— Growing up in Richland Township, Nancy Dickert always wondered about her birth family.

She knew she was adopted from an Ebensburg orphanage before her third birthday. She knew her name was originally Elizabeth College.

She plugged that information into the “reunion” form on the Internet site, adoption.com, and waited to see if anyone responded.

“I was looking for anyone related to me,” Dickert said in the Bedford Street home where she was raised by Paul and Edna Daughenbaugh.

Robert Baker’s wife, Marlene, found Dickert’s posting while helping him research his own birth family. Both were adopted, but it was clear the two had the same birth father. His name was Paul T. College.

“I took a chance and I called her,” Robert Baker said. “I usually don’t do things like that.”

The two met for the first time on May 31, and instantly felt the long-lost family connection.

“We just felt that you know that you know that you know,” he said.

Catching up on lost years at a Richland restaurant, the two learned they share some astonishing history. Although Baker, 52, was born in California, and Dickert, 51, was born in Johnstown, the two grew up less than three miles apart and attended the same schools.

Both graduated in 1978 from Greater Johnstown Vo-Tech. In the class of more than 500 students, Dickert only has a slight memory of Baker in school, and he does not remember her at all.

She was enrolled in the drafting course. He went back to drafting school a few years ago and is now a survey technician with G-Force Engineering.

He volunteers with his church’s nursing home ministry. She is an activities aide at Arbutus Park Manor.

The two have been in communication daily since the first reunion dinner.

“I didn’t know I had a sister at all,” Baker said. “It has been a real blessing. It is hard to find the words.”

They share so many experiences, they feel as if they’ve always known each other, Dickert said.

“We complete each other’s sentences like only a brother and sister can,” Baker said.

The reunion has opened the door for additional research into their family story. With Marlene Baker leading the efforts, they have learned they also share the same mother. Her name was Alma Darr. She and Paul College were married in 1958.

A Johnstown city directory shows the couple lived in Solomon Homes and College worked as a custodian at Walnut Grove Church of the Brethren in 1960.

But California records show the couple moved back to that state and had two more sons in 1963 and 1964.

College, a native of Johnstown, was a World War II veteran and Pearl Harbor survivor, according to his obituary published in The Tribune-Democrat.

He died in December 1991 in a Pittsburgh Veterans Administration hospital.

Learning that nearly floored Baker when he realized he and his father had been stationed at the same facility, Schofield Barracks, in Hawaii.

“We think he had mental problems from the war,” Baker said. “They couldn’t take care of us.”

Although no surviving children are included in obituaries for College and his only sister, Helen Evans of Johnstown, their mother’s obituary said she had five grandchildren. Mary College died in 1982.

They suspect College had five children in total, and that all five were put up for adoption.

“We thought it would be neat to share our story,” Baker said. “It offers hope to somebody who is looking for their family.”

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