Tony & Martyn/Lorraine, Belinda & Donna Family Finders


Tony & Martyn/Lorraine, Belinda & Donna

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Transcript


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Families can be driven apart for all manner of reasons.

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I had no information at all about where my mum went.

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

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You don't know who you are, where have you come from.

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..finding them can take a lifetime.

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I might have a brother that's

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still living here.

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Especially when they could be anywhere,

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at home or abroad.

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And that's where the Family Finders come in.

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From international organisations...

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

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..to genealogy detective agencies...

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For someone to say that it's changed their life, it makes coming to work,

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you know, really, really special.

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..and dedicated one-man bands...

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It's a matter of how much effort you really want to put into it,

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how badly you want to solve the problem.

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..they hunt through history to bring families back together again.

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Finding new family is wonderful.

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

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Suddenly, you get one spark of breakthrough and there they are.

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Learning the tricks they use

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to track missing relatives through time.

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I didn't think I'd ever find my sisters, but I have.

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

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I've been waiting to meet John my whole life.

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Since we've met, I feel part of a family again.

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You just completed my life for me.

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Many families get torn apart and it can take years of detective work to

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find out why.

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Often financial difficulties can lead to relatives being

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separated. Sometimes ill health gets in the way,

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and occasionally it's the

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sheer volume of offspring that can lead to desperate measures.

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Today, we follow two such cases.

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Tony Robinson who found out late in life that he had siblings he never

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knew existed.

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And then she dropped a bombshell on me.

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She said, "What about Ian?"

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and I might have used the words I said but along the lines of,

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"Who's Ian?" She said, "Well, the other one that we had adopted."

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I said, "What other one?"

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And Lorraine Hall who grew up

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believing she was a legitimate only child

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until the funeral of a family friend revealed the shocking truth.

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And I remember saying, "No, no."

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And she said, "Get in the car.

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She was your mother."

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Tony Robinson was born in 1953 and was brought up in Carshalton, Surrey

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by his parents, Shirley and Raymond Robinson.

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Growing up, there's meself, me sister Linda, me sister Carol,

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me sister Diane, me brother Michael and then me sister Marion.

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That was the family.

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A great upbringing, just lower class, not a lot of money.

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There were six of us living in a three-bedroom house.

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When he was 12,

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a childhood illness resulted in Tony being sent away to what was known as

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an open air school in the countryside to recuperate.

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I was asthmatic so I was sent away to this health school

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down in Guildford.

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And I was there for a couple of years.

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'65 to '67 and I was boarding there.

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It was during the two years that Tony was boarding

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at the open air school

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that his parents had to make a heartbreaking decision.

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I can remember once being about 10 or 11, that sort of age,

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in the back garden. I can remember me mum and dad coming out to say,

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"We've had a boy named Stephen.

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"We've had to have him adopted."

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But at that age, I didn't know what adopted meant.

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I had no idea. And it was never discussed afterwards, ever.

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Following the death of his parents decades later,

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a chance discovery set off an incredible chain of events.

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When me mum died it was down to me.

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So, I came down, spent a few days down here sorting out paperwork.

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And I came across this Christmas card and a photo

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and a letter from West Sussex Adoption Agency, so I thought,

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"Well, what's all this about?" When I saw the name Stephen,

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I put two and two together.

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I suddenly remembered who Stephen was.

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Just a flashback of being told about 10 or 11 that they had a boy named

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Stephen adopted. So that really set me thinking, oh, what's this all about?

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Tony was intrigued by the mysterious address

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on the back of one of the envelopes.

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So what I did was,

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we wrote a letter saying who we were, what we're doing,

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why we're trying to do what we're doing

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and we sent it to that address and

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after about a month, we never got a reply back.

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And we thought, "Well, what can we do now?"

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The next step was to trawl through phone directories in an attempt to

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match a name to an address to find a contact number.

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We did find a phone number, rang it up and it wasn't...

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It was the right phone number but the wrong person.

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They didn't live there any more but they did have a number.

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I gave her my number and, blow me, I got a phone call back.

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We spoke to Jenny, which was Stephen's ex-wife at that time,

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and she just went mental in the nicest possible way

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that you could think of.

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She was screaming and jumping up and down.

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She said, "Do you realise how long he's been looking for you?"

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She said, "I'm going to have to ring him."

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Within the hour, Tony found himself on the phone

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to the brother he'd never known.

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And he said, "Hi, Tony. This is your brother, Stephen."

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And I just gave the phone to me wife.

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I just couldn't take it in for a few minutes.

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You know, she was chatting to him as if he'd known her all his life.

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You know, then I had to come back and compose meself and then we just

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spoke for hours and hours about all sorts of things.

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Following that emotional phone call, the brothers met up,

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and Tony and Stephen are now in regular contact,

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but the story didn't end there.

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And then I was speaking to me younger sister, Marion,

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and she was obviously elated and ecstatic

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and then she dropped a bombshell on me.

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She said, "Fantastic news."

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She said, "What about Ian?"

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And I might have used the words I said but along the lines of,

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"Who's Ian?" She said, "Well, the other one that we had adopted."

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I said, "What other one?" And she said, "You must've known?"

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I said, "No, I know nothing about Ian at all."

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I just didn't know. I knew nothing.

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Having just found one missing brother,

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Tony was about to start searching all over again.

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Lorraine Hall was born in 1964

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and raised in Birmingham as the only child of Pat and Ray Edwards.

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I was brought up believing that Pat and Ray were my natural parents.

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I had no reason to doubt that.

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Growing up, Lorraine spent lots of time with a family friend, Sylvia,

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who lived nearby with her 11 children.

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Sylvia was known to me as Pat's friend.

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We used to go and have visits

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and I used to go and play with Sylvia's children.

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But when Lorraine was 15,

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Sylvia died and a huge family secret was dramatically unveiled at the

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funeral, attended by Lorraine and her parents.

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I remember being asked, when the children

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were getting into the main family car, to join them.

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And Pat came to me and she pointed and she directed me to get into the

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family front car and I said, "No.

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"No, I can't."

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And Pat was quite forceful.

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I remember her putting her hands on my shoulders and saying to me,

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"Come on, now, get in the car."

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And I remember standing up to Pat which I didn't do very often,

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but I remember saying, "No.

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"No." And she said, "Get in the car.

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"She was your mother."

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After 15 years of believing she was the only child of Pat and Ray,

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Lorraine was stunned by the shock revelation

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that Sylvia was, in fact, her biological mother.

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I just remember holding my head down in shame.

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Not, not being able to breathe.

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Not being able to remember anything.

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In a heartbeat,

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Lorraine discovered not only that her mother

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wasn't who she thought she was,

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but that the childhood friends she'd grown up playing with were

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actually her brothers and sisters.

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Knowing that

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I am one of 12 children, and been brought up an only child...

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I, I...

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Words, sometimes...

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The truth behind why Lorraine was the only child

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not to be raised by her birth mother remained a mystery

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and as quickly as Lorraine had discovered

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she had siblings, she lost them again.

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Until her death at the age of 46,

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11 of Sylvia's 12 children had been in her care

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but following the funeral, the children were split up.

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The eldest left home, some went into care,

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and the youngest moved away from the area with their father.

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The biggest thing for me at the time,

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and it's something I struggled all my life with,

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was the untruths.

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Maybe Pat or Ray or both of them

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could have sat me down and told me the truth,

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that Sylvia was my birth mother.

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Lorraine went on to leave home, get married

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and raise a family of her own.

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But questions about the whereabouts of her brothers and sisters and what

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had become of them plagued her.

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Didn't know what country they was in,

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didn't know what city they was in.

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Hoping, longing one day to be able to walk down the street to see them.

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Lorraine began trawling genealogy websites for any trace

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of Sylvia's 11 children.

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That many times it came up blank.

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I was searching and I still could not get nowhere

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and then this one day out of the blue...

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I had a match that popped up and it was a proper match

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and it matched the age, it matched the information

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I'd already discovered.

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It matched local location in Birmingham

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and I thought, maybe this could be it.

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But when Lorraine tried to access the details of the family tree,

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she found it was a locked, private profile and to be granted access,

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she would have to write to the administrator and introduce herself.

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The administrator passed Lorraine's e-mail on

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and a week later came a reply.

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When I saw the name popped up that I had an e-mail,

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every emotion you could ever imagine.

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I was happy, I couldn't believe it.

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I was scared. For the worries and woes and rejection.

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Maybe they don't want to know.

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Maybe they don't want to be part of your life.

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All Lorraine could do now was to sit back and wait to find out if these

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really were the siblings she was so desperate to find.

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-Do you recognise that?

-Yeah.

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-I don't.

-It's Mum's purse.

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Mum's purse.

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In Surrey, Tony Robinson had successfully tracked down

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his brother, Stephen, who had been adopted as a baby

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but his sense of achievement was short-lived

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when his sister dropped a bombshell.

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While Tony had been away at boarding school,

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there had been another baby boy also adopted out of the family.

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My sisters assumed that I knew that Ian had been born.

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I was away. I was away from home. I knew nothing about it.

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They just assumed I knew and it was just never...like Stephen,

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it was never discussed. But I knew nothing.

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With the small amount of information his sisters had given him,

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Tony began looking for his second brother.

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His first port of call was the Family Records Centre.

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So I went through the records and found Ian Robinson

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on the 5th or the 6th of December 1967.

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So I found his birth certificate.

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Having uncovered his brother's full name and a date of birth,

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Tony's next step was to visit his local adoption agency

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to try and find a current contact detail for Ian.

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They said they would do what they could

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and they came back after a meeting

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and they said, "We've done some digging for you,

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"we've discovered he's changed his name.

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"But we're not allowed to tell you what his name is."

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So, I wasn't happy.

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And I said, "Well, how the hell am I going to find him?"

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He said, "It's down to him."

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"If he wants to find you, he'll find you."

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It looked like Tony's search had hit a brick wall.

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I was going through every emotion possible - elation, frustration.

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But little did Tony know

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he wasn't the only one who was looking for a lost brother.

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I was sitting on me laptop just using social media.

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and I saw this message appear.

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Um... And I read it, and I thought, "What's this all about?"

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It was a name that I never knew. Wasn't friends with anybody.

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And his name suddenly appeared.

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And it was saying along the lines of, "Hi, my name is Martin.

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"I've been told from an early age I've been adopted,

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"and my family name was Robinson.

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"My parents was this name and that name.

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"I've got my siblings with all the names."

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He said, "I'm just trying to find out if you're my older brother."

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It turned out that Ian had changed his name to Martin

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some years earlier.

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Tony had found his second missing brother

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or rather, his little brother had found him.

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A flurry of e-mails followed.

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It was emotional even though we were on the end of a phone, it was still,

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like, "I'm talking to me brother",

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you know, this is someone I know absolutely nothing about

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but it was my brother.

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During the course of that week, I spoke to him

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every day for hours and hours,

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just talking about everything and nothing.

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Just to hear his voice.

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Martin had been adopted when he was seven months old.

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I always knew I was adopted from a very early age.

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I always knew that my name was Ian Robinson

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and I was the youngest of eight.

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Only really when me mum passed away that...

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..there was a...

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a stirring, shall we say.

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I think, because, out of respect,

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when my parents were still alive, they were my parents.

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But when his mum died she left him some paperwork

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and it contained some intriguing information.

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It's basically a history of my family

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that was given to my mum and dad when I was adopted.

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It tells me the years that me brothers and sisters were born in.

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It also hints as to why I was adopted

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and it also explains in it as well that

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the next one above me, Stephen, was also adopted.

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It says in here,

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my mother feels the strain of coping with such a large family

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on limited income.

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So straightaway you can tell that it was financial.

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It explains that what happened with Stephen

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also happened with me for the same reasons.

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Martin decided to apply to the authorities

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for details of his birth family.

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Done it online and made the application.

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And put a request in for the adoption papers and family records.

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All in all, I think it took about eight months.

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Today, Martin, Ian and another of his new-found siblings,

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Diane, are meeting up.

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Their other adopted brother Stephen would have loved to have joined them

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but his daughter is about to have a baby any day.

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-Are you nervous?

-Yeah.

-Are you?

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-Hiya, bro.

-Hiya.

-Come on in.

-How are you?

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-Long time no see.

-I know, it's good, isn't it, to see you again?

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-How you doing, young man? Nice to see you.

-All right.

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Nice to see you again.

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With over 40 years of family life to catch up on,

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the siblings are keen to fill each other in

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on the time they were apart.

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And they're starting by swapping some treasured family snaps.

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Now that is the earliest one that I've actually got of myself.

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-Now...

-Pick you out.

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..pick me out and that. Yeah, there's a football team at school.

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-It's that one.

-Yeah.

-You're the goalkeeper.

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-The goalkeeper.

-Obviously runs in the family, then.

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I was a goalkeeper. Smallest player there, but I was a goalkeeper.

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Same here. I'm virtually the smallest one there.

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-That there.

-Oh, that's old.

-It is.

-They're really old.

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That is us all on holiday at Butlins.

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But that's Nan and grandad,

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and I don't even remember them being on holiday with us.

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-That's Dad's mum and dad.

-All right.

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And, obviously, Dad must have taken the picture.

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We all had long hair and before we went away Dad made us all wear short

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-back and sides.

-You know, the old pudding-basin.

-Yeah, I remember.

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I cried my eyes out. I really did.

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Now that I'm actually seeing some of the pictures,

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I can actually get the feel of what it was like as a Robinson family.

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And I do actually regret not being part of it,

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but, obviously, that wasn't my choice at the time.

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And obviously, not being involved, there's so much, like,

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history that you've got,

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but it's nice, it's really nice, to see the pictures.

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-I'm glad you're with us now.

-Oh, yeah, definitely.

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And they're all looking forward to yet another new addition

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to the family.

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-I haven't heard from Stephen. He's not a grandad yet.

-No?

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I'm still waiting. I said, it don't matter if it's one

0:18:140:18:17

in the afternoon, or three in the morning,

0:18:170:18:18

-you need to let me know straightaway.

-Is he excited?

0:18:180:18:21

Extremely. Yeah, he's like a cat on a hot tin roof at the moment.

0:18:210:18:24

-Yeah.

-He's really excited.

0:18:240:18:26

This was actually something that I never expected was going to happen

0:18:260:18:29

because I had my own family and so this was the last thing on my mind.

0:18:290:18:35

But now it's happened,

0:18:350:18:37

it's nice because they're so welcoming

0:18:370:18:39

and I feel as though that I've been

0:18:390:18:41

part of the family for a lot longer than I actually have.

0:18:410:18:45

Now Martin has come back into our lives, we will never let him go.

0:18:450:18:49

He's part of our family.

0:18:490:18:50

Always will be.

0:18:510:18:52

It had to become my mission in life to somehow get us all together as a

0:18:540:18:59

family. That was it.

0:18:590:19:01

It just has to be. You know, and now it's happened, it's, well,

0:19:010:19:06

we're just starting out again now and

0:19:060:19:09

we just can't wait to keep it going.

0:19:090:19:11

In Birmingham, Lorraine Hall was trying to track down siblings

0:19:190:19:23

years after the shock discovery, at 15,

0:19:230:19:25

that the woman she thought was a family friend

0:19:250:19:28

was actually her biological mother.

0:19:280:19:31

When a family finding website threw up a match,

0:19:310:19:34

Lorraine contacted the genealogist involved.

0:19:340:19:38

It turned out that he had been researching the family

0:19:380:19:40

for his friend who lived 300 miles away in Scotland.

0:19:400:19:44

Her name was Donna, and she was one of Sylvia's daughters.

0:19:440:19:48

Lorraine had found one of the 11 siblings she'd been searching for.

0:19:480:19:52

Very happy to send her an e-mail.

0:19:520:19:56

And she took a couple of days to reply back.

0:19:560:19:59

I think she was so, sort of, shocked.

0:19:590:20:02

Donna was the youngest of Sylvia's children.

0:20:020:20:06

I was born in 1975 in Birmingham, the last of well, at the time,

0:20:060:20:11

there were only 11 children that my mum had.

0:20:110:20:14

Knew about or knew of my half brothers and sisters

0:20:140:20:18

cos two or three of them, sort of, lived with us, on and off,

0:20:180:20:21

in the first sort of few years.

0:20:210:20:23

After Sylvia died, Donna's father took her,

0:20:250:20:28

her sister and her brother to live in Great Yarmouth

0:20:280:20:31

and they lost touch with the rest of the family.

0:20:310:20:35

I don't know what happened. We just lost touch and I think, you know,

0:20:350:20:39

the Christmas cards eventually stopped,

0:20:390:20:41

and that's sadly what happened.

0:20:410:20:43

The communication line faded away.

0:20:430:20:45

Then, years later,

0:20:470:20:48

a health scare prompted Donna to pick up the search.

0:20:480:20:52

I'd had breast cancer at 26 and

0:20:520:20:57

we went to the family history clinic and, of course,

0:20:570:21:00

they were interested to know, well, let's have a look at your,

0:21:000:21:03

you know, maternal side and see if it's genetic from that.

0:21:030:21:06

I then had to try and remember their details that would be nice to find

0:21:070:21:12

and even to warn them.

0:21:120:21:14

Certainly if the cancer was genetic from Mum's side.

0:21:140:21:19

Donna's diagnosis now gave extra impetus

0:21:190:21:22

to her search to trace her relatives.

0:21:220:21:24

I can remember trawling through the Friends Reunited school

0:21:240:21:29

list trying to sort of have a rough guess. OK, well,

0:21:290:21:31

they would have gone to school.

0:21:310:21:33

I know roughly where we lived so they would have gone to school

0:21:330:21:36

around there. They, you know...

0:21:360:21:38

but going through and then no names were obviously coming up.

0:21:380:21:41

Struggling, Donna turned to a friend,

0:21:420:21:44

an amateur genealogist for help and he began to build

0:21:440:21:48

an online family tree for her.

0:21:480:21:50

My friend had put on one of the forums

0:21:510:21:54

looking for information about my mum and her husband.

0:21:540:21:58

Lorraine had seen that.

0:21:580:22:01

I think her heart must have skipped a beat and she went,

0:22:010:22:03

"That's my mum."

0:22:030:22:05

Lorraine and Donna were soon exchanging a flood of e-mails.

0:22:060:22:11

"Sorry it's taken a few days to reply,

0:22:110:22:14

"to be honest, I did not know where to start.

0:22:140:22:18

"I suppose I've been in shock.

0:22:180:22:19

"Having this contact has always been my secret ambition.

0:22:190:22:23

"And a dream.

0:22:230:22:24

"And I longed deep down but I thought it would never happen.

0:22:240:22:27

"I'm so looking forward to hearing back from you. Thank you."

0:22:290:22:33

The sisters arrange to meet.

0:22:360:22:39

I got there. I was on the steps early.

0:22:390:22:42

I'm always late, but for that I was early.

0:22:420:22:45

And then all of a sudden, I saw this little person...

0:22:450:22:49

..and straight away, looking into her eyes, I could see it was Donna.

0:22:490:22:54

It was like meeting a very old friend for the fir...

0:22:540:22:56

you know, again after a number of years

0:22:560:22:59

when you haven't got to see them.

0:22:590:23:00

I just remember walking round with this silly grin on my face watching

0:23:000:23:05

every movement, watching her walking around.

0:23:050:23:09

But the story didn't end there.

0:23:090:23:11

Donna's research was homing in on another of the siblings.

0:23:110:23:15

An older sister called Belinda.

0:23:150:23:17

I think I might have found Belinda through finding her ex-husband's

0:23:180:23:23

account first.

0:23:230:23:24

It's a bit convoluted way round it but there, again,

0:23:240:23:28

then looking and going,

0:23:280:23:31

"Is that them?" And then,

0:23:310:23:34

you go back and have a look at the family photos

0:23:340:23:38

and think, "Yeah, it is."

0:23:380:23:39

Donna sent a message and waited for a reply.

0:23:390:23:42

I sent a message back straightaway, "Yes, it's me."

0:23:420:23:46

It's Belinda.

0:23:460:23:48

Yeah, it's me.

0:23:480:23:49

So, I thought, "God, Donna's found me."

0:23:490:23:52

How bizarre is that?

0:23:520:23:54

Donna passed Belinda's details onto Lorraine and once in touch,

0:23:560:24:00

they quickly made an astonishing discovery.

0:24:000:24:03

I couldn't believe it.

0:24:050:24:08

Belinda and me had been living less than a mile apart since I had moved

0:24:080:24:13

back to Birmingham three years previously.

0:24:130:24:16

Maybe we had walked past each other on the street.

0:24:160:24:19

Maybe we had been in the same supermarket queue.

0:24:190:24:22

She said, "Shall we meet? Can we meet? Can we meet?"

0:24:230:24:26

I said, "Yeah, yeah, fine. No problem."

0:24:260:24:28

I saw her standing there and I thought...

0:24:280:24:31

The emotions, it was, like, whoa.

0:24:320:24:35

Wow, that's my sister.

0:24:350:24:36

So I broke into a run and we had a massive hug and we were crying and,

0:24:360:24:42

like, "Oh, my God."

0:24:420:24:44

I just fell into her arms.

0:24:440:24:46

I think we stood there for about five, ten minutes, just hugging.

0:24:460:24:50

It had been so long.

0:24:510:24:52

It had been over 40-odd years since I'd seen Belinda.

0:24:520:24:55

And there's so many coincidences

0:24:560:25:00

with Lorraine.

0:25:000:25:01

She only lives down the road from me.

0:25:010:25:04

We'd been so close and yet so far.

0:25:040:25:08

Today is a special day.

0:25:130:25:15

Separated for decades, Donna is on her way

0:25:150:25:18

to meet the older sisters she's missed out on for so many years.

0:25:180:25:21

This morning, we're actually heading to Belinda's house,

0:25:210:25:24

which is the first time I've

0:25:240:25:25

been there, actually, so to meet her and Lorraine.

0:25:250:25:29

So quite excited about that, actually.

0:25:290:25:32

-Hello.

-Hello.

0:25:430:25:45

-Hiya.

-Hiya.

0:25:470:25:48

And Donna's brought something with sentimental value to show to her sisters.

0:25:540:25:58

I've got one other thing that I've brought down that I thought would be

0:25:580:26:02

interesting to show you.

0:26:020:26:03

What's that?

0:26:030:26:05

Do you recognise that?

0:26:070:26:08

-Yeah.

-I don't.

0:26:080:26:09

It was Mum's purse.

0:26:090:26:10

Mum's purse.

0:26:100:26:12

I've had it for years.

0:26:120:26:14

Along with the purse, Donna's brought along

0:26:150:26:17

their mother's favourite pieces of jewellery which she inherited.

0:26:170:26:20

Wow. I haven't seen that in absolutely years.

0:26:210:26:26

How long has it been since you've seen these, then?

0:26:270:26:29

Obviously must be 35 years or more.

0:26:290:26:32

More than that. More than that.

0:26:320:26:34

Do you want any of them?

0:26:340:26:36

-Could I have that?

-Of course you can.

0:26:360:26:39

-You're more than welcome to it.

-Thank you.

0:26:390:26:41

You'll actually have something of Mum's.

0:26:410:26:44

Thank you for that. I will treasure that.

0:26:450:26:47

I will. It's the only thing I've got of my mum's.

0:26:480:26:52

-Have you not got anything?

-No.

0:26:520:26:54

Nothing. That is really nice, to have something of my mum.

0:26:540:26:58

The sisters have planned a trip to the local crematorium where their

0:27:000:27:03

mother's funeral was held all those years ago.

0:27:030:27:06

Here, Sylvia's name has been entered into the book of remembrance.

0:27:060:27:10

-Are you OK?

-Yeah, yeah, it's just sad, isn't it?

0:27:130:27:16

It is sad.

0:27:170:27:18

The three of us here today has meant so much.

0:27:200:27:25

I think today's closure.

0:27:250:27:27

-What I needed.

-Closure and reopening the next chapter.

0:27:270:27:31

All three sisters are now in regular contact and for the first time,

0:27:340:27:39

Today has been such an emotional journey.

0:27:420:27:47

It's been something

0:27:470:27:49

I've waited a very long time for and to share it today with my sisters...

0:27:490:27:55

..I think it will change me.

0:27:580:28:01

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