#Amazeballs: Facebook reunites 8 siblings after 30 years
Saturday, February 26, 2011 at 5:15PMWow. Wow. Wow. This is an INCREDIBLE story that my buddy Marcel not only wrote, but just posted on my Facebook wall. For reals, sit down ... sit back ... grab a cup o'joe ... but most importantly ... ENJOY!
Per CNN iReport: At its core, Facebook is a tool for sharing and connecting friends, families, communities and countries. Below that core, facebook has an incredible capability to bend time. To erase gaps of years and decades, and make all relationships exist in the present tense.
On February 8, 2011, in a small banquet room of a four-star hotel in downtown Buenos Aires, eight siblings and their respective families hugged and kissed each other for the very first time after having no contact for thirty years. Facebook made this happen. Almost a whole year earlier, siblings which had unsuccessfully been searching for each other for decades, suddenly came together in just one single day via the world's greatest unifier.. facebook.
All eight siblings share a father in common, Samuel Rolando Hemsi. Rolando, as he was called, was a charming and gregarious charlatan and con man. Addicted to gambling on horses and aspiring to work with organized crime, he spent a lifetime bouncing around from trouble to trouble. For many years, he was buoyed by an incredible talent to charm, lie and manipulate. In fact, his ability to seduce people into his many schemes was only matched by his ability to seduce women into relationships and marriage. He married eight different women, and had eight children with four of them. The children now reside in four different countries and their ages range from 46 to 19. Sadly for Rolando's children, his was a well worn pattern of seduction and abandonment. He would leave his many wives and all his children before any of them would turn five years of age.
Rolando Hemsi passed away in a small town outside of the Argentine captial, on July 22, 2007. He died an impoverished man with only his eighth wife by his side. He was 69 years of age. Hours before he died, his son Marcel Cairo talked to him on the phone and promised him that he would do what his father had never been able to do, bring all eight of his children together, as brothers and sisters.
On February 8th, in downtown Buenos Aires, Rolando's eight children stood before each other in the same place for the very first time. Suddenly, the pains of lost time and broken bonds gave way to a new sense of shared hope of genuine love.
It was a day that facebook changed lives, instead of just chronicling them.
I would totally agree with Facebook bringing estranged families together. I haven't spoken more than two words to the people my dad grew up with since I was 13, and a few months back, my dad's brother in law (now I refer to again as my uncle), sent me an IM on Facebook chat that he was really proud of everything I had done with this site. Dude, I spent YEAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRSSSSSSSSSSSS in therapy because of the stuff those duderinos did to me as a wee lass, and just like that *poof* - I let it all go, none of it mattered to me anymore, but picking up the phone to call seemed too formal. Social media is far less invasive - an appropriate place to test the waters.
Congrats on the reunion Marcel. Great story!!
Reader Comments (3)
Wow. Those two stories are incredible. It's truly amazing what social media is capable of doing.
Thanks for sharing this, amiga mia. Hugs.
Oh wow, this is amazing. :) <3