Longtime Friends in Hawaii Are Closer Than They Thought

After a 60-year friendship, Alan Robinson and Walter Macfarlane learn they're brothers
By Newser Editors,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 26, 2017 11:05 AM CST

They've been buddies for six decades now, ever since meeting in sixth grade, but it turns out that two Hawaii men are even closer than they thought. Alan Robinson and Walter Macfarlane are, in fact, brothers, reports KHON2. The discovery came when Macfarlane used Ancestry.com to look up his family roots and found that he was a close DNA match to somebody already on the site who went by Robi737. Robinson, who was adopted, goes by "Robby" and used to fly 737s for Aloha Airlines, so it didn't take long for the men to make the connection.

"This guy was, he was like an older brother all along," Robinson tells KITV of Macfarlane, who is 15 months older. "You know, we'd go to Punaluu [to] go skin-diving, I'd be making noise in the water splashing around, he'd be teaching me how to do it right." The pair also played football together in school, and they say the possibility that they were siblings had never occurred to either of them. "But you know, yeah yeah ... there was times when I did think, I look like Robby a little bit," says Macfarlane. (More brothers stories.)

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