The long-lost son of a late WHT photographer has revealed how he is looking forward to meeting his English family after a search lasting 58 years.
Peter Corin Brown, a well-known portrait and landscape photographer, and former staff member of this newspaper, died in November 1983 aged just 60, and shortly before he was due to take pictures of the Queen Mother's visit to WGC.
He said goodbye to his wife Margaret and his daughters Jean and Alison, but passed away not knowing that he had a son, his namesake Peter Böhme, who lives in Germany.
When he was 14, Peter learned the man he thought was his father was not a blood relative, and he subsequently everything he could to trace his natural parent, but sadly his efforts were in vain.
He had been given the adoptive name Böhme at the age of three and was happy when his mother confessed to him that his father had actually been an English pilot stationed in Celle-Wietzenbruch during the Second World War, because the relationship with his stepfather was not the best.
Unfortunately the RAF was unable to provide any information, and his quest for answers would last 58 years.
During this time Peter finished school and joined the police, retrained as a photographer, married twice, raised two daughters and had two grandchildren.
His two daughters urged him time and time again to restart the search for his father, their grandfather, and so eventually he turned to social media in his search for leads.
By a happy coincidence, Vera Richter, who lived near Frankfurt, read the advertisement. She was involved in ancestry search, and shortly before Christmas 2019 she wrote to Peter and offered him data that matched Peter Corin Brown.
This was the starting point for Peter to eventually reach out to his English family, and he is now in regular contact with his half-sister Jean in Equador, and his relatives in England and Australia.
He said: "I am proud of my English heritage every day. If corona had not happened, I would have been able to embrace my half-sister, cousins, nieces and nephews long ago.
"So now everything depends on the development of the pandemic unfortunately, but I am looking forward to my eventual visit to England."
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