On a spring day in 1953, two babies were born at Pioneer Memorial Hospital in the Eastern Oregon town of Heppner — DeeAnn Angell of Fossil and Kay Rene Reed of Condon. The girls would grow up, get married, have kids of their own and become grandparents. Then, last summer, Kay Rene's brother, Bobby Reed, got a call from an 86-year-old woman who had known his mother and had also lived next door to the Angell family in Fossil.

"She said she had something she had to get off her chest," Bobby Reed said in an interview with the East Oregonian newspaper of Pendleton, which reported the story Sunday.

Bobby met the woman at the nursing home where she lives. The woman said Marjorie Angell insisted back in 1953 that she had been given the wrong baby after the nurses returned from bathing them. Her concerns, however, were brushed off.

Then the old lady showed Bobby an old photo.

"It looked like Kay Rene in about 7th or 8th grade," Bobby said.

But it was DeeAnn Angell's sister.

"Kay Rene is not a Reed," the woman insisted. "DeeAnn is a Reed."

Bobby, obviously stunned, didn't know what to do with the information. He didn't want to hurt anyone; he didn't want anything to change.

He finally decided to tell his two oldest sisters, and one of them told Kay Rene.

With both sets of parents dead, the Reed and Angell siblings compared notes and family stories, learning that rumors of a mix-up had been around for years. In early February, DeeAnn got a call from her sister, Juanita. "Do you remember those rumors of being switched at birth?" Juanita asked, and went on to provide the update.

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