Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Roger Hamann
GREENE — Sandy Updyke Browning, of Wyoming, Illinois, entered the United States Army in 1964 and soon found herself going through Intelligence School at Fort Holabird, Maryland in early 1965. During her training, she developed a bond with several of her fellow service buddies, including Susan and Jackie. Jackie was from a military family and so her transition to the Army was almost a given.
“I remember getting to Holabird the weekend before Thanksgiving and Jackie inviting us to have Thanksgiving dinner with her family. With that many children – 14 – two more mouths to feed probably didn’t faze her mother at all!” recalled Sandy.
Fast forward some 50-plus years later. Sandy and Jackie had remained friends and kept in contact with each other. But what ever happened to Susan?
On Jan. 10, 2016, Sandy joined the Facebook group, USA Military Directory at www.facebook.com/groups/USAMilitaryDirectory/. This group is designed “to help others find their ‘MISPLACED’ soldiers, friends, loved ones that have been left behind due to all the military moves.” As any veteran or family member of a veteran can attest, the bonds formed while serving our country are some of the tightest and most-lasting friendships made.
Four days after joining the Facebook search group, Sandy posted her search request: “Searching for Susan J. Strang, aka Layne Strang from Bangor, Maine, birthday December 7, 1946. Intelligence school at Ft. Holabird, MD Jan-Mar 1965 then assigned to Ft. Meade, MD. Was Pvt E-2 at that time. Possibly went on to OCS. All other info unknown.”
As an admin for the FB group and a native of Maine, I noticed the Maine connection and immediately jumped on the case. Given a full name and date of birth was usually a good sign that results would soon be forthcoming. But such was not the case this time.
So, what next? It was time to call some folks in the Bangor area with the family name of Strang. Surely, someone would know of Susan.
As a rule we rarely call possible “leads” ourselves but, hey, this was a fellow Maineiac I was looking for. I called a lady in Orrington and was told that her daughter had a genealogy record of the Strang family, and hopefully, they would get back to me with positive results. Admittedly, this search got lost amongst many others and the months rolled by without any further results.
On Dec. 20, Sandy once again asked if we’d found any leads on her friend, Susan Strang. By now, one of our new FB page administrators saw the post and since he was admin for a Ft. Holabird Alumni group, he took over the search and posted the request, looking for Susan Strang with the same results – a dead end. It was here that I decided to take this matter very personally and dig a little deeper. My wife always calls me “the digger” when it comes to searching for people.
I once again made phone calls to Strangs in the Bangor area. A Mr. Strang in Brewer stated he knew all the Strangs in northern Maine very well and that the name Susan J. Strang was unfamiliar to him. I followed up on a lead that he gave me and sent an email to Meredith Strang Burgess in Cumberland, who, besides running her own advertising company, also does genealogy.
Within a day or two, I received a reply from Mrs. Strang Burgess with Susan’s parents’ and brother’s name! This was the key that turned this case wide open!
I found a listing for Susan’s brother, Guy, living in Kentucky. He was even on Facebook! As is typical, unfortunately, with online directories, the land line phone numbers were no longer valid, but a realty business address for his wife was provided. A call to the realtors office, (where she no longer worked) eventually led me to a working phone number for Susan’s sister-in-law and her brother. The search train was rolling now!
As one may well imagine, my conversation with Guy was a bit strained. I told him who I was, how I found him and what our FB group did.
Information I had about Susan based on what Sandy had provided was verified by him, although he stated that the date of birth was incorrect; everything else checked out, except for one more thing – Susan had changed her name to Cory Layne. Sandy had told me earlier that Susan preferred to go by the name Layne Strang. When I inquired as to whether I might be able to get contact information for Cory, he was, again, somewhat hesitant.
“She’s on her way from Reno, Nevada to New Hampshire as we speak,” he said.
“Do you have a phone number for her that I could share with Sandy?” I asked.
He was not comfortable doing that, but he did agree to pass along a message to Cory with Sandy’s contact info. I told him that was fine and that I understood the reasoning for his cautiousness. I gave Sandy his number so that she might be able to alleviate any doubts he might have about these strangers looking for his sister after 50 years.
My job was done. I sent Sandy a FB message telling her of the events that had taken place and that we had finally found Susan/Cory, kind of.
“Please let me know when you hear from her,” I asked. That was on Dec. 23, 2016.
On Feb. 11, 2017, I sent Sandy a message, asking if she’d heard anything yet.
“Haven’t heard from her. Will try to call her brother again this week. I’ve had a lot going on with my husband’s health and it’s taken precedence,” she replied.
When I’m so close to finalizing a search but can’t do anything else to get to the end result – contact, it drives me crazy! It was time to do a little more “investigating.”
Cory’s brother had given me his sister’s Facebook page. One of my fellow admins said, “That FB page belongs to a guy.”
“Not this one. I spoke to her brother,” I replied.
THAT statement got me thinking. I asked Sandy to take a look at a particular man’s picture on Cory’s FB page. “Do you remember what Susan looked like?” I asked.
“Yes,” Sandy replied, “And she looks a lot like her brother’s picture [on his FB page]”.
There was no identification of any sort on the picture in question on Cory’s FB profile, but I began to think that maybe this was Cory (Susan) and that maybe there had been a gender change. I made Sandy aware as to what may have happened after all these years.
“I’ll wait and see if I hear anything from my phone call. Maybe she doesn’t want to be ‘found’,” Sandy remarked.
At 7:07 p.m. on Feb. 18, Sandy Updyke Browning posted on our FB group, “Success! Spoke with her for quite awhile this afternoon. We talked for an hour or so. Had a good visit. Hoping maybe to meet up when he visits his brother in Kentucky.”
Finally, this search had resulted in a reconnection, after 52 years!
When I asked Cory and Sandy for their initial reactions when they had that phone call reunion, here’s what they had to say.
Cory Layne: “I was just surprised that anyone from Ft. Holabird even remembered me. I was there less than four months, Nov. ‘64 to Mar ‘65.
At first I didn’t recognize the name Guy texted me, and I didn’t call Sandy right away because I didn’t want to embarrass myself by not recalling who she was. After wracking my brain for a couple of days, a picture formed of Sandy Updyke, ‘somebody’ Hooper, and me like the ‘3 Musketeers’ in basic and AIT. They were attending Intelligence classes while I was being shuffled around the post doing odd jobs until my security clearance finally came through. By the time I started school they had both gotten their ‘permanent’ assignments. We wrote back and forth while I was at Ft. Holabird and Ft. Meade, but I lost touch with them when I transferred to Alaska. Now here was Sandy looking for me after 52 years. Amazing!
“I called Sandy and we talked for over an hour. I asked her if she knew what happened to Hooper, whose first name slipped my mind. Sandy told me her name was Jackie and they had remained friends. As soon as she said, ‘Jackie,’ I zipped back in time and remembered spending time at Jackie’s home in Baltimore with her parents and 13 siblings.
“It was like reliving a part of my youth that I thought I had lost all remembrance of. Like recovering from amnesia. Pretty incredible! Just knowing the old memories are still floating around in my musty ol’ brain even though I haven’t retrieved them in so many years is kinda miraculous.”
In an email to me, Cory stated that: “After four name changes, a gender change (1983 gender reassignment – birth certificate amended from Susan Jeanne Strang, female, to Corinne M. Layne, male [The Maine Vital Statistics official accepted my 1971 legal name change, but it took another legal name change in 1984 to change Corinne to Cory] and at least 40 address changes, I always find it amazing whenever someone from my past tracks me down. So, yes, you have my permission to publish your search story using any of my names.”
Sandy Updyke Browning stated: “My husband asked me just the other night what made me think of trying to find you (Susan/Cory). As I get older, I think of days gone by and the people I met along the way. I’ve often wondered what happened to you and where you ended up so I decided to try and find you. I didn’t have any luck on my own (with all the name changes, it’s no wonder! LOL) so I decided to let the Facebook group have a go at it. It took some doing but Roger and the group came through for me.”
I want to thank Sandy Updyke Browning for allowing me to share her search story. Thanks also to Cory Layne for his courage in sharing what must have been a very difficult time in his life and for his openness in what has happened since. Special thanks to Meredith Strang Burgess for her genealogical help. I pray that Sandy and Cory will get a chance to reunite “face to face” soon.
