I would like to share how I found a lost Uncle who had lost contact for over 34 years.

My Father enjoys walking and on occasions, when I visit my parents I would go along with him on his walks around Derbyshire. We often talked about his family and he would tell me about my Uncle Albert. I tried to gether as much information about him, but it was never enough to base a search on.

I had found that another Uncle had tried to find his brother without any luck and also his sister had tried to search for her brother and failed.

I stepped in and tried to gather as much information as I could. My Uncle Albert was in the Navy and was based in Portsmouth in the early 1960's. I remembered visiting them when going on holiday to the Isle of White.

There was a feature on Radio 2 where Jimmy Young would help to find lost family. I wrote as much as I knew and out of the blue I had a response from Radio 2 following details of my Uncle being read out on this feature.

My cousin was a taxi driver and by chance was listening to radio 2 when the feature was on and he responded. I rang my cousin that evening and although we had only seen each other acouple of time in the early 1960's we talk for over an hour as if we knew each other all our lives.

I found that my Uncle also wondered about his family and didn't know how to go about finding them.

My Uncle continued to live in Portsmouth from the 1960's. My cousin and I arranged to get our Dad's together and bring them together. We meet in a pub on Sunday, I took my Mum and Dad and we meet up with my Uncle, his second wife, his children from his first marriage and their children and grandchildren, there were over 50 of us for Sunday lunch. This was a fabulous reunion that I shall always remember.

I then arranged for a reunion with my rest of my Uncles, Aunties, cousin and their families to meet my Uncle from Portsmouth.

I draw up a family tree and pinned it to the wall, there were members of the family I had never meet such as second and third cousins. They were all eagar to add their names to the family tree.

Like with most families, there were break-up and family members not talking, which I was not aware of, but both attended the reunion and they found a way to put their differences a side and starting talking again.

Sadly my Uncle has past away, he would have never been forgotten, but meeting up again will ensure happy memories of the reunions.

In memory of my Uncle Albert 1925 - 2002