Long-lost sisters find bond later in life

They each have one ear that at the top is attached to their head rather than folding down – although different ears. They have similar foreheads. They both got spankings for singing the song “If Loving You is Wrong, I Don’t Want to be Right” by Luther Ingram when they were around age 5.

But for most of their lives, the sisters didn’t know each other. When they finally did find each other earlier this year, it was like finding a kindred spirit.

“It’s like a breath of fresh air that someone accepts you for who you are, what you do, you’re lifestyle, how you live – everything,” Pearson said. “It’s just welcoming. There’s not any jealousy. It’s just accepting life as it is and appreciating each other for who you are.”

Gordon, a special education teacher with Anniston City Schools for 10 years before she had to medically retire in 2018, lives in Warner Robins, Ga. Pearson is a news reporter for WOOF radio in Dothan.

It was Gordon who found Pearson, leaving a phone message for Pearson at her work on May 29.

Pearson was skeptical when she got the message written on a sticky note; although her mother once told her she possibly had another sister through her father. But Pearson’s mother didn’t know this possible sister’s name, just that the mother’s name was Lucille.

“It went in one ear and out the other,” Pearson said. “I never thought anything else about it.”

One of Pearson’s co-workers, Misty Morgan, had taken the message for Pearson with a phone number for Gordon, who had described herself to Morgan as Pearson’s long-lost sister. So, using Morgan’s phone and blocking the number, the two returned the phone call. Once Gordon explained her background and how she was adopted by her father after he married her mother, Pearson asked one question: Was her mother named Lucille?

It was, and Pearson began to cry.

“We just never would have imagined something like this,” Pearson said. “We call each other all the time, a couple times a day.”

Their father, Leon Hodge, died 25 years ago on Oct. 31 after having a heart attack while driving. Pearson wasn’t raised by her father and didn’t get to know him until she was 15 years old. Hodge ran a store called Davis & Brothers Groceries on Burdeshaw Street. He worked for Westside Terrace when he died at age 50.

Hodge was 17 when Pearson was born in the 1960s – her mother was 16. Gordon’s mother was also a teenager. The two young women were actually friends and majorettes at their high school in Ashford. But when Gordon’s mother became pregnant, she was sent by her family to live in Florida and have the baby there. Most people didn’t know why she had left town.

Pearson and Gordon were born nine months apart.

In Florida, Gordon’s mother met and married the man who would adopt Gordon as his own daughter. Gordon had no idea she had been adopted until after her mother died and her father developed dementia. She found adoption papers while going through her parents’ paperwork. An uncle confirmed the adoption and even had her sister’s name.

“Once Tera and I got over the shock, we decided to do the DNA ancestry,” Pearson said.

Pearson traveled to Gordon’s home in Georgia for the initial in-person meeting and Gordon recently visited Pearson in Dothan for a week.

“For us, it’s been like little kids, like Christmas,” Gordon said. “… When we met for those couple of hours, that was Christmas Eve, and then when I came for that week, it was like Christmas all week. We were like kids. We just enjoyed each other.”

The way Gordon and Pearson see it, the past is the past. They’re sisters. They call each other Sissy.

“We were both what each other needed in our lives at this particular time,” Pearson said.