Finding Family

by Richard Hill

  “Never,” he replied. “She just stopped working at the bar and I never saw her or heard from her again.”

  Conrad only learned of the pregnancy when one of Jackie’s girlfriends stopped by to tell him. His response was direct.

  “If she thinks it’s mine, she knows where to find me.”

  He never heard from Jackie. But he did hear about her death in the Jeep accident.

  Conrad’s story made it clear that Jackie had not been completely truthful with the court. Besides her obvious lie about Conrad being a coworker at Wall Wire, she had stretched the relationship to six months and claimed Conrad was the one who wasn’t ready to marry.

  Jackie’s modifications to the story all made her look better. The fear of losing custody of Mike apparently weighed heavily on her testimony.

  Conrad and I continued to talk for awhile, filling each other in on our lives and families. Since he never had any children, he said he would be thrilled to have a son.

  That meant a lot to me. I knew that some birth parents did not appreciate being found by the children they had conceived. I had been praying for a positive reception—and it looked like my search would turn out to be a good thing for everyone involved.

  I learned that Conrad had worked most of his career as an industrial engineer. He had even worked at the General Tire plastics plant in Ionia from 1978 to 1980.

  That surprised me. But Conrad never lived in my hometown. When he was working in Ionia, he lived in Lowell, another small town about fifteen miles to the west.

  Conrad’s lifelong hobby had been ballroom dancing. He had spent much of his free time in ballrooms until his wife had to quit for health reasons three years earlier. He also played the organ.

  Once again, I thought about nature versus nurture. I could dance and had played saxophone in high school. But I was barely average at both pursuits. If my birth father had a gene for dancing or music, I never got it.

  Conrad was still active in retirement. He bowled twice a week in the winter and played golf in the summer. I envisioned a great foursome: my father, my brother, my son, and myself.

  We agreed to meet the following Sunday, January 7, 1990, at a restaurant called Bummies in Adrian. Excitedly, I marked it on my calendar and counted down the days.

  22

  DOUBTS

  When I returned to work the next business day, I called City Hall in Livonia. I figured someone there could find out the name of the bar that had occupied the corner of Plymouth and Stark in the 1940s. The person I spoke with promised to look into it.

  Coming out of a meeting that afternoon, I found a pink phone-message slip on my desk with the following message from Livonia City Hall: “The name of the bar at that corner was Dann’s Tavern.”

  I smiled, wondering what our receptionist must have thought when she took that call.

  Sunday came and Pat and I decided to leave the kids at home for our trip to Adrian. This was more of a fact-finding mission than a social event. We could end up sitting in the restaurant all afternoon. If Conrad were indeed my father, there would be other opportunities for them to meet him.

  We arrived at Bummies a little early, choosing a booth where we could watch the door and wait for Conrad to arrive.

  I was anxious. Even though he was much shorter, I hoped to see something of myself in his face. I wanted an instant jolt of recognition where I could say without a doubt that this man was my father.

  It didn’t happen.

  At the scheduled time, a short man of average build walked in and scanned the room with his eyes. His behavior told me it had to be him. But his looks said nothing.

  I walked toward him and he smiled. I confirmed it was Conrad and we shook hands. He joined us in the booth where Pat and I sat on one side and he sat across from us.

  The lack of physical resemblance was not a problem, I told myself. Lots of men don’t look much like their fathers. We are, after all, a blend of both parents.

  After the waitress took our lunch orders, Conrad apologized for meeting at the restaurant instead of his home. His wife was fearful that I was out to rob her of Conrad’s estate. He felt she would accept me eventually, but she had high blood pressure and was in poor health. He did not want to upset her by bringing me to the house.

  I assured him that I had no such intentions and suggested there might be some kind of legal document I could sign to eliminate her fears. Conrad said that would not be necessary.

  The first thing we did was share pictures. I had brought Jackie’s photo, so Conrad could confirm that she was the one he had dated. I also gave him some photos of myself as a child and as a younger man. Conrad gave me two photos of himself, one of them from roughly the time of my birth.

  Since there was no overall similarity in our appearance, we focused on the minutia of hair, eyes, noses, chins, and ears. We found some common features, but I feared that might have been as much from wishful thinking as any real resemblance.

  I was disappointed that we did not look more alike, but I kept my feelings to myself.

  Conrad retold the story of meeting Jackie at the bar when he took the bartending job. She only worked on Saturday nights.

  I asked if the name of the bar was Dann’s Tavern. He had not heard that name since he’d left the job more than forty years ago, but after hearing “Dann’s,” he confirmed that was it.

  Conrad told us again how he loved Jackie, but she had continued to go out with other guys and would not marry him.

  They did not have any common friends that he could remember. Conrad noted that he and Jackie were both heavy drinkers. I mentioned that Jackie’s mother and father both had their problems with alcohol. So that didn’t surprise me about her.

  Then Conrad revealed that he was an alcoholic. He had been clean, however, since 1963.

  I had heard that alcoholism was partly genetic. With all the alcoholics in my family tree, I wondered how I had dodged that bullet. A light drinker, I had never been drunk in my life.

  Conrad then told us about his family. He had a sister three years older and a brother ten years younger. At five foot eight, Conrad was the tallest one in his family. His father had been five foot six.

  My mind struggled with that fact. For decades, the birth father of my fantasies had been a tall man.

  One of my goals had been to get some medical history. So Conrad filled me in on his health issues and those of his parents and siblings.

  I noticed some small coincidences in Conrad’s personal history. Like my adoptive father, Conrad had been a member of the Elks Club. And like my adoptive mother and my wife, Conrad’s mother and sister had been beauticians.

  After nearly two hours together, Conrad told me he would be proud to have me as a son. I said the same about him as a father. It looked like my search was going to have a perfect ending.

  But then Conrad voiced his doubts.

  “I have to tell you,” he said, “I don’t know if it’s possible for me to be your father.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Because,” he noted glumly, “I believe I’ve been sterile since World War II.”

  Conrad went on to explain that he had been married a total of four times. Even through his last three wives all had children in prior marriages, he could never father a child.

  He had long ago concluded that his lengthy exposure to radar emissions was the cause. If that were true, he was already sterile by the time he met Jackie.

  Before I could absorb this depressing news, Conrad had a suggestion.

  “I think we should do the test that Coleman Young did.”

  Coleman Young was the first African-American mayor of Detroit. A former girlfriend had sued him for child support for her six-year-old son, and a DNA test recently had confirmed that Coleman was the father.

  Thanks to extensive news coverage, just about everyone in Michigan had heard about DNA testing.

  I had to agree that Conrad was right. He had a good reason to be skeptical. And I wanted to be ab
solutely certain I had found my birth father. Jackie had lied about certain details in her testimony to the court. Maybe she named the wrong man.

  I quickly agreed to look into a DNA paternity test. Since I was the one doing the searching, I offered to pay for it.

  We left the restaurant together and said our good-byes in the parking lot. Having brought a camera, I had Pat take pictures of Conrad and me standing together.

  The photos would show us looking pretty happy. I wondered if we’d be that happy after our DNA test.

  23

  PATERNITY

  As soon as we returned home from the meeting with Conrad, I called Jeanette. She was anxious to hear how it had gone and I happily filled her in. However, the possibility of Conrad’s sterility concerned her.

  Jeanette explained that I might be able to avoid the cost of a DNA test if we knew everyone’s blood type. While that could not prove Conrad was my father, it might prove that he wasn’t.

  That’s because certain blood type combinations are impossible. For example, my blood type is B. If Jackie happened to be A or O, my father would have to be B or AB, because my B had to have come from one of them.

  First order of business: did Conrad know his blood type? If he did, we could try to find documentation of Jackie’s blood type from the hospital records where she gave birth to my brother, Mike.

  Since Conrad had been in the Army, his blood type would have been checked when he entered military service. In fact, it would be on his dog tags. I called him and explained what we were trying to do.

  Unfortunately, Conrad did not know his blood type. And forty-five years after his discharge, he had no idea what happened to his dog tags.

  On Monday, Conrad called his doctor’s office and learned they had no record of his blood type. When he called me back with that news, I promised to set up the DNA paternity test.

  I searched for a DNA testing lab and found one in Okemos, Michigan, a few miles east of Lansing. The location was perfect, roughly halfway between my home and Conrad’s.

  I called the lab and they answered all my questions. Yes, they could check paternity with just the child and the presumed father. They did not need to include the mother.

  Good thing, I thought, since she had now been dead for forty-three years.

  This was certainly the test we needed. When they told me the price, however, I nearly dropped the phone. Testing the two of us would cost six hundred dollars…and I had offered to pay for the test.

  This may not seem like a great deal of money today, but in 1990, it was a king’s ransom to me.

  Pat and I talked it over and both of us reached the same conclusion: we had come so far that we wouldn’t—no, couldn’t—abandon our mission now. We would continue to forge ahead. By this time, I think we were both obsessed with learning the truth.

  With Conrad’s possible sterility hanging over the relationship, I could not simply assume that he was my father. Yet he was the man Jackie had identified as such. So I could not write him off, either.

  After checking some possible dates with Conrad, I made the appointment for Tuesday, February 27, at 11 a.m. He and I met at the lab and they drew our blood. In about four weeks, they would mail the results to both of us. Four…long…agonizing…weeks.

  After giving them our blood, Conrad and I found a nearby restaurant and had lunch together. It felt nice talking one-on-one with the man who might well be my biological father. We took our time and learned a lot more about each other.

  For example, I discovered that Conrad had attended college twice, once in engineering and once in accounting. But he quit each time without getting a degree.

  Since retiring, Conrad had owned a small apartment complex. A recent back injury now prevented him from using ladders and he had just sold the building.

  After our leisurely lunch, we shook hands, got in our cars, and went our separate ways.

  As expected, the next four weeks dragged. I wanted Conrad to be my birth father. I mean, I genuinely liked the guy. What’s more, nearly nine years had passed since I began my search. Having already invested so much time and money in finding him, I dreaded the possibility of a negative result.

  On March 24, 1990, Pat called me at my office. The day’s mail had arrived and there was an envelope from the DNA lab. I told her not to open it.

  I had waited so long for this moment that I had to read the results with my own eyes. Although I’m ordinarily a patient man, this day was an exception. I ducked out of work early and rushed home.

  When I arrived, Pat handed me the envelope. My hands were almost trembling. This was the biggest moment of my search since meeting my brother.

  Inside was a single sheet of paper with a table of unfamiliar numbers and letters. On a few rows, the word “Exclusion” appeared in the far right column. Below the table was a brief explanation of the results.

  On one genetic marker, I did not have a particular value that Conrad must transmit to his children. On two other markers, a value that had to have come from my biological father was missing in Conrad’s DNA.

  In sum, the test proved—with absolute certainty—that Conrad was not my father.

  While my search had gone pretty well to this point, inching closer and closer to the truth, this was a gigantic setback.

  For nine years, I had been chasing the short Polish man that Jackie claimed was my father. Now that I had found him—and discovered he was a charming, intelligent gentleman—a DNA test proved he was not my father.

  Tremendously deflated, I started to feel sorry for myself.

  Then I remembered Conrad. He was counting on this test to give him the child he never thought he could have. Immediately, I got on the phone and called him. Yes, he had already opened the day’s mail.

  Even though Conrad was also disappointed, he was not nearly as surprised as I was. His conviction that he was sterile had grown stronger with every childless year. This clinched it.

  I told Conrad I was sorry about the way this turned out and he said he was, too.

  “You’re a hell of a guy,” he said.

  I could already feel the loss deep in my gut. It was like—at long last—I had found my father. And then, just like that, I lost him again.

  To his credit, Conrad helped me refocus on the search by making a suggestion. When he was dating Jackie, she had roomed with another girl at the boarding house in Plymouth. Conrad could not remember the girl’s name, but he did recall that she had a Southern accent.

  If I could find her, she might have been close enough to Jackie to know the name of my real biological father.

  Thinking along the same lines, I asked Conrad if he could remember the name of anyone who worked with him and Jackie at Dann’s Tavern. He could not. He did remember that the bar’s owner was a guy in his thirties.

  “Was that Dann?” I asked.

  “No,” Conrad said.

  He was sure the owner was not named Dan or Dann. Whoever gave the bar its oddly spelled name was long gone by the time Conrad first walked in the door.

  Before we hung up, Conrad and I agreed to stay in touch. But deep down, I think we both knew the basis for our relationship had evaporated. He was merely a man who had known and loved my mother for a short time during her short life. We were not related in any way.

  24

  COOKIE GIRL

  Learning that Conrad could not be my father was a thunderous blow to my spirits. Pat tried to cheer me up with humor.

  “At least you’re not a Polack,” she joked.

  Not funny, I thought. Besides losing the man I was beginning to accept as my biological father, I had also lost 50 percent of my ethnicity. If I wasn’t Polish, what was I? Maybe Dad was right all those years ago when he joked that I was a Heinz.

  Another question began to nag at me. If Conrad was not my father, why on earth was his name in my adoption file? Obviously, the name came from Jackie. But why would she name the wrong man?

  Pat and I talked it over and concluded there we
re only two basic answers: either Jackie made a mistake or she deliberately lied.

  The first scenario suggested that Jackie was intimate with another man at roughly the same time as her relationship with Conrad. By the time she realized she was pregnant, many weeks would have passed and it may have been impossible for her to know which man was responsible. She had to guess and got it wrong.

  The second scenario had Jackie falsely naming Conrad because the truth was more embarrassing. That would probably mean that my birth father was a married man.

  Either of these possibilities could explain why Jackie never told Conrad about her pregnancy. She knew, or at least suspected, that he was not really the father of her second child.

  My search had identified a number of men who Jackie dated in the two and a half years between her separation from Leonard and her death in the Jeep accident. As far as I knew, no one on my current list had been married at the time.

  Thinking back, I had been able to eliminate a few of those men because they dated Jackie at the wrong time. Yet I also dropped others from consideration because they did not have Polish names.

  Thankfully, I had saved all the notes from my countless phone calls, interviews, and other research. I would need to review everything with a fresh perspective.

  Before I could do that, however, Pat reminded me of an incident from many years earlier that I had not even bothered to write down. As soon as she mentioned it, the memory came rushing back to me.

  We had been shopping in a Grand Rapids mall when we stopped at a cookie store. A young girl behind the counter made of big deal of my “surprise” visit. Then realizing her mistake, she explained that I looked just like her boyfriend’s father.

  Naturally curious, I asked if the man was from the Detroit area and she said he was. This got me excited, so I asked if he was Polish. She laughed and said he was not. I then identified myself as adopted and explained that my unknown father was Polish. Convinced that the resemblance was merely a coincidence, we went on our way.