I Found My Father’s Name in My Mother’s Secrets

What if the father you spent your life wondering about turned out to be someone you already knew?

As a kid growing up on Long Island in the 1970s, Rich Boerner learned not to ask too many questions. His mother had her version of the truth and repeated it word for word whenever he asked. His father was a man from Milwaukee who left when he found out she was pregnant. That was all she would say.

It was a story that sounded just plausible enough to stop the conversation. For years, Rich focused on his own life instead. He went to college, built a career in radio, started a family, and kept that mystery locked away in a quiet corner of his mind.

But after his mother passed away, everything changed. While cleaning out her apartment, Rich opened an old address book. Inside was a Polaroid photo and a note that would unravel decades of silence. His father wasn’t a stranger from another state. He was someone who had always been there.

In this first half of our two-part conversation, Rich joins Corey and Kendall to talk about growing up with half-truths, the cost of protecting a parent’s secret, and what it feels like when the life you’ve built suddenly shifts under your feet. His story reminds us how deeply love and deception can intertwine and how the search for truth can begin long after we think the story is over.

In this episode

• Life as an only child raised by a single mother in a working-class New York neighborhood
• The “three-sentence story” his mother told and why he believed it for so long
• What he found among her letters after her death
• The Polaroid that rewrote everything he thought he knew about his father
• How grief can become the moment of truth

Guest

Rich Boerner is a longtime radio executive and the author of The Not-So Only Child: My True Story. The memoir chronicles the discovery of his hidden family and his path toward forgiveness, recorded and produced in his own home studio.

Coming in Part Two

Rich reconnects with the sister who knew the secret all along and learns how his father’s final wish tied their two families together. He also shares the late-night creative process that turned his story into an audiobook for his children and for anyone who has ever had to rebuild their sense of self from the truth.

Transcript

DNA surprise begins with a hidden Polaroid

Corey 0:00

Hello friends, welcome back to Family Twist. It's Corey. Today we're joined by Rich Burner, a radio lifer-returned author whose life story took a sharp turn, thanks to a single photo and a tiny star in an old address book. Rich grew up a devoted only child in a small Long Island apartment, raised by a mom who kept the trains running with love and grit. The story about his father was simple and tidy. Then Grief opened a door. While cleaning out his mom's things, a Polaroid slipped loose and the clue on the page next to it changed everything. Rich is a pearl on both sides of the mic, so you're gonna hear him think in real time. Follow the thread and let the quiet do some work. We talk about the 1970s stigma of not having a dad. The college counselor who told him he deserved more than name, rank, and serial number, buckle up for a conversation people would absolutely eavesdrop on at a coffee shop. Hey Rich, welcome to the Family Twist Podcast. Well, thank you for having me, Corey. Appreciate you. We're thrilled to have you. And uh we're gonna talk about your book in depth, but before we get into that, I was trying to think, like, oh, what are some interesting, like, first questions that we just haven't jumped in with people? And obviously, this is a DNA surprise, DNA family secrets podcast. But what was childhood like for the little rich?

Growing up fatherless in the 1970s

Rich 1:20

You know, childhood to me was there was a limited amount of resources we had, and we were not I mean, we could have been indigent, but we had family that helped support us. It was just me and my mom. So, you know, and we lived in a little three-room apartment that was converted to family house, but it was owned by my aunt and uncle. So they charged my mom like a ridiculously low rent to make sure that she could live and buy food and things like that. And, you know, we didn't live extravagant, we never went anywhere, we never traveled. I mean, if we went somewhere, it was a car trip on Long Island, you know. And you don't know when you're a kid, you don't know a difference, you know. And I grew up in a neighborhood that was filled working-class neighborhoods, so there wasn't a lot of people who were, oh, we vacationed in Maui. Oh, we went to Europe. So there wasn't a whole lot of comparison problem there. So there was a little bit of this bubble of, oh wow, this is really cool. Everything's really cool here. Group of friends. Now, the difference that wasn't cool was I didn't have a father, and this being in the 1970s, that was a different deal then. So that was something to you wanted to hide as much as you could. It was because you were different. And again, uh different, you know, we go back, differences still are sometimes it's difficult, but they were definitely not celebrated in the 1970s. Yeah, that was always a challenge for me because I would always ask my mom what the story was about my who was who was my father. And she had what I called her prisoner of war story. It was like three sentences over and over. It was a man named Alan Scott from Milwaukee. We had a relationship. As soon as he found out I was pregnant, he used to visit on business to New York. And as soon as we found out I was pregnant, he told me he had a family and he could never see me again, and that was it. I was like, well, it's plausible, you know. I mean, given the time and everything else, totally plausible, but there was not another detail beyond that. So I was like, what do I tell the other kids? Just tell them it didn't work out for your mom and dad. Okay, well, that's what I did. And, you know, went along life like that. So I mean, it's not a handicap for certain. It's just, you know, we all have this for different things and different reasons. When you feel a little bit of a I'm different, I'm a little bit of an outsider, it just is a challenge when you're a kid. Um, definitely not something that kept me from succeeding or doing anything.

The scripted story about his biological father

Corey 3:45

Well, it being the time that it was, even you know, if you were to to ask your mother, well, how can we maybe find him?

Rich 3:53

Yeah, no, no. I mean, literally, if she said he's gone and I he hasn't contacted me, and the other the only thing was, you know, yellow pages and you know, and and telephones. And it was like at that point, like, why? It's uh on top of the fact we didn't travel anywhere, so it wasn't like, well, you know, we can hop on jet blue and get to Milwaukee in no time flat. It was like, no, we just don't go. My first plane ride was I paid for it myself, uh right as I in my senior year of college from my own money. And it was, you know, you know, a real discount airline. We went to I went to Florida with a friend, you know, let's go to spring break. Oh my god, I can afford this because I've been working and got on a plane, and you know, it's the difference between my kids, they've been on because my family still, my side of the family still lives in New York, and they've been on planes since they were babies. So it's not that's nothing to them. They're okay, yeah. But I always say to them, do you realize how exciting it was for me at 22 years old? I was like, this is like a cool theme park ride, you know. And then once I had kids, I was like, oh God, this is terrifying. What if something happens, you know? Yeah, um, anyway.

Corey 5:00

Kendall and I took our last plane ride together a handful of years ago, and it was actually meeting his baby sister in person for the first time in New Orleans, and it was January, flying back to Boston. There was one runway open, we had to circle several times. This is like the only time I'd ever been on a flight where people are actually using the vomit bags audibly.

Rich 5:24

Wow. Wow.

Corey 5:26

So, you know, we land, it's not the smoothest landing or whatever, but it's like okay, we're good. And I kind of looked at me and he said, I'm never flying again.

Rich 5:34

Yeah, yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, well, good. I hate it in general, so that was like the straw that broke the camel's back. I was like, I'm done, I'm finished.

Corey 5:47

And I think we made it worse for each other because you know, traveling together, it's like I'm sure we're both thinking, like, well, what happens if something happens and who's gonna take care of our dogs? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I was getting such crazy anxiety around flying with Kennel that we were both a wreck, you know, and then was once I started taking a few trips by myself, I slowly started. I mean, I still don't love it, you know, and I don't think anybody loves it. Yeah, especially these days. Those uh 1960s pan Am, you know, a luxury flight server, a way thing in the past, but yeah, slowly but surely I was able to let that anxiety go. But yeah, who knows? We're gonna have to drug him with milk like Mr. T in the AT we get him.

Rich 6:30

It used to be for infants or when they're young, so they're not screaming all the way. The nighttime cough medicine is good. They slept the whole five hours.

Corey 6:39

Right. We've all been on flights where that has not been the case with babies for sure.

Rich 6:45

Yeah. Oh no, no, no, we know, we know. There's just, you know, like I said, that is a shared experience for many people, not everyone, obviously, but many people, especially in America. You don't remember the easy flights, you but the other ones are ingrained in your brain because it's like, oh my god, it's either torture or I'm gonna die. Torture or I'm gonna die. Torture, I'm gonna die. So yeah, I mean it's challenging. Flying is challenging these days. So I don't blame you, Kendall. Yeah, I realize how irrational I am about this fear, but it still doesn't make me not scare Corey greatly. I don't blame him. I would not want to fly with me either. Or make me sit in a different part of the plane, you know? Yeah, they would have the Kendall section. Right, yeah, exactly. For the rest of your neurotic. In a straight jacket, yes. Yeah, no, as long as it's padded, right? Yeah, kind of like going to those moon bounces at the county fair. It's like, wow, I yeah, it don't get caught in the seam because it feels like you can't breathe when you're caught in the seam of those things, but just as long as you're not caught in the seam, you're good.

Corey 7:52

Right. Oh, I'll try to remember that next time.

Rich 7:55

Don't get caught in the seam.

Corey 7:56

So, Rich, I think for many of us, you know, our parents are the first people that we learn to trust and trust everything that they say and do. What point do you did you start to question that maybe you weren't getting the complete story?

Finding hidden letters after his mother’s death

Rich 8:12

Well, I guess I probably questioned it when getting to tween and teen years and whatnot, but I just didn't want to deal with that. And plus, I loved my mom so much I didn't want to cause her anxiety, pain, anything else like that. Then when I got to college, I doubled majored in communications and psychology. I always loved psych. I was always a huge young fan. And I was definitely into how the world actually operates and why people think they uh finding answers. My counselor for psych, we had to do weekly meetings. I guess he would call them sessions, but they weren't, it wasn't like I would book psychop sessions of the psychologist. But we had to do this program, I had to do that with him, and we're talking, and he said, You're an adult now, you know, and if this is really bugging you, you deserve an answer more than just name, rank, and serial number. I said, So probably about two months of that. And I said, Okay, I'm gonna basically book a Sunday afternoon with my mom. And I did. I booked a Sunday afternoon, I said, Hey, you just talk about it. And she complied, said, Yeah, we'll be there. And we went through conversation and got into the uncomfortable stuff, and she gave me the name, rank, and serial number. And I said, There has to be more. Tell me about before. How did you meet this guy? How was did he work with the company you were working with? I mean, was he uh did he work at another company? I can't not and and just and then the tears started, and then and I was finally, I don't know, it it might have been five minutes of that, but it felt like four hours of that type of interrogation without me. I wasn't trying, you know, getting mean, but I was getting frustrated. And then I finally said, I I it's enough. And I said, you know, I just said and I said, I love your mom. And I walked over and gave her a hug. I said, I I'll I'll find out another day, and I walked out. So I kind of shelved it. I was never on a mission to find out because I was like, I was on a mission to live a life and become a success and do what I love to do, which at that point was radio and to be successful there and have fun because I really liked it. I always did really well in school and all the rest. It was just because I had an excellent memory. If I was in a room with somebody and they spoke, I would remember it for a couple of weeks, like almost verbatim word. So when a test came, I got this. You know, again, had, that doesn't exist anymore. And I didn't think much about it at all. And now we've moved into the 80s and 90s. I had a single mom and we move forward, and I'm going through life. I get married, I get a job. I'm now working in radio in Florida, in Orlando. And it's time my firstborn comes, and it's a lot of stress on my now ex-wife and me. It's a lot of stress, and I want my mom to come down and be with us in Florida. I make the mistake of not discussing that in front of the issue with my ex. Big mistake. And I know that was a mistake, and because I didn't want my ex to feel like I was saying you're not, you can't handle this. But it was just overwhelming. And my mom was getting ready to retire. She had me in in her 30s at that point, you know, in the 70s. So that was late in life. She was in her 60s at this point. That went south really fast. It was good, she was on board, she was coming, and then that went south really fast. I'm giving you a synopsis of the book here anyway. So it ended up not working out. There was some confrontation, some things I had to go do to say, no, you can't come, which was misery. At that point, I ended up getting a job in San Francisco. Uh things were working really well in Orlando, so industry-wise, I was getting noticed, and I just said, I can't, you can't come right now. And then I ended bounced from San Francisco to LA. During that point, my mom got contracted ovarian cancer. And it was serious, it was bad. Ultimately, she ended up not making it. So when I'm cleaning out three months after she passed, because she had lived with my aunt and uncle, so I didn't have to go immediately get the apartment cleaned out. Three after burying her, three months later, I come back and I'm going through all her stuff. And the stuff I found in her private, you know, it wasn't like she was a mobster. The letters she wrote and the letters she had back from she was a huge baseball fan from like big names, Yogi Berra, Vince Scully, um, and Sparky Anderson, you know, all big names back then. She had letters written to them, but they had written back to and was like, why do I not know about this? And then there were other letters to trying to get my aunt, her younger sister, connect her aunt to a roller derby star in Brooklyn. And it was just a while. And then there was another set of letters that were kind of love letters. And I was like, oh my God. And I had to get through to the end. And when I got to the end, I was like, oh, okay. Not, not, not my dad. But I again, all this stuff never spoken, never spoken. Then I'm going, I finally finish all that, and I'm like, I'm worn. I'm I'm I'm exhausted. I'm like, oh my God, this has kind of written like all these new chapters for my book, for the narrative in my head. And then I open up her little private, you know, it was a little the the address book, right? And everybody in there, I know, I know, I know, I know. There was only a few male names. My mom never dated, never, it was always just work and me, work and me, work and me. And I'm looking through and I'm like, oh, I know the the few male names in there are like went to high school, she went to high school with him, their friends from the neighborhood, this, this, that. And then I open, I open up one page and a picture, a Polaroid falls out. And the Polaroid that falls out is a person I know and I've known my own life. And next to that person's name in there, it is it says Pink Week Motor Lodge, Valentine's Day, the year I was born, with a star next to it. That's nine months before I was born. Actually, a little bit more than nine months before I was born. And I'm just like, and I look at the person, I'm like, this I look like this person. And I'm also, you know, I'm a type one diabetic, which I was diagnosed you know, in as a child. This person was the only type one diabetic that I knew. And it never, I mean, I felt like the world's dumbest detective at that point. You know what I mean? So, but the thought is, I was like, does everybody know? Am I the only idiot? So I started asking. Besides, after sitting there, I always likened it to at the point earlier there had to have been the Kevin Costner Robin Hood movie, and the trailer to it had an arrow that looked like it hit you in the forehead. Like, I said it's like boom. I was like, I just sat there for like probably 30 minutes, like going, what now? What now? Because this person also had a family, right? So it made sense. Her original story, this person did have a family, and it meant that I had siblings or half siblings. And I was like, What do I do? So that's where that's how I discovered who my father was. And then the ensuing part of I ultimately connected with one of my siblings of the three. Two of them were troubled, and I didn't really want to bring that into my life. That took another decade.

Corey 15:37

Was this discovery? Did that have anything to do with your the ending of your marriage?

A half sibling who already knew the family secret

Rich 15:43

My marriage ended a few years after that. And that was, you know, and anybody anybody who's been in, kudos to my ex. She's she's a good person. Um, it just it didn't work for us. And we got married. We when we got married, we were young. I don't mean baby young, but we were young, and you know, I was definitely immature, even for my age, young, you know what I mean? And we leaned on each other because we had uh issues growing issues and narratives we'd painted growing up. And then ultimately when living together, it just didn't work right anymore. So yeah, I mean so no, that happened. My the divorce happened almost six years after my mom passed. But you know, again, anybody who's been through something like that is unless there's an incident that causes it, usually it's like it probably could have ended before then. But we had kids, and I was like, I don't want to do this. The one thing I didn't want to do was to me that was a failure. Divorce was a failure in my brain there. And I had I had to get to the point of we tried, we did many therapists, we did you know, I through multiple therapists, and it was just not gonna work. I was like, I can't believe this. This is this doesn't fit in my narrative. I was like, first I get this from my mom, and now I get this. What is going on? I have a book written here of like how I'm going to show everybody that I'm cool and normal and everything else. And life, life has other plans. You have to learn to go with the flow in life, unless it's taking you over the Niagara Falls, swim with the flow and stop trying to create your own. That was all part of that. One of the things I said in the discovery is we had one child at that point, and I was an only child, and we got a cat. I'm like, oh my God, something else is in my space. What's going on? It was, you know, so everything was major for me of adding to there. And my ex wanted a second, and I was like, I'm open to it, but I know in no rush. Um, but after going through burying my mom and doing all that stuff, I was like, okay, I'm on board now because I want our eldest to have somebody to help, because they'll have two people that they have to go through this with, and I don't want them to be alone, you know. And you know, that also didn't ring very well because my ex was like, you're not alone. I'm like, but no, I said, you don't understand. I don't mean alone like you're not helping and you're not here and you were not together. It it's just different when you're attacked, you're the familial attachment to it. So the thing about going with the flow of life, too, and the story is once I found that out and I knew I had siblings, there was credit to my sister who I won't say she she was relentless, but she was persistent or persistent, sporadically persistent in trying to connect because I didn't know, but she knew. In fact, she knew she because of how I knew this man, there was an event we were at all together. After that event, which she was at, she said her mother and father didn't talk because my mom and I came over to the table, and she had been at the event, and she said, I'm at this event, and we're talking. So they're at the event, and she's talking to one of the other executive wives, and she said, I'm standing there, and my dad, you know, didn't take great care of his diabetes, is over at the bar. And then I see the dad I knew when I was six walk up to him, shake his hand, and pat him on the back. And I'm just my jaw drops. And the the other exec's wife turns around and looks and goes, Oh, sweetheart, you're gonna need some drinks tonight. Oh. So she didn't, she was like, there was silence at the table for a long time there. And silence in the car ride home because her and her husband had gone with her father and her mother. And she went back like a week later and to confront him. And they had uh a screaming match, and he wouldn't admit to anything. And finally, he walked out and said, Kidddo, sometimes you're too smart for your own damn good. And he slammed the door and walked out. So she knew, and then when my mom died, we had a wake, a traditional wake. He was in Puerto Rico with his wife on vacation the week it happened, and she came to represent the family. And so I had only heard about the other I'd heard about all three of them, but I'd only heard about the older two sisters who had a lot of problems growing up. There was but police reports and you know drugs and things like that. And again, they just they were troubled. They were troubled. And I talked to she comes and talked to me. I'm like, she's cool. How'd she get so cool? And she's just going on and on about my mom and all the rest. And she said, I just had a little boy, and I hope that we can have the type of relationship that I saw like that you two guys had. So what after I find the picture three months later, I'm like, oh, and I get back from finding the picture, and a week later a letter arrives from her saying, Hey, I just wanted to remind you that if you ever need to talk, I'm here, and going on and on. And I'm like, she knows. But what do I do? So I talked to my family, and they said, Well, there's still a lot going on, and there's a big there's a backstory to me and him, too, that's in the book that is, you know, makes it obvious why I wouldn't immediately just run and connect. And she, I just wrote her a generic one back. Sure, it'd be great to talk in the future and everything else. I didn't want to close the door. It's the late 90s, we're still writing letters, and off it goes. And then nothing after that. I kept that letter. I kept that letter on my work desk, you know, where you sit down, do stuff, or we're reuse it with your laptop. It was there. Every place we moved to, everything else, that letter stayed there. I was like, someday. So I tried like five years later writing to her and she had moved. So I got it rich out. I was like, ah, damn it. So then I'm sitting there and flash forward now, it's 10, it's a decade later, and I'm doing a podcast with a friend of mine, and just two guys, two guys and a mic, and it's a you know, we're trying to be morning show guys. That's what we knew. Not a great podcast, but we're having fun. It's just for fun. We're not trying to monetize. And he comes over one day and he's like, I go, I go, What do you got today, dude? I said, I'm so busy, I don't have anything. What are we gonna do? And he goes, I don't have anything either. I've been slammed out. I said, Well, this weekend's my mom's death date, and I can tell you about the comedy I created in the funeral parlor trying to distract myself, and he's like, Oh my god, it's my dad's death. So we do a death date show and how people will hide from the pain by creating comedy and whatnot. The day after we record that show, out of the blue, I get an email from my sister. That the email comes in and she's like, I'm not sure if this is I Googled you, I'm not sure if this is really you and everything else. If it is, my my son is in high school now. And so I guess it was more than 10 years. It was my son is in high school now, and he is in communications and he needs to interview somebody who's in the industry. And if it is you, it would be great if he could interview you. I was like, Whoa. So I email back, yeah, of course, I'd love. You know, tell your son, yeah, we can set this up and set up an interview and everything else. But at the bottom of her, she wrote, There's so much more to talk about. I write back to her and I wrote at the bottom, I go, Yes, there is so much more to talk about. So I send the email. Five minutes later, an email appears. Great, fantastic, he's excited, we're gonna do this, and if I yes, and if there we that that that's there is so much more to talk. Like we went back and forth like four or five times, but there's so much more to talk about in these emails, and finally I email, just sent an email to her. I said, Look, if there's so much more to talk about is the relationship between your father and my mother, I know. And I sent it to her. If you I said, if you want to talk, I'm here. And I sent it to her. Now there was like 30, 30 minutes. I'm like, oh, uh-oh, maybe that maybe that was a mistake. Maybe that was a mistake. Email comes back, the first words in the email are holy, it's like three lines. Holy shit, you can end the word. And and she goes, I can't believe it. Tears are streaming down my face. I it's this long, long email of just, you know, oh my, I I'm I I have a I have a brother, I can't believe it.

Corey 24:05

That's part one with Rich Berner. We went from three little rooms on Long Island to a Polaroid, a starred Valentine's entry, and a brand new understanding of what your family might be. In part two, we pick up at the moment the past writes back. A letter that sat on Rich's desk for more than a decade turns into an email that says, There is so much more to talk about. You're gonna hear how he connected with a sister who already knew, how anger gave way to empathy, why both of his parents now rest in the same cemetery, and how he turned the whole journey into an audiobook by walking into his studio at 1 in the morning and speaking it into existence. We also dig into the song that scored his healing, Peter Gabriel's Red Rain, and his advice for anyone ready to tell their story out loud. Rich's book is The Not So Only Child. We will link to all the editions in the show notes. See you in part two. And remember, Family Secrets are the ultimate plot twist. The Family Twist Podcast is presented by Savoie Faire Marketing Communications and produced by How the Cow Ate the Cabbage LLC.