Finding My Father

After a lifetime of wondering about the parents who gave him up for adoption, the diving legend reunites with his birth father—and finds a whole new family full of love

- Patrick Gomez

It was a moment decades in the making: On July 17 Olympic diver Greg Louganis and his birth father, Fouvale Lutu, finally wrapped their arms around each other in their first official father-son hug. “It was just meant to be,” Louganis says of joining his father and dozens of his father’s relatives at Ala Moana Beach Park in Honolulu for an extended Lutu family reunion. “It’s so wonderful to have him with us,” says Lutu, whose three other children—son Malcolm and daughters Sheri and Gerilyn—were also in attendance. “And this won’t be the last time.” Adds Louganis: “Yes, this is more of a beginning.”

But the four-day celebration also marked the conclusion of an emotional lifelong journey for Louganis, 57, who was put up for adoption as an infant and struggled for years with the feeling that his biological parents never loved him. While he had first met Lutu in 1984— when Lutu sought him out after his gold-medal victory at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles— Louganis wasn’t able to verify Lutu as his birth father until just last year, following a DNA test. “Through the years I had gotten to know Fouvale,” says Louganis, “but I was always skeptical. When I did the DNA testing and found out how we were connected, it validated everything that I knew in my heart.”