RACINE, Wis. — The local corner pub is typically where old friends go to catch up. But on Thursday at Michigan's Pub in Racine, two of the seats at the bar are occupied by a long-lost father and his daughter who spent decades to find him.
This is their story.
Bill Caswell, the father, served in the U.S. Military. He served two tours in Vietnam, ending in 1969. But he didn't feel like he'd done enough yet. Shortly after making that known, he got orders for a third tour this time in Germany.
While there he met a woman at a Christkindlmarket.
"We just got along right off the bat. And we were together the rest of the time," Caswell said.
His tour in Germany lasted about a year and a half.
Alex Hollis, the daughter, was born and raised in Germany. When she was 17, her mom shared a life-changing secret before she passed away. The man who raised Hollis was in fact not her biological father. Her biological father was in the United States. Hollis' mom showed her a picture and gave her a name.
At the time, Hollis said it didn't impact her much. The dad she had was who she knew as a dad. But when she herself got married and moved to Wisconsin in the 90s, something in her led her to begin her search in earnest.
"I would go to the library with all three of my little, little kids. I would write down phone numbers from every state out of the phone books there and go home and call all of them. And nothing would turn up," Hollis said about her early efforts.
She ended up connecting with a group online that works to reconnect families with military ties. But nothing turned up. She stepped back from her search for a bit but still would look around on social media. Still, no luck.
Years passed by.
"Then last Christmas my kid bought me an ancestry kit. So I did that and it came back in March. And I found absolutely nothing in there that could be of any help. Like third cousins, fourth cousins, just nothing," Hollis said.
She reached back out to the group she'd found online, thinking they might be able to help her decipher the results.
Hours later, they had a hit.
"I looked and I saw the picture of him, like now, and I knew when I saw those eyes," Hollis described the feeling like looking into her own eyes.
She reached out over social media. The next day Bill Caswell called the daughter he never knew about for the first time.
Hollis said the first thing she asked him was "Did you know my mom? and he said 'I did.' And I totally lost it, I started crying."
"It sounds like something out of a soap opera," Caswell said of the journey to each other.
The woman Caswell had fallen in love with in Germany was Hollis' mom.
"I intended to go back. I don't know what happened. But my 20's are just a blur," Caswell said.
That first phone call between father and daughter was about a month ago. They immediately began to plan Caswell's trip from New Mexico to Wisconsin to visit while talking every day in between.
Early Thursday morning, the father and daughter met for the first time.
"I promised myself I wouldn't cry, but I couldn't hold back," Caswell said of the moment he saw his daughter for the first time.
But of course, life continued to go on in the last five decades for both of them.
Bill has been married for 40 years next month. He has a 38-year-old son, Hollis' half-brother.
Hollis has three kids and grandchildren. Bill's grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Both families hope to meet all of each other in the near future.
"All these years of not knowing even if he was still alive or not. Not being sure. You don't know. And then wondering if when I do find him, is he going to accept me? You don't know. And this turned out way better than anyone could have expected," Hollis said.
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