OP, that is quite a story and I'm happy for your family.
DH was deployed to Dhahran immediately after the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996 as a squad leader of 12 airmen. One of the them was an Italian immigrant named Roberto who had just gotten his U.S. citizenship and was around 20-21 years old. DH was proud of him during the deployment because he'd performed well. As they were coming back, there was a freak accident on the flightline and Roberto received a head injury and knocked unconscious. Unfortunately, Roberto was left behind for medical reasons (irreversible coma) and his father traveled to Saudi Arabia to terminate life support. My husband and his squad were completely devastated. We had memorials and erected a monument on base in his honor. Years later, my husband got an email out of the blue from a young man, graduating high school and joining the Air Force, who said he was Roberto's son. It turned out Roberto's girlfriend found out she was pregnant while he was deployed. We never knew. The son wanted to know about his dad and what had happened. Even through the tears and lingering grief, it felt so good to know a part of Roberto lives on.
Another quick story: we recently found the burial site (in 1950) of DH's half-brother, which had been a mystery for decades in his family. His father had been married/divorced before DH's mom and had a baby that died. DH's mom refused to ever talk about the previous marriage/baby, so no one really knew where he was buried. The cemetery is massive and only a certain cousin knew the location (who lives in AL now). This past spring DH's sister decided to find it. We searched and searched where they thought the gravesite would be... and then I finally found it on
findagrave.com (what a great site!) We went back and walked straight to the grave! We've since cleaned the rock and put flowers on it.
If you're interested in geneaology, definitely check out the findagrave website. I was stunned how much of my own family history is on it.
