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63-year-old Polk man meets sister for first time
Alicia Davis hugs her brother Donnie Browning. Image courtesy of WBIR-TV.
POLK COUNTY (Bay News 9) -- In Tennessee, Alicia Davis had a picture-perfect family.
Then she found out there was more to her family than her father wanted to admit.
"My dad did not talk about that," Davis said. "He actually asked me to wait till he passed."
Her father had a son in a previous marriage in Florida. When her father died, Davis searched the Internet for her brother Sam Ware Jr.
She also found out there was a second brother named Donnie, who was abandoned at the hospital when he was born.
"Daddy didn't know anything about Donnie at all," Davis said. "That was really a big shock to all of us."
That brother is 63-year-old Donnie Browning of Auburndale. Davis wrote him a letter to tell him about his other family.
That letter brought back a flood of memories -- memories of his wonderful adoptive parents in Polk County but also disappointments.
Browning had tracked down Ware and his birth mother decades ago, but their relationships didn't work out.
"Things just kind of came up, and I decided I was just going to let well enough be," Browning said.
Browning and Davis traded more letters and decided it was time to meet.
"Well, I just hope that we can have a long life and enjoy each other's presence," Browning said. "And be the brother and sister that we were supposed to have been. And that we can make up for the lost time."
When Bay News 9 talked to Browning Tuesday he had his bags packed for a Greyhound bus trip to see Davis and her family for a Christmas in Tennessee.
And on Wednesday the two met for the first time at a Greyhound bus station in Knoxville.
Davis and her husband will drive Browning back to Florida after Christmas.
Special thanks to WBIR-TV in Knoxville for their help with this story
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