We all know how difficult it really is for a parent to separate from their children, you just get scared just imagining it. But for a mother named Lanny, that was her life and destiny for the last forty years. Lani, who is from Thailand, met with a member of the US Air Force during the Vietnam War. He later fell in love with her, and they soon married and moved to Ohio. There they had a daughter, then moved to Oxford, England, and later their other daughter was born. But just two years later, their relationship changed dramatically for the worse, and the couple eventually divorced. Lani, who was not fluent in English, couldnt understand the terms of the divorce and signed a document stating her rights to see her daughters again. From that day on, both mothers and daughters spent the next forty years searching for each other, until they finally found each other and united through social media.
When Lanny had to separate from his two daughters, Starla and Ginny, the girls were only 2 or three years old. It was as painful for the girls as it was for their mother. Starla tells ABC News: “We asked our father a lot about his mother, and he never wanted to talk about our mom. He simply said that he could not speak English because he was full of bloody Thai. “He said he thinks because we are Americans and he is in the military, he can take better care of us and provide us with a better life than he could.” So for the next four decades, both the mother and the daughters searched for each other, and Starla and Gin searched for each other with the help of their father, but to no avail.
“When I sit down and just think about it, I think he was just trying to act as if he was trying to help in some way. He was trying to protect us, or perhaps he was afraid that he might lose his little girls forever. They always say that there are three sides to this story. “His side, his side and the truth,” Ginny told ABC News.
The years passed very quickly, and the girls wondered if they should give up the idea of finding their mother and continue their normal life. But recently, Starla received a very unexpected and accidental message on Facebook. It was by a man named Mark Szarmakh. It turned out that Marcos was Lani’s second husband. He tried to help his wife find the girls he had long lost, but for a long time his efforts were in vain. Mark says about his wife. “Lani wanted to find them, but he did not know how and because he did not have much information, he could not search diligently. “But he often cried to sleep, always talking about his daughters in his mind and imagining how he would one day find them.”
Because of the woman’s voice, Mark thought that Starla was simply called “Stella” and Ginny “Jenny”. Not surprisingly, finding them was quite difficult for him. Mark, however, knew the name of the girl’s father and tried to find him. The man’s name was John Thomson, and because it was so popular, it took time for Mark to find it through certain people who had the same name. Finally, he found his souvenir. Thanks to all that, he revealed the real names of the girls and went to Facebook to look for them again. This time Mark found Ginny Tumi’s Facebook post and was very surprised when he saw a picture in which he is particularly depicted.
“I opened an album and a picture of their childhood appeared. I was just in shock. I came out of the bedroom and immediately said: “Honey, you must definitely come to see all this.” “I showed him that picture and he just started complaining,” Mark said. Mark contacted Ginny, who was blown away. He and Starlan Lani made plans that in forty years and a week they would finally be able to reunite.