12 AUGUST 2023 WorldWide Drilling Resource® The Un-Comfort Zone II by Robert Evans Wilson, Jr. My Parents Were Married, but I was a Bastard by Law I was conceived by donor insemination when it was illegal. My life began as a lie. Perhaps my parents thought of it as an innocent lie and no one could be hurt by it. Maybe my father considered it a white lie which he told me were okay to tell because those were lies you told when you didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. My parents assumed no one would ever find out about their little white lie; then decades after their deaths, along came DNA testing for genealogy. On May 18, 2022, when I was 65 years old, I got the shock of my life. I learned I was not related to my father. It happened as I was telling my cousin (on my father’s side) about a new feature offered by Ancestry.com that uses your DNA to individually isolate each of your parents by ethnicity. It enables you to tell which parent's side of your family your DNA matches are on. My cousin sent me the Ancestry.com graph separating her parents by ethnic percentages. When I looked at it, I was baffled. Neither of her parents matched either of mine, but our fathers should have. When I told her, she suggested I look at another cousin’s profile on Ancestry who is also on my father’s side of the family. When I pulled up that profile it read: “You are not a DNA match for this person.” It didn't make sense to me, so I then pulled up the profile of the cousin to whom I was talking; it said the same thing. I was thunderstruck and didn’t know what to think, so I did an online search: “Ancestry DNA says I’m not related to my first cousin, what does that mean?” The response I got was: “Ancestry DNA is 99% accurate, if it says you’re not related to your cousin, then you are not related to your cousin.” I then made the stunning realization that if I wasn’t related to my cousins, I probably was not related to Dad. I couldn’t be adopted because I was seeing DNA matches on Ancestry from my mother’s side of the family. My mother certainly lacked scruples in some areas of her life, but I could not imagine she would cheat on Dad. When I got off the phone, I was shaken and confused. I imagined all the possibilities, but no answers were forthcoming. Eventually my consternation diminished, but turned into depression. I kept wondering how this could be. I wondered why no one told me. Unfortunately, everyone I could think of to ask was dead. Intellectually I could understand it didn’t really change anything about my life, but emotionally it was an earthquake. The next morning, I recalled my father contracted tuberculosis (TB) during World War II fighting on Okinawa. He spent a year in a TB hospital receiving intravenous chemotherapy comprised of a potent three-drug cocktail. Those powerful drugs eventually destroyed his kidneys, requiring him to have a kidney transplant ten years later. I went online to do some research and learned the TB drugs used in the 1950s did render some men infertile. I concluded my parents discovered Dad was infertile, but still wanted children. Yet, for some reason, they did not choose adoption, and instead they must have opted for artificial insemination with a sperm donor. Now I wanted to know who my biological father was. I went back to Ancestry.com and found the 12 closest relatives by DNA percentage on my biological father’s side and wrote to each of them. Of the 12, only one wrote back, but it was all I needed. My second cousin once removed sent me a detailed family tree. I eventually found out my biological father was an OB/GYN doctor who specialized in fertility; he passed away more than a decade ago, so getting to meet him was out. A few days later, I remembered one of my mother's best friends who is still living; so I phoned her. After a few minutes of chitchat, I told her how I’d learned I wasn’t related to my father. She replied, “Okay I can confirm all of that to be true; your father was sterile, and your mother conceived by artificial insemination, but she did not know the donor." She added, "Your mother made me promise to never to tell you, but you’ve already figured it out, she's been dead for 30 years, and I believe that people should know the truth so that they can live their most authentic lives.” When donor conception started to become obtainable after World War II, it was deeply frowned upon by society, and parents were told to tell no one. These children were considered illegitimate in all U.S. states. The legal father was the donor; and it did not matter the parents were married. The only way to make it legal was for the donor to sign away all rights to the child, and for the husband to formally adopt the child. Instead of following the legal procedures, most husbands simply put their name on the birth certificate as the father; this was done to avoid any stigma, and the secret was kept for life by the doctor, mother, and husband. Legally I was considered a bastard; and it remained true until I was seven years old when, in 1964, my home state of Georgia became the first state in the union to recognize donor conceived children as legitimate. Today - six decades later - the world is a different place, and donors of sperm and ovum can no longer expect anonymity. It’s been a year and I still think about it frequently. Much of what I've always believed to be true is now false. I’ve suffered an identity crisis. It has kept me awake and unable to sleep many nights. Which of my characteristics are nurture, and which ones are nature? Clearly, the values I live by began with the parents who raised me, but what strengths and weaknesses do I possess came to me genetically? It seems I’m still trying to process it. I feel bisected: there’s the life I've lived, and that which I might’ve lived had I been raised by my two biological parents. Genealogy has been a hobby of mine for decades, and for 65 years I thought I knew my family tree, but overnight an entire half disappeared and was replaced by another. I have relatives I've never met; I have ancestors I know nothing about. I’m still close and will remain close to all my cousins, but the thought is constantly in my mind that I’m not related to them, and it makes me sad. I’m left with many questions; some are about the health and genetics of my biological father, but others are about the motivations and feelings of my parents as they chose donor insemination. I wonder if my parents had lived until DNA testing entered the mainstream would they have told me about my conception. I wonder how they found out about donor insemination when it was taboo. And, I wonder if Dad treated me differently than he would have if I were his actual progeny. Nevertheless, I admire my parents for being willing to go against the status quo to have children. It tells me where I got my curiosity and willingness to question authority - both of which have been important components of my creative life. In the meantime, I wonder when I'll stop obsessing about who I am, and whether or not I'll ever have a relationship with my halfsiblings on my biological father’s side. Robert Contact him via e-mail to michele@worldwidedrillingresource.com WOW, IT WORKED! NOW, DON’T BUY OUR NEW SHARK REAMER 618-439-4042 infinitytoolmfg.com
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