My sisters are coming out to pick me up today and we are all going to my brothers to meet and visit. MY sister who lives in Switzerland still, has been here since mid July and flies home in a few days, so the sister who lives in Arizona has come up so we can all be together.

For those of you who don’t know the history: Dr Massa’s , who worked in Sturgis, wife Shirley, made a trip to Switzerland in the early 1950’s and evidently found out it was fairly easy to get children from Switzerland adopted into the US. There were quite a few couple scattered around this area who could not have children, so there were many who wanted to adopt a child. I think there were 26 of us who came to this area.

My oldest brother was the first of our family who came here and then a few years later, my sister and I came. In the mean time, an older sister had been adopted to a couple in Rapid City. Time passed and when I was 18 years old, the sister who went to the couple in Rapid City tracked me down. She was on her way to Switzerland and we made arrangements to meet. After she got over there, she found our youngest sister, and brought her back for a visit to the USA. We are all full brothers and sisters with the same biological father and mother, but the youngest one was raised by our mother in Switzerland. No one seems to understand all the reasons why we were adopted out, other than our birth father was never around very long and our birth mother couldn’t afford to raise us. She eventually re-married and that man and our birth mother raised our youngest sister and she carried his name.

So now we keep in touch. It is odd for me to have siblings who I was not raised with, that you know are siblings, but yet they seem more like cousins. As for me, the people who raised me from the time I was 11 months old are who I consider my mother and father and evidently  biology is not as important as environment as I am very much like the people who raised me, carrying many of their traits! Matter of fact, my wife tells me I am way too much like my Mom and Dad, in many ways, she finds annoying. 😉

‘Course, I am sure she appreciates all the good traits they passed on to me. And they are many! 😉

Anyway, that is the history of the Swiss kids. Sometime I’d like to find all the others who came over to this area and have a get together. I personally know of one who ranches not far from here, tho’ we don’t have a lot of contact.