Father, 73, and Lost Son Share 1st Holiday

A Sherman Oaks man and his son shot some pool together this Thanksgiving holiday, a simple but fitting epilogue to the 53 years they had spent apart.

The father, Donald F. McDiarmid, has been a bit of a drifter in his 73 years. During the Depression, when he was still calling himself John F. Hazlett, the name given him by his foster family, he drifted away from his wife and 5 1/2-month-old son, looking for work. He never went home.

The son, Donald L. Hazlett, drifted, too, at first because his family moved a lot. His mother and stepfather moved about the country from Pennsylvania to Nevada, to California and back to Pennsylvania. Then, as a man, he joined the Marines and traveled around the world.

Along the way, father and son had thoughts about finding each other but never saw them through.

Wrote to Son

“On a different occasion, I got to thinking about Don,” McDiarmid said. He would make stabs at finding him and once, when his son was 18, found out what town he was in and wrote to him.

He thought the boy’s mother never showed the letter to him.

He had no hope that his son could find him. If for no other reason than that, he had since taken back his birth name.

McDiarmid was the youngest of seven boys and girls born into the family of a Salvation Army captain. Soon after his mother died, however, the captain fell into a life of drink and died alone and penniless, McDiarmid said.

The children were sent to an orphanage and later to different homes.

McDiarmid became a foster child of the Hazletts in Pennsylvania.

Got Name Wrong

“When I was about 11 years old, my foster parents got into a fight, and my foster father told me my true last name was McDiarmid,” he said.

He began to search for his family. Unfortunately, he got the name wrong.

“I went out looking for McDermotts,” he said. “I was always looking for the name McDermott.

He kept the name Hazlett, married and fathered a son.

But he couldn’t stay put.

“I would go off on forays to different places to look for work,” he said. A lot of men did that. But for McDiarmid, it was different.

“I don’t think I was looking so much for work as I was looking for McDiarmids. My excuse was looking for work.”

In his travels, McDiarmid got pretty good at pool.

“I was a real pool-hall bum all my life and I’ve played some of the best,” he said. “I could go into any pool hall and pick up three or four bucks, eating money and sleeping money.”

Over the years, all seven McDiarmids found one another. John F. Hazlett, unable to find any evidence that he was ever adopted by his foster parents, took back his family name.

‘Twinge of Jealousy’

And, over time, he gave in to what he calls his “twinge of jealousy.”

All of the McDiarmids, it turned out, had raised successful children.

McDiarmid had lost track of his.

“I have always told people that I have a son,” McDiarmid said. “I always told my relatives I had a son who was a captain in the Air Force in Japan. It was a lie as far as I’m concerned. To me, it was always real.”

After bouncing from job to job for years, McDiarmid finally settled down with his fourth wife, Estelle. They moved to Sherman Oaks 26 years ago, bought a pool hall in Canoga Park and worked until retirement.

Nothing happened to upset the lie about his son, and it seemed that nothing would.

Then a letter arrived in October.

“I am writing to you in the hope that a long search has come to a happy ending,” it began.

‘That’s My Son’

The letter came from Donald L. Hazlett of Orem, Utah.

“I said, ‘Jesus Christ. That’s my son,’ ” McDiarmid said.

He called. The next weekend, Hazlett, who is now the maintenance division director for the City of Orem, drove to meet his father.

He came again for Thanksgiving with his wife, Betty, and the youngest of his three children, Stephen.

Hazlett, it turned out, had seen the letter from his father when he was 18 or 19. But he never did anything about it.

“I felt that I had never known my father and she had kept me with her and raised me,” he said, referring to his mother. “I felt it would be kind of disloyal to her to up and move. I never did pursue it. I thought maybe later.”

After his mother died this year, he thought it was time.

Hazlett got nowhere until the Orem police chief volunteered to help. He ran a motor-vehicle check on Donald F. McDiarmid in California.

Visited in October

Hazlett visited his father in October, then returned on Thanksgiving for their first holiday together.

And, McDiarmid is happy to say, the old lie held up pretty well.

His son was a captain in the Marines when he retired in 1977. And for a time, he was stationed in Japan.

McDiarmid has two other children he has lost track of, and he is hoping the news of his reunion with this one will bring him luck in hearing from the others. In the meantime, he is pleased with what he found in meeting Hazlett.

“I am very happy to know that, in his own way, he’s successful,” McDiarmid said. “He’s a wonderful guy.”

But he doesn’t shoot a game of pool like his dad.