Episode 5 Family Finders

Families can be driven apart for all manner of reasons.

My mum went away and didn't come back.

And when you do lose touch with your loved ones...

I never saw Kathleen again.

..finding them can take a lifetime...

I wonder where he is, I wonder what he's doing.

You don't really know where to begin.

..especially when they could be anywhere, at home or abroad.

And that's where the Family Finders come in.

Hi, it's the Salvation Army Family Tracing Service.

From international organisations...

There's never been a day when we have never had new inquiries.

..to genealogy detective agencies...

When is it you last had contact with him?

..and dedicated one-man bands...

I like to do the searches other people can't get

because it makes me feel good.

..they hunt through history

to bring families back together again.

You are my biological dad.

In this series, we follow the work of the Family Finders.

This case came from our Australian colleagues.

Learning the tricks they use to track

missing relatives through time...

I'm 68 years of age, she's 75 years of age and we're just starting off!

..and meeting the people whose lives they change along the way.

I said, "Well, this is your younger sister."

It's a miracle!

I was struck speechless and I couldn't stop crying.

It's a proud moment...for Dad.

That was the start of finding my family.

Every year, thousands of people across the UK

begin searching for their families.

And just occasionally, they find out that while they're

looking for their relatives, those same relatives are looking for them.

That's what happened to 65-year-old Mark Kerr,

who was desperate to find his father,

but a stroke of luck led him to someone just as interesting.

Mark was born to a single mother in Paddington, West London,

four years after the end of World War II.

25th of December, 1949. A Christmas Day baby.

My dad wasn't about at the time, I suppose, and...

But like I said, back then, it was...

You didn't keep children out of wedlock. You was pushed away.

As a very young boy,

Mark was sent to the Maybourne Children's Home in Sydenham.

It wasn't an orphanage as such because we all had parents,

so I suppose it was a children's home where children was put because their

mums and dads weren't in a position to look after them at the time.

You hear so many stories back in the '50s and '60s,

but I consider myself pretty lucky to have ended up in that house.

Reluctant to completely give him up to the care system,

Mark's parents, Solly and Peggy, used to visit him regularly.

So every second week, my mum would come

and she'd bring a big food parcel and sweets and comics.

My dad used to come and see me every second Tuesday

and I distinctly remember sitting on these massive great steps outside

and sometimes, he didn't turn up and I used to get so upset, I really did.

It was heartbreaking, it really was,

because you look forward to this every second week.

Mark's dad slowly faded from his life and then, aged around ten,

he went back to live with his mum and her new partner.

He was a hard taskmaster, he really was. He didn't like me...

and he made it known he didn't like me.

And he... The belt would come off and he, you know...

I was very wary of him.

Mum picked a bad one there.

And that's when I think I went off the straight and narrow.

As a young teen, Mark got in with the wrong crowd

and ended up in borstal.

By the time of his release,

Mark's mum had set up home with another man, Bob.

He was a lovely chap. He idolised her.

He really thought the world of her. Treated me very, very well.

Never once raised a hand, once took his belt off.

He used to run a butcher's shop down the Harrow Road.

And I remember moving in there

and I must have gone to school for about a year,

but then I went down into the butcher's shop

working in the butcher's shop. I was only about 14 or 15,

because back then, you left school fairly young.

And I enjoyed it. I loved the butcher's shop.

But then, tragedy struck the new family unit.

Unfortunately, then, just as things was going on, Mum got meningitis,

I think it was, yeah, meningitis, rushed to hospital and passed on.

When my mum died, I would have been 16, 17.

I think Bob took it fairly bad.

He just threw himself into his work.

We plodded on for a couple of months and I just said to him one day,

"Oh, I've been down Oxford, I'm joining the Army."

But Mark continued to see Bob when he could.

I went to see him a few times when I was on leave from the Army

because I didn't have no family, as such.

And then, unfortunately, we drifted apart.

Christmas times and Easter and stuff like that,

when all the other chaps, all of them going to their mums and dads,

brothers, sisters,

I used to volunteer and do the guard duty for them.

Yearning for a sense of family, Mark decided to trace his

biological father, Solly Levene,

whose details he had on his birth certificate.

Like I say, I was born on the 25th of December, 1949, Mark Joseph.

Father, Solly Levene, a taxi driver working out of London Bridge.

I did try and trace him in the Army.

There was a family liaison officer,

he heard about my family and everything.

Thanks to all the information Mark had on his father,

it didn't take the Army family liaison officer long to trace him.

But the moment of first contact didn't go quite as Mark had hoped.

He gave me a telephone with a phone number, I dialled the number,

a lady answered, "Oh, hello, can I speak to Solly, please?"

"Yes, who's talking?" And I said, "It's Mark."

And she was insistent. "Just Mark, his son."

Phone went dead.

Because back in them days, when a phone went dead, it was dead.

There was none of this, "Ooh, I've lost you, I've lost you,

"where are you?" It was dead, that was the end of it.

Rejected, Mark gave up hope of tracing any family.

But little did he know, someone else was looking for him.

Every year, more and more people set about trying to find

family members they've lost contact with.

Numerous organisations are now available to help

this difficult and sensitive process.

After 30 years in the police force, Antony Marr set up

a genealogy consultancy helping families reunite across the country.

Many people come to Antony after attempting

a search on their own without success.

So a lot of people get so far and get stuck and get frustrated,

and we try and help them and get past that point, and show them

where they might want to go and look next.

One person who sought Antony's help

is 72-year-old Wendy Brightwell from Buckinghamshire.

I wanted to find out more about my dad, that was the paramount thing.

Wendy grew up in Middlesex with her brother Rod and sister Margaret,

but theirs was an unusual family set-up

because, as well as Dad, there were two ladies of the household.

My mum had the job, when she was a teenager,

of going to the dairy to get the milk and, of course,

she used to get the milk in a churn, and my father worked in the dairy.

Before Wendy was born, her family relocated

and her father invited her mother to come with them

and work as a nanny to the children he already had, Rod and Margaret.

When they decided to move away to Hayes,

I understand that my mother went with them.

Because by this time, she was like a baby-sitter, so...

And I think she was about... I think she was in her early 20s.

But it was soon clear that Wendy's mother

was more than just a baby-sitter.

So by 1942, I arrived on the scene.

Despite already being married to a woman called Lil, Wendy's father

suggested that the young Wendy and her mother join the family home.

My Auntie Lil was obviously the mother of Rodney and Margret

and, really, my father's wife,

but I've always called her Auntie Lil.

Despite the unusual arrangement of one father and two mothers,

things seemed to work.

We lived very happily together

and I never really thought anything about it,

and I don't think Rod did either, or Margaret.

I mean, we just lived as one big family.

For Rod and me, it was almost like having two mums

because they looked after both of us.

Wendy's father passed away when she was just nine,

after which, the unconventional arrangement broke down.

Obviously, with my father not there, then, you know,

my mother had to then find something to just look after me,

so she moved to a place in Harrow, near Harrow, a place called Kenton.

It was at this point Wendy lost contact with Rodney and Margaret.

There was no way, really, that we could keep in touch

because people didn't have telephones, you know,

no Internet or anything, no mobiles or anything like that.

It wasn't until Wendy was a little more grown-up that

she realised just how unusual her family make-up had been

and it came as a real shock to her.

When I got to about...probably about 10, 11,

it suddenly occurred... I mean, my dad had died by them.

And it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't have the same surname.

And up till then, it hadn't twigged that

I wasn't actually a legitimate child, you know.

And it always felt like a bit of a...a stigma, really.

And also, I wondered if I was really wanted.

Years later, Wendy got married and had three children of her own.

That's when I really started to search and think to myself,

"One of these days, when I've got the time, when the kids have grown up,

"I'm going to start looking and seeing if I can find out",

to put it right in my mind that I was actually wanted.

Desperate to find out what had happened to her old family,

Wendy turned to family finder, Antony Marr.

She wanted to know more about her father,

and of course, he wasn't there to ask any more.

And the more I spoke to her, and I gave her advice about where

she wanted to look, where she might think about looking,

how to find out more information, and she was very happy with that

and she went away, then a little while later came back and

asked me to do the research for her and see where we could get to.

It soon became apparent there was much more to know about

her brothers and sisters that she'd lost touch with

and that was very quickly where the focus of the investigation went.

I wanted to find out if Margaret and Rodney were still alive

because I knew that time was marching on.

I knew they were both older than me and I thought,

"If I don't do something about it, you know, it's going to be too late."

But I was frightened that they would actually want to see me

and want to talk to me.

Because at that point, I still felt that I was like the outsider

and I didn't, you know, I felt very nervous.

I thought, "Well, supposing when I do find them, they'll say, well,

"they don't want to talk to..." You know, they won't want to talk to me.

With no way of knowing what he might discover,

Wendy asked Antony to carry on digging.

Antony soon discovered that Margaret had passed away,

but he put together family trees for both Wendy and her brother Rod.

Rod's family tree led Antony to his son Neil

and some more detective work revealed that Neil's phone number

was actually available on Directory Enquiries.

Once I'd got all the information I needed,

I put it together in a report and arranged to go and see Wendy.

It is a very, very exciting situation to be in,

but it's also quite tense

because I didn't know for certain that Rod was still alive.

I knew his son seemed to be alive and living locally,

but the information is always that little bit extra you don't know.

So we arranged to meet. I went and saw Wendy,

gave her the report, gave the information I had

and we talked about how she might then make contact with Rod's son.

So I rang Neil...Rod's son,

and I was very nervous.

I didn't know what his reaction would be.

I didn't know if he knew about me. He probably didn't.

So I... He answered, and I said, "My name is Wendy."

I said, "Please don't put the phone down",

because I thought he might've put the phone down.

I said, "I think we're vaguely related."

And I said, "Is your dad still alive?"

And he said, "Yes, he is."

And, I said, "Well, do you think you could ring him for me

"and see if he would like to talk to me?"

PHONE RINGS

My son phones up and said, "I've had your half-sister on the phone

"and she wonders if she can phone you."

I said, "Well, of course she can." I wanted to find her,

but I could never find her because I didn't know her surname.

Wendy's sudden departure from family life was

a great shock to Rod at the time.

The next thing I know is Wendy's not there and her mum's not there.

And...at that age, you don't say to your mum, "What's going on?"

She wouldn't have told me anyway, I don't suppose.

So I waited till the next day

and then I rang and, you know,

we spoke to each other for the first time, so it was just amazing.

Obviously, relieved to hear that she was OK.

I was very surprised that she found me.

Wendy and Rod have met up for the first time recently,

but there's still one big thing missing from Wendy's life.

Maybe a photo of us all out together, you know.

We were a family unit, after all,

and it would have been nice to see something like that,

just to prove to everybody that...

..in spite of my birth

and everything like that, we were just a unit and we were happy.

They're getting together again in a few days

and Rod has promised he'll bring what family photos he has.

So, Wendy will have to wait until then to find out if he does

hold the proof of the happy childhood she so fondly remembers.

Mark Kerr was born Mark Levene to a single mother in 1950s London

and spent his childhood in care and Approved School.

Mark's search for his family began initially with his father, Solly,

but it hit a brick wall when the only lead he had hung up on him.

Phone went dead.

But little did Mark know that, all along, another woman was

conducting an investigation into her identity,

which would ultimately hold the key to Mark's search.

Margaret Teague was born in the '40s and grew up in post-war

south-east London as an only child.

I did have a very good childhood. I can never complain about that.

My parents were absolutely wonderful.

Despite being well cared for,

it was in her teenage years Margaret felt something wasn't quite right.

People used to say, "They your mum and dad?" "Yes."

"Oh, aren't they tiny?!"

It just didn't look right because I was really tall.

When Margaret was 17, she overheard her aunt talking to her mother.

I remember her saying, "Oh, that daughter of yours, she's so...

"Why on earth did we ever have her because she's the black sheep of

"the family." And they didn't think that I'd heard it

and I got quite upset. I walked round the block of flats, you know.

I thought, "Why did they call me the black sheep of the family?"

Then I thought to myself, "Well, perhaps I'm not theirs."

Pushing questions to the back of her mind,

Margaret did her best to get on with her life.

I worked in the bank in the Foreign Exchange in London, in Moorgate.

Then, one day,

a friend again commented on the lack of Margaret's family resemblance.

She said to me one day, "Your father definitely doesn't look like you.

"You definitely must have been adopted."

By then, her mother had passed away, so Margaret asked her father,

the man she called Mike, directly about her possible adoption.

Mike never told me anything.

When I used to say to Mike, "Is it true that I was adopted?"

"No, no, no." He wouldn't... He'd say, "You're just being silly."

Despite her father telling her otherwise,

Margaret was convinced she was adopted.

Her suspicions were confirmed when she dug out her birth certificate

from the Records Office. She decided to turn to her aunt.

I told her that I'd got my birth certificate.

"Oh, my goodness," she said, "I always knew.

"I always knew but I could never get the gist of it."

When her biological mother fell pregnant with Margaret

she wasn't married, which held a great stigma at that time,

so she chose to give Margaret away.

A close friend of her mother's who couldn't have children

was the obvious choice to adopt her.

After revealing all this to Margaret,

her aunt then dropped another bombshell.

"You've got a brother somewhere, I can't remember where he was,

"but he's somewhere." And he was eight or nine years younger than me.

I was determined to see if it was true

cos I always wanted to have a brother or sister.

Margaret spent decades unsuccessfully

searching for her brother.

Then, in 2005, she enlisted the help of an independent family finder

who, after five years of research, finally made a breakthrough.

This is the letter that she sent me telling me all about my mother.

She trained to be a dressmaker at Corots in Bond Street

and was a first-class dressmaker working in Richmond.

The family finder also confirmed her birth mother Peggy

did indeed have a son, Margaret's brother, Mark.

In the March quarter of 1950, Peggy had a son

and he was called Mark J Levene.

It did make me feel better that I've actually found it all out.

I can now know the actual truth

and not walk around like I was living a lie all my life, like, "Who am I really?"

With Margaret's consent, the family finder sent a letter to Mark,

the brother she'd never met.

"Dear Mr Kerr, I'm sorry to intrude on your time,

"but I'm hoping that you may be able to assist me with my search.

"I'm trying to chase a Mr Mark Joseph Levene,

"who later took the surname Kerr.

"As my search is of a sensitive nature, I would be grateful

"if you could let me know whether you are the person I'm looking for."

And I sent the letter back confirming who I was.

The family finder then gave Mark a call.

She said, "Are you sitting down?" I said, "Yes."

She said, "Are you on your own?"

I said, "No, I've got one of my daughters with me."

And she actually said, "Look, you've got a sister."

And I just... I just couldn't believe it.

I said, "No." She said, "You have got a sister, Mark." And I just...

Well, I couldn't talk to her.

I had to hand the phone over to my daughter.

Mark and Margaret then arranged to meet for the first time in their lives.

I just went there and I sat at Guildford railway station

waiting for this train to come in from Brighton.

Saw the train on the board arrive, all these people coming off,

and I saw this woman walk through,

and I knew straightaway that that was Margaret.

He knew it was me by my hair because it was like Mum's.

She was the spitting image of Mum, how I remembered her -

tall, blonde hair...

..make-up.

Mum would never go out without any make-up and I went up to her,

tapped her on the shoulder and said, "Margaret?"

And we just fell into each other's arms.

Mark and Margaret have met regularly since they found each other.

But as Margaret was adopted at birth,

she never knew their mother, so today Mark is preparing to share

some of his memories of her in a trip to London.

This is actually the first time that we have met in London.

We're both hoping to get to the cemetery where Mum was laid to rest.

-Hello, my dear. How are you?

-All right.

-Lovely to see you again.

-And you.

-All right, then?

Cor.

-Our mum would be pleased now, wouldn't she?

-Yeah.

Believe it or not, this was Mum's old handbag and inside...

-..the pearls she used to wear.

-Oh, look at them. Aren't they lovely?

Gosh. Is it all right if I put these round my neck just for once?

Course it is, love. Of course it is.

-Look at that.

-Yeah, and she used to do that, as well.

Well, look at that. Keep them as a family heirloom from now on.

-OK.

-And these are headscarves.

-Oh, gracious.

-Look at this.

-Never been worn.

-Oh, look at them.

-1962, I think it is.

-A pen there, look.

-Oh, lovely, look at that.

-Pen what me mum used to have.

-Yeah.

-Our mum.

Yeah. Oh, that's lovely.

When he left Approved School,

Mark only had two more years with his mum Peggy

before she died suddenly of meningitis.

It's been a long time since Mark has been able to visit her grave.

Today, he's taking Margaret there for the very first time.

I think I can see it now, Margaret.

-This one?

-This is it.

Yeah, there you go.

"In loving memory of my darling Peggy.

"Laid to rest, 14th of January, 1968...

"An angel on earth, now an angel in heaven."

-Yeah. All right, Margaret?

-Yeah, lovely.

-There you go, Mum.

We're back together now.

You've got nothing to be afraid of, nothing to be ashamed of.

Nothing at all, love. If only you'd let us known earlier.

But there it is, what's done is done.

-Right, love?

-Yeah.

-There you go.

I've go... I've got to go.

HE EXHALES

HE SNIFFS

-Are you OK now?

-Yeah.

-Sure?

-Sorry, love.

-That's all right. Listen, don't you dare say sorry.

-You don't say sorry for anything.

-I can remember the day,

the funeral, now.

Now that I know that my mum is there,

it makes the picture a lot clearer now.

And after all these years, I understood everything that

went on and I understand, you know,

these things are a must.

It's just made everything really happy.

'It was a really, really lovely experience for both of us.'

And we intend to come up again, get the grave cleaned up,

bring some flowers and maybe come up once or twice a year

for as long as we can.

In Buckinghamshire, Wendy Brightwell

has reconnected with her half brother Rod after 60 years apart.

They've met up briefly a few times since getting back in touch,

but today is a huge day for them both.

Rod is bringing some family photos which Wendy has never seen before.

And Wendy will introduce him to her family for the first time,

including the nieces and nephews he never knew he had.

I'm really excited. I couldn't sleep last night, waiting...

waiting to see him again.

I'm hoping he's going to bring some photos with him

that we can look at together and I can show him my photos.

Maybe we will remember things, you know, together that happened

when we were young.

-God! I've been so looking forward to this.

-How are you?

So looking forward to meeting you again.

-All right?

-I'm all right. Yeah.

-Oh!

-You're still tiny.

-I'm still tiny!

-SHE LAUGHS

-I've got some photos.

-You've brought some photos, lovely.

And I've got all my stuff there as well.

-I really like that one.

-Yeah.

-There again.

-Really, really nice.

But I find it amazing, Rod, that you've got

all these pictures of me when

I... You know...

I didn't know that you cared about me that much, you know.

Rod now produces the photo which Wendy has been

waiting to see for 60 years.

-Oh, my goodness.

-That's all of us. That's all of us together.

This is amazing because we were all on a day out

-and Dad must have been taking that photo, mustn't he?

-Yes.

That proves that we were all living together as a family

and everybody was OK with it.

I'm going to put that in a frame and put it on the wall.

Although their family set-up was unusual, Wendy can take comfort from

the fact that Rod's photo shows them as a close-knit and loving unit.

Now Wendy would like to introduce Rod to her immediate family.

She's arranged for him to meet her husband,

daughter and grandchildren in a local cafe.

-Hello.

-This is Lewis.

-Hi, you all right?

-Hi.

-Lewis.

-Hello, nice to meet you.

-And you.

-That's Liddie.

-You didn't know you had an uncle, did you?

-No. And little Ella.

-Are you all right?

-Hello.

-And this is Sue.

-Hi, lovely to meet you.

-Really lovely.

-Hello, Ken. All right?

-Hello, Rod.

-Got a whole new family now.

This is only... This is only a little bit of it.

How did it work out, you all living together?

That must have been rather odd.

Well, because we were young, Rod and I didn't really...

We didn't really think anything of it. But it was an odd set-up.

I mean, two women, one man,

but there was never any trouble.

The neighbours didn't seem to... There was never any...

We were never aware of any bad feeling in the house.

-There was never any rows...

-No.

-..that we remember, anyway.

-Just all got on with it.

-And we just all got on with it.

As family are so important to Mum,

meeting Rodney is really fantastic and she's really happy about it,

and we are all delighted to meet another new member of our family.

-It's the icing on the cake.

-It is the icing on the cake.

Good quote, Lydia.

And for Rod and Wendy, a new chapter of their lives has begun.

Family is important, it's always been a search to find

the rest of my family, to find the family that I grew up with,

so to find Rod is just amazing.

-And I've got a lot more family than I did have before.

-That's right.

I only had one, I only had a son. Now I've got loads.

THEY LAUGH

It just makes our family complete

and... And that's just wonderful. It's just what I wanted.