NEWPORT-A Newport family has a very special Christmas present this year. They recently found a long-lost brother.

Newport resident Frances Webb had been searching for an older half-brother separated from the family decades ago.

"A few weeks ago I was doing some research on our family genealogy," said Webb, "and came across Eugene's birth certificate. Now I had actual proof of not only his existence, but the exact date and place of his birth."

Eugene was born in 1949 in Gaston County, North Carolina, the child of an earlier marriage by the Gilliland family's father, Lacy Gilliland.

"As children growing up, our mother, Nancy Gilliland, had told us we had a brother living in North Carolina, but we just didn't know where. Daddy confirmed this story through our brother, Lacy, Jr., who was then a small boy.

"Lacy, Jr. remembered Daddy taking him to the railroad tracks one day to watch a train pass by and remembered Daddy telling him, 'You have a brother and some day we're going to get on that train and I'm going to take you to see him."

For more details, please see the Tuesday edition of the Newport Plain Talk.