GLEN DANIEL, WV (WOAY)- A parent’s love for their child is unwavering, even when you can’t see them. Well, for 46 years, one father only had this image of his 2-year-old daughter to love, as he had no idea where she was.
The two have recently reunited, and they say it’s like the missing piece of themselves is back.
“When I turned and saw her for the first time, my heart skipped a beat, I’ll be honest, and I just almost lost it right there,” said Marvin Lumpkin, a father who has been reunited with his daughter after 46 years.
Their journey back to each other starts in Cleveland, Ohio, in the late 70s. After Marvin Lumpkin and his ex-wife separated, she moved with their daughter Lavania down south. He tried looking for his daughter to no avail. Then, when Lavania was grown, she started the search for her father.
“It took a long time actually. I went to several sites. There are a lot of people with the same name who lived around the same time that he did,” explained Lavania Lumpkin, a daughter who has been reunited with her father after 46 years. “So it was much more just going down the list of everyone with that name and reaching out to everyone and hoping that somebody would hit me back. So that’s basically how I did it.”
He didn’t believe it could be his little girl after all this time.
“Well, honestly, I thought it was a scam, and it was several months before I even responded. I don’t even know what made me do it; something just said to see who this is. So I did,” explained Marvin Lumpkin. “And I asked her. I said, Was is your mother’s name Beverly Jean Smith? And then it dawned on me, Well, I just gave the girl the name, so I asked her her middle name. I knew if she could answer that, then she was my daughter because I gave her a very unusual name. Her middle name is LakitaLynn, which is all one name, and the ‘L’ in Lynn is actually capitalized. So when she responded in kind, then I knew.”
A few days after they connected on Facebook, he drove to Alabama to see her in person. The met in person at the beginning of October.
“It brought tears to my eyes, it really did. I held on to I grabbed her and hugged her. And oh lord, you just don’t know, it was still so dynamic and I’m still, you know, reeling from it,” said Marvin Lumpkin.
“It was like a dream. Like a dream has finally come true. It was… it was… man I’m going to cry… It was awesome. Just actually put my actual eyes on him and actually hug it out for real. Like, close up. It was… it was more than what I expected; way more than what I expected,” explained Lavania Lumpkin.
When they reconnected, he discovered he had multiple grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
“There are four generations in this picture,” said Marvin Lumpkin.
The two now use Facetime every day to grow their relationship. Lavania and her family plan to come to West Virginia for Marvin’s birthday, aka Christmas, to celebrate and start a new family tradition.
