There are plenty of public records available online or at the courthouse to help you search for a long-lost friend, relative or schoolmate.

A good place to start is Cyndislist.com, a nongovernmental site with links to about 265,000 people-finding sites.

Included are links to state and federal census records. No private information is included in that data, but the Census Bureau releases information like names, ages and ethnicity on individuals counted 72 years after the survey.

If you know where a person lives, search for their city or county's property and tax records.

Commercial sites, like Ancestry.com, help you wade through government data and other resources. Much of its content is free, but some features require paid membership.

Be cautious about using Internet people-finding services, which can't search the entire country.

No computer? Try a public library, which often keep old city directories or phone books. You can also get civil and criminal court documents at a local courthouse.

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/nation/16923014.htm

Old friends find new love

On a quiet street in Carrollton, the Carlton and Etier kids ran and played, forming family friendships that endure even now, 40 years later.

Highland Drive was an idyllic place to raise kids. Noma Etier says she often saw her son, Doug, playing tetherball with Cindy Carlton.

"If I ever needed to know where Doug was, I'd go to the fence and look down there," says Noma, who had three sons – Doug, Richard and George – with husband J.D. Etier.

Noma and J.D. met Cindy's parents, Maurice and Mary Carlton, in 1955 during Sunday school at First United Methodist Church in Carrollton. The next year, the Carltons built a house on Highland Drive in Carrollton. Six years later, the Etiers moved in two doors down.

The parents' Sunday school activities and a close-knit neighborhood kept them connected. And their kids went through school together. Cindy Carlton and George Etier often double-dated during high school because she was dating his best friend. In December 1972, when George – who was then a student at the University of Texas at Arlington – needed a date for a college career Christmas party, Noma suggested he call Cindy.

Even though the Carltons moved to Amarillo the next year, the families kept in touch. And Cindy and George were dating. Maurice and Mary Carlton next moved to Illinois, winding up back in the Dallas area in 1975, the same year Cindy and George married.

That union further strengthened the families' bond. At Christmas and other holidays, the Etiers and Carltons congregated at Cindy's and George's house. When the grandbabies were born, they also celebrated together. In 1997, Noma and J.D. marked their golden wedding anniversary. Maurice and Mary followed suit the next year.

However, health issues began to crop up over the next few years. In 2005, Maurice lost his wife, Mary, to pancreatic cancer. The next month, J.D. Etier died of complications from diabetes. Their formerly bustling homes had become empty nests.

Making such a huge adjustment was difficult for both Maurice and Noma after nearly 60 years of marriage. "The house was kind of empty," says Noma. And Maurice wasn't enjoying going to dinner and the movies alone.

Noma says, "He told Cindy, 'It's not much fun to go by yourself.' She said, 'Well, Dad, why don't you call Noma? I'll bet she'll go to the movies with you.' "

Noma wasn't surprised that Cindy thought of her.

"Cindy's always been the daughter I never had with three boys," says Noma, who worked at Carrollton Public Library for 22 years before retiring in 1987. "She's always been so special to me."

So Noma and Maurice started spending their days together. And lunch at the retirement center with Maurice helped Noma "break the monotony of the day." They had so much to talk about – several decades' worth, in fact.

"We just enjoy each other's company," says Maurice, who was in management for Avis Rent A Car for 17 years and then retired from business adminis tration at their church in 1992.

During outings to baseball games, the Mesquite Rodeo and the Fort Worth Livestock Show, Maurice and Noma once again found joy in life.

"Maurice said, 'Have you ever thought about remarrying?' As time went on, we got talking to each other about it," Noma says.

In July of 2006, they took Cindy and George to dinner and asked for their blessing. With very little fuss or fanfare, Noma and Maurice set a wedding date.

On Sept. 9, they exchanged vows at George's and Cindy's house in Carrollton. Cindy's son-in-law, a minister, officiated.

"We just had the kids and grandkids," says Maurice, 79. "They were all for it."

Noma, 78, and Maurice won't have to go to movies alone anymore.

Finding true love once in a lifetime is a blessing, they say. But to find it twice is nothing short of a miracle.Do you have a story of True Romance? We'd like to hear from you.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/life/profile/stories/DN-NSL_romance_0318liv.ART0.State.Edition1.446bdb1.html

Mother and daughter are reunited after 44 years

A MOTHER has been reunited with her daughter 44 years after she was forced to give her up for adoption.

But their emotional reunion only came about after 62-year-old Marlene Houston hit the headlines after finding love with playground sweetheart Gordon Johnson through the Friends Reunited website.

Her daughter, Gillian Halliday, who grew up in Stanley, County Durham, had tried to trace her without luck - until she saw the newspaper report.

"The pieces just seemed to fit together,"

she said. "Marlene is an unusual name and where she grew up all tied in with what I knew."

The pair arranged to meet, along with Gordon and Gillian's partner, Neville Sterling.

Ms Halliday, a team leader at Tesco, in Consett, said: "It was very emotional. We both cried and hung on to each other for absolutely ages. We received some strange looks from passers-by.

"I already knew she hadn't wanted to give me up, but had been made to by her family. I was still scared of rejection though."

Mrs Houston said: "For the past 44 years, a day hasn't gone by when I haven't thought of my baby.

"The feelings I had for her when I first held her in my arms never went away. It is incredible we should find each other like this."

Ms Halliday has two daughters, Ashleigh, 19, and Rachel, 16.

She grew up in Stanley with adoptive mother Elsie Marley, 79, father Ronald, who died 24 years ago, and sister Judith Bryant, 48, who is also adopted.

Mrs Houston last held her daughter, who she had named Yvonne, when, aged 17, she was forced by her parents to place her six-week-old baby up for adoption.

"Giving her up was heartbreaking, but I had no choice. I was 17 and my family circumstances were not very good," she said.

Mrs Houston, who has two other children, Sherin, 42, and Michael, 41, three grandchildren and nine foster children who she has cared for over the years through Barnardo's, has just moved from her Newcastle home to live with Gordon in Carlisle. They plan to marry later this year.

She said: "It is wonderful our families are getting together. I have grandchildren I never knew I had. Everyone I need is around me now and I feel like life is complete."

http://www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/display.var.1251902.0.mother_and_daughter_are_reunited_after_44_years.php

$25 Million Success Factors

The people search-and-find site Reunion.com, secured $25 million from Oak Investment Partners this April, a whopping first round of institutional funding for a networking site.

But unlike many Web 2.0 sites, Reunion has been profitable since its launch in 2002 with $1.4 million of angel funding from company founder Jeffrey Tinsley, the former founder and CEO of GreatDomains.com, Richard Rosenblatt, the former chairman of MySpace.com and Andy Mazzarella, current CEO of eForce Media.

Tinsley's and Reunion's success is due, in part, to a revenue model that places paid-for services on par with advertising.

Also, the site's idea – that most everyone has lost touch with someone they would like to find again – targets a broad market with purchasing power.

"We are fortunate to provide a service that appeals to this older audience, [who are] more than 60 percent female and [they] are the ones making buying decisions for the home, they have credit cards, they are interested in the service and have a willingness to pay," for them, Tinsley said.

More than 90 percent of the site's audience are adults over the age of 25 – the post-Facebook crowd – and many are drawn to the site to search for someone they lost touch with such as a best friend, co-worker, neighbor or former high school sweetheart.

Reunion searches public records, personal profile data sets and its own database, of over 28 million records, Tinsley said, to find names matching the special someone that is being searched for.

"It's a different service offering versus a lot of these other social networking [sites], it's not about kids flirting on the site, trying to discover who they are," he said. "It's an audience of older people, that are busy, they have jobs but they care about their friends, family and their relationships and they want an easier way to stay connected that saves them time."

At the first, the site searches millions, if not billions of records to find the new user's old friend. Next, add-on services keep the user coming back and updating their Reunion community on the big events in their lives such as weddings, births and job changes. (Unlike other social sites, it is not expected that a Reunion member would update their profile, blog or photos every day, much less every hour.)