The Hemisphere: Reunion in Bogota

It was back in 1901 that Mrs. Ester Licht and her son Daniel, 5, got the tragic word: her husband, soldierly, courtly Candido Licht, had been “killed in battle” in the civil conflict that Colombia now calls the Thousand Days’ War. Some years later, Candido Licht, not dead but hiding out from vengeful wartime enemies, heard indirectly that his wife had been “drowned in a flood.” That report was equally false. Each lived on and grew old, believing the other dead.

Recently in Bogota, Candido, now 90, saw mention in a newspaper of someone named Licht. Diligent backtracking from this clue led him to his son Daniel, a Bogotá poster artist with children and grandchildren. After recovering from his astonishment, Daniel took his father to the frail, 82-year-old wife he had last seen 50 years before. In the cool, brick-floored upstairs hall of the Bogota home for the aged where she lived, they tearfully embraced. Then, white-bearded Old Soldier Candido Licht looked at her, his son,-his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren, and spoke with pride and emotion: “I left a seed, and I find an orchard.”