Daughter Meets Mother For The First Time

“A Nashua woman met her birth mother for the first time Friday night following decades of separation and searching.

The reunion came at the Waterloo Regional Airport one day after her father passed away.

“It’s a happy time and sad time right now,” said Cindy Dralle, 57. “I get to meet my mom for the first time, and then I lose my dad.”

Dralle said she had been looking for her mother, Lidia Rodriquez, now Lidia Munoz, for years, and her mother had apparently been seeking her for a long time before they found each other through Facebook. They spoke for the first time by telephone in October.

“I have never stopped searching or wondering where she was,” Dralle said. “And it’s just a miracle that God had brought us together.”

Dralle’s story begins in the 1950s when her father, Harold Kothenbeutel, a New Hartford native, met Munoz in Cuba while serving in the U.S. Navy. They had a son, Jim, who was born at Guantanamo Bay, and then returned to Iowa, where Dralle was born at Allen Hospital.

But Munoz was young, only 16, and living in a foreign land.

“She didn’t understand the culture. She was scared and left us home alone,” Dralle said. She said her mother returned to Cuba when they were infants. After the Batista regime collapsed in 1959 and Cuba headed toward communism, Munoz re-entered the United States and settled in California.

Meanwhile in Iowa, Dralle grew up with her father. She didn’t get along with her stepmother, an issue she chalks up to missing her birth mother, and left home at age 14. She lived with her grandmother in Waterloo for a short time and then with foster families.

Her relationship with her father remained strained until about four years ago, and she has been making up time with him since then. He died Thursday in Bedford, where he had been living.

Over the years, Dralle attempted to track down her real mother, but all she had to go on was the Rodriquez name.

“There are so many Rodriquezes, and I didn’t know if she got remarried,” Dralle said.

She sought help from TV talk shows like Dr. Phil and Maury Povich to no avail. Once she found someone with the same name living in a nursing home, but staff told her it wasn’t the same person.

Then, a friend of Munoz found her through social media and sent a message in May. Dralle said she was without Internet service at the time and didn’t find the message until later. She phoned the friend, who put Munoz on the line.

Dralle said she knows it’s her real mother because Munoz told stories — like her first experience with snow — that her father corroborated.

“They sent pictures, and I look just like her,” Dralle said.

She said her father was happy they found each other.

“He was very excited for me, because he knew I had this hole in my heart,” she said.”

Mother, daughter reunited after 50 years[WFC Courier 12/20/14 by Jeff Reinitz]

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