BROTHERS REUNITED AFTER SEVEN DECADES

Spokane, Wash. -- For nearly 30 years, John Mellinger Jr. knew that he had a brother. He just didn't know who -- or where -- he was.

Then, in the space of two weeks, all that changed. First came the e-mail from "a fella named Dan Newburn. It says, 'John, I think I might be your older brother,'" Mellinger said.

Mellinger, a Spokane resident, and Newburn, a longtime Southern Nevadan, became friends on Facebook, a social networking Web site.

They started talking daily via Skype, an Internet telephone and videophone service.

They noted the family resemblance, the similar noses. They sorted out the family history.

Finally, on Wednesday, Mellinger and Newburn met face to face in Mellinger's Spokane, Wash., home, a reunion 70 years in the making.

"How very cool," Newburn said Wednesday as he walked up to embrace his brother on the front step of his North Spokane home. "Hi, little brother."

It was the first time the brothers were together since 1939, when they were placed in the Children's Home Society in Boise, Idaho, by their teenage mother. Later adopted by separate families, the brothers' lives took divergent paths.

Mellinger, 70, worked for years as a police officer in Baltimore, then changed course and moved to the Northwest, where he ran a barber shop in Hillyard until his retirement.

Newburn, 71, worked as a pastor, journalist and photographer in Las Vegas, where he still keeps busy with various projects. Newburn served on the Clark County School Board in the late '80s and early '90s and was the executive regional director for the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

TIME TO CATCH UP

The men plan to spend the next couple of days together, visiting, going out to dinner and catching up.

"I'm excited, but I don't think it's really sunk in yet," Mellinger said. He told Newburn, "I recognize you and accept you as my brother, but it hasn't really snapped in."

For most of his life, Newburn says, he wasn't too curious about his biological roots, unlike Mellinger, who tried to investigate his background in 1980 with limited success.

But now that Newburn has found Mellinger, with a half-brother and two half-sisters, he said it has enriched his life.

"All of a sudden, I had a sense of being connected like I never had before," he said. "I found a kinship."

The men's mother was 17 when she had Newburn; their dad was 32. He was a salesman, and she was a waitress, and they married briefly, Newburn said.

Their dad left before the boys were left at the home, but a lot of the details are murky.

"It sounded like our father, when he drank, he was a mean drunk," Newburn said. "I felt like she didn't want to put us in harm's way."

The boys went into the Children's Home Society, a Boise orphanage that has become a children's services agency.

Mellinger was adopted by a Boise family; his father was an administrator with the Social Security Administration, and the family moved to Baltimore in 1954. He had known he was adopted since he was 9. In his 40s he decided to seek out information about his birth parents, driven partly by the desire to know more about his medical history.

When Mellinger approached the Children's Home Society, he found the names of his parents but nothing about a brother. Later, he found an aunt in Pocatello, Idaho, who told him he had a brother, so he went back to the home society. They would tell him nothing.

He left a note in his file, saying if anyone inquired about him, they could get in touch with him.

"So I let that go," he said.

FACEBOOK FRIENDS

Newburn, meanwhile, had spent his childhood with a family in southern Idaho, later moving to California, where they lived in Los Angeles and Vista.

He hadn't been particularly driven to discover information about his birth parents, he said. Like Mellinger, he'd had a happy experience with his adoptive family, and it wasn't until curiosity about his medical history pressed him into action that he began investigating his past.

That was two weeks ago. He called an official with the Idaho state records office and soon was connected with the Children's Home Society. Within a day, he heard back.

"She said, 'I've opened your file. You have a brother named John Forrest Mellinger Jr. who's been trying to get a hold of you,'" Newburn said.

That was July 8. Newburn got online and searched for Mellinger, whose Facebook account popped up. Newburn also had a Facebook account, so he sent his brother a message and a friend request.

Back in Spokane, Mellinger found an e-mail alerting him to the friend request.

"I went on Facebook and saw his picture, and oh, boy, there was no doubt about it," Mellinger said. "He was my brother."

'HI BIG BROTHER'

For a couple of guys in their 70s, the brothers are pretty tech-savvy.

They began talking daily via Skype and planning their face-to-face reunion. When Newburn was flying into Spokane on Wednesday morning, Mellinger was checking the progress of his flight.

When it landed, Mellinger sent him a text message: "Welcome to Spokane."

Mellinger and his wife, Linda, were waiting on the concrete front step of their home when Newburn pulled up in a rental car with his wife, Liz.

The two men embraced, and then went inside, where they sat down and began chatting about their lives.

"I'm absolutely convinced this was a God thing," Newburn said. "In three days I found out I had ... a younger brother, I talked to him, saw him on the Internet. It was just kind of like -- wow."