(MONEY Magazine) – For the past six years, Jim Davis, 69, of Prineville, Ore. has spent days at a time poring through old phone books and county records. He was searching for Eve Young, a lover from five decades ago, and "Jimmy," the son he believes they conceived. Now facing his seventies, the bluff but affable farmer -- who has two children with Helen, his wife of 35 years -- wants to make up for lost decades. "I'd like to take Jimmy fishing," he says wistfully. He was 17 in late 1942 when his romance with Eve Young flowered in Westfield (both her name and the town's are changed), a small town southwest of Portland. She was 20 and, recalls Davis, going through a divorce. "I turned 18 in April of '43 and joined the Navy in May," adds Davis, who was sent to Williamsburg, Va. for basic training. "She announced she was pregnant," he says, "but we couldn't marry because her divorce wasn't final." That June, he remembers, Young wrote that she was marrying another man to, in her words, "give the baby a name." During the war, Davis concedes he thought little of Eve or the child. But in 1947, while he was living in Newberg, Ore. and hauling lumber to sawmills for a living, a chance meeting outside a Westfield restaurant with Eve and a child she called Jimmy changed his life. "I waited for her to say something, and I guess she was waiting for me," admits Davis. He recalls noticing that the mischievous youngster resembled him. "But back then you didn't discuss things openly," says Davis, who even forgot to ask for Eve's new married name. And if Eve was passing off Jimmy as her second husband's son, says Davis, he didn't want to start any rumors flying. "But," he adds, "I never forgot him. It's a human tragedy." An eighth-grade dropout, Davis went on to achieve impressive success, amassing a net worth of roughly $3 million through trucking, real estate, farming and related businesses. Now he'd like to share that wealth -- and affection -- with his lost son, who would be 50 or 51 today. No one knows exactly how many Americans are hunting for lost friends or relatives, but the number surely totals in the hundreds of thousands. As just one indication, Genetic Design, a laboratory based in Greensboro, N.C. with 3,000 affiliates nationwide, performs a million DNA tests annually, with roughly a third of them related to family searches (cost: $600 to test two people; $195 for each one thereafter). Over the past decade, searchers have been blessed with a powerful new ally -- computer databases. For example, Seekers of the Lost (800-669-8016), a nonprofit group in Vancouver, Wash., has 160 million names in its electronic files (for more search groups, see the box below). Last year, says the Seekers group founder Steve Shultz, the service was responsible for 260 reunions. Jim Davis, however, was not a Seekers success story. After a 1987 heart attack, his search had gradually grown more urgent. "Two of my brothers died of heart attacks, and I didn't know how long I had to live," Davis explains. "I wanted to warn Jimmy that he's at high risk for coronary disease." So last year he consulted Seekers, but its computer-generated lists didn't help much: There were six Eves born between 1922 and 1924 who held Oregon driver's licenses, 150 Eves of appropriate ages who had died since the 1960s. Sporadically, Davis phoned around -- to no avail. "I wanted to find out if my son is aware that the man he may know as his father isn't," he says. "What really hurts is that Jimmy may have always known about me and thought I didn't care." Davis puts a high premium on family -- partly because his own disintegrated early on. His 34-year-old mother died in childbirth just after the boy's eighth birthday, leaving seven children. It was 1933 -- the depth of the Depression -- and his father, a brickmason, left the family home in Nehalem, Ore. to find work in California. Relatives adopted the family's two infants, and the elder Davis sent money for Jim, a middle child, and his younger sister to board with neighbors. (The older kids struck out on their own.) Jim bounced among three families before quitting school at 16. He soon got a job in a brick factory, living in a Westfield boardinghouse for $40 a month. Not long after that, 20-year-old Eve moved into the boardinghouse. The two began dating in late 1942, says Davis, and by January she claimed to be pregnant. They had, she told him, "a problem." After the June 1943 letter concerning her marriage plans and that 1947 chance encounter with young Jimmy, Davis had no further word from Eve. In the decade or so following World War II, Davis prospered, primarily by selling hay. He also married, divorced and remarried the same woman. They had a daughter Linda, now 45. The couple eventually parted in 1957, and two years later he wed Helen, his former sister-in-law. She has two children by her first marriage, Danny, now 47, and Dianne, 42. Meanwhile, Davis was expanding his business, first to lumber and then by a truck fleet that hauled milk for a Portland dairy. In 1968, he sold out for $165,000 and went into land development around Lincoln City on the Oregon coast. By the mid-1970s, he says, "I had acquired enough." He and Helen, by then with two kids of their own -- Dean, who is 32, and Teresa, 27 -- wanted to live in the country. So in 1975, the couple paid $200,000 for a 120-acre alfalfa farm in Crook County, located 150 miles southeast of Portland. Characteristically, though, Davis' knack for making money turned the marginal farm into a high-profit operation. Last year, for instance, the farm sold 40,000 pounds of mint oil at $16 a pound. He and Helen now own 375 acres, worth an estimated $750,000, and lease 900 more. Davis' enterprises took in $1.5 million last year, including revenue from a thriving fertilizer business. Like most business owners, he deducts everything from farm supplies to dinners with customers in order to minimize taxable income. "If we can't deduct it, then we can't afford it," he likes to say. His conservatively estimated $3 million net worth includes the business and land; $14,000 in a checking account; a $226,000 simplified employee pension plan mostly in blue-chip stocks like Pepsi and MCI; and $1.5 million of farm equipment and what Jim calls adult toys. Among them: two powerboats, two RVs and a six-seat Piper 260 Comanche C, although Davis can no longer pass the physical to fly the plane. The couple's only debt is $210,000 owed on land and equipment. None of Davis' sporting toys get much play, however. The couple go camping in the Cascades every year for a week -- their only vacation. "We haven't seen a movie in eight years," Helen notes tartly. Jim admits his life lacks balance, but he swears, "I love every minute of it." More thoughtfully, he adds: "I sought money more aggressively than some because of my limited education. Dollars were little soldiers that could protect me from the hard world." And dollars are what ultimately spurred Davis to search for Jimmy: "In the Navy I earned $78 a month, and there was little I could do for him," he says. "But once I acquired wealth I wanted to share it."

After his heart attack, Davis finally confided Jimmy's existence to Helen, and then, with her blessing, to Dean and Teresa. "We all agreed that he was doing the right thing," says Helen. She wasn't at all shocked. "It was wartime -- and he was only 17," she says. "Those things happen." Dean and Teresa agreed with her but still declined to discuss the matter with MONEY or to be photographed. As for Jim's plan to include the son in his will, Helen says: "I have no complaints." In any event, Dean and Teresa will inherit Davis Farms, since they have spent their lives helping to build it. The hunt for Jimmy had stalled until MONEY was alerted to Davis' plight in February by Seekers of the Lost. We then got in touch with Davis to see whether he was interested in receiving expert advice about his search and finances and being featured in the magazine. Davis consented, and in March, attorney H. Paul Montgomery of the Portland office of Bogle & Gates spent one ! morning with the Davises outlining estate plans. Montgomery endorsed Davis' idea of establishing a trust fund for Jimmy: "Set a time limit, though," he urged. "You don't want this uncertainty to drag on for decades." The couple agreed to a five-year term for the trust. Davis also planned to follow Montgomery's advice to undergo DNA testing soon. Should a potential heir turn up after his death, genetic records could still be matched. Later that day, MONEY's second adviser, licensed private investigator Fay Faron of the Rat Dog Dick Detective Agency in San Francisco, quizzed Davis about his affair with Eve. "I planned to use condoms the first time, but she threw them away," he recalled. "She said she couldn't get pregnant." Jim had always figured that meant Eve had been unable to conceive during her marriage and that she assumed she was infertile. But Helen suggested that, in fact, Eve was already pregnant. Fay agreed. "Jim, you can be naive," his wife said fondly. Faron went to work: A trip to Westfield, some palaver in a hardware store and then a blitz of phone calls brought quick results. In 24 hours, she had unearthed phone numbers for Eve and Jimmy, who were living near each other in a small town of a northwestern state. When Faron returned to Prineville, the Davises were happily expectant. After Faron named Jimmy's location, they joked about visiting in their RV. Then Jim rose from his chair: "Let's call Eve," he said grinning, heading for the kitchen phone. Eve picked up the phone on the third ring. And, yes, she did remember Jim Davis from 1943. Soon, however, the conversation turned hostile. No, she had no idea what Davis was talking about when he asked about their son. Her son Jimmy, she said, was named for his father, her husband Jim Roberts (again, this name is changed). No, she didn't recall telling Davis "we have a problem" in early 1943. Davis pressed on but Eve responded with anger -- "What have you been smoking?" -- and hung up. Shortly afterward, Helen slipped out of the room for a follow-up call to give Eve their number in case she wanted to telephone later. Result: a second slam in the ear. Returning to the kitchen, Helen saw Jim sitting alone, silently grieving. She comforted him with hot coffee and a warm hug. Faron went back to work: A search of Oregon records did not turn up any marriage license for Eve -- either for the spouse she said she was divorcing in 1943 or for second husband Jim Roberts. But one of Eve's relatives, reports $ Faron, "recollects that Eve gave birth to a son in mid-1943, who was then adopted by her first husband's sister." Concludes Faron: "If this is true, we can assume the first husband fathered the child -- though we can't be sure." Three of Eve's relatives told Faron that Eve then had a second son -- the Jimmy whom Jim Davis encountered in 1947 -- born in May 1944. Most likely, that Jimmy was indeed Jim Roberts' son. (Oregon birth records are available only to those who are named on the certificate; MONEY has therefore been unable to verify those dates.) Given the timing, however, Jimmy surely wasn't fathered by Jim Davis. If Eve's reputed firstborn adopted son is ever located, his parentage could be determined by a DNA test. "But if I was the father," says a now skeptical Davis, "it sure happened quickly." A few days later, he was resigned and angry. "I wish Eve had had the courtesy to tell me, not to leave me feeling responsible for all these years," says Davis. Fay Faron closed the case on a more hopeful note: "He knows now that he didn't have to feel guilty about abandoning his son. A release is setting in," she observed. "As for any lingering romantic feelings he may have had for Eve -- well, they're gone for good."