Reunited again

Sitting in a Fargo hospital room, young Sandy Holden delivered a baby boy on October 14, 1971.

Her only secure option at that time was to relinquish that brown-eyed babe to a loving family, and give both mother and child the opportunity for a better life apart from each other.

Nearly 53 years later, a red Kia Optima with Ohio plates rolled up to Sandy Trader's front curb on 5th St. North in Carrington Tuesday evening, August 27, and out stepped that boy.

Steve Goetz, a Hettinger native who has lived in Cincinnati for 26 years, met up with his biological mother for the first time since that day, and the loving embraces and tears the two shared for nearly half an hour were proof positive of hearts being mended.

"Meeting him for the first time in 52 years...amazing," said Trader of the reunion. "He looks so much like me."

The memories of her hardships during her formative years came back in a flood of emotions for Trader.

"Giving Steve up for adoption was the most heartbreaking decision of my young life," she said. "I just wanted and needed to find him. A part of my heart was missing."

Goetz came to Carrington with his wife, Laurie, and he and Sandy immediately felt a connection like they'd always known each other.

"I've always been a person of faith, and I do believe this was God's plan to bring us back together," he says. "Through loss and suffering, it brought joy and peace."

The reunion came with a backdrop of recent tragedy for both Steve and Sandy. Her husband, Al, lost his battle with cancer at the age of 67 on July 30 after 46 years of marriage, while Steve's dad, Bill, passed away five days later.

"These past six weeks, we've supported each other through phone calls and texts," he said. "It's a bittersweet moment, that's for sure."

Growing up with a new family

Steve was adopted by Bill and Jan Goetz of Hettinger, and graduated from high school in 1990.

He started at NDSU his freshman year, where he majored in sports medicine. He then left North Dakota and enrolled at Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights, Ky., changing his major to criminal justice.

Goetz said he then "went into a couple of odd jobs" before joining the Air Force in January, 1993. He was stationed at Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Ak., named for the famous Hatton aviator, Carl Ben Eielson.

He met Laurie there, a Macon, Ga., native who was working at the time as a hairdresser at the base, and the two were married on October 26, 1996. They would later have three children, Maria, William and Melissa.

The family would relocate to Cincinnati in 1998, where Steve took a job in utilities maintenance working at TriHealth Good Samaritan Hospital.

"I always wondered what Steve would do when he got into the working world," said Sandy. "Hoping he would choose something he was passionate about, and would love."

Picking up the pieces

Sandy would later marry Al Trader, a native of Oriska and recent graduate of North Dakota State School of Science in Wahpeton, on July 29, 1978, and the two would make their home in various cities throughout the state before ultimately setting down their roots in Carrington in 1982 when Al took a job at Rosenau (later Leading Edge) Equipment.

While Sandy and Al never had children together, they effectively "adopted" the kids coming through the Carrington school system for that 40-plus year period, through their steadfast support of various Cardinal extracurricular activities. The Traders would later be named as Honorary 'C' Club members for their devotion to the children of the community in 2014.

"Everybody who went here became our kids," Trader says. "We tried to get to every event that Al and I could, just to show how much they all meant to us and how proud we were of what they were becoming."

She would work for over 10 years with the Carrington Public School district as a paraprofessional educator, and also at Golden Acres Manor, in addition to working over 20 years as a daycare provider. Al would later retire from Leading Edge in March, 2023, after a 42-year career as a sales representative.

Attempts to reconnect

In 2002, Trader would make her first move in trying to get back in contact with her son.

She met with a representative of Lutheran Social Services (LSS), Cindy Skauge, who later relayed those intentions to Goetz.

Steve, then 30 years old, was receptive to the idea of getting together, but events in his life weren't conducive to traveling over 1,000 miles one way across the continent back then.

"To be honest, it just wasn't time," he says. "I was a young father raising a family, with a demanding job."

Goetz also said that before the days of social media and video calls, getting in touch with someone was much more difficult and a slow process.

"I think we were in the days of AOL back then," he said with a laugh. "It was just harder to communicate. Correspondence was almost exclusively snail mail."

It wouldn't be until just under two months ago when, in the irony of ironies, a chance Google search led to a breakthrough and confirmation of his mother's identity and whereabouts on July 12.

Goetz was searching for John Deere lawn mower and tractor parts, and one of the first stories that popped up in the engine's results was the Independent article on Al's retirement, "Al Trader calls it a career," which ran in the March 13, 2023 edition and on fosterconews.com.

"I didn't have Facebook at the time, so my sister, Rachel, messaged Sandy," he explained. "I knew that name from all those years ago, put two and two together, and saw the face from all the correspondence."

The first phone call that day lasted for one full hour and 46 minutes, Trader recalled.

"To hear my Steve's voice..." she recalled. "Our new journey had begun."

The two would later graduate to video calls, with each interaction more emotional than the last.

"We just couldn't speak at first," she said.

So, six weeks later after texts and video chats, the Goetzes traveled to Carrington to meet up with Sandy.

Steve expressed regret that he wasn't able to meet up with Al in person before he succumbed to his final illness in late July.

"I didn't know at that time [when establishing contact] that he was battling cancer," he said.

Sandy credits Al with inspiring her to make the move to reconnect with Steve.

"He always knew how much this meant to me," she says. "And I know he's smiling down from heaven with all that's happened."

Plans to move to Carrington

During the past four years, Goetz has had to deal with major health issues of his own.

He was diagnosed with COVID on six separate occasions, each bout with the disease leaving him progressively weaker and unable to function in his previous line of work.

"It gave me really bad vertigo, definitely slowed me down, and kind of cramped what I do for a living, which involves a lot of climbing ladders," he said. "Fatigue has really been a factor too."

Goetz has been out of work for over a year and a half, and expressed the desire for a hypothetical job pursuit at places such as Prairie Inn.

"I want to help with doing dishwashing," he says. "That way, I can get my feet wet, and build my stamina up."

Eventually, he says he wouldn't rule out putting his utilities system specialist training to use at a place like Dakota Growers or Golden Acres, he said.

In the meantime, while he and Laurie get their feet back underneath them, he hopes to build that bond with his birth mother, Sandy, that has been dormant for over five decades.

"This is a forever connection now," Goetz says. "Almost 53 years, that's a lot of people's lifetimes."

For Sandy, she has now regained a son, and added three grandchildren to the family mix.

"Now to make memories," she said with a smile. "Let the fun begin... He calms me so, and I am so blessed to have him in my life again."