A lifetime of questions ends as siblings meet

LANCASTER, PA - Eric Jon Deppen always knew he was adopted.

"I guess I was about 8 or 9 when my parents first told me," said Deppen, now 47 and a parent himself. "My parents were always honest about it with me and left it up to me as to how much I wanted to know."

For most of his life, the Mount Joy chicken farmer was content not knowing anything about his genealogy. As far as Deppen was concerned, his adoptive parents were his only parents.

"They satisfied all my needs," he said. "They gave me a great life. I never even considered anything else."

Nevertheless, Deppen said, it was always in the back of his mind.

"I always wondered if there was some lady out there who thought about me every year on my birthday," Deppen said. "I always wondered if she loved me."

Then, on Christmas Eve, Deppen's life was changed forever. An article in the Intelligencer Journal told the story of a family looking for its long-lost brother. His wife, Julia, was the first to read it.

"Eric was on the road when the article came out," Mrs. Deppen said. "I thought I recognized the name, Steven Alan Trimble, but when I turned the page and saw the birth certificate, that's when I knew for sure. I wanted to tell him right away, but I knew it would be too traumatic to tell him something like that while he was on the road."

Deppen, the father of four daughters ages 12 to 20, was headed back to Lancaster County from Virginia. As each of his daughters came to breakfast, each read it in turn.

"We were all very excited," Mrs. Deppen said. "The girls had been trying to help Eric trace his birth-family for a couple of years."

When he got home that afternoon, Mrs. Deppen asked her husband if he had seen that morning's paper. He told her he had not.

"I said, 'Well, you better read it,'" she said. "'And you better sit down when you do.'"

Deppen didn't sit down at first. He stood in the living room and read the story of how his birth-family had been searching for him for the past 10 years.

"I saw the name; then I saw the birth date, and that's when I sat down," Deppen said.

He learned that his birth mother was Violet Trimble Webb, a 75-year-old resident of Conestoga View Nursing Home who is suffering from diabetes and kidney failure. Before it was too late, she wanted to ask her son for forgiveness and tell him that she had never stopped loving him.

"I grew up as an only child, and I often wished for brothers and sisters," Deppen said. "Family has always meant a lot to me. And here I find out I have two brothers, and that's just on the front page."

He learned that his oldest brother, Samuel Trimble Jr., suffers from cerebral palsy and lives in a nursing home in Hamburg. He found out his other brother, Gerald Trimble, lives in Florida and works for the Department of Defense. He also learned he has a sister, Donna Mohler of Pequea.

Finally, Deppen learned why he had been placed into adoptive services in the first place.

His birth father, Samuel Trimble Sr., who had died in the early 1980s, suffered intense depression from dealing with his oldest son’s crippling condition. Not only had he insisted on placing his third-born son into adoptive care, he also considered adopting out his other children. He only relented when his wife found the courage to put her foot down. But by then, it was too late for Deppen.

"When I got through, I laid my head down and cried," Deppen said. "I e-mailed Gerald that same day. I told him I had the adoption papers he and his family were looking for."

Deppen only encountered the documents two years ago, though he had always known where to look. He found them out of necessity, when his adoptive mother became ill and he had to get some papers from her safety deposit box at the bank.

That was when he saw his adoption papers -- and his birth name -- for the first time.

"Even though it isn't my name, it's not a name you just forget," Deppen said. "It's very strange to see something like that."

His daughters were interested in finding out about their father's background and researched libraries and the Internet to no avail.

"They found out you could register with some service that reunites families, but I never did," Deppen said. "I'm not sure why. I just figured I might not ever know."

So when the article came out and Gerald Trimble sent an e-mail reply two days later, Deppen was stunned.

"He asked me all these specifics: my height, my weight, what color eyes I had," Deppen said. "He gave me Donna's number. I called her, and we set up a time to meet."

On New Year's day, the newfound siblings met for dinner at the Deppen family farm on Grandview Road in Mount Joy.

"She's a dynamite girl," Deppen said of his sister. "She's got to be related to me."

Mohler said she and her brother have visited about once a week since that first meeting. The family resemblance is unmistakable, she said.

"The first thing I thought when I saw Eric was that he looks just like my brother Gerry and the other men on my father's side of the family," Mohler said. "The second thing I thought was what a very nice man he was and what a wonderful family he has."

About a week after meeting his sister, Deppen met his birth mother and put to rest the shadows of his past.

"The first thing she said to me was, 'Son, son, my lost son,'" Deppen said. "She said, "'I have always loved you. I never stopped loving you.'"

Deppen said he felt an obligation to provide his ailing birth-mother the closure she needed to end her days in peace.

"I feel that it is very important for a person to have closure in their life," Deppen said. "That's the way it should be when you have a child. I told her, 'You did the very best thing you could have done by giving me up. I couldn't have asked for a better life. Please don't feel guilty about it anymore.'"

Mohler said her mother has taken comfort in the reunion with her son.

"I think it put her more at ease with herself," Mohler said. "She seems like she has peace of mind now."

Deppen also will be meeting his brothers soon. Gerald Trimble said he and his family are leaving Florida today and heading up to Lancaster for a visit. The three siblings plan to visit their brother in Hamburg together.

"Eric can't wait for us to come up and see him and we can't wait to get up and see him," Trimble said. "We sound a lot alike over the phone, but the big thing is going to be when we actually meet. That's when the realization will sink in for me I think."

Deppen is just as excited.

"I told Donna, 'we're blood,'" he said. "I said, 'I'm going to take care of you like we're family... because we are.'"

(Two weeks after this story was written, Violet Trimble Webb passed away. "It was as though she had held on until she met him," her daughter said. "She died content and at peace with herself.")