

Home, he'd learned over the years, wasn't just a place you lived. It was a place that grounded you, a place where your toes dug into the soil like roots and made you grow. Helped you thrive.

Harald never had that. But on a cool and rainy Saturday afternoon in April, he was about to find it.

After a dozen failed attempts to find his family and a weather-delayed flight from London to Washington, Harald walked into the embrace of cousins.

Into his history.

There were no tears. Only smiles and introductions and pictures.

And then a scurrying to baggage claim so they could get out of the airport and back to Stafford County where the journey would really begin.

On Oct. 8, 1947, less than two years after the Nazis were defeated, a young, unwed mother gave birth to a baby boy in war-weary Germany.

AnnaLisa Stoelting, unable to raise her child, turned baby Harald over to foster care.

Years later, AnnaLisa would tell Harald this much about his birth father: His name was James Clark. He was an African-American World War II veteran from Virginia, stationed briefly in Bremerhaven. During the mid-1940s, he'd lived with a sister on Early Street in Lynchburg.

It was little to go on.

No one in the U.S., it turned out, knew Harald Stoelting existed.

At 15, Harald wrote to his dad: Dear Mr. Clark, I want you to know I am your son.

He mailed the letter. No response came, but the envelope was never returned.

In 1980, Harald, by then a German merchant marine, was stationed briefly in Chesapeake. On a cold weekend in November, he hopped a Greyhound bus to Lynchburg and found Early Street. For hours, he asked every black person he saw if they knew James Clark.

No one did.

Over the years, Harald would contact the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Army, the Social Security Administration and the Federal Records Center.

But all responded the same way. Without a Social Security number, without a veteran's service number, they couldn't help him.

Date published: 4/24/2005