A German man's quest to identify and locate the Cincinnati-area family that helped him and his family through post-World War II struggles has been rewarded.

        After the Enquirer ran a story Feb. 9 along with the 55-year-old photo that was his only lead to the family's identity, calls began to a special phone line set up by a Bayer Corp. official.

        “When I saw the picture, I was just taken aback,” said Patricia McGraw, 58, of Pleasant Ridge. She was an unknowing subject of the sentimental search by Harald Laesche of Oldenburg, Germany, which will end Sunday with what will be a family reunion. His family's benefactors turn out to be relatives.

        Mr. Laesche, in an e-mail, said he is overwhelmed and anxious to meet his long-lost relatives.

        “All of the family here in Germany share my happiness and are waiting for me to tell them about the family members in America,” he wrote.

        Mr. Laesche, 58, a marketing executive with the Bayer Corp, recently found the photo among his deceased parents' keepsakes, which triggered memories of the packages the pictured family had sent to his to bolster them in war-torn Germany.

        The photo was dated 1947 and had writing on the back: “This was taken on a picnic. My mother, Jerry & Patsy, and my niece Jeannie and myself.”

        Mr. Laesche wanted to find the family to thank them, but had nothing to go on other than the photo and his recollection that the packages came from Cincinnati. With a trip here for a business conference this month already planned, he decided to make what he considered a long-shot try.

        Word spread through the Bayer corporate grapevine and a director at the Addyston plant, Ken Perica, set up a phone line to take leads.

        The phone started ringing the morning the Enquirer story and photo appeared. The child in the center, Mr. Perica was told by a relative, was Patricia McGraw.

        “I returned home to several calls from different cousins telling me it was me in the picture,” said Mrs. McGraw, 58, a secretary at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

        According to Mrs. McGraw, her grandfather and Mr. Laesche's grandfather were brothers, making Mrs. McGraw's mother, Marie Laesche Roa, 91, and Mr. Laesche's father, Franz Laesche, cousins.

        The other two children pictured are Mrs. McGraw's brother, Jerry Roa, who is deceased, and a cousin, Jean Ahlers of Delhi Township.

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