52 Years in 11 Days: A Son, Facing Death, Finds His Father

After struggling with cancer for years, Sam Anthony was running out of time. Before he died, he found the courage to mail a letter that he had long been afraid to send.

FALLS CHURCH, Va. — Three weeks before he died, Sam Anthony, 52, mailed his last wishes to a man he had never met.

He was dying, he wrote in a letter postmarked Aug. 2, of an aggressive cancer in his mouth and throat that he had been struggling with since 2005. He enclosed a copy of a college alumni magazine article about his high-ranking job at the National Archives. He was writing, he explained, because the two men shared ancestors, a fact he had learned from DNA matches and public records.

He had recently learned that his biological father’s name was Craig Nelson.