Man Finds Letter Wife Hid, Discovers Long-Lost Son

An elderly man who's wanted kids his whole life just learned that he's had one—for 61 years. Tony Trapani and his wife tried for years to have their own children, and when he was cleaning out her filing cabinets after her recent death, he discovered a bombshell of a letter from another woman mailed in 1959: "I have a little boy. He is five years old now. What I'm trying to say Tony is he is your son," the woman wrote. Now Trapani, who's 81 and lives in Grand Rapids, Mich., has met his 61-year-old son, Samuel Childress, who grew up in Pennsylvania assuming his father didn't want to know him, reports the New York Daily News.

"He's my full son that I've had my whole life, but why my wife hid that letter is beyond me," Trapani tells Fox 17. "I don't know. She wanted children. She couldn't have any. She tried and tried." Chimes in Childress, "Just to know him now is so important to me—it's going to fill that void." They do, however, plan to perform a paternity test to be sure that the big news is more than just a good story. (Speaking of long-lost relatives, this 18-year-old plans to marry her father, with whom she recently reunited.)