Episode 12 Family Finders

Families can be driven apart for all manner of reasons.

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

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

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

..finding them can take a lifetime...

I might have a brother that's still living here.

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

And that's where the Family Finders come in.

From international organisations...

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

..to genealogy detective agencies...

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

you know, really, really special.

..and dedicated one-man bands...

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

how badly you want to solve the problem.

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

Finding new families is wonderful.

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

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

..learning the tricks they use

to track missing relatives through time...

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

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

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

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

You just completed my life for me.

Families can lose contact for all sorts of reasons.

But in the history of human civilisation,

one thing above all others has been responsible

for tearing families apart - war.

Today, we follow the stories of two families,

both split up by the huge upheaval created by the Second World War

and both left unresolved for decades.

Wendy Stringer has been searching for answers

to a 70-year-old wartime family mystery.

She never got to see her son.

That she must have always loved.

And Maureen Cooper's search for her birth mother began

when they were split up by the conflict in Europe.

Inside, you feel,

you know, warm and fuzzy about meeting them cos you're nervous.

This is the first time.

For Mum as well, this is... This is a big moment for my mum.

Wendy Stringer was born in Wigan

as the Battle of Britain was being fought

in the skies over southern England.

My parents were married very young.

My mum was 17. My dad, 19.

They wanted to get married before he went to war.

A few months later, I was born, in June 1940.

Just before she was born,

Wendy's father, Ronald, was sent to fight in North Africa,

leaving his daughter and her mum, Marjorie,

in Wigan to face a war alone.

I didn't know what it was all about.

I just heard these bangs.

It was quite scary.

Cos the bangs used to shake the house.

I can remember my mother running down the road with me

to an air raid shelter and cuddling me.

And I can remember snuggling up under her chin,

and she always smelled nice.

It was hard. It was quite difficult for my mother, really.

But life was about to get even harder.

My mum got a telegram.

And in this telegram, it said that my dad was missing, presumed dead.

His battalion had gone away, and they were all killed.

I can remember her crying a lot, but I didn't understand.

I was too young to understand.

Wendy's father was missing in action.

Her mother assumed the worst.

But wartime life carried on for Wendy and Marjorie,

just two more innocent victims of a conflict that had engulfed millions,

until one day, two years later...

And then another telegram came saying that he had been found

with malaria and desert sores and loss of memory.

Ronald was alive.

Soon after, he returned home and met his daughter, Wendy,

for the very first time.

He rushed over and got me up in his arms and hugged me

till I couldn't breathe.

And then he got hold of my mother

and was hugging and hugging for ages.

After the hostilities ended, family life began to return to normal.

Wendy's sister, Gillian, was born in 1945,

and they had a happy childhood.

It wasn't until years later,

after Wendy had started a family of her own,

that she learned of her mother's wartime secret.

I had my first baby in 1960.

And it was getting towards Christmas -

my mother was always very upset around Christmas time

and we didn't...we never knew why

until she told me that she'd had a baby

during the war. And she called him Michael.

My mother said to me that my dad was missing, presumed dead,

and how upset she was.

Her two sisters wanted to take her out so that she wouldn't be so

upset, and she met an old school friend and she went out with him

for a while. And then she found out she was pregnant.

But then she found out that my dad was still alive.

During the Second World War,

over 40,000 members of the British Armed Forces

were declared missing in action.

And in the fog of war,

it was near impossible to keep accurate records of soldiers

thought missing or killed. When hostilities ended,

there were still almost 6,000 British troops unaccounted for.

Back at home, it left many families in turmoil.

When we look at the make up of families in Britain

in the 20th century,

I think the First World War, the Second World War

and National Service

are the three biggest single influences

on how families developed, broke up,

were put together over that time.

There seems to be some kind of a social shift,

that there were lots of children born out of wedlock.

There was a feeling of having to live for the moment

because nobody knew what was going to happen tomorrow.

The war had a huge impact on Wendy's family.

When her mother, Marjorie,

found out that the husband she assumed had been killed

was coming home,

she had been seven months pregnant with another man's child.

Wendy's grandparents hastily made plans for the unborn baby

to be adopted.

My mum told me that we had gone to Cornwall,

where she had the baby and the adoption papers were signed.

It all fell into place then, you know,

what I could remember as a child,

going on holiday with my gran and my mother.

I think my mother told me about the adoption.

You know, we'd seen my baby

and maybe she looked very much like him

and it brought all these memories

back which she had tried to put at the back of her mind.

I can remember her crying

as she told me.

I felt awful because I couldn't console her cos I was so...shocked

at what she was telling me. I couldn't take it in.

That was in 1960.

The subject of Wendy's half-brother was not mentioned again until after

the death of Wendy's father in 1993.

My mum started to talk about it and she said,

"I would love to meet my son before I died."

And I started to feel

that I should...we should do something.

All we'd got was the telephone directory, you know,

and nobody answered the phone,

or the ones that did, didn't know what we were talking about.

So we came to a dead end.

So we put that on one side.

And sadly, my mum died in 1999.

It wasn't until 2010 and I thought to myself,

"I've lived my threescore years and ten, you know,

"and I would love to see him, see what he's like,

"what he looks like," so I made it a quest to find him.

With very little information to go on, Wendy's husband, Graham,

took up the reins.

The only information

I had was his name, his place of birth

-and possibly a year.

-HE LAUGHS

My mother had found out

that his parents were called Sheriff and they'd called him John.

So we went through 192, Yell, everything I could find.

Nothing came up.

And then my son suggested that I use one of the social media websites,

and I found every John Sheriff that I could

that sort of fit within a one-year parameter.

And I sent every one of them a message.

I sent it as Wendy would send it,

so I put, "I'm looking for a brother

"born 1942, 1943, December,

"born in Cornwall and his mother's name was Marjorie."

And I just left it at that.

We never heard anything. Nobody...

Not one person answered, so we gave it up as a bad job.

I thought to myself, "We're never going to find him now."

Cos nine months had passed and we hadn't heard.

Then, out of the blue, Wendy and Graham finally got a response.

I was just checking my e-mails and

one popped up from a John Sheriff.

And I thought, "Wow!"

So I opened it, and it said,

"I could be the person you're looking for."

Finally, after years of looking,

Wendy seemed one step closer to solving her family puzzle.

It's a little bit like a jigsaw,

where we're putting the pieces together slowly.

100 miles away, 70-year-old Maureen Cooper had also been trying

to piece back together a family blown apart by the Second World War.

Maureen grew up in post-war Birmingham with her parents,

Robert and Mary, and her sister, Brenda.

Although the conflict had ended, the upheaval it had caused

for so many families was about to have a profound effect

on a young Maureen's life.

I didn't find out I was adopted until I was 11.

I'd had a row with my cousin Norma over the fence.

And she blurted out that I was adopted, just like her.

And I... "What's she mean?"

So I went running into Mum and I said, "Am I adopted?"

She said, "Yes, you're adopted." I was quite upset.

I can remember going up to the bedroom

and having a good blowout,

as you do when you find out these things.

I kept saying, "Why me? You know. "Why me?"

And then they explained it all,

that they couldn't have children at the time

and they decided they would adopt.

They said that I was a special one because, you know, they went

and looked at lots of little babies and they chose me.

Although Maureen had a happy childhood, as she grew up,

her thoughts often turned to her birth mother.

When you get a bit older, you think to yourself,

"I wonder what she looks like.

"I wonder what my natural mother looks like.

"I wonder if I could find her."

In those days, it wasn't the done thing, you know,

It was all kept sort of hush-hush.

But then, in 1965, on the day of her wedding,

Maureen's adoptive father dropped a bombshell.

My dad was in the bedroom and he said, "Here's your adoption papers.

"If you want to try and find your natural mum, you can."

"I don't know where she is." He said, "That's all I can tell you."

Obviously, I was looking at them.

Something you don't really do on your wedding day! But...

I was looking down at them and I thought, "Oh, my God."

Slowly, Maureen began to learn more about her background

and her birth mother, Dorothy.

My natural mum, she was married in 1938.

I was born in '45, so...

What I was told was that her husband had probably gone off to war.

While her husband was away fighting, and with no idea that if he was

ever coming back, Dorothy fell pregnant with Maureen.

On her birth certificate, no father is named.

Of course, you get all the Americans

and everybody else coming over. I don't know my dad.

I don't know whether he's American or what he is. I have no idea.

I mean, it'd be nice to find him,

but I wouldn't even know where to start.

In the confusion of war,

it's possible that Dorothy thought her husband was killed in action

and had started another relationship,

as many war widows did.

However, when Maureen was just six months old,

it seemed word reached her mother that her husband was returning.

All I know is that he was coming home from war and she had to get

rid of me before he got home, just had to get rid of me.

Put me in a... You know, ready for adoption.

Within a few months, Maureen was found a new home and began a new

life with her adoptive parents. It wasn't until years later, after they

had died and Maureen had children of her own, that she started

to consider finding her birth family.

Well, we sort of got an idea

that she was adopted.

And we always knew that there was this little bit of the

jigsaw that she didn't have.

We could see what it meant to Mum to

hopefully find, you know, part of

her family, and ideally, her mum.

She knew bits of who she was, where she was from,

but she didn't know this other side.

And that's the other side that she really wanted to complete.

Now Maureen began her search for her birth mother in earnest.

I started to write.

I think it was a council we wrote to in Birmingham.

And they wrote back saying, "Oh, try the courts."

Which again, I wrote to the courts.

And they said, "Put a letter in,

"in case we do find her and we can send it to her."

So I did a quick letter. "Hello, I'm your daughter,"

and that sort of thing.

And I had a letter back from the court saying, "Sorry...

"Can't find anybody of that name."

And I thought, "Right."

So there we got a blank.

You think you're doing the right thing.

And you think, "Is it worth it?"

"No, I can't be bothered any more."

As the years passed, one dead end followed another.

Then in 2011, Maureen was contacted by adoption agency.

But it wasn't the news she'd been expecting.

I had this phone call out of the blue.

And she said, "Are you Maureen Cooper?" I said, "Yeah."

She said, "We think we have found a sibling."

I said, "Really?"

I couldn't believe it. I was...

I was in awe! I thought, "You're joking!"

I said, "We think we've found somebody, you know, of mine!"

And, I know I got all excited, as you do.

You think, "God, after 50 years!"

And I was tickled pink, I really was.

They hadn't found Maureen's birth mother,

but they'd had discovered that she had an older sister.

Before Maureen was born, it seems her mother, Dorothy,

had another child while her husband was away at war.

Both children has been put up for adoption.

I had a phone call from my mother.

She says, "We found them, we've got them!"

I said, "Who, who?" And then she explained who she'd found.

It was like, "Wow!" So, yeah, it was great news.

You could hear from the way she was speaking to us that she was really

delighted and happy that finally there was a breakthrough,

and it was going to open a lot of doors in knowing what's,

you know, her heritage and where she's come from.

Little did know Maureen know that the search for her birth mother

was about to bring together two families separated by war.

To meet your family you've never met before,

it's exciting and scary and a little bit anxious about it

all in one go.

Hello.

Wendy and her husband, Graham, had been searching online

and on social media for Wendy's half-brother, John.

John had been born and then given up for adoption during the war.

But with no luck, Wendy had given up hope of ever finding her brother,

until one day, months later, when Graham was checking for messages.

And one popped up from a John Sheriff.

And it said, "I could be the person you're looking for."

And I thought, "Wow!"

We'd been on holiday, we arrived back and,

as you do when you get home,

you have to see if there are any messages, mails.

There was one there asking if John Sheriff,

who was born in 1942 or 1943,

was somebody I knew.

So I decided I would e-mail them back

to confirm that I was the John Sheriff they were looking for.

And he knew his mother's name was Marjorie,

he knew when he was born, he also knew he had two sisters.

I gave him my phone number and he telephoned me.

And we had a quick discussion,

and then I gave the phone to Wendy,

which was quite emotional.

HE CHUCKLES

My husband burst through the door, he said,

"We found him, we found him!"

I said, "Found who?"

"John Sheriff! John Sheriff's on the phone."

He said, "It's your brother." And I just screamed.

I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it.

I thought all my birthdays had come at once.

And when I heard his voice, I said, "Is that really you?"

And he said, "Yes, it's me."

And we just talked for two hours solid.

It was exciting, but it just felt quite normal.

And we made arrangements to meet a week later.

John wasted no time in filling Wendy in on his life since being adopted

and discovered he had spent many years living just half an hour away.

I grew up in Stockport with my parents.

Happy, very happy. It was a lovely background.

And I first found out that I was adopted

when I was about seven or eight years old.

My mother told me.

I remember that she was very upset at the time about this.

It didn't upset me,

in that I thought it was lovely that I had been picked.

In a lot of respects, that was the only time it was ever mentioned.

I don't ever discussed it with my father.

I just got on and had a lovely life.

They cared for me greatly.

It's a strange thing to have this mystery.

Knowing I was adopted, I mean, it was there in the background.

I always felt that it would be a bit cruel to my parents

to actually start chasing original family.

So I decided to leave well alone.

I thought it would be disrespectful for my family.

But after his adoptive parents died, John felt able to start

looking for his birth family. He began with his adoption papers.

There was no mention of a father,

but it did provide some other vital information.

It had my mother's name, Marjorie Hallon,

and I was born in Redruth.

I thought my mother must have been Irish, being Hallon.

And I thought with it being the war, my father was probably an American.

I tried to contact the registrar in Redruth.

And I sent an application for a birth certificate,

putting all the information that I had from my adoption certificate

and waited for the response.

The registrar spoke to me

and she said that she couldn't send me a birth certificate because I had

gotten the name incorrectly.

When I looked at the adoption certificate, and it looked right to

me, Hallon, H-A-L-L-O-N, so frustration kicked in

and she wasn't then able to tell me the correct spelling

and left me in limbo, to be truthful.

I think it was an enquiry I was tentative about making anyway,

and then to have it thwarted by that, it was just,

"Blow it, I'm 60 years on, I don't really need to push this at all."

And there, John's search may have ended

were it not for the determination of his son.

Well, he was more successful than I.

About 2006, he had obtained a birth certificate.

On the birth certificate, it was Halton, not Hallon.

When I looked at the adoption certificate,

the L, the second L, hadn't been crossed.

John's son also discovered some other news

he had to break to his dad.

He said, "Your mum's died, sadly.

"She died in 1999."

Which was...quite upsetting,

you know, cos I would've liked to have...

I'd have liked to let her know that...

-EMOTIONAL:

-..that I'd been happy.

This simple administrative error had prevented John from making contact

with his mum before she died.

He'd done further research and found out that I had two sisters,

one who was born prior to me and one who was born after.

He said, "They don't live too far away,

"should we contact them?"

And I said, "No."

Being in between the two sisters and they having the same father and

me not having a father named made me more aware that there was...

a danger of upsetting by making an approach.

John put his search on hold.

What he didn't know was that one of his sisters, Wendy,

was looking for him.

But it was another ten years before they eventually make contact.

And after a phone call, a few days later,

they met for the very first time.

We just hung onto one another.

We couldn't speak for about five minutes.

It was as if we'd...we'd known each other all that time, really.

Which sounds stupid.

But it just feels quite natural.

They've been so nice and kind to me.

It seemed to bring the circle together.

It just rounded everything off.

And finding out about the circumstances surrounding

my adoption, I don't feel that there should be any shame or anybody

should be ashamed of anything, because they were just circumstances

of the war.

One or two people may have been hurt at the time. When I look at it,

for me, I wasn't hurt. I was quite happy.

It was exciting. It was wonderful.

As I say, I was telling everybody, anybody who would listen.

They've been making up for lost time ever since. But Wendy and John's

happiness at finding each other after all these years is tinged with

regret on both sides.

I just feel very selfish...

..that I didn't look for him while my mum was alive.

I feel guilty because she'd never saw him.

And it was her last wish, to see him.

She never got to see the son...

..that she must've always loved...

..but couldn't do anything about.

But I'm still pleased that we found him.

He's the most wonderful person.

-TEARFUL:

-He's so much like my mother.

If I'd pursued things in '98,

I'd have probably had the chance to actually meet my mother.

I think what would've been good about that

would have been to tell her that everything had been good.

But sadly, that didn't happen.

Today, Wendy and John are meeting up again.

John will be visiting his mother's grave for the first time.

It's a journey that has taken a long, long time.

It's a little bit like a jigsaw,

where we're putting the pieces together slowly.

Hiya, sweets.

-How are you?

-I've missed you.

-THEY GIGGLE

-Are you all right?

-Yes.

-How are you doing?

-I don't do well.

It feels like I expected.

Before they head to the churchyard,

Wendy wants to show her brother some old family photos.

-Our mum was...

-Ah, did Mum...?

She put all these together. This is when dad came home

-from the war.

-Yeah.

-There is my mum and me.

-She's lovely, isn't she? Gorgeous.

-Yes.

But this is me at school, one my school photographs.

Nice photograph, isn't it?

Yes. I look very much like my mother there.

Very much. There's my mum.

-There? With Gran?

-Yes.

-There's two photographs here of my mum in later life.

-Our mum.

Our mum. I keep forgetting, yeah.

She's got the smile.

-Do you remember when it was?

-It was about two years before she died.

-Oh.

That's sad.

It was just about the time, probably about the time

-when I was finding out about her.

-Yes. Yeah. Probably, yeah.

-This was the adoption certificate.

-Oh, right.

-And this was on January 1944.

-Oh.

-So just about two or three weeks after I was born.

-Yes, yes.

So they must have just got me settled down, you know,

and then up to Stockport.

-She only saw you for two weeks.

-Did she?

-That's all. Two weeks.

Well, that would have been it, wouldn't it?

She didn't have a picture of you or anything,

so all she got was her memory.

That's awful.

-Really awful.

-She said you were the most beautiful baby.

-There, that was...

-Oh, my goodness.

John at six months old.

-So I was happy enough there at one time.

-Yes.

It's a pity Mum didn't know...

-Oh.

-..that I was looked after.

-It's been so lovely to see you.

-Thank you.

Wendy and John's mother, Marjorie,

was buried at St Mary's Church in Tarleton.

Wendy makes regular visits to pay her respects.

John has never been here before.

The closer we get, the more emotional I feel.

Here it is.

Marjorie was buried on a family plot,

alongside husband, Ronald, and her parents.

SHE SNIFFLES

HE SIGHS

-Let's put the flowers in. Can I?

-You do it.

I think the closer we got to the grave,

the greater the emotion became, to be truthful.

I just want to say thank you for bringing me over here.

-It must've been difficult...

-Nice to have come together, isn't it?

..being here. Yeah, nice to be here with you.

So thank you. As I say, thank you for, well, finding me.

It's just the most wonderful thing that's happened.

I...I... I'm just over the moon that, you know, we found you.

You meet after 70 years or whatever and it's as if

you've known each other all...

-all the time.

-It is, isn't it? Yeah.

Maureen Cooper had also been given up for adoption after being

born out of wedlock during the Second World War.

She had no luck tracing her birth mother.

But an adoption agency had discovered she had an older sister.

The agency put the two families in contact.

But it wasn't Maureen's sister who called...

So I rang the phone number and Terry, Maureen's husband, answered.

And I, of course, had to explain who I was.

The voice on the end of the phone belonged to Maureen's niece,

Adele, the daughter of her long-lost sister

who she discovered was called Christine.

But the news was bittersweet for Maureen.

My sister had died 12 years before.

But I did find out off Adele

that her mum, my sister,

was looking for me.

You know, I was glad somebody was looking for me.

But upset that, you know, my sister died and I'd never get to meet her.

Christine had died in 2000 at the age of 57.

Adele helped Maureen to fill in the missing gaps

about her sister's life.

My mother, Christine, was born in Birmingham

and was Carol Anne Hunt until she was three-and-a-half.

And then she was adopted by a family called the Parkers,

and they renamed her Christine Parker.

She was always told that she was adopted.

She was very fortunate. The family she was adopted into, they were very

affluent, there were able to afford to give her a very good life,

post-war years.

But she always felt that something was missing.

The two sisters had very different upbringings,

although they unknowingly lived just a few miles apart

in the Midlands for many years.

My mum was nursing at the time in Birmingham.

She met my father at a dance in St Catherine's.

And he'd been working in Cadbury's.

And they got married and they had my two brothers in England.

And then they moved back to Ireland and had my sister and myself.

She spoke a lot about wanting to belong and have her own family.

That continued, really, into our lives as we grew up. She always

felt that she never belonged. That was always the issue that she had.

My father would have a very big family on his side,

and, you know, they would always be very open and accepting.

She was very fortunate to have them.

But she always said that they weren't her family.

You know, she wanted her own, someone to call her own.

But despite decades of searching,

Christine died before any family connections were made.

For Mum to find out that she had a younger sister

would be just huge.

I think that's the saddest part of all of this.

It's lovely for us to have found Maureen,

but I think for my mother, it would have been huge. And for Maureen.

They were so close in age.

It would have been lovely for them to have found each other, yeah.

Since the families were brought together,

Adele and Maureen have been in regular contact.

Adele's brother Philip

has been piecing together the family history.

I've done the family tree and I can track back my father's family

for generations.

And with Mum's family, we couldn't get past the Parkers.

So we had no idea who her family was.

And also, when the grandchildren came along,

she was very proud of them.

And, you know, she would've loved to have been able to show them off

to her family, you know, and relatives,

but she had nobody to show them to.

On both sides of the Irish Sea,

the sisters were searching for each other.

But with little information to go on and limited resources,

they were fighting a losing battle.

We take so much for granted nowadays

because of the technology, the internet.

We can instantly get answers.

She did everything by pen.

She had no reference books.

So she might write a letter to somebody trying to

track down her family. She mightn't hear back for six or seven months.

Sometimes they were never answered. But she couldn't pick up the phone.

We didn't have a phone. She couldn't go on the internet and search.

If she was alive today and she had the access today that we have,

she would've found Maureen.

She would have, yeah. I do believe that, yeah.

After making contact with her older sister's family, Maureen made

the trip to Ireland to meet her newly discovered nephews and nieces.

The fact that we've now found Maureen,

it actually puts a lot more pressure on us trying to express the

desire that Mum had and the passion that she had to find her family.

And the fact that she got so close and yet never achieved it,

and now we've managed to put all the pieces of the jigsaw together

and meet people in the flesh,

she would have been ecstatic. She would have been delighted,

over the moon.

Now, three years after they first made contact,

Maureen is reuniting with her sister's family again,

this time in England, where Maureen lives in Bristol.

And today marks another very special occasion.

It'll be the first time Maureen's sons, Mark and Matt,

will meet their new-found family.

Are you looking forward...

-Yeah, it's not far.

-..to meeting your new cousins?

-Yeah. It's going to be exciting.

-How about you, Matt?

-Are you looking forward to it?

-Yeah, it's going to be good.

-Yeah.

-It'll be good.

It's like the culmination of something that's been

going on for years.

And to meet your family, your extended family that you've never

met before, I can't quite imagine how the moment is going to be.

And it's exciting and scary and, you know,

a little bit anxious about it all in one go.

They know I've got two boys and,

obviously, they would like to meet both of you.

-So today's the day.

-Yeah.

-Yeah, well exciting.

-Yeah.

Can't wait. Can't wait.

Inside, you feel, you know, warm and fuzzy about meeting them.

Because you're nervous cos, you know, this is the first time.

And for Mum as well. This is a big moment for my mum.

I suppose when we meet today,

-Mum will be with us.

-Oh, she will, yeah.

She will experience it in her own spiritual way

that she's found her family.

Waiting to meet them are all of Christine's children -

Philip, Patrick, Donna and Adele.

-Hi!

-All right.

THEY LAUGH

-Hello.

-Hello.

-Oh, great.

-Isn't it just?

-Yeah.

-Tired?

-Oh, hi, Philip.

-Hi. How are you?

-Mark is it?

-Matt.

-Matt, sorry.

-That's Matt. Sorry.

-How are you?

-Good, good.

Christine's children have brought with them

some family archive that Maureen has never seen before.

OK, these are some pictures that we brought. That's Mum

when she was about six, I'd imagine. I can see the resemblance there.

-Yeah. It's the same. Uncanny.

-That's her wedding dress.

-And that one.

-It's quite like yours, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-You can see the resemblance, then?

-Oh, yeah. Definitely.

Through his mother's passion for writing and painting,

Philip can also reveal that her unknown birth family were

never far from Christine's thoughts.

And then we brought these as well.

-These... She used to write sort short stories.

-Oh, right.

But she used a pen name - Hunt.

-Really?

-That's interesting.

Yeah. She used to sign them Christine Hunt.

Oh.

And then I have a photograph of a painting.

But she used to use a pen name for painting, which was Carol Anne Hunt.

Which was her birth name.

-Yeah, that's right, cos that's on the birth certificate.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

That's a little biography that she wrote,

and there's the actual document with her handwriting on it.

And her signature, Christine Hunt.

-Her handwriting is similar to yours as well.

-I know!

-Really?

-Yeah, absolutely.

-It's so uncanny, this is.

-It's so uncanny, yeah.

It really is.

Goes to show how much your genes have an influence on your life,

-doesn't it?

-Crazy.

And Maureen has some memories of her own to share.

These are of me when I was... I think I was about three on that one.

You were born Hunt.

-Yeah.

-What name had you here?

-Truman.

-Truman, OK.

-Yeah.

-They're lovely.

You couldn't make it more complicated, could you?

No, you couldn't.

This is the wedding one.

Terry was 21 and I was 19.

Same age as Mum when she got married.

-Yeah, the same.

-What church is that?

-St John's.

-In Birmingham?

-Yep.

-And it snowed.

-It snowed. The night before we got married.

The same with Mum's wedding.

-It snowed.

-Did it?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Both got married at the same age, both did nursing,

both have amazing looking children.

-THEY LAUGH ALL:

-Yeah!

Maureen's family is just one of millions that were left

devastated and divided by the Second World War.

The consequences of this conflict mean Maureen will now never

get to meet her birth mother or sister. But from today,

at least the next generation of their family is reunited.

-ALL:

-Whoo!

-Hey!

-THEY LAUGH

Today has been...fantastic!

I'm really pleased.

And now that I've been able to catch up and little bits of snippets

come out, you know. But, yeah, it's been great.

They are relatives. I mean, all of them.

You know? And it's...

..brilliant. I am so pleased.

A toast to Carol Anne Hunt.

-Yes.

-Carol Anne Hunt.

-ALL:

-Cheers.

It's been fab. Really, really very special. They've been brilliant.

It's a long time that my mum's been looking.

You kind of thought of it was never ever going to happen.

And now it's happened.

Mum's not a particularly emotional person, and now, today, stood

right next to you, you could feel how pleased and excited she was.

It sort of completes everything for her.

-Really, really nice feeling.

-Yeah.

They're a great bunch of people as well.

-PHILIP:

-Mum be very proud that we found them.

And I'm so happy for Auntie Maureen that she's found closure.

She is a wonderful woman and I'm just very happy for her.

It's almost like the final piece in the jigsaw puzzle for all of us.

It's lovely to know now the that we will keep in contact,

and with the next generation coming through.

And seeing us all together in the one room, it really is a family.

From Mum's history, we have another side to our story,

another chapter.

That's all I need to mention.

50 years...

Yeah, it's been a long time coming. But it has paid off.

It's nice when you find what you're looking for.