My late sister, Bonnie Stevens, insisted that I take a DNA test. That was nearly 15 years ago, I think. I’ve since done additional tests at two places, one of them Ancestry.com.
I was up very early on Sunday morning, and found an alert waiting for me from Ancestry.com announcing a new DNA match.
These are usually distant cousins based on a common relative many generations, and sometimes several centuries in the past. I’ve found several thousand of these, but only a few have known or plausible family connections.
Sunday’s match was different.
Ancestry estimated there is a 94% chance we are half-brothers, and only a 5% chance of a slightly more distant relationship.
So at age 74, I’ve found a previously unknown brother. I’ve edited out his name here, because I have no idea how he will feel about going public with this.
I have to admit that this is a moment I’ve been either hoping for or dreading, depending on which where I am on the ambivalence scale on any given day.
That’s because I was given his name many years ago by a woman, a distant acquantance, who swore me to secrecy. Her brother had been a beachboy, and she had spent a lot of time on Waikiki Beach back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when my dad was the handsome 30-something co-founder and president of the Waikiki Surf Club.
She told me her best friend had become pregnant by my dad somewhere around 1950, and then left for California, where the child was apparently born. My dad supposedly wasn’t told. I did a little research today, and it appears the woman was married at the time, as was my dad.
Complicated.
I wrote his name down when she told me, and years later dove into the records at Ancestry.com and other genealogical sites trying to figure out who his mother was, but the digital trail proved to be very convoluted, and I set it aside as an unconfirmed sibling.
The woman who told me the story died last year. I had never pressed her for additional details.
But here on a quiet Sunday morning it was confirmed courtesy of Ancestry.com.
After the initial shock, I started trying to contact my new brother. I sent a message via Ancestry, but realized those often remain unseen, if my own user experience is any indication.
I found him on Facebook, and tried to introduce myself via Messenger.
Then I spent some time searching (unsuccessfully) for an email address, but found a couple of possible telephone numbers. I texted a mobile number, and still don’t know if it reached him or not.
But on Tuesday morning, I received a tentative email reply. We were both cautious, not sure exactly how to proceed. We started exchanging texts. He’s a rock musician who paid bills by working as a surgical nurse, grew up mostly in California, lived in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district during 1967’s “summer of love”, while Meda and I were at Whitman College. I tried to provide a brief capsule introduction to my–well, our–dad’s history and family, and he’s started filling me in on his family and 70-years of life.
Today we are hoping to connect via Zoom for the first time this morning (this afternoon in Florida, where he now lives).
Digesting all this takes a while, I’m sure.
I suppose you never know what a DNA test is going to deliver.
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Looking forward to hearing about your Zoom meeting.
Thank you for sharing all your wonderful stories with us!
Wow! Looking forward to the next installment.
My girl friend knew her father wasn’t her father but her mother and everyone else refused to talk about it. She did Ancestry and discovered her half family. She was welcomed with loving arms as they had had many other half siblings contact them over the years. Their dad fathered a number of children. I hope you and your half brother enjoy each other.
Ian: great and wonderful story ! A (japanese) classmate of mine did a test and turned out the family had some Ainu ancestry, much to his surprise.
Wow, that’s the kind of stuff you hear or see in movies. I can’t say I actually know someone that experienced a discovery like this. Looking forward to your update after your zoom call.
I agree. I’ve read about other situations like this resulting from the availability of DNA testing. And I have a friend who discovered he had 40-something year old twins who he had not known existed. But, that’s all different from waking up and finding yourself with a brand new brother.
My father was a salesman for a Midwest manufacturer of woodworking machines, used in both factories and school “shop” classes. His territory covered three states, and he usually took a road trip of perhaps a week or longer per month. He was an alcoholic and probably a womanizer who might have left numerous sperm deposits hither and yon. If I have any biological half-siblings, I would regard them as zero-siblings in any spiritual or emotional sense, considering that there has been zero interaction or even awareness of each others’ existence for all these many decades. There is simply no connection other than biological. If any of them, or I, needed an organ or bone marrow transplant, that’s the only sort of reason why I would consider the biological connection to be relevant; but I would feel no greater moral or psychological obligation for me or them to donate money or biological materials than whatever obligation there might be to help any complete stranger. Indeed, “complete stranger” is the correct label for any such never-known-about half-sibling. As we go through life we build or dissolve relationships with others, some deep and others ephemeral, regardless of genetics. Would it be fun to explore nth degree connections x times removed? De gustibus non est disputandum!
Wow! Pretty amazing all around Ian… Wishing you a good “meet up” and at the very least a wonderful new friendship with a ‘distant’ relation. Looking forward to hearing how it goes.
Good luck Ian, this is rather sensitive situation but you two appear to be caring people (he’s a nurse & you’re a writer) so I feel it will go well. Also, your half brother can read your blog at his leisure as a way to get to know you also! Don’t listen to that Ken guy he is such a negative Nellie!
Are you saying that Ken’s comment is negative?
By the way, Ken is a pretty smart guy.
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Ian, why did your late sister “insist” that you have a DNA test 15 years ago? Did she know, or at least suspect, about the half-sibling? And, if your half-brother was linked to you through Ancestry, it means he was also in their system – and likely notified, too. How long has he known about you?
Bonnie pressed me to do the test because she was working on tracing the roots of our Lind family in Scotland. Unfortunately, the test didn’t help much because, it seems, someone “jumped the fence” a few generations ago, and my male DNA line veers off from the Linds beyond that point, somewhere just beyond my great-great-grandfather.
And my half-brother just did the test and showed up in my Ancestry results. I have been in the system quite a few years, while he just did the test.
As I understand it, most of the ancestry sites are owned or controlled by China.
How do you feel about your DNA being in the Chinese database?
As you “understand it” or with solid evidence?
Just genuinely interested, thanks.
From what I’ve looked at, the China angle isn’t true.
Ancestry.com, for example, was bought a few years ago by a large American hedge fund. Not Chinese controlled.
You never think it will happen to you. A similar situation happened to me and I thought that way. At my sister’s insistence, I sent my DNA to Ancestry and it came back with a match! Like you, not a 3rd cousin, but a half sister! So you never know!
A great example of never knowing for sure what a day brings. Obviously opens some doors on a person’s journey in life. A bit of a sad commentary on these times when someone’s politics or who they support impact as an important concern. Blood is thicker than water and the altar of politics is thicker than blood, we might say. Time may be short. Not much else except to note the comment on the intelligence of another contributor being pointed out. I would suggest that intelligence is it’s own measure and not always an indicator of maturity. Also, an affair is not always the opportunity to infer “womanizers.” There are many aspects possible outside of our contemporary shellacking of all human motives.