Man finds he has a sister in Germany

GOSHEN, Ohio (AP) — Underneath a pair of lederhosen and some childhood photos, an Ohio man found his original identity — and discovered that he has a sister.

Gary Schmelzer, opening a package mailed to his home northeast of Cincinnati, was stunned to find his adoption papers. Dated 1955, they were from an orphanage in his native Frankfurt, Germany.

He learned his birth name — Gerhard Rothermel — the names of his late birth parents, and information about a sister he never knew existed.

“Most of it was in German, and I can read a little German,” recounted Schmelzer, 57. “It did have a small English transcript in there as well. I started to read through it. I went, ‘Whoa, I got a sister!”’

Schmelzer, a husband, father and grandfather, last month tracked down his sister, Hannelore Rothermel, 60. She is fluent in English, so they have exchanged e-mails and chatted on the telephone to set up a reunion here.

She will fly to Cincinnati at the end of this month for a two-week visit that will include a Labor Day fireworks show and a Cincinnati Bengals pro football game.

The papers that made it possible for Schmelzer to find his sister were almost tossed out when his adoptive parents, Joseph and Dorothy Schmelzer of San Antonio, Texas, were moving to a new home. Their son Timothy noticed the child’s lederhosen and photos in the box, and shipped it to Gary.

Schmelzer said he had known little about his background, and remembered almost nothing about his early childhood in Germany, where their mother died when he was little.