Twins finally meet after 71 years

MILWAUKEE - Pat Gudinas has finally met her sister, 71 years after they were born, culminating eight years of effort to track her down.

"I've never had anybody in my family," she told Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Jim Stingl of the reunion Tuesday at suburban West Allis restaurant not far from where her sister, Shirley McGuire, lives.

"It's hard. All these years I have missed with her," McGuire said after she and Gudinas, who lives near Austin, Texas, shared their first hug and kiss.

Stingl reported that the twins were born to a woman who had been intimate with a married man, and they ended up in different foster homes and eventually at St. Joseph Orphanage on Milwaukee's south side.

"But we were kept separated. We were never in the same room with one another," Gudinas said.

Both girls were told while they were growing up that they were adopted and had a twin.

The efforts by Gudinas to find her sister made significant progress recently when a nun in Chicago who had archival materials from the orphanage provided her with the name of the people who adopted her twin.

She hired a genealogist to track her down with the help of public records and newspaper obituaries, and the genealogist showed up at McGuire's door recently, leading to the arrangements for their meeting Tuesday.