Making Up For Lost Time

A Father And Daughter Together Again

(CBS)  CBS News Correspondent Steve Hartman had the good fortune about a year ago to capture an emotional reunion - after almost six decades - between a father and the daughter he had hadn't seen since her first year of life. The two are still trying to catch up on lost time.

But as Hartman found out in this "Everybody Has a Story" update, time may be running out.

Seventy-seven year-old Albert Conatser and his wife, Dorothy, of Delta, Colo., have been married 54 years. They raised three children on a small farm where they still tend to chickens, and goats, and other animals.

But just a few days before Hartman arrived, Albert Conatser’s mailman delivered a plain white envelope with a bombshell inside.

It read:

"Dear Albert,

I'm searching for Albert Lee Conatser whose parents lived in Bushland, Texas. If you are the person, please contact me. You may be my birth father. Yours truly, Rosetta May."

Fifty-six years earlier, fresh out of the Navy, Conatser had met and married his first wife and together they had a baby girl whom they named after Conatser’s mother, Rosetta. The marriage ended just a few months later and Conatser never saw, or even heard from, his daughter again.

For a while, that was fine with Conatser.

"I was just happy to get away from them," he says.

But as he got older, the guilt worked on him. He tried to find her, repeatedly, but couldn't. And as for Rosetta, she wasn't interested in reuniting anyway, not with a dad who had just disappeared.

Asked what he dreams his relationship with Rosetta can become, Conatser says, “Being able to make up for what I haven't done. I hope I can. I don't know. I'll get a try at it."

Conatser’s second chance pulled into his driveway about a month after the first letter arrived.

Rosetta says, "I knew there was more. I knew there was this missing piece that you just don't feel complete without."

And with an embrace, Rosetta surrendered her bitterness and Conatser, his regret

Rosetta says, "So we start from today…"

As they look at pictures, they talk about how they have a lot of catching up to do, a lot of relatives to meet.

“You're Grandpa Al?" asks Rosetta's little girl. He replies, “Oh, am I grandpa Al? I guess I am.”

And he started to make up for 56 years of missed hugs.

It’s been just about a year since Hartman first found Conatser and he first found Rosetta. They now visit one another every few months.

“This will be the fourth time,” he says.

Each reunion is more emotional than the next, and each goodbye quite possibly the last.

”He has emphysema, severe emphysema,” Rosetta notes, “He’s not a candidate for surgery, so it’s a matter of time.”

Albert Conatser had the disease the first time they met, but now he’s on oxygen almost constantly. And although it clearly slows him down, he says no illness can put a damper on moments like this: All four of his kids, together for the very first time.