All together now

When Bill Russell and his daughters, Rana and Vanece, met in Florida in December of last year, they hadn’t seen each other in 42 years. But it wasn’t as though they hadn’t wanted to.

The saga started in 1970. Bill, who owned a dental laboratory in Joplin and then worked as a sales manager for a precious metals company, said he came home from the road one day in 1970 to find his house empty and his wife, Bernice, wanting a divorce. During the impending divorce he only saw his daughters intermittently.

“I spent a lot of nights looking at the flyspecks on the wall, wondering why this was happening,” the 89-year-old Russell said.

A couple years later Bernice took the girls and left. He said he had friends who knew where they were, but that they wouldn’t tell him where. Rana said her mother told the girls in a letter years later that Russell had been a good husband and a good father. But she never told him before she died why they left.

“I wish she’d have been alive when I found the girls so I could ask her why,” Russell said.

That began years of futile searching by both Russell and his daughters.

“We looked for him, but there are a lot of Bill Russells,” Rana said.

Russell eventually moved to Florida when a Masonic lodge brother offered to sell him his house for a bargain. When he tried to get more money than he originally offered, Russell went and found a house he liked even more.

“Then I met a young lady down there and we ended up getting married,” Russell said. “I gave up on finding my family. I thought I’d never find them.”

Last year he had a stroke of luck when his social worker decided to search for his girls on Facebook. Rena got the message on a Saturday but was headed out of the country to help her son. When she got back she sent pictures of the family so he’d recognize them when they came to visit.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Russell said. “Everyone I’ve kept in touch with says I sound like a different person. I didn’t think I’d ever see them again, but I knew I sure wanted to.”

Rana and Vanece visited often, and soon convinced Russell to move to the Midwest.

“We both wanted him to come to where we live,” said Vanece, who lives in Springfield. “But he felt like Pittsburg was a smaller town and easier to get around in his car.”
Russell said it’s like being in heaven.

“I see Rana every day, and Vanece every chance I can get up there or she can come here. I can’t see them enough. I get family dinners every Sunday and breakfast every Saturday. I couldn’t ask for anything better than that.”

The reunion has been good for Rana and Vanece, too. Rana’s husband, Chip, who met Russell several times when he first started dating Rana, said he can see the happiness on their faces every time they see him.

“There’s a joy in them,” he said. “It’s something they wanted for a long time.”

Vanece’s husband, Chuck, said there was some initial anxiety at the reunion. But love and religious faith helped ease the tension.

“It turned into a celebration real quick,” Chuck said. “The family’s just picked up and gone on quickly.”

And for Russell, family is all that matters.

“It’s a miracle they didn’t forget me,” Russell said with a smile. “I’m the richest man in the world.”