Todd Unger
COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (KPTM) - It sounds like a plot out of a Hollywood flick: two sets of siblings divided at a young age reunite after decades apart.
For a Council Bluffs family, it has been an all-to-real separation.
46 years is a long time to be without family, and Mike Thorp would know. "I'd never met them before and it was pretty wild knowing that you've got family out there," he says.
For the first time that he can remember, Mike met his sisters this past weekend. When their parents divorced more than four decades ago, the Thorp siblings suffered a split of their own.
The two brothers, Jim and Mike, stayed with dad, while sisters Nancy and Tina moved away with mom.
"You don't ever realize how much you have in common. It's a miracle that you have all this family and you missed out on," Tina says.
Nancy says she wasn't sure she'd ever see her brothers, especially Mike, again. "After my mom passed away, it seemed like it was lost hope because she was the primary information source," she says.
But about six weeks ago, Tina and her half-sister started searching online and found Mike through MySpace. The siblings all reunited at their aunt's house in Council Bluffs.
They say it won't be their last visit. "We're here to make it right. To see our sisters, we'll see each from now on, somehow, someway we'll get together," says Jim.
