May 12, 2026 • 29 mins
Want more Corey and Kendall? Join us on Patreon for Family Twist: After Hours, our weekly unfiltered bonus show with personal stories, behind-the-scenes conversations, family chaos, and plenty we wouldn’t normally share on Family Twist.
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What would you do if, on the day you buried your mother, you discovered a hidden bundle of records labeled with one clear instruction: Please destroy these?
In this gripping first part of Corey and Kendall’s conversation with retired journalist and author Paul O’Connor, a lifetime of hidden family history begins to unravel through DNA testing, courthouse archives, old birth records, and one relentless search for the truth.
Paul shares how a mystery surrounding his mother’s identity turned into a years-long investigation that ultimately became his new book, The Missing Child: The Life She Lost and the Life She Led, releasing May 26. Pre-orders are available now.
What begins as curiosity about his mother’s background evolves into something much deeper: an emotional exploration of shame, secrecy, adoption-era stigma, and the devastating weight family secrets can carry across generations.
Using AncestryDNA, 23andMe, historical records, and help from newly discovered cousins, Paul uncovers shocking truths about infidelity, hidden relatives, and the biological grandfather his family never knew existed. Along the way, he and Kendall discuss the emotional complexity of adoption, identity, DNA surprises, and one question that lingers throughout the episode:
Is knowing the truth always better?
In this episode:
- Paul discovers hidden family records after his mother’s death
- A DNA test reveals unexpected biological connections
- The emotional fallout of long-buried family secrets
- Adoption stigma and shame in the early 1900s
- How genealogy research helped uncover the truth
- Why Paul wrote The Missing Child
- The complicated emotional legacy of secrecy
- Kendall reflects on growing up adopted without secrecy
If you’ve ever searched for biological family, uncovered a DNA surprise, wrestled with identity, or wondered how hidden truths shape generations, this conversation will stay with you long after it ends.
Pre-order Paul O’Connor’s new book, The Missing Child: The Life She Lost and the Life She Led, ahead of its May 26 release, and subscribe to Family Twist for more stories about DNA surprises, adoption, NPE discoveries, donor conception, and the secrets families keep.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Corey (00:00):
Okay, quick pause before we jump in.
Kendall's talking to Paul inthis one, and I've gotta tell
you, this is one of thoseconversations where you think
you know where it's going, andthen it just keeps taking turns.
Paul is a retired journalist,which you'll pick up on
immediately because he basicallystarts interviewing Kendall.
I mean, I respect it, but I alsofeel slightly replaced.
(00:22):
Paul's story starts in a waythat feels very family-twist.
He and his sister are goingthrough their mom's things after
she passes.
They find a bundle of recordsthat literally say, don't open
this, and yes, of course theyopen it.
What comes out of that turnsinto this full-on investigation,
which eventually becomes Paul'sbook.
And not about having I wrote abook about my life kind of way,
(00:44):
but I spent years trying tounderstand my mother, her past,
and the secret that shapedeverything.
It's part DNA search, parthistorical digging, part
emotional unpacking, and you canfeel all of that and how he
tells it.
If you're into the whole, I justwent down a genealogy rabbit
hole, and now it's 2 a.m.
and I'm looking at records from1917.
(01:05):
This is your guy.
Alright, let's get into it withPaul.
Kendall (01:12):
Paul, welcome to the Family Twist Podcast.
Nice to be here.
Very good.
So you and I were chatting alittle bit before we started
recording, but I purposefullydon't know a lot about your
story so that this can unravelorganically.
I know you found us, which ishumbling.
I think that's wonderful.
(01:33):
But I don't know what your storyis.
I don't know much.
SPEAKER_01 (01:40):
Let me start by telling you who I am and what I
did.
I'm a retired journalist.
I was a political reporter forfor most of 41 years.
And for 31 of those years, I wasalso a university professor of
journalism.
So two jobs, which you probablyunderstand the necessity for at
(02:01):
times.
And I spent almost my entirecareer here in North Carolina,
even though, as I as you doknow, I'm originally from
Connecticut.
I spent my college years and mygraduate school years in the
Midwest, and that's where Istarted my career.
But I came to North Carolina in1977.
(02:22):
I retired from everything, mylast my university job, in 2018
after the after the springsemester, because I had started
to work on a book.
And the book is about my mother.
And the way that I found youfolks is that I gave the
(02:42):
manuscript to my neighbor, whowas a retired history professor,
and he's a real pro.
And he said, I wonder whathistorians will do in the future
with DNA, how will it shape thewriting of history?
And they said, gee, that's agreat question, Rick.
(03:06):
I have no idea because I don'treally understand DNA.
I got a C in high school biologyand a C in every other science
class I took.
But that for that 12 years thatincludes the writing time and
dealing with publishers andpress people, I put together
this book and Rick read it, andhe said, I need to look into
(03:30):
this more off a little bit more.
So he did, and in the process,he found the New Yorker
magazine.
And you're mentioned in there.
So I said, I've got to see whatthese guys have to say.
So I pulled you up, hadn't heardof you, and I listened to a
couple of your episodes andsaid, This is interesting.
(03:50):
It's different from what myexperience is.
But DNA really made a differencethan the lives of these people
who share their stories withyou.
And the DNA that we just we usemade a difference in in some
lives.
Not so much in mine, but in inthe people I found.
(04:14):
And that's basically, I can tellyou about the book itself and
the story, but staying on theDNA, you might have some
questions.
Kendall (04:23):
Yeah, so what did you find?
Okay, so I gotta go backwards.
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (04:29):
The day we buried my mother in 1994 in East Avon,
Connecticut, my sister and Ifound her vital records.
And they were tied up in alittle bundle, and she said she
had written, please destroythese.
Don't look at them, pleasedestroy these.
I'm a reporter.
What do you think I did?
(04:49):
I would I'd have to open it.
I opened them, and actually, mysister opened them because she's
older.
And we found out what we'dalways suspected, and that is
that my mother biologically washalf Polish.
Now, my last name is O'Connor,and I've lived my whole life
(05:10):
very identified as an Irishman.
As a matter of fact, I'm anIrish citizen.
And we started asking questions.
I was busy, I had a child toraise on my own, of my own, not
on my own.
And I put the papers aside, andevery once in a while I
mentioned it to someone.
And in 2015 or 16, I gotAncestry.com.
(05:35):
I took the DNA test.
And much as you would expectfrom a birth certificate where
the last name is Mikolijik, themy mother was Polish.
So I'm 50% Polish.
Eventually I'm 50% Irish.
I started finding all of thesenames that didn't make any sense
(05:57):
in my DNA matches.
And one thing led to another.
The whole genealogical quest forme on my mother's side was to
find out why these people gaveher away.
And I had a lot of ideas, noneof which turned out to be the
(06:22):
final solution.
But we were out with friends forpizza one night, and one of the
women just said to me, Oh, thisis a case of infidelity.
I said, No, I don't think so.
1916, good Polish Catholicpeople.
We know the couple is togetherbefore my mother is born.
(06:44):
We know they're together afterthey're born.
There's no way some guy is gonnaput up with his wife having
cheated on him and had a baby,even if they gave the baby away
in 1917.
He's gonna, he's gonna get ridof her, and the church is gonna
cast her out.
It turns out that the DNA prettymuch proved me, proved this
(07:06):
young this woman proved, I'mgonna get not going to give you
her name because she has sincedivorced one of my best friends.
She was right.
And that the in in this is aspoiler for the book in case
anybody wants to read it, itthat it was my biological
grandmother got pregnant byanother man who just also
happened to be Polish.
(07:27):
And so my search became findingthis other family, as you can
imagine.
Who were these cousins of minewho were kept?
And if you go into the VitalRecords room in Hartford
(07:48):
Courthouse in Hartford,Connecticut, they let you sign
up if you have an appointment,they say, sure, just go back
there.
So I went back there, and it'sthis huge room, and there's all
of these wonderful bound volumesof birth certificates, death
certificates, and marriagecertificates.
So I just looked it up and Ifound out that my birth
(08:13):
grandmother had six pregnanciesbefore my mother.
Only two survived.
Wow.
And then I also found out justby actually pulling indexes off
the shelf and flipping throughthem, I found two other children
of theirs.
(08:34):
So now I had this real seed cornfor uh a genealogical search.
And as I started putting thesetogether, I kept going back to
the kept going back to the DNAevidence.
I did both ancestry DNA and23andMe.
(08:54):
Did you use 23andme?
Kendall (08:56):
I did.
We did both.
Ancestry is what led me to myfamily, but you know, we did
both hoping the value of 23andMewas that other first of all,
that other people had done it,so there was a greater chance.
SPEAKER_01 (09:15):
And secondly, that they told you where these people
were living now.
Did you notice that?
Yeah.
And so I found this cluster ofvery close relatives who were
living in Detroit, Michigan.
And that would have made mesense on my father's side
because some of my grandfather'ssiblings had gone to Michigan.
(09:39):
But these were Polish people.
And 23andMe told me, this isfrom your mother's mother's DNA.
So it was the DNA, their DNA,that eventually led me to the
man who was my biologicalgrandfather.
(10:01):
And those people have nevercommuted, with one exception,
those people have nevercommunicated with me.
They they don't know who I am.
The people who were affected bythis are the offspring of my
mother's siblings.
So, in other words, the peoplewho were left behind in the
(10:23):
Mikolajic family.
And I have no idea if I'mpronouncing that correctly.
You should see it, it's justthis mess of consonants.
Yeah, I I have a better chanceof speaking to you in Irish than
I do in Polish.
Anyway, so the uh the Mikolajicshad shortened their name in my
(10:47):
parents' generation to Michael,M-I-K-O-L.
And I started doing researchthere.
And by using the DNA matchesthat I had from Ancestry and a
few other things like obituariesand press releases from the
(11:12):
University of Wisconsin,curiously enough, I find the
names of my contemporaries froma fellow by the name of Uncle Ed
Michael.
And so I start going throughFacebook and I find seven of
(11:33):
this one name.
How do I figure out which one ismine?
Kendall (11:38):
Did you start poking them electronically?
SPEAKER_01 (11:42):
That's no.
Yeah.
And there was one of my DNAmatches.
Wow.
And it was wonderfully, it was aa young lady who oh, this could
have been a story, but it was ayoung lady who is an actress in
(12:02):
New York City.
And I went online and I saw someof her commercials that she does
for area businesses.
And then I saw in her biographythat she went to York
University, NYU, the same timemy son was there.
Oh wow.
(12:24):
That was fortunately, they nevermet and fell in love and
produced children.
Kendall (12:30):
I tell you, those stories are there for sure.
SPEAKER_01 (12:34):
Yeah, yeah.
I I can't imagine my son was notthat bold in those days to be
pursuing actresses, but yeah,that would that would have been
that would have been something.
But anyway, the long and theshort of it is that this Polish
family found out that thiswonderful woman who they love,
their grandmother, had to giveaway a child.
(12:57):
And none of them speak well ofthe man who was their
grandfather.
And the uh the upshot of it isthat it led to some real doubts
amongst those family membersthat the two older children, the
(13:20):
children who were born after mymother, had the same father as
the two younger children, thedaughters who were there when my
mother was born.
So there's all this DNA thatunfortunately we can't use to
solve that.
We there is no DNA, I shouldsay, that we can use to solve
(13:41):
that question because those twoolder women, of course,
obviously are long gone.
They'd be well over 100 now, butso are their children.
And there are no grandchildren.
Wow.
Yeah.
But believe me, this one newcousin of mine, he and I spent a
(14:01):
year flipping through DNAmatches and old email addresses.
We he tried repeatedly to get upwith a fellow he knew from the
family, I think a second cousin,and I think he learned that he
had passed away.
(14:22):
So it was a it was a rigoroussearch to try to prove that.
But all of that is is the storyof my found family.
I found this family, and Iwouldn't say that DNA alone
solved this, but without theDNA, I wouldn't have solved it.
(14:45):
Yeah, so that's my story.
Now if you wanted Okay, goahead.
No, if you want to talk aboutthe perils of trying to publish
a book about something like thatand tell that story coherently,
(16:02):
yeah, I bet.
Kendall (16:03):
Before we do, have you I I don't think I heard you say
that you had discovered yourbiological grandfather's were so
you have you connected with somecousins on that side as well?
SPEAKER_01 (16:17):
That I connected with one cousin, okay, whose
response was very polite, and itwas I knew nothing about my
grandfather.
Oh.
And I connected with anothercousin who has no idea who let
(16:40):
me put it this way both hermother and her mother's mother
were adopted.
Oh yeah.
So the obvious connection,because she's in the Detroit
area, also, the obviousconnection is that this it's
this guy, Peter, who was oneother thing that I would suggest
to any of your listeners who areon a genealogical search using
(17:05):
DNA, is to find a really smartcousin.
Because I have this cousin up innot far from where you are,
basically in Springfield Mass.
And he was just so focused onsolving this, and he has 7,000
(17:31):
people in his family tree, allthe way going all the way back
to people who rode horses withlances, and Ron figured it out,
and he even figured out how thisbiological grandfather got from
Camden, New Jersey to Hartfordto impregnate my biological
(17:58):
grandmother.
SPEAKER_03 (17:59):
Wow.
Wow.
That's my the train schedule.
Not quite that specific, buthe's he amazed me.
Kendall (18:10):
Wow.
I find that fascinating.
And yeah, I'm so thankful thatmy half-brother, my father's
son, the first person I everconnected with through my story,
he has done so much research.
And he was hoping to find me, ofcourse, but he just had that
genealogical interest and reallywanted to trace the family, my
(18:35):
father's family, as far back ashe could.
And he's done a really good job.
It's fascinating to sit and lookat the documentation that he has
and read it.
One of our ancestors was one ofthe founders of Connecticut.
It's just I know it's bizarre.
SPEAKER_01 (18:52):
It's like I have him to thank.
Kendall (18:54):
I know.
I never knew that I had anyconnection to New England
because I was born and raised inArkansas because that's where my
birth mother's father movedwhile she was pregnant with me.
And I never knew I had aconnection to New England, but
(19:14):
yeah, it's bizarre.
And I love these stories and Ilove reading the historical
documents.
And it's just after being anadoptee for 47 years, you just
feel like yes, I loved bothsides of my adoptive family.
Don't get me wrong.
Very connected to them.
But I knew that biologically Iwas I didn't belong to them.
SPEAKER_01 (19:39):
So the danger here is that I'll take over this
interview.
But at what age did you learnthat you were adopted?
Kendall (19:45):
I never remember not knowing.
My parents told me from themoment they could.
And did you carry this as astigma?
No, it's I always I've mentionedthat a few times on this podcast
before, that surprisingly,because I grew up in a very
conservative Arkansas town,there were enough people who had
(20:12):
also adopted that if there werestigmas, I I never experienced
it.
Quite the opposite.
When my parents joined a churchwhen I was like two years old
and we started going there, Irem I can I have memories of
being three and four years oldand women in the church saying
(20:35):
how lucky I was that my parentsare the people who got me
because they were so kind andwonderful.
And so it's so interesting.
I never really felt that.
And again, thankfully, myparents had couples that they
were friends with who had alsoadopted.
So I it felt very normal in myfilm, which was great.
SPEAKER_01 (20:58):
And this is, I'm gonna tell you, this is the
problem with having a reporteron.
I'm gonna keep asking youquestions because this ties into
my family.
So you never felt any shame.
But you see, that's the wholeimpetus for my book.
It is that my mother had thisshame, and she had shame and the
things that haunted her.
(21:20):
But at the the base of them allwas that somebody gave her away.
And this happens at the end ofthe book.
It's that she my sister decidedthat instead of trying anymore
to have children, she and herhusband were going to adopt.
(21:41):
And my mother was just oh, shewas so upset because she didn't
want my sister getting someweakling nafe, I think is the
word she used, nafe for waif orwhatever.
And when my sister showed upwith her son, who he's one he
(22:05):
did this kid is something.
He's in his early 40s now, itjust transformed my mother's
life.
She fell in love with himimmediately.
She was already in love with myson, who's a year older.
And then the second child thatmy my mother, my my sister
adopted, she is every everyperson is unique, but she is
(22:28):
unique.
And I think that my mother's thelast eight, ten years of my
mother's life, were so enhancedby my sisters adopting and
letting my mother both have thejoy of grandchildren who were
close by.
Mine was all my son was all theway down in North Carolina, have
(22:51):
the joy of having grandchildren,but also having been relieved of
some of this shame.
That she had that that had beenlifted from her shoulders.
And this is going to lead me tothe next question I actually
wrote it down because I knew Iwould be taking over your
(23:12):
podcast in me in my overbearingway.
But my question is (23:18):
have any of your previous guests, people
who've had family twists, everexpressed to you the wish that
they had known the truth abouttheir families from the start,
that they had known, okay, I'mnot giving up on my dad, the guy
who's raising me.
(23:40):
But I wish I hadn't learned thiswhen I was 41 or when I was 29,
that I would learned it.
Somebody had said to me when youwere five, mommy and daddy um
adopt or whatever the terms thatthey would use.
Kendall (23:56):
I would say overwhelmingly, most people said
that they wish they'd sometimesbecause of horrible health
concerns.
And it's it's hard for me not tobe judgmental about these
parents who, when their adoptedchild came to them with health
concerns, and they had detailsthat they could have given those
(24:17):
children.
I cannot relate to that.
Like you would risk your child'shealth to this secrecy.
I don't know that my birthmother wouldn't have done that.
She she still, you know, I'venever skin to my birth mother.
She doesn't want to haveanything to do with me.
Um he's wondered, like, why I'llneeded a kidney, I've ever gone
(24:40):
to her, you know, again.
I think I know the answer.
Yeah.
But yeah, that's that's uh acommonality, talks with people
is that these lies and thesesecrets are just so damaging.
Um and I I have to adopt aparent's credit for the fact
(25:00):
that they never lied to me, uheverything they knew, um, which
wasn't a lot.
SPEAKER_01 (25:09):
You see, the in in the situation I'm in, but my
mother was in her birth mothernever told the other children
about that baby.
Whether she ever told herhusband, I don't know either,
that I'm giving away my bookhere, but they had separated and
(25:33):
she had left him, and about twoor three years later, after she
had given birth, he found her,and he had to come from
Bethlehem where he was workingin the steel mills, he had to
come up to Hartford to find her.
And the problem that she hadkeeping this a secret is that
(25:53):
her first two daughtersremembered this child who
disappeared, and they told mycontemporaries, the people I now
consider to be my cousins, aboutthe missing child.
And that's the name of the book,The Missing Child, the life she
lived and the life she missed.
(26:14):
And they held on to that story,that there was a child missing,
that they had an aunt somewhere.
And so when I showed up in theirFacebook messenger saying, Hey,
(26:35):
I I've got the papers andeverything, the response I got
was essentially, hey cousin, howyou doing?
It's good to finally meet you.
They've just been wonderful.
They've had me in one of themhad me in his house.
One introduced me to his veryelderly mother, who was my aunt.
Wow.
And I had to meet her a yearbefore she died.
And but to go back to thequestion I just asked you, I
(27:01):
wonder if my mother would havebeen better off if she hadn't
known.
Now there's no way she couldhave could this could have been
hidden from her because of othercircumstances.
But if she hadn't known, shewouldn't have carried this shame
all of her life and this burdenthat was on her shoulders.
Because they were very differenttimes.
Corey (27:22):
Very people just attributed stigma to children
when children had well, do youexplain how do you blame the kid
for being born to his mother?
Sure, Paul's a talker, but Imean that in the best way.
Because basically what he'sreally doing here is working
(27:43):
something out in real time.
And that's what led to the bookin the first place.
This wasn't just a curiosityproject.
This was him trying tounderstand his mom, the choices
around her, and the weight shecarried her entire life.
And I keep coming back to thatquestion he raises.
Would it have been better not toknow?
We don't hear that a lot.
Most people we talk to wish theyhad the truth sooner.
(28:06):
Paul's looking at it from theother side, watching what the
truth did to someone overdecades.
And then, of course, you've gotthe DNA jerry layered on top of
that.
The matches that don't makesense, the branches of the
family that suddenly appear, thepeople who welcome you in, and
the people who absolutely donot.
All of that becomes part of thestory he's telling in his book,
which we'll get more into inpart two.
(28:28):
So stick with us for thatbecause it goes deeper,
especially when you starttalking about what happens when
you don't just uncover a story,you publish it.
We'll see you next week in parttwo.
And remember, Family Secrets arethe ultimate plot twist.
The Family Twist Podcast ispresented by Saboffer Markham
Communications and produced byMosaic Multimedia.
Okay, quick pause before we jump in.
Kendall's talking to Paul inthis one, and I've gotta tell
you, this is one of thoseconversations where you think
you know where it's going, andthen it just keeps taking turns.
Paul is a retired journalist,which you'll pick up on
immediately because he basicallystarts interviewing Kendall.
I mean, I respect it, but I alsofeel slightly replaced.
(00:22):
Paul's story starts in a waythat feels very family-twist.
He and his sister are goingthrough their mom's things after
she passes.
They find a bundle of recordsthat literally say, don't open
this, and yes, of course theyopen it.
What comes out of that turnsinto this full-on investigation,
which eventually becomes Paul'sbook.
And not about having I wrote abook about my life kind of way,
(00:44):
but I spent years trying tounderstand my mother, her past,
and the secret that shapedeverything.
It's part DNA search, parthistorical digging, part
emotional unpacking, and you canfeel all of that and how he
tells it.
If you're into the whole, I justwent down a genealogy rabbit
hole, and now it's 2 a.m.
and I'm looking at records from1917.
(01:05):
This is your guy.
Alright, let's get into it withPaul.
Kendall (01:12):
Paul, welcome to the Family Twist Podcast.
Nice to be here.
Very good.
So you and I were chatting alittle bit before we started
recording, but I purposefullydon't know a lot about your
story so that this can unravelorganically.
I know you found us, which ishumbling.
I think that's wonderful.
(01:33):
But I don't know what your storyis.
I don't know much.
SPEAKER_01 (01:40):
Let me start by telling you who I am and what I
did.
I'm a retired journalist.
I was a political reporter forfor most of 41 years.
And for 31 of those years, I wasalso a university professor of
journalism.
So two jobs, which you probablyunderstand the necessity for at
(02:01):
times.
And I spent almost my entirecareer here in North Carolina,
even though, as I as you doknow, I'm originally from
Connecticut.
I spent my college years and mygraduate school years in the
Midwest, and that's where Istarted my career.
But I came to North Carolina in1977.
(02:22):
I retired from everything, mylast my university job, in 2018
after the after the springsemester, because I had started
to work on a book.
And the book is about my mother.
And the way that I found youfolks is that I gave the
(02:42):
manuscript to my neighbor, whowas a retired history professor,
and he's a real pro.
And he said, I wonder whathistorians will do in the future
with DNA, how will it shape thewriting of history?
And they said, gee, that's agreat question, Rick.
(03:06):
I have no idea because I don'treally understand DNA.
I got a C in high school biologyand a C in every other science
class I took.
But that for that 12 years thatincludes the writing time and
dealing with publishers andpress people, I put together
this book and Rick read it, andhe said, I need to look into
(03:30):
this more off a little bit more.
So he did, and in the process,he found the New Yorker
magazine.
And you're mentioned in there.
So I said, I've got to see whatthese guys have to say.
So I pulled you up, hadn't heardof you, and I listened to a
couple of your episodes andsaid, This is interesting.
(03:50):
It's different from what myexperience is.
But DNA really made a differencethan the lives of these people
who share their stories withyou.
And the DNA that we just we usemade a difference in in some
lives.
Not so much in mine, but in inthe people I found.
(04:14):
And that's basically, I can tellyou about the book itself and
the story, but staying on theDNA, you might have some
questions.
Kendall (04:23):
Yeah, so what did you find?
Okay, so I gotta go backwards.
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (04:29):
The day we buried my mother in 1994 in East Avon,
Connecticut, my sister and Ifound her vital records.
And they were tied up in alittle bundle, and she said she
had written, please destroythese.
Don't look at them, pleasedestroy these.
I'm a reporter.
What do you think I did?
(04:49):
I would I'd have to open it.
I opened them, and actually, mysister opened them because she's
older.
And we found out what we'dalways suspected, and that is
that my mother biologically washalf Polish.
Now, my last name is O'Connor,and I've lived my whole life
(05:10):
very identified as an Irishman.
As a matter of fact, I'm anIrish citizen.
And we started asking questions.
I was busy, I had a child toraise on my own, of my own, not
on my own.
And I put the papers aside, andevery once in a while I
mentioned it to someone.
And in 2015 or 16, I gotAncestry.com.
(05:35):
I took the DNA test.
And much as you would expectfrom a birth certificate where
the last name is Mikolijik, themy mother was Polish.
So I'm 50% Polish.
Eventually I'm 50% Irish.
I started finding all of thesenames that didn't make any sense
(05:57):
in my DNA matches.
And one thing led to another.
The whole genealogical quest forme on my mother's side was to
find out why these people gaveher away.
And I had a lot of ideas, noneof which turned out to be the
(06:22):
final solution.
But we were out with friends forpizza one night, and one of the
women just said to me, Oh, thisis a case of infidelity.
I said, No, I don't think so.
1916, good Polish Catholicpeople.
We know the couple is togetherbefore my mother is born.
(06:44):
We know they're together afterthey're born.
There's no way some guy is gonnaput up with his wife having
cheated on him and had a baby,even if they gave the baby away
in 1917.
He's gonna, he's gonna get ridof her, and the church is gonna
cast her out.
It turns out that the DNA prettymuch proved me, proved this
(07:06):
young this woman proved, I'mgonna get not going to give you
her name because she has sincedivorced one of my best friends.
She was right.
And that the in in this is aspoiler for the book in case
anybody wants to read it, itthat it was my biological
grandmother got pregnant byanother man who just also
happened to be Polish.
(07:27):
And so my search became findingthis other family, as you can
imagine.
Who were these cousins of minewho were kept?
And if you go into the VitalRecords room in Hartford
(07:48):
Courthouse in Hartford,Connecticut, they let you sign
up if you have an appointment,they say, sure, just go back
there.
So I went back there, and it'sthis huge room, and there's all
of these wonderful bound volumesof birth certificates, death
certificates, and marriagecertificates.
So I just looked it up and Ifound out that my birth
(08:13):
grandmother had six pregnanciesbefore my mother.
Only two survived.
Wow.
And then I also found out justby actually pulling indexes off
the shelf and flipping throughthem, I found two other children
of theirs.
(08:34):
So now I had this real seed cornfor uh a genealogical search.
And as I started putting thesetogether, I kept going back to
the kept going back to the DNAevidence.
I did both ancestry DNA and23andMe.
(08:54):
Did you use 23andme?
Kendall (08:56):
I did.
We did both.
Ancestry is what led me to myfamily, but you know, we did
both hoping the value of 23andMewas that other first of all,
that other people had done it,so there was a greater chance.
SPEAKER_01 (09:15):
And secondly, that they told you where these people
were living now.
Did you notice that?
Yeah.
And so I found this cluster ofvery close relatives who were
living in Detroit, Michigan.
And that would have made mesense on my father's side
because some of my grandfather'ssiblings had gone to Michigan.
(09:39):
But these were Polish people.
And 23andMe told me, this isfrom your mother's mother's DNA.
So it was the DNA, their DNA,that eventually led me to the
man who was my biologicalgrandfather.
(10:01):
And those people have nevercommuted, with one exception,
those people have nevercommunicated with me.
They they don't know who I am.
The people who were affected bythis are the offspring of my
mother's siblings.
So, in other words, the peoplewho were left behind in the
(10:23):
Mikolajic family.
And I have no idea if I'mpronouncing that correctly.
You should see it, it's justthis mess of consonants.
Yeah, I I have a better chanceof speaking to you in Irish than
I do in Polish.
Anyway, so the uh the Mikolajicshad shortened their name in my
(10:47):
parents' generation to Michael,M-I-K-O-L.
And I started doing researchthere.
And by using the DNA matchesthat I had from Ancestry and a
few other things like obituariesand press releases from the
(11:12):
University of Wisconsin,curiously enough, I find the
names of my contemporaries froma fellow by the name of Uncle Ed
Michael.
And so I start going throughFacebook and I find seven of
(11:33):
this one name.
How do I figure out which one ismine?
Kendall (11:38):
Did you start poking them electronically?
SPEAKER_01 (11:42):
That's no.
Yeah.
And there was one of my DNAmatches.
Wow.
And it was wonderfully, it was aa young lady who oh, this could
have been a story, but it was ayoung lady who is an actress in
(12:02):
New York City.
And I went online and I saw someof her commercials that she does
for area businesses.
And then I saw in her biographythat she went to York
University, NYU, the same timemy son was there.
Oh wow.
(12:24):
That was fortunately, they nevermet and fell in love and
produced children.
Kendall (12:30):
I tell you, those stories are there for sure.
SPEAKER_01 (12:34):
Yeah, yeah.
I I can't imagine my son was notthat bold in those days to be
pursuing actresses, but yeah,that would that would have been
that would have been something.
But anyway, the long and theshort of it is that this Polish
family found out that thiswonderful woman who they love,
their grandmother, had to giveaway a child.
(12:57):
And none of them speak well ofthe man who was their
grandfather.
And the uh the upshot of it isthat it led to some real doubts
amongst those family membersthat the two older children, the
(13:20):
children who were born after mymother, had the same father as
the two younger children, thedaughters who were there when my
mother was born.
So there's all this DNA thatunfortunately we can't use to
solve that.
We there is no DNA, I shouldsay, that we can use to solve
(13:41):
that question because those twoolder women, of course,
obviously are long gone.
They'd be well over 100 now, butso are their children.
And there are no grandchildren.
Wow.
Yeah.
But believe me, this one newcousin of mine, he and I spent a
(14:01):
year flipping through DNAmatches and old email addresses.
We he tried repeatedly to get upwith a fellow he knew from the
family, I think a second cousin,and I think he learned that he
had passed away.
(14:22):
So it was a it was a rigoroussearch to try to prove that.
But all of that is is the storyof my found family.
I found this family, and Iwouldn't say that DNA alone
solved this, but without theDNA, I wouldn't have solved it.
(14:45):
Yeah, so that's my story.
Now if you wanted Okay, goahead.
No, if you want to talk aboutthe perils of trying to publish
a book about something like thatand tell that story coherently,
(16:02):
yeah, I bet.
Kendall (16:03):
Before we do, have you I I don't think I heard you say
that you had discovered yourbiological grandfather's were so
you have you connected with somecousins on that side as well?
SPEAKER_01 (16:17):
That I connected with one cousin, okay, whose
response was very polite, and itwas I knew nothing about my
grandfather.
Oh.
And I connected with anothercousin who has no idea who let
(16:40):
me put it this way both hermother and her mother's mother
were adopted.
Oh yeah.
So the obvious connection,because she's in the Detroit
area, also, the obviousconnection is that this it's
this guy, Peter, who was oneother thing that I would suggest
to any of your listeners who areon a genealogical search using
(17:05):
DNA, is to find a really smartcousin.
Because I have this cousin up innot far from where you are,
basically in Springfield Mass.
And he was just so focused onsolving this, and he has 7,000
(17:31):
people in his family tree, allthe way going all the way back
to people who rode horses withlances, and Ron figured it out,
and he even figured out how thisbiological grandfather got from
Camden, New Jersey to Hartfordto impregnate my biological
(17:58):
grandmother.
SPEAKER_03 (17:59):
Wow.
Wow.
That's my the train schedule.
Not quite that specific, buthe's he amazed me.
Kendall (18:10):
Wow.
I find that fascinating.
And yeah, I'm so thankful thatmy half-brother, my father's
son, the first person I everconnected with through my story,
he has done so much research.
And he was hoping to find me, ofcourse, but he just had that
genealogical interest and reallywanted to trace the family, my
(18:35):
father's family, as far back ashe could.
And he's done a really good job.
It's fascinating to sit and lookat the documentation that he has
and read it.
One of our ancestors was one ofthe founders of Connecticut.
It's just I know it's bizarre.
SPEAKER_01 (18:52):
It's like I have him to thank.
Kendall (18:54):
I know.
I never knew that I had anyconnection to New England
because I was born and raised inArkansas because that's where my
birth mother's father movedwhile she was pregnant with me.
And I never knew I had aconnection to New England, but
(19:14):
yeah, it's bizarre.
And I love these stories and Ilove reading the historical
documents.
And it's just after being anadoptee for 47 years, you just
feel like yes, I loved bothsides of my adoptive family.
Don't get me wrong.
Very connected to them.
But I knew that biologically Iwas I didn't belong to them.
SPEAKER_01 (19:39):
So the danger here is that I'll take over this
interview.
But at what age did you learnthat you were adopted?
Kendall (19:45):
I never remember not knowing.
My parents told me from themoment they could.
And did you carry this as astigma?
No, it's I always I've mentionedthat a few times on this podcast
before, that surprisingly,because I grew up in a very
conservative Arkansas town,there were enough people who had
(20:12):
also adopted that if there werestigmas, I I never experienced
it.
Quite the opposite.
When my parents joined a churchwhen I was like two years old
and we started going there, Irem I can I have memories of
being three and four years oldand women in the church saying
(20:35):
how lucky I was that my parentsare the people who got me
because they were so kind andwonderful.
And so it's so interesting.
I never really felt that.
And again, thankfully, myparents had couples that they
were friends with who had alsoadopted.
So I it felt very normal in myfilm, which was great.
SPEAKER_01 (20:58):
And this is, I'm gonna tell you, this is the
problem with having a reporteron.
I'm gonna keep asking youquestions because this ties into
my family.
So you never felt any shame.
But you see, that's the wholeimpetus for my book.
It is that my mother had thisshame, and she had shame and the
things that haunted her.
(21:20):
But at the the base of them allwas that somebody gave her away.
And this happens at the end ofthe book.
It's that she my sister decidedthat instead of trying anymore
to have children, she and herhusband were going to adopt.
(21:41):
And my mother was just oh, shewas so upset because she didn't
want my sister getting someweakling nafe, I think is the
word she used, nafe for waif orwhatever.
And when my sister showed upwith her son, who he's one he
(22:05):
did this kid is something.
He's in his early 40s now, itjust transformed my mother's
life.
She fell in love with himimmediately.
She was already in love with myson, who's a year older.
And then the second child thatmy my mother, my my sister
adopted, she is every everyperson is unique, but she is
(22:28):
unique.
And I think that my mother's thelast eight, ten years of my
mother's life, were so enhancedby my sisters adopting and
letting my mother both have thejoy of grandchildren who were
close by.
Mine was all my son was all theway down in North Carolina, have
(22:51):
the joy of having grandchildren,but also having been relieved of
some of this shame.
That she had that that had beenlifted from her shoulders.
And this is going to lead me tothe next question I actually
wrote it down because I knew Iwould be taking over your
(23:12):
podcast in me in my overbearingway.
But my question is (23:18):
have any of your previous guests, people
who've had family twists, everexpressed to you the wish that
they had known the truth abouttheir families from the start,
that they had known, okay, I'mnot giving up on my dad, the guy
who's raising me.
(23:40):
But I wish I hadn't learned thiswhen I was 41 or when I was 29,
that I would learned it.
Somebody had said to me when youwere five, mommy and daddy um
adopt or whatever the terms thatthey would use.
Kendall (23:56):
I would say overwhelmingly, most people said
that they wish they'd sometimesbecause of horrible health
concerns.
And it's it's hard for me not tobe judgmental about these
parents who, when their adoptedchild came to them with health
concerns, and they had detailsthat they could have given those
(24:17):
children.
I cannot relate to that.
Like you would risk your child'shealth to this secrecy.
I don't know that my birthmother wouldn't have done that.
She she still, you know, I'venever skin to my birth mother.
She doesn't want to haveanything to do with me.
Um he's wondered, like, why I'llneeded a kidney, I've ever gone
(24:40):
to her, you know, again.
I think I know the answer.
Yeah.
But yeah, that's that's uh acommonality, talks with people
is that these lies and thesesecrets are just so damaging.
Um and I I have to adopt aparent's credit for the fact
(25:00):
that they never lied to me, uheverything they knew, um, which
wasn't a lot.
SPEAKER_01 (25:09):
You see, the in in the situation I'm in, but my
mother was in her birth mothernever told the other children
about that baby.
Whether she ever told herhusband, I don't know either,
that I'm giving away my bookhere, but they had separated and
(25:33):
she had left him, and about twoor three years later, after she
had given birth, he found her,and he had to come from
Bethlehem where he was workingin the steel mills, he had to
come up to Hartford to find her.
And the problem that she hadkeeping this a secret is that
(25:53):
her first two daughtersremembered this child who
disappeared, and they told mycontemporaries, the people I now
consider to be my cousins, aboutthe missing child.
And that's the name of the book,The Missing Child, the life she
lived and the life she missed.
(26:14):
And they held on to that story,that there was a child missing,
that they had an aunt somewhere.
And so when I showed up in theirFacebook messenger saying, Hey,
(26:35):
I I've got the papers andeverything, the response I got
was essentially, hey cousin, howyou doing?
It's good to finally meet you.
They've just been wonderful.
They've had me in one of themhad me in his house.
One introduced me to his veryelderly mother, who was my aunt.
Wow.
And I had to meet her a yearbefore she died.
And but to go back to thequestion I just asked you, I
(27:01):
wonder if my mother would havebeen better off if she hadn't
known.
Now there's no way she couldhave could this could have been
hidden from her because of othercircumstances.
But if she hadn't known, shewouldn't have carried this shame
all of her life and this burdenthat was on her shoulders.
Because they were very differenttimes.
Corey (27:22):
Very people just attributed stigma to children
when children had well, do youexplain how do you blame the kid
for being born to his mother?
Sure, Paul's a talker, but Imean that in the best way.
Because basically what he'sreally doing here is working
(27:43):
something out in real time.
And that's what led to the bookin the first place.
This wasn't just a curiosityproject.
This was him trying tounderstand his mom, the choices
around her, and the weight shecarried her entire life.
And I keep coming back to thatquestion he raises.
Would it have been better not toknow?
We don't hear that a lot.
Most people we talk to wish theyhad the truth sooner.
(28:06):
Paul's looking at it from theother side, watching what the
truth did to someone overdecades.
And then, of course, you've gotthe DNA jerry layered on top of
that.
The matches that don't makesense, the branches of the
family that suddenly appear, thepeople who welcome you in, and
the people who absolutely donot.
All of that becomes part of thestory he's telling in his book,
which we'll get more into inpart two.
(28:28):
So stick with us for thatbecause it goes deeper,
especially when you starttalking about what happens when
you don't just uncover a story,you publish it.
We'll see you next week in parttwo.
And remember, Family Secrets arethe ultimate plot twist.
The Family Twist Podcast ispresented by Saboffer Markham
Communications and produced byMosaic Multimedia.
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