Bloodlines & Beginnings Pt. 1: The Father in His Blood

For more than eighty years, my father believed he knew where he came from. Like most of us, he carried a story about his family, his heritage, and the name he bore. Then, in his eighties, an AncestryDNA test changed everything he thought he knew.

This story is about more than DNA. It's about identity and the enduring human need to understand our origins. How do you redefine yourself when a foundational piece of your life story changes overnight? What does family mean when biology and lived experience tell different stories?

Bloodlines & Beginnings Pt. 1: The Father in His Blood is a moving exploration of discovery, legacy, and the remarkable courage it takes to embrace the truth—no matter when it arrives.

My father has given me his rull permission to share his story -- our story. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to At the Root of It, a podcast built on real conversations, honest stories, and the moments that connect us all. I'm your host, Kim. Here you'll find connection, comfort, laughter, and good conversation. Every episode is a place to be seen and understood. A reminder that we are all walking through life together. Are you really their brother? Imagine being asked this question throughout your life, and decades later, technology steps in and answers the question. Welcome to At the Root of It Podcast. I'm your host, Tiffany. Today I'm going to share an incredible personal story of how my father discovered the identity of his biological father at the age of 83. Yep, you heard me correctly. 83. I'd like to share that my father has given me his full permission to share his story. Our story. He's of the mindset that if the story is going to help someone, then he is all for sharing it. There are some details of the story that have been omitted for the sake of this recording due to the sensitivity of some of the events that occurred. But I endeavor to share the story as respectfully as I can while maintaining the integrity of the story. This is part one of a story I like to call bloodlines and beginnings. Let's go back to the late 1990s, early 2000s. It was a Saturday morning, and I remember overhearing two of my siblings discussing whether our grandfather was our dad's biological father. As a teenager, you don't think twice about those things. You know, your parents are your parents, your grandparents are your grandparents, so forth and so on. So I remember asking them why they were discussing this, why did they think this? And they shared some things with me that made a lot of sense, things that I had never considered, but they made a lot of sense. I decided to talk to my dad about it. So I went to my dad and told him about the conversation. And I wanted to get his thoughts. I wanted to know why they would even be thinking this. Have you ever thought about this? And I remember he chuckled and said, Oh, you know, my dad is my dad. And he paused and he said, But you know, growing up, people would always ask me, Are you really their brother? And I'm like, Are you really their brother? What do you mean? And so he said, People would always ask me if I were the biological brother to my siblings. And I'm like, really? I've never heard this story. This is the first time I'm hearing this. And he chuckled again and he said, Well, my dad's my dad, and that's all I know. And he went about his day. As you can imagine, that was pretty jarring for me. And I wanted to learn more information. So from there, I realized I didn't know a lot about the background of my dad's family or my mom's family. I knew my grandparents' names. I didn't really have a relationship with my grandparents because we lived in a different state and all of my grandparents had passed away by the time I was 10 years old. So I don't have grandparent memories as most people have. I remember visiting them and things like that, but I don't have the grandparent-grandchild bond that a lot of people have. That set me on a path to ask questions and learn more about my family history. As I got down the road and I started doing research and putting things together, I would get bits and pieces of stories from various family members, but I realized we don't have a cohesive family history documented anywhere. And so I went on a quest to begin documenting the things that I had researched and putting them together so that anyone else in the family, if they had questions about our family line, they could find themselves in this family tree book that I put together. And the supporting information and documentation would be with it. As time went on, there were people in the family who were making claims that we had a certain ethnicity in our DNA. And so I began to challenge that, not from a space of confrontation, or at least not in my mind anyway, but it was more of, hey, we had these claims, but no one could really give any proof to the claims. And so it would be, well, where did this group of people reside? And there were no answers and no one could really remember. And so I said, well, give me a name, a place, someplace that I could go and research and get a document and verify. And so it was just, well, so-and-so told me that. And so I said, Well, I'm not disputing that the person told you that. It's just I just want the documented to go along with it before I can buy into that claim because I'm having trouble accepting that. They wanted me to know that the claim carried weight and that this is what it is. So as time went on, ancestry DNA comes out, and I decide to take an ancestry DNA test out of curiosity of this specific ethnic claim that I'm being told I have in my family. So I take the ancestry DNA test, and when I get my results back, this particular ethnicity shows up as 0%. So I go back to my family, particularly the relatives who were challenging me on this, and I said, Hey, I took this DNA test and it's showing that I don't have any of this particular ethnicity in my genetic makeup. And from there it was, well, no, that's got to be a mistake. Are you sure they didn't mess up the test? And I'm like, no, they didn't mess up the test. It's my DNA. It is my DNA. There's no mistake. So I'm explaining how I get my DNA for my parents. I don't have this. And so if it's showing up at zero, I said it's likely they don't have it. I think my dad volunteered to take an ancestry DNA test as I started sharing these details. By this time, my mom's deceased, so I can't get a test on her, but he decides to take the test. And when his results come back, his results also show that he has zero percent of this same ethnic claim that the family's making. And so we go back again to try to explain well, hey, mine is showing at zero, my dad's is showing at zero. And if you all are claiming that we have this, it should be showing up somewhere. And it was a lot of back and forth. No, no, so-and-so told us. And, you know, I know I ruffled a lot of feathers along the way in this process. And it was unintentional, and I can guarantee you that my questions all came from a good place. And in no way was I ever insinuating that people were being dishonest or whatnot. It was just stories are as good as the people who tell you the stories, right? And stories sometimes can lose details as they're passed down in time. So my goal was just to be able to get something to substantiate that claim. And at this point, I had nothing. So I then told these same relatives, you know, well, if mine's shown up at 0%, my dad's has shown up at 0%, why don't one of you take this test? And if yours comes back with this, perhaps we ought to all sit down and have another conversation. And it was sort of like laughed off, brushed off, and that was the end of it. So one of my siblings says, Well, I'll take a test. Let me just see if it comes up in mind. So this sibling steps in and they take an ancestry DNA test, and when they get the results back, same thing. Zero percent for this specific ethnic claim. So we are just tickled, the three of us anyway, me, my sibling, and my dad. And Ancestry has a feature where you can sort and search matches. So I go in and out of curiosity, I said, I'm gonna go in and I'm just gonna search our surname and see if anyone else with this name comes up in our DNA matches. To my surprise, or maybe not so much surprise, the only people who showed up as a match with that surname were me and my sibling and my dad. So I go to my sibling and my dad, and I said, Let me show y'all this. And I'm explaining. I said, you know, this is interesting. Out of all the billions of people in the world, how are we the only three people in this database that are matching each other with this name? And they're like, well, what does this actually mean? And I'm like, it means we may be looking at a wrong line. Like there ought to be more people in here with this name matching us or matching us in DNA to some extent past the three of us. I went on and tried to get other family members to test. I really wanted to get someone else to test so that we could compare our results and figure out what's going on. I remember having a conversation with a relative, and somewhere along the conversation, the relative brought up that they had taken an ancestry DNA test. And so I said, Oh wow, I had taken one too. And so I'm like, tell me your name in the system so I can look you up. And they said, My name is my name. And so I'm like, okay, so I go back and I check again and I said, You're not showing up in any of my matches. And this person should have been showing up in my matches. And so they said, Let me check mine. So they check their account. They can't find me, they can't find my dad, they can't find my sibling. So I tell the relative, I'm wondering if something is going on here. And so I began sharing what I remember of a conversation with my siblings years prior about our grandfather. And so I told the relative, I also went in and searched our surname, and there is no one else who matches us in this database. And the relative laughed and they said, Well, you know what? I don't have anybody with the surname that comes up in my DNA matches either. And so we're like, what is going on? So we just sort of joke that maybe our ancestor may have stolen somebody's identity, and that's how we all wound up with this name. As time goes on, I continue trying to gently ask people again. You think maybe a certain amount of time has gone by? Maybe people may have changed their minds sometimes. You don't know until you ask. And so I'm asking again, and I'm still getting a lot of pushback. Okay. And again, I know I upset some people in this process, but it wasn't intentional. It was coming from a good place. Somewhere around 2017, my dad wound up getting checked for a medical issue. And while he was being checked for it, he asks the doctor, How did I get said issue? And the doctor tells him, Oh, it's hereditary. So when he relays the information to us, we're like hereditary. Nobody else in the family has this. I said, Okay, y'all, it is really time to crack down and figure out what in the world is going on. Because if they're telling him this is hereditary, one, this is something that we all need to have on our radar. But two, what other medical information is out there that we may not be privy to at this time? I said, something is clearly going on. It's evident just the way some of the things were laid out, um, medically, anyway, with my dad and medical issues in the family. He does not have any of the medical issues that run on that side of the family. And we don't either. And even down to his age, he is the oldest person in the family at this point, on that side of our family. And none of the men on that side of the family have ever lived to be that old. So we're researching again, trying to ask relatives, and everybody's no, no, no, you know, they don't want to do it. And I'm sort of at a loss. So around 2019, I wound up traveling to Salt Lake City for tech, which is the biggest genealogy conference in the world. It's just several days of classes and technology hubs about how to do research and what's cutting edge with DNA and all this stuff. And if you have questions, the research library is up the street from the convention center. You can go there and connect with a librarian. If you are into family history and you're the person in your family who loves to do genealogy, I highly encourage you to go. You will be with your people, and it's definitely an experience. So, anyway, I'm in Salt Lake City and I take some paperwork with me for some folks that I had been researching on my paternal line. I could not find any records on these four individuals past a certain point in time. And it was literally like they had just vanished in time. No records. And I'm like, what happened to them? So I go to the research library, and as I'm connecting with the librarian, the librarian asks me to pull up my DNA matches. And so she wants to cross-reference what I have in my database, DNA database versus some of the records I have in my possession. And she says, Who are these people? And she points to some folks in my DNA match database. I said, I have no idea. She said, Well, why don't you go ahead and mark them as mystery family for now and we'll come back to that. So I said, okay, so we mark them as mystery family, and we're still researching, but for whatever reason, she's fixated on these people in my DNA database, my matches. We still cannot find the information on the people that I came there to find information for. And she very gently said, you know, maybe if you focus on these people here that you have marked this mystery family, I think you're gonna find what you're looking for. And she smiled at me and went on her way. And in hindsight, I'm wondering if maybe she had already put it together, but she may not have been at liberty to say it plainly to me since she's there to assist, and just let me arrive to that conclusion on my own. So I get back and I'm like, I don't know what to do with these matches. So I decide, well, let me look at my dad's matches and see if any of these folks come up. So he's got some folks that are coming up in his DNA database, and they match me too, but they were a little further down in my match summary. So as I'm looking at his matches, there's a man and a lady, and they're showing out of California. We don't have any relatives in California, at least none that we knew of at that time. And so they were showing up to him as a second cousin. So I had no idea who these people were, and I have a pretty good handle on who's who in the family. I go to all the family reunions. So even if I don't know you personally, I know enough about what family group you belong to. And I decided to go into Ancestry and filter the matches to see if these people were matching cousins that I knew on my dad's mother's side. And as I sorted the matches, they didn't match each other. So that told me, okay, we're looking at two different lines here because they don't match the cousins on my dad's mother's side of the family. So I call my dad and I tell him, I'm looking at your DNA matches, and you've got two second cousins that are showing up out of California. And he's like, California, you know, and I'm like, yeah. So I said, Do you know these people? And he says, No. So I'm reading the names and he's like, I have no clue. And I said, You're positive, you don't know who these people are, because a second cousin at your age is a big deal. He said, No, but see what you can find out about it. I said, Okay. So I sent a message within Ancestry. I sent a message to the man and the lady, explain the situation, who I am. We're just trying to figure out how we are connected because you all are showing as second cousin matches to my father, so forth and so on. It took a while, but the man got back in touch with me. And so, very nice. We wound up setting up a three-way call with my dad. And he, this gentleman, didn't have any details. And so he shared with us that his parents were deceased. He didn't really have a lot of information about the family, and so he tried to connect us with his sister. Sister, same deal. And they were very nice people. She didn't have a lot of information. They were excited and curious, and they said that they were committed to helping us figure out whatever we could help figure out together. I remember something about them having an aunt who was an opera singer in Germany, and they were trying to track this lady down to see if she knew anything. We didn't hear back from the aunt, and somewhere along the line, life happens and we lost touch with these people. Still curious about what's happening here, and so maybe around um 2022, I decide to reach back out again. And so I send a message to a person who is another cousin match to my dad. They're showing us like a third cousin, I think. And this person also shows up out of California and she gets in touch with me. And so we wind up talking on the phone. I explain the whole deal again. You know, we're not trying to get anything from anybody. We are just really trying to figure out what is going on because these are some close cousin matches at my dad's age, and we'd like to try to hone in on who the people are. So she was really hopeful. We'll call her Dee. Initially, she was thinking that the relation may have been on her dad's side of the family. And so as we continue filtering through our matches, we realized no, this connection is on her mother's side of the family. And Dee helped us gather a lot of details and to clarify, she let me know that the lady that you contacted a while ago requesting information, she she let me know that was her mother. And she said, unfortunately, her mother had passed away, which is why I had not received a response from her. And she said, Well, this is interesting, and let's keep in touch and we will try to figure out what's going on here. So Dee and I wind up talking to each other on the phone, emailing, texting at least once per month. Hey, did you hear anything? You know, oh, I got this match. Why don't you try to reach out to this person or I found this newspaper article? Or what do you think about this? One day, Dee tells me about a family line on her mother's side of the family that she said, I wonder if this is the connection. And the family line had like, let's just say 14 kids or something like that. There are a lot of them. And again, we had no background as to where to even start with all these people. I remember making notes. She had given me that, and I'm like, okay, well, we'll we'll see where we go from there. In 2024, the beginning of 2024, I had an urgency that we have got to figure out what's going on. I began calling around to family members again, and a lot of folks are still, no, you know, this is interesting, but it's not for me, or I would prefer not to take an ancestry DNA test. And I was stumped. I wound up joining a DNA group online, and I said, I'm stumped. My dad is in his 80s. We think his father may be a different person than the father he knew who raised him. What can I do to figure this out? And so this group stepped in and gave so many recommendations and a lot of good information. I decided to keep asking, and I finally found a relative who said, Yeah, I'll go ahead and take the test for your dad. I said, Okay, great. So they said, What do I need to do? So I said, I'm gonna order things, expedite them to your home, and we can get on the phone and I can walk you through how to do everything. They said, Okay, great. So get this person their kit, and they contact me, they let me know they received it, they submit their sample, and now we wait. And it was uh, you talk about sitting on pins and needles, and so we're waiting, and I remember it was Easter Sunday of 2024. I got up and I checked my dad's ancestry matches, and it showed that he had a new match. When I opened the match, it was the relative who had agreed to take the test. As I'm looking at their relation, it shows that this relative is only related to my dad through my dad's mother. Again, surprise, but not so much, right? So I sort this relative against these mystery family matches, and this relative doesn't match any of these people. So I know we're dealing with two different lines. I knew my dad was already on the way to church, and I called him to let him know that the results were in because I knew he wanted to know. And so I said, Hey, you know, I got the results, and um, I know you're on your way to church, I can share them with you now, or we can wait until everybody gets together for dinner this afternoon. And he said, No, tell me right now. And so I said, Okay, well, good news is you guys are related like we knew you would be, but it's showing that you two are only related through your mother. And so he said, What does that mean? And I said, It means there is another father involved that we have to find out who that is. And I remember he let out the heartiest laugh. Sometimes when people laugh like that behind that kind of news, you gotta wonder, are you okay? I said, how do you feel? Like, are you okay? And he was like, Oh, I'm fine. As a matter of fact, this is exciting. But above all, this really gives me closure. And I said, What do you mean? And so he has shared over the years just that he and his father had a contentious relationship. Some of the things would make you wonder, wow, how could a parent and child dynamic be this volatile? And so he said, This just really gives me closure. It explains why my dad treated me the way he did. Either he knew I wasn't his or he suspected that I wasn't his. That statement just really sat with me. As fast as he said that, he said, just like this, Well, do you know who the biological family is? I said, No, we we don't know right now. And I remember the earnest in his voice when he said it. He says he doesn't remember this, but I remember it vividly. The earnest in his voice, and I can only liken it to when you have children and the children ask you, can you do something for them, get something for them? And you don't know how you're gonna do it. You may not even have the means to do it, but you know you're gonna do everything in your power to make that thing happen for them or to get that thing for them. I just remember hearing the earnest in his voice, and immediately I knew I don't know how we're gonna do it, but we're gonna get this information for you. So when he asked me that, I said, no, we don't know who the family is, but it may take some time to find them, you know, because he was asking, well, how do we find them? I said, well, it'll take some time because of your age. We don't even know who we're dealing with or who we're looking for or where the family lines even intersect at this point. But I said, but we will find it. And in my mind, I'm like, God, I don't know how we're gonna do it. But I just told him that we would. So we got it's gotta happen some kind of way. So he said, well, keep me posted when he kept saying, This is exciting. I want to know everything you find out about this. He did say, and he said this on more than one occasion, that it doesn't change him, it doesn't change who he is, but he would like to know more information if there's more. So everybody gets together that Sunday afternoon for dinner. And before we eat, I clue the rest of the family in. Y'all know we've been on this journey for a while to try to get some answers about what's going on on our paternal line. I tell them, said relative tested, and the results show they're related, but they're only related through our grandmother. And everyone looked at each other maybe for one to two seconds, and everybody had the same reaction and erupted in laughter. And they were saying, we've always known now we've got the science to back it up, we've got the proof to share with other people in the family because we were getting pushback from other people, and so they want to know what are the next steps. And I'm like, y'all, I can't even wrap my mind around what the next steps are. We got to get a plan together because I need to get a handle on this because at this point we're working from a blank canvas. My dad is in his 80s, so he's the oldest person in the family. We have no one older than him to ask as a point of reference who can give us a name or a location or anything. Someone asked a very good question and they wanted to know how does this impact some other family connections? I said, that's a good point. So let's see if we can try to get some more folks in the family to test so that we can rule out some additional things. We were able to get some more folks to commit to testing. And around this time, I think it was like Mother's Day was coming up or something like that, but Ancestry was running a sale on their DNA kits and they were marked down cheap, like $39. So I decided to buy a handful of kits. My sister Meredith and I planned a trip because we had multiple folks we were going to connect with, met up with the relatives and got folks tested. When we got there, there was one relative who opted out, and that was fine. So I had an extra kit. Um, I think I had a couple of extra kits because I wound up sharing one with another relative on my mom's side of the family who wanted to do some research on their line. Meredith and I come back. I've still got the ancestry DNA test, and I start letting people know I have an extra ancestry DNA test. If anybody wants it, it's already paid for. If anybody's interested in learning more about their heritage, it's free. You can have it. I could not get anyone to take the test. And when I say take the test, I mean anyone who was willing to get the kit from me. And so no one wanted it, so I wound up putting it in the closet. I mentioned I'm in this DNA group and I start requesting assistance. I need some help to figure this out because we've got all these matches, and I don't know what to do. The locations where these folks reside don't match where we are or where we have relatives. I don't know what to do with this information. There was a person who reached out, and in this group, they have what they call search angels. And these are people who volunteer, they're at all different experience levels, but they volunteer their time to walk alongside anyone who's trying to solve something in their family. They've had a lot of success. So this individual reaches out to me after I made my post and they said, I think I can help you. They went on to share some details about how they had helped someone who was like 80 years old who had been adopted. And my dad wasn't adopted, but they were just letting me know the context for the age. And I don't know what it was, but she was so sincere in her messaging. And I have never laid eyes on her in real life. This is only a person I've communicated with online, but just the sincerity of her tone and the way she crafted her messages, I totally believed that she could assist us. And I'm like, here you go, here's all my logins and all my DNA and all this stuff. And so she asked me if I had created a tree for that part of my family. And I said, no, but uh, we can get one started. So we start with this tree. Again, we're working with a blank canvas. So we start with this tree with me and my dad, and the search angel just takes over from there. And thank God for her because there was just so much going on personally during that time that I would not have even been able to focus. Um, just wasn't in the right space to tackle anything like that. So I am super appreciative of her efforts and enthusiasm in wanting to get these answers for us. She begins working in like every day. She and I are sending messages and she's letting me know what she's working on. She finds this same family that Dee had mentioned to me a while ago. And she said, I think you all come from this big family. And like I said, there's probably like 14 kids in this family. She said, I think you all come from this one family line, but I've got to figure out which person you descend from. And she said it got a little complicated because there were some folks who had kids, and then they would name them the same name as somebody else. And so now you got to look through records to determine which generation you are looking at to make sure you're looking at the right person within that tree. So she had me submit my dad's DNA into some other databases to see if we could get some additional matches for folks who may not have tested in ancestry. While ancestry DNA is the largest, there are some other databases out there that folks test in who don't test in the ancestry. So we wanted to just broaden our horizon there. Unfortunately, we didn't find any better matches on those databases than we did with ancestry DNA. So we decided to continue focusing our efforts there. I remember it was a Friday night, and I was preparing for a class I was teaching the next day. As the search angel and I are touching base, it's just this huge gap with the matches. So you've got my dad, you've got me and my sibling who've tested. So we are his next closest matches. Then the next matches behind us are second and third cousins. And I'm like, no, I know there's got to be somebody. And I remember I laid across the bed and I said, God, I know that my dad has to have some more family out there. I said, I know he has got to have a niece or a nephew or somebody out there. And that was it. That was the prayer. So the next day I get up and I go to my class. As I'm walking into the class, the search angel is messaging me and she says, Hey, give me a call when you have a chance. I think I just figured out who your dad's biological father is. It took everything in me not to say. Class is canceled. As excited as I was, of course, that would not have been fair to my class, but I could barely concentrate getting through the content of my class because I could not wait to hear what she had to share with us. So get the class done. I wind up contacting my dad and I'm like, hey, I'm on my way to your house. The search angel's contacting me. She's got more information. She thinks she's figured out who your biological father is, and we'll call her together so you can hear all this too. And he said, okay. So I get over to his house and we call the search angel. And so she's given us the rundown and she said, I think your dad's father is. And she tells us a name, which is a different name than I've ever heard. I've never heard that family name in all the time she and I had been communicating, nor had I found that name in any of the records we had looked at. So I said, Well, where did this name come from? Because this is not the family name that we were following when I thought we descended from this other family. And she says, Oh, but you do. So she said she found an obituary for a person who we believed was my dad's great-grandmother. In the obituary, it listed all of the great-grandmother's surviving children. There was a child's name of that great-grandmother who had not shown up on any other records that the researcher had found previously. So when she saw that name, she said, let me look into this person and figure out what's happening here. As she began researching that individual, she was able to determine that that person from the large family had married someone with the name that she shared with us, and they had a son. And that son would have been old enough to have had a child at the time that my dad was born. The gentleman also lived in the same city that my dad was born. I said, Well, give me some context around this and how do the California folks tie into all this? We were able to determine that my dad's great-grandmother and the great-grandfather of someone from the California line were brother and sister. So that's where the California bunch and my bunch, that's where we all descend from, from two of those siblings out of that large family. Okay, so it's making complete sense to me. The search angel tells us, unfortunately, the father has passed away. And he had two other sons, and unfortunately, those sons have passed away. And I'm like, oh, and while the information was exciting to learn, it was also a little deflating to think, wow, we had gotten to this point and now they're not even here. And in the next breath, she says, but he still has some grandchildren who live in that area. I found a potential niece and nephew of your dad's. And immediately my mind went back to the night before of my prayer of God. I know my dad has got to have a niece or nephew out there. And now the very next day, the search angel tells me she has potentially found a niece or nephew. She had pulled some information together and said, you know, they're on Facebook. Why don't you try to reach out to them? I said, okay. I wind up contacting Dee to let her know what was going on that I think we figured it out. And I'm gonna try to reach out to these folks and see if I can get a response. I sit down and I'm taking a deep breath and I'm like, what do I do? Do I reach out to these complete strangers and take the risk of sounding like a crazy person? Like, hey, I think we're cousins and we've never met because that's a surefire way to get blocked on social media, right? So I said, I have to figure out a way to write this message so that it comes across that they understand this is coming from a real person. It's a legit message, no one's trying to scam them. So I created a subject line and I said, I think we may be cousins, laid out the whole thing about my dad's age. We had done the testing, given him the whole rundown, left my contact information so they could get in touch with me. Within minutes, the potential nephew reached out to me and obviously had no idea about any of this. And so he was trying to wrap his head around it and he was with another relative. And so they were discussing it. And I'm like, no, we don't know anything. We were just giving this information today, but we think that you all may be the family that we're connected to. They wind up sending me a picture of the nephew's father. When I saw the photo, I was totally blown away. It looked like my dad. And so my dad has always worn a unique hairstyle that anybody who knows him, if you've been around us any length of time, people know him by his hair and his breach. And they'll be like, oh, your dad's the one with the hair. Yep, that's him. So I saw this hairstyle, and I'm like, I have never seen anybody in my life wear this hairstyle except my dad. And I'm looking at this man with the same hairstyle, and the profile was the same. And I show my dad, and he says, Oh, wow. And that's the first time he's even acknowledged out loud, oh wow, I can see that I look like this person. Um, for anybody who knows us, he, my dad looks just like his mother and everybody in his mother's family. His father's side, I wouldn't even say not so much. I will say not at all. So we're looking at this photo. So I asked my dad, I said, is it okay for me to send them a picture of you? And he said, Yeah, that's fine. So I said, I'm gonna send them a picture of you around the age of this person that we're looking at in this photo, but I'm also gonna send them a picture of what you look like present day. I send the pictures over to them, and immediately they're like, Oh my god, your dad looks just like uncle so-and-so. So they tell us the uncle's name. And I said, Okay, does anybody have a picture of him so we can see him try to match it up? We were all very curious because there were a lot of similarities in the photos. Oh, another thing the search angel provided us with was a map that noted where the potential biological father lived in relation to my dad's parents around the time my dad was born. They lived in close proximity, but what was most interesting, at least to me anyway, is the street where the potential biological father lived is the same name of a church that my parents and family attended when my family lived in that area. So I called my dad to make him aware, and immediately he says, Oh, that's the guy. That that's gotta be him. I'm convinced that's him. And so I asked him, Do you ever remember seeing this man at the church or in the vicinity or anyone with this name or surname who attended the church? He couldn't say for sure, but he remembered a lot of folks who attended the church at that time anyway, lived nearby. But for him, he was convinced with that bit of information, it locked in the timeline, the location, and answered the question of how his mother and biological father could have met. About a week later, we were in the final stretch of preparing for a family reunion that we were hosting. Uh, I remember it was a Sunday night, it was late at night. I had been gone all day, and I was just getting home. I was pulling into the driveway, and my aunt was calling me, my dad's sister. My aunt was calling, and when I picked up the phone, I could tell by the tone of her voice something was wrong. And so she let me know that one of my cousins had unexpectedly passed away. I mean, shocking. We didn't have any details. Everyone was just finding out, but she was contacting us to make sure we were aware that I'd let everybody on this end know and we'd keep in touch to get more details as they unfolded. The next day, I come home from work during my lunch break to pick up a package that I needed in advance of the family reunion. As I'm getting the package and I'm bringing it inside, my phone is just ringing back to back to back. And I'm like, who is this calling me like this? So get back to my phone, and I see it's one of my siblings. So I pick up the phone and she's talking in a rushed way, but I can't really tell what's happening, thinking she's asking me, can you hear me? And so I'm saying, yes, I can hear you. What's going on? And she's saying, No, no, did you hear? And I'm saying, hear what? And so she then tells me that our aunt, whom I had just spoken to hours before, had also unexpectedly passed away. So as you can imagine, talk about shock, like the family is reeling, just horrible, right? Just totally unexpected. With both now, we're trying to process everything and figure out what's going on. Ultimately, with the planning of services, it was decided to proceed with the family reunion because the services would occur after that time. So we've got family in town, and my dad gets into a conversation with another relative about what's happening with this whole DNA story with him. And this relative tells him, wow, I remember hearing this story when I was a child, but that was all I heard about it was that you potentially may have had another father, and that's all I know. And now you're telling me all these years later, you're finding out that that is the case. Not at the reunion, but maybe not too far after, another relative and I were talking, and this person was aware of what was going on, and so they wanted to see how things were going. And so I shared, we found out that the potential biological father lived on this street, which is the same name of the church that the family went to when they lived in that area. And this relative tells me, Well, you know, your grandmother also lived on that street. And I said, No, I said, I'm I never knew that. And I said, I don't think my dad knows that. I said, He's never mentioned it. This relative says, Oh, yeah, your grandmother and various other relatives lived on this street from X time to X time, and they gave me some details to check it out. And I went and checked it out, and my grandmother and her family lived on that street. So I showed my dad, and he was just totally taken aback. He said he had never known that his mom lived on that street. And so I said, Well, initially, we were thinking that they may have met at the church because you mentioned a lot of folks who lived in that area went to the church, and I said, But if you don't ever remember seeing this person or don't recall coming across anyone with this name there, it's probably more likely that they just met somewhere in the neighborhood since they both lived on this street at some point. So as we are preparing to travel, I remember that I have this DNA kit that has been sitting in the closet for months. I asked my sister if I should take this and maybe reach out to see if they may be willing to meet us before we leave, since we're going to be in town for an extended period of time. She said, There's no harm in taking it with you. You've already had conversations with them, but if they're willing to meet with us, you just have it in case the conversation goes that way. So I reached out to the potential nephew and I made him aware of the circumstances that we'd have to be traveling back for services. And I said, We're here to be at the services and support the family. But since we're going to be in town for an extended period of time, if we have any time available, and you all are also free, would you be willing to meet with us before we left town? And so he said, Oh, yeah, that would be fine. And so he asked me for the dates. And when I shared them, he said, Oh, that that's perfect. I usually work on the weekends, but I'm off on this particular weekend. And he wanted to make sure your dad's gonna be here, and I'm like, Yeah, absolutely. He will be with us. And so he said, Okay, I'm looking forward to it. And so we get there and we get to the services and we're getting to spend time with various family members and comforting each other and being a support to the family. Towards the latter part of the trip, we had a day where we didn't have any commitments. So I reached out to the potential nephew and we'll call him tea. So I made him aware that we had a day where we didn't have any commitments, and if he was also free to confirm if he would still be interested in meeting with us. And so he said yes, and we wound up meeting for lunch at a local Chick-fil-A. It's funny because when he showed up, he was wearing a Prince t-shirt, and my brother also was wearing a Prince t-shirt, so we all thought was pretty funny since it was unplanned. T was really thoughtful and brought an envelope that contained photos and obituaries so that we could get a chance to see and read through some of the information on people on that side of the family. He answered what he could answer for us, but he made us aware that some of the details were limited due to the fact that their father passed away when he and his sister were young, and their uncle passed away when they were maybe teenagers or young adults. They thought every Everyone in their father's family was gone. I asked T if I could take pictures of the information that he brought. So he allowed me to take pictures. I got my phone out, took pictures of the photos that he had, the programs. I mean, there was no denying that we are related to these individuals. T called his sister, we'll call her Kay. He put us on a video chat with her, so we got a chance to speak with her and pass the phone around. He also wound up contacting another cousin that we got to speak to by phone. We were there for lunch and spent half a day in Chick-fil-A. His sister, Kay, showed up and she said, I saw you all on the video, but after I saw you, I had to come and see you in person. She got in her car and drove an hour to be there with us. My dad was like, Are they gonna kick us out? And I'm like, no, just keep ordering food. It's fine. The folks in the Chick-fil-A, they were so gracious serving us that afternoon and even getting bits and pieces of the story as they passed by. And then we'd see some of them standing within earshot to hear what's the next thing happening. We got a chance to learn more about each other that day, and we all got great photos together. He asked me, What is the next step in all of this? I said, Well, we need someone to take an ancestry DNA test to confirm if my dad is your uncle. And that will tell us who my dad's biological father was. And in worst case scenario, it'll come back just showing that you're another cousin in this big family tree somewhere. And that will just put us back at square one of trying to figure out who his biological father is. And so T asked me, well, can I do that today? And I'm like, Yeah, you can do that today. So I had the kit and we arranged to meet up after we left the Chick-fil-A and we took care of that. I think it really helped that they were able to see my dad in person, just because people can make up things online. Obviously, we were not making up anything, but you know, you can never be too careful these days. But it's one thing when someone's trying to convey something to you over the phone or in a text message or email. But when you get a chance to look someone in their eyes, and you get to look at their features and you get to see similarities, there's no denying those kinds of things. So a few days later, we made our way back home from the trip, and we were all in touch over the coming weeks, just sharing photos and oh, and I remember this, and people sharing details and just trying to get people caught up on what has occurred in all of our lives since we're all just now finding each other. I was on the phone with Kay the night before my dad's 83rd birthday, and I asked her if she had heard from her brother to determine if his ancestry DNA results had been returned. And so she said, no, I haven't heard anything. And so I said, Okay, no worries. I said, I didn't want to be overbearing in the process, but I just thought it would be cool if he did receive them. My dad's birthday is tomorrow, and that would be a really cool surprise to give him. And she says, Oh, yes, let me send him a message now. So she messaged him while we were on the phone, and he said, No, he had not received anything, but he was still checking on his end, and vice versa. So after I ended my call with Kay, I pulled up the pictures in my phone that I had taken the day we all spent the afternoon together meeting each other. And I looked at the potential father, the potential brothers, the potential nephew, and I look at my dad, and I'm looking at all of their features. And I remember telling my sister, I said, This has got to be the guy. This has got to be the family. If it's not, I don't know where we go from here. But the features, particularly of the potential father and one of the brothers in particular, they look so much alike with my dad, just even at different points in time. And I even began looking at features like their hands and their fingers. And the same hands and fingers, they look like my dad's hands. And I told my sister, I said, they all have the same hands. And she couldn't quite see what I was saying, but I'm telling you, it was there. So the next morning, my dad's birthday. Uh, I just had an unction to go in and look at his DNA matches, and surprise, he had a new DNA match, a nephew. T showed up in my dad's DNA matches as his nephew on his paternal side. So now we could say definitively, scientifically, conclusively, that T's grandfather was my dad's biological father. Just to make sure I wasn't off my rocker, I messaged the search angel to get her up to speed. I said, and based on what I'm reviewing, here's where I'm landing. And so she went in and double-checked me, and she says, Yes, based on reviewing the amount of DNA they share and where he shows up, he is your dad's paternal nephew. So, yes, we can conclude that T's grandfather, and we'll call him Mr. C, that Mr. C is your dad's biological father. I was over the moon. It was so early in the morning that I'm not even sure what the search angel was doing that that she responded to my message that early, but I started waking people up. And you gotta be careful with that because when you start getting phone calls and it's still dark outside, five o'clock in the morning or whatever, people wake up startled because you think naturally something happens. I had to preface it like, hey, wake up. It's not an emergency, but the DNA results are in, and Mr. C is our grandfather. And I mean, just the level of excitement at that early in the morning. And I mean, just there were screams of excitement on the phone, and you know, and hold on, I gotta call this person. And people are clicking over. Hold on, so-and-so just walked into the room because they heard me screaming. Let me tell them what's going on. And so it took everything in me not to wake my dad up at five o'clock in the morning to give him that news. So I knew we were all getting together that evening, and I wind up connecting with now the newfound cousins to let them know. And so they were really excited too. And I'm just like, I'm so excited. We get to share this with him on his birthday. I wind up talking to my dad on the phone that afternoon, and he was just really reflective but excited, and he was just sharing that he never expected that he would be 83 and just how much God has blessed him and all these things. And he's just going on and on about this is just so amazing. And I'm like, I could not sit on it anymore. I'm sorry I tried. So I said, Yeah, I said, Well, since we're talking about blessings and amazing things happening, I said, I just wanted to tell you that the DNA results have come in from Ancestry. And he says, Oh, and I said, Yeah, I had a chance to go in, and I'm trying not to give it away because my good thing we were not on FaceTime because I would have already given it away with my big smile that I have even as I'm telling this story now. I never get tired of telling this story. So I said, I had a chance to go in and look at the DNA results. And I said, and after careful review, we have determined that T is your nephew. And he said, What? What he was like, wow, like what? Are you serious? He was so excited. He was so excited, but surprised at the same time. It was just like we had gotten so close, but the reality of it has now been confirmed. This is not speculation, this is scientifically proven. It is a fact. I said, so now we can definitively say Mr. C is your biological father. And he just kept saying, This is amazing. Okay, okay, explain it to me again. So I explained it to him. And I said, and when we meet up, I'll bring my computer, I'll pull it up on the big screen, I'll show you, we'll go through all the matches. Before the birthday festivities fully kicked off, I had decided to print the pictures that I had taken the day we all met. And I wanted to put them into an album for my dad, just so that he would have an album for that part of his family. I thought that would be really cool. I printed the pictures and put them into magnetic photo frames. I intended to hold them as a surprise for later in the night, but after I got to my dad's house, he was just reflective and he just kept sharing his amazement that we had made this discovery and how excited he was to know this information. And he paused and he said, you know, I know I never got the opportunity to meet any of them. I really wish I had some pictures of them though. I said, Well, I was really holding this for later. And I'm like, but because you want to see them, I have some pictures available for you. And it was exciting for me to watch his excitement as he looked at their faces, seeing people that he had never met, but that he could relate to, people that he looked like. He sat in that chair and looked at those pictures for about 30 minutes. My dad looks just like his mother and everyone on his mother's side of the family. When you compare him to the father that raised him and that side of his family, he doesn't look like them at all. So it was really great to finally see people that he looked like outside of his mother and his mother's family. We brought dinner to his house that night and served all of his favorite foods. K and T were so thoughtful that they set up a Zoom call along with another cousin so that they could say happy birthday and welcome to the family. That was a pretty incredible moment. And to think when we started this journey, we started with a blank canvas, no information, a family tree that had no one but me and my dad, and with the help of our search angel, we now have a paternal family tree for my dad's family that has almost 500 people in it, and we can identify where we are within that tree. That's amazing. This was definitely a labor of love. I was discredited and slandered throughout my years of pursuit to get my dad the answers he deserves. And I would endure it all over again for him. Today, I stand vindicated because DNA doesn't lie. It is your right to know where you come from and don't ever let anyone take that away from you. If something doesn't seem right, if something doesn't feel right, it probably isn't right. And if you feel that nudge to pursue truth, then I hope this story serves as an encouragement for you to learn more about your background. I am so grateful to God for allowing us to make this discovery. Thank you to every relative known and newfound who has supported us on this journey. Thank you to my sisters and my niece who endured my daily updates and photo comparisons. Thank you to our incredible search angel who helped us get across the finish line. And thank you to my dad for entrusting me to carry his story, our story, for allowing me the privilege and honor to help preserve his experiences and our family's journey, and to ensure that our story continues to be remembered. I am fully convinced that God does all things in his time. And in this case, it was 83 years. There's a Bible verse in Deuteronomy chapter 29, verse 29. And I'm gonna read the KJV version. It says, the secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. I hope you enjoyed part one of Bloodlines and Beginnings. Stay tuned for part two as I talk with my sisters and my niece to get their perspective. If you enjoyed today's episode, feel free to leave a spam mail and let us know. Also, don't forget to follow us on social media. If today's episode made you laugh, think, feel seen, or gave you a little hook along the way. We hope you continue to hold on to that and share with others who might need it. Don't forget to like and subscribe and connect with us on social media. Until next time, this is at the