Jerry Davich

Metro columnist

Ron Achterhof waited in a wheelchair with a bouquet of roses in his hand. A minute later, the 79-year-old Chesterton man would meet the older sister he never knew he had until last month.

“I can’t wait to finally meet her,” Ron Achterhof told me earlier.

Gillian Taarland, who’s 80, exited her plane at a terminal at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. She was wheeled toward Ron Achterhof and his wife, Teri Achterhof, as a camera crew from a Chicago news station stood behind them, along with a couple dozen curious bystanders.

They didn’t know who was walking toward them, but they felt the anticipation rise as Gillian Taarland got closer.

“Don’t stand up,” Ron Achterhof told Gillian Taarland when she finally faced him from their wheelchairs.

She instin

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