The fantastic saga of two long-lost brothers who found one another while working at Dow’s Furniture in Waldoboro has grown as two half-sisters have entered the picture.
“It was surreal,” Randy Joubert said, along with his newly found half-sister, Joanne Campbell, on Saturday at Dow’s Furniture in Waldoboro.
Joubert, his brother, Gary Nesbit and Campbell had just returned from a three-day excursion to New York City, where they told their story live to millions of viewers and where they met one more sibling.
Nesbit and Joubert were swamped by a media blitz when their story was published in several newspapers and broadcast on local television stations. Jamie Campbell, a lobster buyer working on Matinicus Island, was taking a break and reading The Free Press when he saw the story of the two brothers who were adopted by separate families at very young ages and who found one another at work over 30 years later.
Joubert and Nesbit were born to the same parents, Wilfred and Joan Pomroy. Joubert was born in July 26, 1973 and his brother was born June 10, 1974.
Knowing his wife Joanne’s maiden name was Pomroy, Jaime called her and told her the news.
“She went ballistic,” Jaime said. “I knew she wanted to find them (her biological brothers), but had no idea where they were.”
Tears streaming down her face, Joanne, now 41, went to Dow’s Furniture right away where she met the two brothers she had been separated from for the past 30 years. Joanne is the oldest of the siblings and was taken from her mother at the age of five.
“She had a tough life in foster care,” Jaime said and knowing she had siblings out in the world, she wanted desperately to make contact and unite with them for the first time.
While at the furniture store, a representative from MSNBC’s The Today Show called and asked to speak with Joubert.
“We were all just getting to know one another when the Today Show called and I said, ‘guess what, my sister just showed up’,” Joubert said.
The NBC network flew Joubert, his fiancée, Jen and her two children, Nesbit and his mother and Joanne and Jaime out to New York the following Sunday, on Sept. 20. They spent two nights at the Essex House and a surprise final night at the Hilton.
Monday morning the family spent the day in the city. Provided food and beverages and a limo driver for a day, they toured around New York. The network gave them all tickets to the Top of the Rock observatory, where they got an eagle eye view of the city.
Weary in recounting their story, the three siblings said they were thankful for the network television station’s hospitality.
“They were all great,” Joanne Campbell said, the most vocal of the three, adding, “We didn’t know Al Roker had three adopted children.”
When Tuesday morning rolled around and as the three were telling a nationwide audience their story, Cathy Cooper, 39, was sitting down to watch from her couch in Sarasota, Fla.
“It was the first time she’d watched the show in four months,” Joubert said. “She just happened to be watching it.”
Cooper called the station after seeing the show and they flew her to New York to reunite with her siblings. She joined Joubert, Nesbit and Campbell on stage the following day.
“It’s unbelievable,” Joubert said. “I’m still wrapping my head around all this.”
Joubert, who was taken from his biological mother at the age of two months, grew up in a loving family, the youngest of four sisters. He said he had always wanted to have a brother and is just getting used to the idea of his reunited family.
“I had a great childhood,” Joubert said. “My parents Bob and Jackie Joubert were the greatest parents ever. I feel very fortunate to have had been adopted by them.”
In addition to finding his long lost brothers and sisters, Joubert has answers to medical questions he was never able to answer before. As it stands currently in Maine, medical records are not readily available to either adoptees or the adoptive parents.
According to a spokesperson from the Office of Vital Records at the Maine State Adoption Reunion Registry, 99 percent of medical records are not included with the original birth certificates. Unless a biological parent fills out the medical form in connection with the birth certificate, adoptees seeking their own medical history have to track down their original parents to get the information.
Maine is one of the few states to allow adults who were adopted to obtain their original birth certificates. Dana Dow, owner of Dow’s Furniture in Waldoboro and former state senator, voted for the bill co-sponsored by then Maine State Senator Paula Benoit. The bill allowed those people who had been adopted to obtain their original birth certificates. The law came into effect on Jan. 1 of this year.
“I’d just like to give a special thank you to Senator Benoit for sponsoring that bill,” Joubert said.
He said there are still 42 other states in the nation that do not allow adult adoptees access to their records and hoped his family’s story would provide inspiration for legislators to take action.
