By Christine Jacobsen*For months after I received the surprise DNA test results that revealed a not parent expected (NPE) event, I was obsessed with research into all things regarding a deceased Black man named Paul Keith Meeres, my biological father.

During the Vietnam War, I was more likely to identify with draft dodgers and conscientious objectors than someone who had actually served in the military, so it was a surprise to find out that Paul Meeres was a Marine in 1943 in World War Two.

Ancestry.com’s extensive records cited his rise in rank from private to sergeant and back to private on the muster rolls, and I was curious about the reason for this military inconsistency. I’d already received his death certificate, so I used it when looking for answers and requesting information from the National Archives.

Discharge papers arrived with a picture of Paul Meeres on his first day of muster. It was sad seeing a photograph of my biofather as a teenager going off to war. He looked so young. I was relieved to learn he was honorably discharged because I was learning about some of his self-destructive behaviors and feared that they might be the cause for a demotion in rank. Unfortunately, there was no information about the demotion. I would need personnel records to obtain that information.

On a beautiful warm day in September 2018, I was in Dumbo, Brooklyn, sightseeing with out-of-town friends. The change in military rank continued to trouble me as I wandered through photography exhibits under the Brooklyn Bridge. Separated from my friends for a moment, I stumbled upon an exhibit by the Marines. I asked Sergeant Bryan Nygaard if he knew how a demotion in rank happens. He asked where my father had been stationed.

When I told him Camp Lejeune and Montford Point, he said with an air of admiration, “Oh, he was a Montford Point Marine!”

He told me that in 1943 the first cohort of Blacks were allowed in the Marines, and that there could have been any number of reasons someone got demoted; racism could be one of them. He gave me his card and said to contact him if I had any further questions.

As I walked away from the Marine exhibit wondering why Sgt. Nygaard seemed so impressed with where my father had been stationed, my first cousin, whom I found on 23andMe.com, called me. She had a close relationship with Paul Meeres, who was her uncle. After we spoke, she texted me a photo of him in the Marines while he was stationed in Japan.

When I got home that day, I resumed my obsessive researching about my paternal line, focusing on the Montford Point Marines.

In 1941, Black civil rights leaders pressured President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue a decree banning discrimination in the defense industry. They threatened to send tens of thousands of protestors to Washington, DC.

Days before the protest march was to take place, President Roosevelt signed an executive order prohibiting government agencies from barring employment in the defense industries on the basis of race, color, national origin or creed. It was the first presidential decree issued on race since Reconstruction.

Thousands of Black men were eager to serve during the Second World War. They enlisted in the various arms of the military, and following this decree were allowed to become Marines. Once Marines, they were sent to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and were stationed at the adjacent segregated base camp called Camp Montford Point.

I thought about my teenage biofather coming from New York and being forced to ride in the segregated area of the train once it crossed the Mason-Dixon line—the indignity of it. And the further injustice of shuttling him and his fellow Marines to the base camp barracks in the backwoods. The segregated base camp was substandard compared to Camp Lejeune: the decrepit buildings were falling apart. When the men left base camp, they were often spat upon. As I became aware of the racism he experienced, I felt a confusing mix of emotions: guilt as a person who’d identified as white and anger reckoning with my new ethnicity.

Then on Wikipedia I saw that 66 years after my father’s tour of duty, President Obama and Congress awarded all 20,000 of the Montford Point Marines the Congressional Gold Medal. The greatest civilian honor Congress can bestow. My hands shook as I sobbed at this on my computer screen.

I knew the family never even knew about or received the awards in 2012. Could it still be given posthumously? I wondered how I could make that happen.

Since Staff Sgt. Nygaard had given me his business card, I reached out to him for advice. He said he would look into it and sent me a photo from military archives dated 1944 depicting the Montford Point Marines at a swimming pool in the camp. A man stood on the high dive looking down at the swimmers. The caption read: Black Marines practice descending cargo nets in Montford Point’s training pool under the watchful eye of Sergeant Paul Meeres (on board) (USMC Photo 8275). I was thunderstruck with pride.

Finally, after I provided the New York Chapter of the Montford Point Marines Paul Meeres’ discharge papers and death certificate, they wanted to present the Congressional Gold Medal to the surviving family at the annual dinner/dance less than two months from then, on November 18th, 2018.

I wasn’t sure why I was so anxious for Paul Keith Meeres to get this medal—whether it was for him, for me, for the legacy of the Montford Point Marines, or all of these. Was it for redemption?  If so, who was being redeemed?

And then I was asked for a biography of my father’s postmilitary life.

Because he had been a minor celebrity, I was able to learn from online photos that after the war he’d had an international dance career; he also had a violent streak. He struggled with sobriety and fathered multiple children he didn’t support or know about, like me. I grappled with the idea of honoring a man who behaved dishonorably at times, but the more I found out about the Montford Point Marines and their struggles with racism and segregation, the more passionate I became about honoring courage and service to country.

“I’m stuck,” I said to my adult son, Alek.

All I’d been asked for was a simple biography of his postmilitary life. At first I thought about writing of his illustrious show business career, but then paused because of his messy, complicated, flawed side. I still had an unrealistic idea about the military; I imagined the attendees at the ceremony would be upright citizens who were morally correct and intolerant of  behaviors they might consider dishonorable.

“What do you mean?” Alek asked. At times like these, when I admit to feeling unsure in front of my son, I feel less like a senior citizen, and more like a confused child.

“I’m embarrassed that Paul Keith Meeres’ life was so out of the normal. I bet the Marines at the ceremony have had education, jobs, marriages, and children they raised. He didn’t do any of those things.”

He asked me, “Do you think any of the Marines or their families have experienced any of these conditions? Have they had alcoholism, violence, and dysfunction in their lives?”

I thought about the foolishness of my assumptions—that because they were Marines they didn’t possess the character flaws and defects we all struggle with. With Alek’s guidance, a layer of humiliation slid off my body. I could still respect Paul Meeres’ service in the military during World War 2 while opening my heart to his humanity. I wrote that biography and a speech because my son was right—the Montford Point Marines and their families would understand, maybe better than any others, the struggle to be human. This was part of my inheritance as the daughter of a Montford Point Marine, a mixed-race woman whose ancestors echoed down to her from the past.

I invited all my newfound relatives to the ceremony, but only my half-sister, Paula, whom I had just met just twice prior to that evening, was able to come. With my husband, Angelo, now four weeks after hip replacement surgery, I picked her up at her house. She wore a glittery top and ruby red lipstick. Alek met us at Antun’s, the venue in Jamaica, Queens.

“Do you want to stand with me during the ceremony?” I asked Paula. We held hands a lot that evening, and later, looking at the video of the event, I noticed I put my arm around her almost instinctually.

The color guard marched in as an Audra Day track of “I’ll Rise Up” played in the background. From the first bar of that song, I tried not to cry.

On easels behind my sister and me were framed declarations from President Obama and the Marines. The medal, nestled in a velvet lined box, was heavy as I held it in my hand.

The inscription read For Outstanding Perseverance and Courage that inspired social change in the Marines Corps.

The tears I tried so hard to hold back flowed down my cheeks as I stepped up to the podium to give my speech:

Nelson Mandela said “what counts in life is not the mere fact that we lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.” The Congressional Gold Medal affirms the significance of the life of Paul Keith Meeres and the other Marines who trained at Montford Point Camp. In this day of increasing intolerance and division in our country, it is heartening to realize that Congress, in 2012, was able and willing to show the national appreciation for the distinguished achievement and contribution the Montford Point Marines gave to American history and importantly, to African American history. The qualities of standing firm despite formidable odds, racism, and inhumane treatment is the mark of a hero, the making of the Montford Point Marines. My family and I are grateful for the patriotism Paul Meeres exhibited and the difference he made in the lives of the Marines who followed him. Semper fi.

After the ceremony, in the photo session, several Montford Point Marines, all in their 80s and 90s, were brought up to pose for pictures with us. One came up to me and said, “I remember Sgt. Meeres. He was my swimming instructor.” It was a great honor to be in their company, to acknowledge the Montford Point legacy, and mark my allegiance to my biological father. We were in a sea of multihued faces and military uniforms and were welcomed into the Montford Point community, descendants of Paul Keith Meeres.

Always faithful.

When the ceremonies were over, the dance floored was cleared and we all boogied to the tune of the Electric Slide, Paula, me, Alek, and Angelo, who stood on the dance floor with us, leaning on his cane.

*Adapted from her book, “Dancing Around the Truth”Christine Jacobsen is a retired school counselor who dedicated 20 years to education in upstate New York. Prior to that she had an engaging, decade-long career in the performing arts, appearing on Broadway and feature films. She’s written for local magazines and school journals highlighting topics of human development. Her debut memoir was inspired by a DNA test surprise, which left her asking herself, “Who Am I?” Follow her on Twitter @Christinesstory and on Instagram @christinefromqueens. 

BEFORE YOU GO…

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By Lana BrammannI recently visited Earth Sanctuary—a perfect place to reconnect with my soul and nature. There I found peaceful ponds, sacred stone circles, a labyrinth, Tibetan prayer and Native American medicine wheels—all nestled in a protected forest.  Perhaps, I thought, it would also be the perfect place to connect with my recently discovered BioDad, Michael,  who passed in 2017. After my NPE (not parent expected) discovery and after having found his family, I understood my gravitation toward all things Native American. Visiting this land, with its sacred Native spaces, had me hopeful and happy for a soulful adventure.

Leaves crunched beneath my feet on the winding path. Deep breaths and deliberate steps… inhale… crunch, crunch, crunch … Exhale… crunch, crunch, crunch. Wearing low-tread sneakers instead of hiking boots was an intentional choice that forced a more mindful gait on the muddy, slightly hilly trail. At each activity location I said a prayer, left an offering, and felt lighter. The Native American prayer place surprised me. It felt familiar, though I’d never been to or seen one. Intuitively, I peeled off my sneakers and socks, then stepped barefoot on the flat rock at the pond’s edge. With hands outstretched and palms up, I closed my eyes and thought of Michael. In my mind’s eye, I had a strong vision of the man whose genes created me. His face was clear from photographs shared by his family. The stories they’d generously shared of his struggles and joy created both peace and sorrow. One deep breath and a tear ran down my cheek. Two breaths, another tear.

I told him how sorry I was that he’d passed before I found him. I explained that for a year and a half I’d begged my mother for information; yet she insisted he was not my father. I asked Michael if he knew I was his child during those two times, 47 years ago, when he came out of his home in an attempt to speak with my mother and peered around her at me. I thanked him for helping me find my new house (it was nothing short of a miracle) and for watching over me, especially as I navigated this traumatic discovery. I purged silent tears and years of sorrow for Michael, the father who created me, and for Skip, the assumed father forced into a teenage marriage then also withheld from me after his divorce from my mother. Tears fell for my mother’s family, who turned their backs, and for both fathers’ families, who have recently enveloped me in love and warmth. Tears fell for puzzle pieces that finally fit together.

As if to indicate I’d overstayed my welcome, a squirrel eventually emerged from the bushes a couple feet from my toes and watched for a few moments before scampering behind me to the place where offerings were left. It’s as if the squirrel was saying, “Okay, that’s enough… go on your way.” I left an offering of sage and thanked Michael and the squirrel before putting on my socks and shoes and continuing along the path.

I took solace in the realization that Michael is in the rustle of wind in the trees, the solitary call of the owl every night at dusk, and the shimmer of the lake. He’s in the notes from my cello, flute, and mountain dulcimer. He’s in the activities that bring me comfort and joy, which seem so foreign to the rest of my assumed family.

His relatives have shared that he was flawed and far from perfect, but a very kind and loving human. He loved nature, was musical, and his soul ran deep with his Native American heritage. He and my mother couldn’t have been more opposite. With this knowledge, certain memories with her take on a different significance. It makes me giggle to recall the time I dragged her on a surprise adventure through two inches of mud for hours of mushroom hunting. What makes the recollection so sweet now is knowing he would have relished the spectacle with impish joy, as my very urban, very perception-conscious mother had no option but to indulge me by investigating fungus in the mud.

Although I didn’t know then I was an NPE, when I was a child I was confused by interests and perspectives different from those of the family in which I was raised. I was kept from Michael, and, ultimately, from Skip, the man assigned the role of father. I’m grateful to Skip for stepping in as a father when he had no obligation to do so, and to Michael’s family for sharing stories, photographs, and accepting me as if I’d been part of their world all along. I just wish I’d met him myself. For a child who had no fathers, who would have thought I’d be blessed as an adult to have had two?Lana Brammann grew up in Orange County, California, where she never quite fit in. She now thrives in caffeinated bliss with the natural abundance of Whidbey Island, Washington. She provides love and sanctuary to unwanted tortoises, retired racing greyhounds, and parrots. The parrots, like Brammann, sometimes say things they shouldn’t. She’s a member of the International Society of Genetic Genealogists. Look for her on Facebook.BEFORE YOU GO…

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• Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
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By Julianne Mangin

Mom’s stories about her family history were like bursts of steam from a pressure cooker—brief, tantalizing, and, at times, disturbing. She started telling me her disconnected anecdotes when I was about eleven years old. The most frequently repeated story in her canon went something like this:

      My mother had an uncle who set her up in business running a delicatessen. During the Great Depression, the business failed. When I was seven years old, my mother became mentally ill and was sent to a mental hospital. I was taken from my father and put into the county home.

In just a few sentences, Mom would sum up a family tragedy that was Dickensian in proportion: a girlhood weighted down by financial disaster, her mother’s insanity, and separation from her father. When she finished telling the story, Mom would evade the inevitable questions the story prompted with facile explanations and the occasional shoulder shrug. Although she admitted that her father had divorced Grandma while she was in the mental institution and that he had never tried to get my mother out of the county home, Mom professed that Grandpa had been the most wonderful father ever. It made no sense to me.

Mom became interested in genealogy a few years after Grandpa’s death in 1966. Over the years, she worked on it intermittently while she and Dad raised six children. Genealogy didn’t interest me. Looking at the pedigree charts and family group sheets filled out in Mom’s distinctive scrawl, I was unable to make any more sense of the past than I had by listening to her stories. After all the work she’d done, I expected that they would have become more detailed and connected. But Mom continued to tell the same old tales, which were unaltered by anything that she might have uncovered in her genealogical research.

What I wanted was a more coherent narrative of Mom’s childhood. A lifetime of listening to her brief and disjointed stories hadn’t given me that, so I had no expectations of getting it out of genealogy. It wasn’t until I was in my fifties that I gave her genealogy a closer look.

In 2011, I retired from the Library of Congress. Around the same time, Mom, then a widow, went into assisted living. The unit was too small to accommodate her genealogy research, which was stored in boxes full of binders and file folders, pedigree charts and census sheets, certificates and photographs. All of that came to my house, where I stored it in my basement, intending to hang on to it until someone in the family expressed an interest in genealogy. But the librarian in me couldn’t resist peeking into the boxes and organizing what was there. I didn’t know at the time that I was on a slippery slope from being a reluctant genealogist to a relentless family historian.

There was something fishy about Mom’s research. For all the years that she’d worked on it, there were surprising gaps, especially regarding events from her childhood. There was nothing about Grandma’s time at the state hospital, except for its name: Norwich State Hospital. After a brief Internet search, I located the hospital records department at the State Archives at the Connecticut State Library and I requested Grandma’s patient record. After proving I was her descendant, I received not only her record, but those of three other women in the family who had been patients there. Following the clues in the records, I was able to upend some of Mom’s stories, especially the one about the delicatessen, the mental hospital, and the county home.

In Mom’s version of her family history, her parents had separated in 1922, not long after they married. However, her father returned, as she put it, “when he found out that I was on the way.” The truth was it was Grandma who had left Grandpa and went to live with her married aunt. They were separated for two years. In 1924, Grandma announced that she was pregnant. Her aunt’s husband—the uncle in Mom’s story—set her up to run a delicatessen where she and Grandpa could live together in the apartment over the deli. The family lore was that they had continued to see each other during their separation.

What I found in Grandma’s patient record was a different story. She told the hospital staff that her uncle by marriage had forced her into a sexual relationship. “He said it was nothing as we were relations and I felt it was the only way out.” The moment I read her statement, I suspected that the uncle might be my mother’s father rather than Grandpa. I surmised that my grandparents were probably set up in the delicatessen to deflect suspicion that anyone else might be Mom’s father.

Mom was born in 1925 and spent her early years living at the delicatessen. During that time, Grandma began to exhibit the psychotic symptoms that eventually got her committed to the state hospital. She laughed and cried inappropriately, accused Grandpa of having sex with other women, and physically assaulted him. My heart went out to my mother—a toddler with a mother whose mind was spiraling out of control.

In 1931, the delicatessen failed. According to Mom, it was due to the Great Depression. Grandma told the hospital staff that after nine years she finally told her uncle she wouldn’t have sex with him anymore. His response? He threw Grandma and her family out of the delicatessen—including the daughter he must have suspected was his own.

Grandma continued to accuse Grandpa of cheating on her. Her delusions about his infidelity were perhaps symptoms of her paranoid schizophrenia. Grandpa, for his part, was a disabled World War I veteran who suffered from shell-shock (now known as PTSD). He didn’t know how to handle her rantings or his own violent impulses. Their marriage devolved into physical abuse. In 1933, Grandma told him about the relationship she’d had with her uncle, which meant the violence only got worse. Mom, eight years old at the time, probably witnessed many of their fights. I cringed the first time I realized that she may have heard Grandpa say that she wasn’t his child.

In 1935, her parents had a terrible fight, after which Grandma was sent to the state hospital. Mom was taken away to the county home for her own safety. Until the age of ten, Mom had lived in a household full of violence and secrets. As tragic as this story is, I was glad to learn the truth. Finally, the stories Mom told made sense. Of course she had to insist that Grandpa had been a wonderful father and that it wasn’t his fault that the state wouldn’t let him raise her. To think otherwise would have meant acknowledging the pain of having been abandoned by him. If she suspected that the uncle had been her father, she was dealing with a second fatherly abandonment and a great deal of shame as well. This might explain why she’d been so rigid about the details of her story. 

In July 2013, I sent a sample of my DNA to Ancestry.com to find out who Mom’s father was—Grandpa or the uncle. In April 2014, I got a DNA match that answered this question. Ancestry estimated that this match and I were 1st or 2nd cousins. When I looked at her tree, I saw that her great-grandparents were the parents of Grandma’s uncle-by-marriage. The only way we could be second cousins was if these were my great-grandparents, too.

In her book, The Secret Life of Families: Truth-telling, Privacy and Reconciliation in a Tell-all Society, Evan Imber-Black, PhD, says, “Living with a toxic secret can feel like living in a pressure cooker. The need to tell the secret can build and build until it explodes in an unplanned and hurtful way. Or the secret can leak out through seemingly inadvertent clues that force someone else to discover it.” In Mom’s case, the principal leak in her story was that whenever she talked about her childhood, she never failed to mention the uncle who had set Grandma up in the delicatessen. She never had anything else to say about this uncle. After researching the secret I found in Grandma’s patient record, I realized that the uncle didn’t just set her up in business and then walk away from it. As her boss, he would have been a weekly, if not daily, presence at the delicatessen. There would also have been the times he came to Grandma to demand sex from her. If Mom had found it necessary to erase him from the story of her childhood at the delicatessen, why hadn’t she erased him entirely?

Mom’s insistence on naming the uncle in her story calls to mind Chekhov’s famous advice to writers: “Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.” Mom knew, consciously or not, that the uncle in her story held great significance. And because he was always mentioned, it was only natural that this uncle would be one of the relatives whose story I would verify once I set out to explore the family’s past. My research took the proverbial rifle off the wall, and by sharing what I learned, I fired it.

My mother, who passed away in 2017, endured a dysfunctional family and was separated from her parents at the age of ten. Still, she somehow managed to thrive. She earned two college degrees and had a 56-year marriage with the kind of stability that she’d never experienced as a child. It was no wonder Mom always emphasized the importance of education. It had been her ticket out of poverty and dependence on the state. 

However, she was not a warm or emotionally supportive mother. But now, when I look at her family history, I ask myself: What were her parental role models? She had a schizophrenic mother, an absent father, and surrogate parents she shared with dozens of children at the county home. I learned through Grandma’s patient record that she too had a mentally ill mother, a missing father, and had been sent away from the family home. I’m grateful that Mom managed not to repeat this pattern for my generation. She was the best mother she could have been under the circumstances. But there was often tension between Mom and me—tension that might have been alleviated if we’d been able to discuss the family trauma.

Julianne Mangin is a family history researcher, blogger, and former librarian and web developer at the Library of Congress.  Since her retirement in 2011, she’s been uncovering genealogical and local history mysteries. Mangin lives in Silver Spring, Maryland with her husband Bob, an artist. For more information about Mangin, check out her blog. 

By B.J. OlsonI was born William Joseph Olson in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on September 27, 1979, when my mother was only 20 years old. Because she’d been intimate with two men, she couldn’t be certain who my father was. One of the men, Brent, had been her senior prom date, and the other, Howard, was eleven years older—a man she saw when he was home on leave from the military. Her father despised him, and though she prayed he wasn’t my father, she suspected he was, thinking she remembered the night I was conceived: Christmas Eve 1978.

Howard had already been married and had a daughter, but my mother believed he was divorced at the time she became involved with him. A dental technician, he was the older brother of my mother’s close friend Alice from high school. During his visits to Lennox, he’d take my mom out on dates, usually to the races. When he wasn’t drunk, my mother says, he was a great guy.

When it came time for my mother to fill in the birth certificate, she chose to leave the father’s name blank. That decision profoundly influenced my life and my self image.

As a poor single woman, she needed state assistance, but the state required her to provide the name of the person who might be my father. She named Brent, but a DNA test ruled him out. That could only mean the man my grandfather despised—Howard—was my father.

When the state agency again asked for the name of a potential father, she then gave them Howard’s name and tried to reach out to him directly before the state would. Howard did everything he could to avoid contact with her. In 1983, she wrote to his commanding officer in the Army, where he was stationed at the time. He wrote back on January 23, 1984 to assure her he would take care of the situation. A week later, she received a letter from Howard’s lawyer telling her not to contact Howard directly again and advising her that all further communications had to be directed to his legal office.

My mother didn’t have the means to hire a lawyer. She’d been under the assumption that since she had to give my father’s name to the state, the situation would be taken care of. It would take the state’s Department of Social Service until August 2, 1996 , when I was just shy of 17 years old, to send a letter to Howard requesting that he take a DNA test to determine paternity.

On January 15, 1997, Howard was finally served papers requiring him to take a DNA Paternity test. The court documents stated that should he be shown to be my father, he’d be responsible for $368 per month in back child support—$79,488—along with half of all medical bills accrued for a problematic birth, tonsil surgery, and a five-day intensive care stay for a concussion I suffered playing football, not to mention all the miscellaneous doctor, dentist, and eye appointments. Another letter, dated March 6, 1997, indicated that he’d be permitted to take the test in Huntsville, Alabama at the Columbia Medical Center and that he wasn’t required to report for the test until April 10, 1997. It took almost six weeks until Howard received a letter from Social Services excluding him as my father.

It was bad enough that my mother was an unmarried woman in a small town, but now, with the only men she’d ever been with ruled out by DNA, she had no clue who my father was. For the next 20 years, she believed she must have been drugged and raped and thus couldn’t recall who the father was. She couldn’t think of another explanation. This had a powerful impact on her, affecting her ability to trust others and contributing to bad decisions in her relationships with men.

I grew up very ashamed of not knowing who my father was. I feared meeting new people who would ask who my parents were. I never had a full answer. People who haven’t experienced this would be surprised how many times you get asked about your dad. I dreaded the first day of school every year when we would have to stand up and tell the entire class about ourselves. I would try to avoid the topic of my father, but it never worked. Until I was 38 years old, I felt my mother was always hiding something from me. I wasn’t sure who she was protecting or trying to protect me from. Naturally, I resented her because I felt she was the reason I didn’t have a dad.

On August 12, 2015, an Ancestry.com commercial lured me into spending $88.95 on what I referred to as my spittoon of hope. Finally, I thought, there was technology that might answer some questions. I was so excited the day the box arrived that I spat in the vial as soon as I was able to muster the saliva. I registered the kit, sent it off, and patiently waited for the results. When at last they came in, my excitement quickly died because there were only distant matches which meant nothing to an amateur like me. I logged off Ancestry.com and once again began to look at every man roughly 20 years older than me and wonder if he was my father.

Nearly three years later, on March 17, 2018, my daughter wondered how substantial our Irish bloodline was, so I logged back in to look at my results. My jaw dropped. I had a new first cousin match, Joanna, whom I didn’t know. I immediately called my mother to ask who the heck she was. A few days later, I received a message through the Ancestry app from Joanna’s daughter, who managed her DNA test. After communicating with her, I learned that Joanna had been raised to believe her grandmother was her mother and her mother was her sister. But in fact, the woman she thought was her sister was her mother. She’d had an affair with Howard’s father when she was very young. Because of her age, her mother decided to raise the child who resulted from that union—Joanna—as her own. Joanna, then, although she didn’t learn about this until much later in life, was Howard’s half sister. The existence of this close match seemed to lend weight to the idea that Howard was my father, but since Joanna was only a half sister, it left room for doubt.

My mother and I were astounded by this discovery and had many questions. We needed to dive deeper. To confirm this Ancestry.com match, my mother reached out to her high school friend—Howard’s younger full sister—who agreed to take a test from Health Street, a Lab Corp company. On April 20, 2018, the results demonstrated that she and I were a 99.9718% relative match.

Although I finally had confirmation about who my father was, I also then knew the sad truth that I’d never get to meet my biological father. If my father had been someone other than Howard, there might have been I chance I could have met him. But Howard had died in Sioux Falls, on April 5, 2010, less than 10 miles from where I lived at the time. Immediately I was angry and I wanted more answers!

Once I knew I was certainly related to Howard, I felt more confidence about contacting his famiIy. I knew he had a daughter and I reached out to try to find out more about him and to see if she’d take a test that would further confirm that we were siblings. Within minutes of receiving my message, she emailed me the original 1997 DNA test results from her deceased father and asked me not to contact her again. It struck me as odd she responded so quickly and happened to have that documentation, which I now knew was erroneous, at the ready.

Since I got nowhere trying to get information from my sister, I thought I’d connect with other members of my biological family. I’d known these people all along. Lennox was a small town of roughly 1,000 people when I grew up there. My family owned the local hair salon. Everyone knew everyone. Howard’s mother—whom I now know to be my grandmother—was our cleaning lady. His brother was our garbage man. His sister-in-law was my music teacher. The catcher on my baseball team and a classmate throughout all four years of high school were my cousins. I had relationships with all of these people prior to knowing that Howard was my father. Once I’d made my discovery, they all shut me out.

I had uncovered a big secret that no one wanted to talk about. The family had a pact, created by Howard’s closest brother Harry, to avoid all contact with me and my mother. Except for Joanna, all family members I discovered ultimately rejected me.

Even though all signs led to Howard, I continued to seek further evidence that he was my father. Since my relatives wouldn’t cooperate, I hired a genealogical private investigator who tracked my ancestry back a couple hundred years. The genealogical trail led to the same conclusion as did the DNA—that my ancestors were Howard’s family. It indicated that my grandparents were Howard’s parents, which meant that one of their sons was my father. But, like Howard’s daughter, none of his brothers would speak with me.

After I hired the investigator, Howard’s daughter sued me for $50,000.00 in the state of Texas for invasion of privacy and for stating that Howard had an illegitimate son. She noted this caused her and her family anguish. Just as her father had decades earlier, she tried to use lawyers to silence me.

I did not cave. I fought back to have her drop the suit. After I spent several thousand dollars in lawyer fees she finally did, and I made it clear to the family that I will not let this rest until I get the answers I deserve.

I’m not looking to expand my family, get invited to more family events that I don’t have time for, or even to take my father’s name. I just want an identity. I want my story to be known. I want to draw attention to the errors and deception that affect how vital records are created and maintained and assert that we should have the ability to correct vital records based on science.

I have been denied access to my father’s family history, his military benefits, and his medical history. I will continue to use my loud voice until I can make a change for everyone whose rights have similarly been denied. I intend to work to bring awareness about the situation of NPEs—to change laws to give NPEs the right to correct their birth records based on scientific evidence.

Since I have come forward with my story on my Facebook page @deniedaccessDNA and website DeNiedAccess,  dozens of people have come forward to share similar stories. I’m not alone in this battle, and I look forward to the day when people realize the truly innocent victims are the those who did not ask to be born and who are just trying to clean up everyone else’s mistakes. There is no QUIT in my DNA!!!

By Cory GoodrichI look in the mirror now and I see the face I have always seen — same Disney princess eyes, same prominent nose. The hair color changes with my whim, but it’s still mine, straight, fine, and always out of control.

I look in the mirror, but now I also see someone else’s face staring back at me. His face. It unnerves me.

By the time I was born, my mother already had three children who looked strikingly like their father: blond and angular, small eyes, narrow nose. When I emerged, the doctor took one glance and said, “Well Ernie, you finally got one that looks like you!”

She repeated this over and over throughout my life: You look like your mother. She wanted that story etched deep in my brain so that when I questioned my dark hair, my unusual nose, or my short, curvy build so unlike my lanky siblings’, I would say, oh, that comes from Mama.

But it didn’t.

Those features came from my father. My real father. The man who was not the same father as the one my brothers and sister had. The truth was as plain as the nose on my face. Literally. My nose was the Garnett nose, not the Goodrich nose — and my mother knew it. In order to conceal that obvious truth, she built her own narrative so that when I questioned the differences I secretly suspected on a deep, unconscious level, she could repeat it as a mantra. You look like me, you look like me, you look like me.

I discovered the truth shortly after my fifty-first birthday. I was the result of an affair and everyone in my family knew that I was not really a Goodrich. Everyone but me.

And so now, when I stare at my face in the mirror, I see his features, not my mother’s, not even my own. I marvel that this newfound knowledge has the power to change my self-perception so entirely, even though I have been me for half a century. Why should learning that my father was not the man who raised me have the power to change how I see myself — to throw me into an identity crisis of epic proportions?

Damned if I know.

I look through my childhood photos, searching for clues, or maybe to try to find the person that I used to be, and I’m struck by how sad “little Cory” always appears. I think back to those formative years and I remember that ever-present sense of loss and sadness that I always felt but could never understand.

Children intuit things. They are so much more observant and aware than we give them credit for. There was a part of me that knew I was different from my siblings, but I didn’t understand why, and then I would feel guilty for even having those feelings. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t fit in? Why did I think of myself as an outsider? Why did I self-inflict so much of the blame for my parents’ eventual divorce?

Because I knew, deep down, that my very existence was the reason. Because children know.

I look at my childhood photos and I see the little girl that I was and I want to hug her. I want to comfort her and tell her, It’s not your fault.

I want to tell her that she feels different because she is different, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t belong.

I want to tell her she is a gift, a miracle, a blessing that came from the love between two people — and just because those two people didn’t end up living happily ever after together doesn’t change that. She is their happily ever after.

I want to hold her and say, You are not the cause of your parents’ divorce. They have their own lives to live, their own choices to make. This is not on you.

I’d tell her she will grow up to be an empathetic warrior chick who writes and sings and paints and acts and has two little girls of her own that she protects fiercely. She will be a good mother. I’d tell her: You are going to be okay. You are loved.

And then I realize, all these things I would gladly say to my childhood self my fractured adult self needs to hear too. Can I look at my reflection — at my Franken-Cory mixture of DNA — and give her the same compassion? Can I say those same words to myself?

This will become my mantra. It’s not your fault. You’re going to be okay. You are loved.— Cory Goodrich is an actress, singer-songwriter, painter, writer, autoharp player, and collector-of-weird-instruments who lives in the Chicagoland area. Check out her website, blog, and recordings at www.coryshouse.com and her paintings on Instagram@corygoodrich.Severance is not monetized—no subscriptions, no ads, no donations—therefore, all content is generously shared by the writers. If you have the resources and would like to help support the work, you can tip the writer.

On Venmo: @Cory-Goodrich

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