A South Jersey man has told how he tracked down his long-lost family after he spotted the father he had never met on the re-run of a TV game show.
Keith Mason, 72, spent much of his life wondering about his father, who left when he was a child.
He knew his name – Burton Mason – and that he was a deep-sea diver, but had never seen a photo of him and didn’t want to ask his mom for more details for fear of “forcing open a rusty door in her past.”
But while watching YouTube he randomly stumbled across a re-run of CBS show To Tell the Truth which finally gave him some of the answers he was looking for.
The panel show features three contestants, and celebrities must identify who is the real person whose unusual occupation or experience has been read aloud by the show’s host.
The show featured an “adventurous deep-sea diver” called Burton – and it dawned on Keith one of the three men on the panel was his father.
And as the host asked “can the real deep sea diver stand up” – for the first time in his life he saw his father’s face – and heard his voice.
While it was too late to meet his father, who died in the 1990s, the new information finally led him to find a brother and half-sister.
Recalling watching the game show episode from the 1950s or 60s, in October 2016, in his living room, he said he instantly realized the show host was talking about his father, from the scant facts he had about his dad’s professional past.
“I replayed it again and started using the mouse to stop it, to try to catch a look of an eye or the shape of a chin or something,” Keith said.
“I had no idea which of these three men was my father.
“The panel voted what they think is true. [And the host asked] ‘Will the real underwater salvage expert please stand up?’
“My father stands up in front of me on a game show.
“If you ever want to get a definition of the expression ‘mixed feelings,’ well, there it is.”
He described his “search” prior to the game show as not “tracking him down” in the sense a detective would, but to find more information. But he didn’t attempt to actually meet his father.
Raised by his mother, Jean, 95, who he describes as “gloriously still going,” Keith had little information about the man who had abandoned him, noting he died in the mid-1990s.
“I didn’t want to force open a rusty door in her past,” Keith said as to why he never asked his mother about his father.
“I didn’t want to dignify him with curiosity, but I couldn’t shake the questions,” said Keith, who lives in South Jersey outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
“It felt strange to search for him, but at the same time, it was like something was missing, and I had to fill in the gaps.”
It wasn’t until he was an adult, searching the internet, that he started to piece together parts of his father’s story.
“I spent hours looking through old articles,” he recalled. “I started to find his name in headlines from the 1960s. He was in the news, but not for the reasons I expected.
“My father was a deep-sea salvage diver who had made headlines in 1960 and 1961 for his daring expeditions.”
The articles Keith found detailed his father’s involvement in salvaging sunken Nazi submarines off New England and retrieving treasures from wrecked freighters.
“I had no idea,” Keith said, still in disbelief. “All I had known was that he left, and now I was learning he was a part of these historic events. It was mind-blowing to me.”
The discoveries, however, didn’t provide the answers Keith was searching for.
“There was so much about him being a diver and a treasure hunter, but nothing about his family. I just wanted to know: Why did he leave? Did he ever think about me?”
And he still had no photo of him.
In October 2016, Keith sat in his living room scrolling through YouTube, came across the TV game show To Tell The Truth and saw his dad’s face for the first time.
With more information, he took to social media to find siblings – with newfound energy, having seen his face.
It inspired him to track down his older brother, Rod, a former honored homicide detective, in 2019, before he passed away at age 72, using family lineage information.
Keith also discovered a social media post from a woman claiming to be his half-sister in 2021 and he met, Kitty, 73, a retired nurse, in 2024.
“That was the turning point,” Keith said. “I didn’t know whether to feel angry or just confused. But when I found my half-sister, it gave me hope. I was no longer alone in this search.
“It was surreal, finding my half-sister after all this time.
“I always imagined my father as this figure from the past, but finding someone connected to him made it feel like I was opening a door to a new chapter.”
He discovered his father had a total of nine children and seven marriages. Aside from Rod and Kitty, he has spoken with a few others and plans on meeting them in person.
Keith, who released a book Please Stand Up, said the search for him has helped him come to terms with the absence that defined his childhood.
“I still don’t know everything about him,” Keith admitted. “But I’m willing to listen. I want to understand the story, even if it’s not what I imagined. It’s not finished. It’s just starting.”
