Sisters find each other after 70 years of separation

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters Life!) - Seventy years after losing touch, two elderly half-sisters have found each other in a Pennsylvania nursing home.

Dorothy Proudfoot, 89, and Jean Mowrer, 78, rediscovered their close blood relationship over dinner at the Long Home in Lancaster after Dorothy noticed her stepfather's last name on Jean's place card.

"I asked her whether she knew someone by my stepfather's name, and she said, 'That's my father," Dorothy recalled during an interview.

At that point, four months after Dorothy moved into the home where Jane has lived for 14 years, they realized that they had the same mother but different fathers.

"We found that my mother was her mother," she said.

The revelation has brought them close together, especially since they are both the last surviving members of their generation.

Dorothy spent a year when she was about 12 living with her mother and stepfather and got to know her younger half-sister. But then she went to live with her grandparents and she lost touch with Jean.

Now the two of them spend hours reminiscing and discovering things about each other's lives over many decades. The extraordinary meeting has created a buzz among the home's other residents.

"Everybody is excited," said Dorothy.