Finding Family

by Richard Hill

  A search for “Livonia genealogy” led me to the Western Wayne County Genealogical Society. I submitted an e-mail inquiry with what I knew about Doug and Jack Richards. The organization’s secretary responded with a number of search tips and promised to ask members with e-mail addresses if they knew of these men.

  Within a couple days, I received an e-mail from a genealogist named John. He remembered a Vernie Richards from the Joy Bar who had been an instructor at the Henry Ford Trade School in Dearborn.

  Continuing the e-mail exchange with John, I learned that Vernie and his wife were deceased, but they had a daughter, Gerry, who lived in a small town west of Detroit. Fortunately, he knew her married name.

  Searching the online phone directory for that area, I found one listing for her last name and dialed the number. The man who answered told me Gerry was his cousin’s wife, but he would not give out her number because it was unlisted.

  Telling him that I wanted to discuss a family history matter, I asked if he would call her and relay my name and phone number. He agreed to do that and, later that same day, my phone rang.

  The caller was Gerry, who asked politely how she could help me. I told her I was trying to find the family of Doug Richards, who had owned Dann’s Tavern in the 1940s. She confirmed that Doug had been her uncle and that her father, Vernie, had owned the Joy Bar.

  “I thought the owner of the Joy Bar was Jack Richards,” I said, somewhat puzzled.

  “My father’s name was Vernie Fletcher Richards,” she explained. “But a lot of people called him Jack. I have no idea where he got that nickname.”

  Gerry went on to tell me that the Richards family was from Texas and her father had four brothers and three sisters. Vernie was the oldest boy and came to Michigan to work for Ford, eventually becoming a teacher at the Henry Ford Trade School. Some of the other brothers followed him here.

  “Which brother raced horses?” I asked.

  “That was my dad,” Gerry replied. “I don’t think Uncle Doc ever got into racing.”

  “Who’s Doc,” I asked.

  Gerry apologized for confusing me.

  “Friends and family referred to Doug as Doc. I can’t explain that nickname, either. The Richards men had a lot of surprising nicknames. Uncle Joe was known as Dick, which as you know, is usually a nickname for Richard.”

  I wrote all this down, certain that I wouldn’t be able to keep these brothers straight in my mind without a written cast of characters.

  Pulling out the Douglas S. Richards obituary, I had her confirm the facts over the phone. Yes, everything in it was true. The Douglas in the obituary was, indeed, her uncle. Her father, Vernie, died just two months after his younger brother did.

  Gerry was friendly and talkative. But it wasn’t long before she got around to the inevitable question.

  “How are you connected to the family?” she asked.

  I told her I was an adoptee searching for my biological roots with evidence that Doug Richards was my birth father.

  Half expecting her to hang up on me, I was pleasantly surprised when Gerry remained friendly and exhibited genuine interest in my story.

  Encouraged to continue, I explained how my mother had been a waitress at Dann’s Tavern in 1945 and had gone out with Doug a couple of times. Then I explained the DNA test that suggested my biological surname was Richards.

  What Gerry said next took my breath away. “Your situation fascinates me because I’ve heard this story before.”

  34

  GERRY

  I was dumbfounded. What on earth did she mean? Had there been a rumor about me in the Richards family?

  It turned out that Gerry was not referring to me at all. Yet the situation she recalled was eerily similar.

  In 1952, her father, Vernie, had fathered a son with a waitress from his bar, the Joy Bar. When Gerry heard from me that her uncle might have also fathered a child with a waitress from his bar, it sounded all too familiar.

  “My dad supported his son financially,” Gerry reflected. “My mother and older sister knew about the boy, but they all kept me in the dark. They thought I was too young and my father did not want to spoil my image of him.”

  “When did you find out?” I asked, thinking again about all the families I had encountered keeping secrets from their children.

  “Just before my dad died in 1986,” she responded. “Then my half brother and his family showed up at the funeral!”

  Gerry went on to say that twenty-one years had passed and her half brother—who looked a lot like her dad—was fully accepted as a member of the family.

  She then shared her feelings.

  “Children are not responsible for the actions of their parents. We have to accept the truth as we find it and move on.”

  I knew Gerry was talking about herself and her brother. Yet her wise words certainly fit my situation as well.

  Gerry then asked about my physical appearance. If she could see me in person, she would know if I were a Richards. She was certain of that.

  Anxious to pursue my only contact with the family, I asked if she would be willing to meet my wife and me. Her curiosity aroused, Gerry suggested we meet at a restaurant near her home the following Sunday.

  Pat and I arrived early and waited for Gerry to arrive. I kept wondering if this possible cousin would look anything like me. When she walked in and looked around, I saw a short, attractive woman with tightly curled, strawberry blonde hair.

  No obvious resemblance there, I thought.

  I greeted her at the door and showed her to the table where Pat was waiting. After a little bit of small talk, she apologized for meeting in a restaurant.

  She explained that her husband had needed a long time to accept her new brother. Predictably, he was less than enthused about her getting involved with my search.

  To summarize her husband’s position, she passed on two of his favorite expressions: “Let sleeping dogs lie” and “Don’t dig up old bones.”

  “Don’t worry,” she went on. “He will get used to you just like he did my brother.”

  “Does that mean you think I’m a Richards?” I asked.

  “There’s no doubt in my mind,” she said.

  That was music to my ears. I already had the circumstantial evidence that Doug had dated Jackie and the DNA evidence that my biological surname was Richards. Now I had Gerry’s assurance that I looked like a Richards.

  Unfortunately, only the first of these three clues pointed directly at Doug Richards…and Gerry was about to muddy the waters.

  “I have to wonder,” she pondered aloud. “Perhaps my dad was your father.”

  “What makes you say that?” I asked, surprised that she would raise that possibility.

  “You’re quite tall and Doug, who we called Doc, was the shortest of the five brothers. My dad was the tallest and I think you look more like him.”

  She could be right, I realized. Vernie, aka Jack, must have been in his brother’s bar from time to time. It was certainly possible—even likely—that Jackie knew him.

  Since both men were dead, father-son paternity tests were not an option. Sadly, I realized that a Y-DNA test of their sons could not settle the issue, either. Vernie and Doug had inherited the same Y-chromosome from their father. Then they passed it on to all their male children, including me. We would all match on a Y-DNA test.

  I asked Gerry if I could see photos of the men. She had some at home and invited us to follow her there.

  When we arrived, Gerry introduced Pat and me to her husband. He was cordial, but he did not join us when we sat down at the kitchen table to look at pictures.

  Gerry had lots of photos of her father, of course, and tall, dark-haired Vernie did remind me a lot of myself. She also had one photo of the five brothers standing together as young men.

  Brothers Vernie, Clyde, Doug, Joe, and Wayne

  “They’re in order of age,” she explained: “Vernie, Clyde, Doug, Joe, and Wayne. All are gone now. And except for Wayne�
��s widow, all their wives are gone.”

  Doug was indeed the shortest. And even though the photo was in black and white, I could see that his hair was a bit lighter than that of his brothers. In my opinion, the three who looked the most like me were Vernie, Joe, and Wayne.

  “Were any of the other brothers living in Michigan in 1945?” I asked.

  “Clyde was here and also married. But he was a schoolteacher and not the kind of man to frequent bars. Joe and Wayne were single then, but I don’t know if they were here or in Texas. I’ll have to look into that.”

  Gerry promised to look for other photos and send me copies by mail. Then she brought out something else for me to see: the Richards family Bible.

  Obviously quite old and beginning to deteriorate, the Bible had belonged to Gerry’s great-grandfather. Born in Alabama in 1835, he had moved to Texas in 1859. Birth and death dates for numerous family members had been recorded by hand in the front and back pages.

  I copied down all of the names and dates. Even though my father’s identity was still in doubt, I now knew the grandfather and great-grandfather in the paternal line. If I could research that line back another generation or two, perhaps I could connect this Richards line to Wiley’s line. Then we would know the common ancestor responsible for our DNA match.

  Gerry and I exchanged e-mail addresses and agreed to work together to solve this mystery. I now had an ally within the Richards family…and she seemed as determined as I was to discover the truth.

  35

  FATHERS AND SONS

  Gerry and I decided to be discreet about my situation until we could determine all the possible birth father candidates and come up with a plan of action.

  Using online genealogy tools, I traced this Richards family from Texas back to Franklin County, North Carolina—the same county where Wiley Richards’s ancestor lived about the same time. This supported my assumption that Wiley was connected to me through Gerry’s family.

  Knowing that the three older Richards brothers lived in or near Livonia at the time Jackie became pregnant, we still needed to learn the whereabouts of the two younger ones.

  Joe had served in the Marines, but Gerry unearthed a photo placing him at a family event in the summer of 1945. He could have gone to the bar owned by his Uncle Doug, aka Doc, and met Jackie. What’s more, a photo of Joe in his Marine uniform bore a striking resemblance to me in my high school band uniform.

  Also, Joe had used the nickname, Dick. If Jackie had known him by that name, she could have suggested the name, Richard, to my adoptive parents. A stretch perhaps, but it was an intriguing thought.

  Wayne, the youngest of the brothers, graduated from his Texas high school in June 1945. Gerry found out from his widow that Wayne spent that summer working for Vernie and Doug in Michigan before returning to Texas to join the Army in September.

  One of Wayne’s jobs was to visit both bars shortly before closing to pick up the day’s receipts. Jackie worked Saturday nights and must have met him. She had an ongoing need for a ride home…and Wayne had access to a car.

  In just a couple weeks, my suspect list had mushroomed from one guy—Doug—to all five Richards brothers. Granted, Doug was Jackie’s employer and any connection between Jackie and the other four was more speculative. But in theory, any one of them could have gotten Jackie pregnant and given me the Y-chromosome that matched Wiley Richards’s.

  Gerry sent me a copy of the five-brother photo, which I scanned and e-mailed to my kids and several others who were aware of my search. I did not identify anyone or provide any clues. I simply asked, on appearance alone, if any of these men looked like they could be my biological father.

  Some people picked one; others thought two of them looked like me. When I added up the votes, Joe and Wayne received seven each. Vernie got three. Doug got one. No one thought it was Clyde.

  All reviewers expressed confidence in their choices. Even my cousin who cast the lone vote for Doug felt strongly about her minority opinion. “Without a doubt, you look like the brother in the center!!!!” she wrote. “It’s amazing, can you see it? He doesn’t appear to be as tall as you, but you could have gotten your height from your uncles.”

  No, I did not see the resemblance she was seeing. Yet I was glad somebody had voted for Doug. After all, he was the only one of the brothers known to have gone out with my birth mother. In my mind, that single piece of evidence made him a more likely candidate than his siblings, who had merely been in the area.

  While the results of my poll were interesting, I knew that opinions on physical appearance could not provide a definitive answer.

  DNA had helped me twice before. A paternity test had eliminated Conrad and a Y-DNA test had pointed me to the Richards family. Could another DNA test tell which of these five brothers had fathered me?

  Although they were all deceased, each man had at least one living son. One would be my half brother and the others would be cousins. It seemed logical that the half brother, with whom I shared a father, should have more DNA in common with me than cousins who only shared a pair of grandparents.

  Searching online, I found a few labs offering a DNA sibling test. The companies I had used for my two prior tests were not among them. I reviewed the two most promising web sites and called each company to discuss my situation.

  Each company offered home test kits for situations that did not have legal ramifications. And each one admitted that results of a sibling test were not always conclusive. If I tested sons of all five men, however, the chances were good that one of them would stand out as my half brother.

  Could I convince five men to take a DNA test for a complete stranger? Since the goal was to discover the father of an illegitimate child, each man would be playing Russian roulette with his father’s reputation.

  I had written many persuasive letters in my career and in my search. But this time, anything less than a 100 percent response rate would be a failure.

  With great care, I prepared a two-page letter. I summarized the historical events and explained how the Y-DNA test, combined with my genealogy research, suggested that my father had been one of these five brothers. I enclosed photos of myself at various ages along with a photo of Jackie. I wanted them to see what Gerry saw—that I looked like a member of their family.

  Next, I explained how the sibling test worked and the painless, at-home sampling procedure. Then I provided the web address of the company I had chosen to do the test. I explained that I would pay all costs of testing and share the results with them.

  In closing, I told each man that I would be trying to reach him by phone in a few days to introduce myself and answer any questions he might have. In case anyone wanted to contact me, I provided my home phone, cell phone, e-mail address, and postal mailing address.

  Gerry gave me the names and mailing addresses of all five men. She also called her half brother and the two cousins she spoke with most often to tell them about me in advance, expressing her opinion that I was definitely a Richards.

  On April 10, 2007, I sent out all five letters and photo sets in Priority Mail envelopes so they would stand out from the usual junk mail. On the following weekend, I began making my phone calls.

  I decided to start with Gerry’s brother, Vern. The situation surrounding his birth was so similar to mine that I felt certain he would be sympathetic.

  A restaurant manager, Vern was living in Alabama. He had received my mailing and was expecting my call.

  Vern agreed with Gerry that I had to be a Richards. He could see himself and Wayne’s son, Dale, in my college graduation photo. He went on to tell me his story.

  He saw Vernie a lot as he was growing up, but thought the man was merely a friend of the family. He was a teenager when an older brother told him that Vernie was his father. Angry at first, he went to military school and then into the Army for six years. Once he got over his anger, he enjoyed a good relationship with Vernie and legally changed his name to Vern Richards.

  Vernie had been a
successful man, owned a large number of racehorses, and always attracted a lot of attention from the ladies. Vern said it would not surprise him at all if his father turned out to be my father.

  Vern had no problem taking the DNA test and said he would be glad to help me.

  One down, four to go.

  The next one I spoke with was Clyde’s son, Dave. A former science teacher who had retired to northern Michigan, Dave was fascinated by the Y-DNA test I had done and the DNA sibling test I proposed to do.

  Having already spoken with Gerry, he was on board with the idea of me being a member of the family and was quite willing to be included in the sibling test. He thought I looked a lot like his Uncle Vernie.

  We both agreed that Dave’s father was the least likely of the brothers to have been involved with Jackie. Gerry had already described Clyde as a schoolteacher who did not spend time in bars. Dave concurred. Unlike Vernie and Doug, Clyde had never been one to fool around. He didn’t even have a cool nickname like Jack or Doc.

  Thinking about the nicknames used by three of the brothers, I asked Dave what he knew about that. The only one he could explain was Doc. “All those kids were born at home,” he said. “The only exception was Doug, who was a difficult delivery and had to be born in a hospital. As I heard it, that’s how he got the nickname Doc.”

  Dave informed me that the Richards family would be having a reunion at his place on July 21. He suggested that my wife and I plan to attend. That way I could meet a number of family members in person.

  Gladly, I accepted his kind invitation. That gave me a hard deadline. I had just over three months to complete DNA testing and prove my relationship to this family.

  Two down, three to go.

  The three remaining guys were all in Texas. I decided to start with Wayne’s son, Dale, the last of the three that Gerry had primed to receive my call. Gerry had warned me not to mistake Dale’s strong Texas accent for a lack of intelligence. A successful rancher, he was, in her words, “one smart cookie.”