Life is full of surprises sometimes.....

Is there somebody way back in your past life that you often wonder about? Someone that was important to you but due to circumstances beyond your control they are gone from your life and you have no clue how to find that person again....

When I was in Caseville, I got a phone call from my friend (the one who lost her son to cancer awhile back). She tells me that she was reading the local hometown paper and that there was an article in there with my name mentioned....my maiden name. A man from Wyoming was looking for information about his family. He had been born in Michigan and he and his brother had been adopted out when they were small. Quite a few years ago he found an aunt who led him to his mother who he was able to meet. She passed away a couple years ago. Now he is trying to find information about his father and his little brother. He and his brother were adopted out to two different families. He has little information to go by. Only recently he got a copy of his baptismal certificate from a church in Plymouth, MI that listed the name of his father and his sponsor (Godmother) Diane Paquin.....ME!!

Robert Shawn Staffig was born to Darlene Diane Staffig on June 29, 1962. Darlene and I knew each other way back in Junior High School. She was a year older than I was. She became pregnate and at age 17 she had a baby. She was totally rejected by her parents. She had little Shawn (as she called him) baptized in September and asked me to be his Godmother. I was 16 at the time. Shortly later, she went out to Dallas, TX for awhile. She returned to the area by 1964 and tried to finish her high school education by going to night school and working during the day. They lived in an old upstairs flat and I use to go visit her and little Shawn. He was like my own baby. I loved him so much. He loved when I would come see him, and he would cry and cry when I had to leave. Eventually I got married and moved away and she got married and got pregnate again. I remember seeing her and the two boys and her new husband once, but then she divorced him, put the boys up for adoption and moved out of the state. I never saw her again.

While she was working here, she befriended a relative of mine who babysat for her. She became good friends with my second-cousin's mother....who was my mother's cousin. They kept in touch thru letters and phone calls for years and years. It was through her that I found out about the adoption and her moving away. I asked her for Darlene's address once, but I never got it; and Darlene never contacted me.

When my friend spelled out the last name in the article, I couldn't believe it.....OMG, that's SHAWN!!!!...my Godson!!!

She had sent an email to him telling him that she knew me and gave him her phone number. He called her and gave her his number which she gave to me. I called him and spoke to my Godson who I haven't seen since 1966. I felt so sad when I learned that Darlene had passed away. But he did tell me that she had remarried a man in the oil business and had two more children....a girl and a boy. He said that the boy is an attorney. She did eventually divorce him, but she had a good life with him.

So get this.....

I told him that I wasn't at home that I was at my summer place in Caseville. He proceeds to tell me that he is very familiar with Caseville because he grew up in the Port Austin/Kinde area!! His adoptive parents own land and raises cows on a farm near Kinde. He graduated from Kinde High School. I drive through Kinde when I go to Bad Axe. I've eaten in Kinde. I go to the Kinde Polish Festival. He grew up right near where I have been vacationing! He even worked at the Castaways Inn where we once stayed one winter before we bought the condo in Caseville. He lived there until 1982 when he and some friends decided to go to Wyoming. He's been there ever since.

He's a singer/songwriter and he has a CD he is going to send me....He plays festivals and concerts and parties, etc. He is using his mother's last name as his professional name, and he goes by the name Rob now. He has this really great song out called Drive-In Nights and the video is on Youtube. It's a great song and a great video. It is like a slide show of old nostalgic drive-ins. It sure brings back the memories of a time and day long gone.

So you have to check it out....his website is www.robstaffig.com where you can see pics of my handsome godson. I get the song better on Youtube. If you google Rob Staffig, the youtube video comes up and you can watch it that way.

And guess what else I am excited about?? He is coming to Michigan in October for a wedding and I will finally get to see him again. I am so excited I could bust.

Through all these years I have thought about him often and wonder whatever happened to my little Shawn and if he's okay and how did he turn out. I have pictures of him when he was little and pictures of his mother. Every once in awhile I look at the pictures and wonder what should I do with these pictures. My family wouldn't really care or even know who he is. Now I can give them to him where they belong and he can pass them down to his sons.




Then.......



....and Now