Best Friends for Years Turn Out to Be Brothers

L.A. Times Archives

Dec. 30, 2001 12 AM PT

From Associated Press

WILTON, Conn. — Gary Klahr and Steven Barbin met decades ago and became close friends--so close that Klahr was best man at Barbin’s wedding and once signed a photograph, “You are truly my brother.”

How truly, they had no idea.

A search of adoption records revealed that Barbin, 49, and Klahr, 52, really are brothers.

This Christmas, the two men, their families and those of three other siblings they didn’t know about until a few years ago celebrated the holiday at Klahr’s home in Wilton.

“Gary and I have always felt a special bond between us,” said Barbin, who works in shipping. They met in a bar, he said, and immediately hit it off.

Then, three years ago, a man in the area contacted state officials seeking information from his adoption file for medical reasons. That man also discovered he was one of nine in a family of 13 whose parents had given them up for adoption.

Nancy Sitterly, the caseworker who dug up the records at the Department of Children and Families, decided to contact the eight others. She called Klahr first.

Klahr was surprised to learn he was adopted, since the couple who reared him had never told him. Klahr told Sitterly that he would be turning to his best friend for support.

“I said, ‘My best friend was adopted, and he’s OK with it, so I guess I will be too,’ ” he recalled. “Then she asked me, ‘What’s your friend’s name?’ When I told her, there was a short silence on the line, then she asked me for Steven’s number.”

Klahr suspected what she was about to divulge.

“I said, ‘Wait, if you are going to tell me that my best friend for 25 years is really my brother, you will be giving me the greatest gift on Earth,’ ” he recalled.

Klahr also discovered that his gym workout partner was another of his brothers. And a girl he briefly dated in the 1970s was actually his sister.

“If there was any forgiving to do, we did it pretty quickly,” Klahr said. “Thank God we didn’t get married.”

Their birth parents were Polish-Catholic, but Klahr, Barbin and three of their siblings were reared by Jewish families.

“They used to call me ‘Jew boy’ and spit on me,” Klahr recalled of his childhood. “I was one of the only Jewish kids in the neighborhood, and I got picked on a lot.”

But he was also a star athlete in high school in Fairfield and later played football with the New Orleans Saints. These days, Klahr is an actor.

The family’s tale was featured earlier this year on NBC’s “Dateline,” and Klahr is writing a book.