Episode 5 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've you 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 someone 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 family 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 my 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've just completed my life for me.

When it comes to tracking down lost family members, you don't

always have to pay for a professional service

or seek outside help.

In the age of the internet, anyone can become a family detective.

Today, we follow one man's mission to find out about his

grandfather which uncovered a family lost across the generations.

Well, that's really quite shocking, actually, in a pleasant kind of way.

It's as if it's meant to be.

And Lynn who spent years trying to track down her long-lost brother.

A million things went through my head,

what I thought I would say to him,

and I practised it and practised it and practised it and then I rang

the number and just before I put the last digit in, I put the phone down

and if I did that once, I must have done it 20 times.

53-year-old Simon Wrigley was born and brought up on the Isle of Wight.

It was a great place to grow up.

My father was the harbour master so we were a lot of time on boats

and I grew up on boats and I loved the sea.

But at the age of 21, Simon decided to leave the island

and broaden his horizons.

And by chance, I ended up in Israel.

Literally by chance as a volunteer on a kibbutz.

I was working in the bananas and with the oranges and we were a

group of young people who were having a wonderful time.

And been there ever since.

Even though he's been living in Israel for over 30 years,

Simon has never forgotten his roots.

England is my home.

Especially the Isle of Wight and that's where I come from.

When you live away from your family, you realise how important they are.

But it wasn't until he returned to the Isle of Wight, briefly,

after his grandmother died that Simon began a fascination

with his family history.

When grandparents die, when they pass over,

the knowledge goes with them.

I think that living away from my family and growing older

and family members passing away,

I became aware of that more

and it's very important to talk to them about the past,

to get that knowledge from them, because if not, it goes.

I discovered a picture in my parents' house of my grandparents

and this was when they were engaged.

It must be around 1923.

I can see myself in my grandfather.

And I realise that nobody really had any connection with his side of the

family and there was this whole, sort of, mystery that nobody knew.

That's why I wanted to know more about him.

Determined to find out more about his mysterious grandfather,

Bernard, who had died before he was born,

Simon began his search close to home with his mother.

I asked her lots of questions because it was her father

and she's the only one that remembers her father.

She was 12 years old when he died.

She remembers sitting on his knee and he would sing to her and he

told her stories of the war and that he had a crash in a plane over France.

Simon knew very little else about his grandfather

so, determined to discover more, back in Israel,

he began to search, in earnest, on the internet.

One of the first things I discovered online was my grandfather's death

certificate and here's my grandfather's name on the certificate,

Bernard Frederick Groundsell.

He died at a very early age, at the age of 46 in 1949.

He died of lung cancer to which I didn't know.

It stirred an emotion in me, reading this because

what does this come down to, just a piece of paper saying somebody's died? But this is... This is...

This is somebody. This is my family. This is my... This is my grandfather.

And it's not just a date on a piece of paper. It was a human being.

Simon's search was beginning to bear fruit.

And now he'd started to delve into his past, he couldn't stop.

Next, he traced his family tree back hundreds of years.

We get back here to 1744.

It was like a piece of history in my hands. I was amazed.

When I read this, when I look at it, it's...

I think, "Who are these people?

"What did they do? Where did they come from?"

But Simon's focus kept coming back to the mysterious Bernard.

I realised that my grandfather was one of nine children.

There were so many questions that were raised which sparked my interest.

There was one question that really caught Simon's imagination.

If his grandfather had eight brothers and sisters,

could Simon have surviving relatives out there

he didn't know about?

He decided to investigate further.

His first port of call was back on the Isle of Wight.

I thought I'd give it a go

by putting an advertisement in the local paper.

They have a section, here, called Islanders Reunited.

So I thought, "I'll send an e-mail, here, and let's see if anything comes up."

As well as putting an advert in the local paper, Simon engaged

the help of the Family History Society on the Isle of Wight.

There are 160 of these local societies around the UK.

All are listed on the Federation Of Family History Society website.

The FFHS deal with England, Ireland and Wales.

If you live in Scotland,

you'll need to contact the Scottish Association Of Family History.

Local societies are a great starting point for your search

and can help with research tips, burial indexes and parish records.

Simon had been in touch with the local History Society

and placed an ad in the local press.

But with no idea if his ancestors had any surviving relatives

left on the Isle of Wight,

all he could do now was wait.

It must have been about six months and I got a bit, sort of...

..I wouldn't say given up

but I didn't have much hope of finding family members from this

but I thought, "At least I'll give it a try, you never know."

Was this the end of his journey to find long-lost relations or was it just the beginning?

54-year-old Lynn Lewis has been waiting

almost 40 years to find out the truth about her long-lost family.

Lynn grew up in Buxton, in the Peak District, with her parents,

Maureen and Alan, her two sisters and a brother.

I had a wonderful childhood. Everything we wanted, we got.

We were a bit spoilt, really.

It was always a happy home.

Mum and Dad, I think, planted that in us all.

That family was important.

So, I am really close to all of my family.

The first clue for Lynn that all may not be as it seemed came one

Christmas when she was hunting for presents.

When I was younger, I looked through Mum's drawer,

seeing if she was hiding anything at the side of the bed, once.

And I found this little black-and-white photograph of a little baby.

And I thought, "Who's this?"

But, obviously, I couldn't ask me mum because

I shouldn't have been rooting through her drawers.

Maybe it was a cousin, maybe it was a baby of a friend of Mum and Dad's or...

I didn't have any idea and

think, for one moment, it could possibly be a sibling of mine.

It wasn't until years later that Lynn discovered

the truth about the baby boy in the photo.

My parents told me I had an older brother when I was around 15.

I think they thought, at that point, I was probably old enough to

take on board the information.

It was much of a shock to me so I asked, "Will I ever see him?

"What does he look like?"

And they said, "Well, we'll never know

"cos we gave up all rights to have him.

"He was given up for adoption, you know,

"there's nothing you'll ever be able to do about it."

Mum was only 15, at the time, when she got pregnant and she said in them days

it wasn't allowed for you to have a baby out of wedlock and so young

so she was sent away to a mother and baby home to have my brother.

In fact, the news of 15-year-old Maureen's pregnancy had

a devastating effect on the family.

My mum went home to tell her parents that she was pregnant

and her mum was at the top of the stairs, at the time, and she must've

shouted up to her and her mother fell down the stairs

and died.

Erm, that left just my grandad then and I think it was a shock

and a really taboo subject.

She probably blamed herself for her mum dying

so she'd got the guilt of all that

and I can't imagine what she must have gone through.

Nobody to talk to apart from her sisters.

Maureen was sent away to a mother and baby home

for the remainder of her pregnancy.

She cared for her new baby there for the first six weeks of his life

while suitable adoptive parents were found for him.

It was a heart-wrenching day for her.

She didn't want to give him away.

Her and my dad would have loved to have just kept the baby

and got married

and carried on with a lovely family life and that's what she craved for.

Both of them. Mum and Dad.

That's what they wanted to do

but the decision was taken completely out of her hands.

Even though Maureen was forbidden to see the baby's father, Alan,

the couple continued their relationship in secret

until, finally, three years later, they were married.

Shortly afterwards,

Lynn was born and three more siblings were to follow.

Mum and Dad had always wanted another boy

and then ten years after my youngest sister was born,

my mum got pregnant again

and they finally got the little boy that they'd always wanted.

It was the couple's last child together.

Just four years after his youngest son was born,

Lynn's father, Alan, was diagnosed with leukaemia.

The illness was too far gone for them to actually treat it.

And his lifespan didn't last more than six to eight months.

And before we turned round, he'd gone and he was only 39.

It was a very, very stressful and upsetting time for the whole family.

Despite his illness,

Lynn's dad walked her down the aisle on her wedding day in 1981.

He died just a few days later.

Lynn made it her mission to reunite the remaining family.

So I decided after my dad had died that I would see

whether I could find my brother.

I had thought about him since they'd told me when I was 15

but now it become more important to me to try and find him

so I gathered the information from Mum, as much as I could,

and I was determined that, one day, I'd meet this brother of mine.

But Lynn's search immediately hit a brick wall that would

leave her frustrated for the next 25 years.

Because Mum had given him up for adoption,

I didn't have any rights to look for him.

He could look for us but we couldn't look for him.

Every programme that I watched on the TV that had anything to

do with adoptions... I'd be scanning the TV looking for somebody

that would look like my dad.

I even wrote to Cilla Black's Surprise Surprise.

But I got a letter back saying, sadly, they couldn't help me,

and everywhere I went it was a closed door.

And it wasn't until I watched a programme on the television

in 2005 that said, "Please dial this number

"if you've been affected by this programme." I dialled the number,

I explained what had happened

and I was told, then, that the law had changed a couple of years ago

and you, now, had a right to look for your siblings.

In 2005, there was

a change in the law which, for the first time, allowed people to

contact birth relatives who'd been put up for adoption.

This initial contact has to take place through an intermediary

such as an adoption agency or local authority.

It was because of this law change that Lynn could finally try

and find her long-lost brother with the help of an adoption agency.

I gave them as much information as I possibly could and I was told,

then, the procedure would be that if they found somebody

that was my brother, they would, then, write a letter to him explaining

that they had somebody that wanted to get in contact with him.

From there, Lynn's long, 25-year search for her brother began

to move very quickly.

I got a phone call from the agency saying they'd narrowed

it down to one person who they felt sure was my brother and could I

write a letter and send photographs that they would pass on to him.

So, I was so excited.

The emotions, the love, the scare, the fright,

the "What's he going to look like?"

You know, he could be somebody famous for all I knew.

He could be anything and I couldn't imagine what was

going to become of this but it was just so, so exciting

to think that I'd fi...after 25 years,

the door was opening and maybe he would be at the other side of it.

But there was still one big question that remained unanswered.

Would her long-lost brother want to get back in touch

with his birth family?

I wrote this long letter and left it with the adoption agency...

..and waited.

So, it all hung on whether he actually read the letter

and wanted to get in touch with me.

All Lynn could do now was wait.

In Israel, Simon Wrigley was also playing a waiting game.

What began as a desire to discover more about his grandfather

had become a mission to find long-lost relations on the Isle of Wight.

Simon had appealed online for any news of his grandfather's

eight brothers and sisters.

But, there, his search seemed to have hit a dead end.

From the time that I placed the advert, more or less

six months passed and I hadn't heard anything.

And, then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, I saw an e-mail.

It was a very emotional moment to think that somebody's read

the e-mail and who was a family member and I was very curious to see

who this person was or how they connected.

I was quite excited about it

because, at the time, I was working on the family tree myself

but only the bare skeleton of it and he started telling me

a bit of the information that he'd got together which

I was, then, able to piece together with the information I already had.

And, then, I realised that her father must be my mother's first cousin.

Hayley had seen Simon's ad.

They worked out that their grandfathers were brothers,

making Hayley and Simon second cousins.

It was very exciting when I first read the e-mail because

I felt there was a re-connection with the Groundsell family.

It was the next step for me. It was another piece in the jigsaw.

I'd never met my grandad.

He died the year I was born and the Groundsell family has always

been quite a mystery to me, a bit of an enigma.

But it turns out it's actually quite a large, extended

family on the island that I never even knew about.

And that wasn't all. Someone else saw Simon's ad.

Jane.

Her father, Frank, was another of the Groundsell brothers.

It was so absolutely amazing because Simon wrote back to me

and wanted to know what stories I knew and I filled him in with

quite a lot because my father was a great storyteller.

I knew loads of...loads of stories going right back to

when they were little boys.

I've got to know Hayley and we just clicked.

We got on like a house on fire.

Thanks to Simon's determined detective work,

the three cousins were able to share stories and anecdotes,

helping to fill in some of the gaps in their family history.

I don't know about the girls of the family

but out of the nine siblings, I think the five boys used to get up

to all sorts of mischief by the sound of it.

I know my father said if they ever came home drunk,

they would have to spend the night in the local police station.

My grandfather wouldn't entertain anybody coming in drunk.

I found out things about my grandad I never knew.

I never knew he was in a rodeo so that was, like, wow.

This clipping came out of a local paper on the island.

Then, I came across my grandfather's name in this.

My grandfather and his brothers were part of a horse riding act.

I believe he's the one on the top.

They formed a pyramid

so here he is standing on a horse with his brothers.

There's four of his brothers here.

-They used to lead the carnivals...a lot of island carnivals.

-Yeah.

They used to lead the procession.

As more of Simon's grandfather's relatives came to light,

the cousins decided to celebrate their new-found family

by arranging a reunion in 2004.

Simon flew back from Israel to meet them all for the first time.

I was slightly nervous, I think, really. I mean I... How... Will they like me?

Or who knows?

I believe we had about 20 members of the family come up and

their question was, without being rude, "Now, who are you? How are you related?"

And I got the family tree out

and there was a lot of missing gaps that I could fill in.

For Simon, it was the successful culmination of years of research,

the fruits of which he, now, committed to paper.

Although I had all this information, it was all online. I had documents.

I had things here and there

so I decided to put a small book together for them.

I wrote a profile on each member of the family. Everyone has a story.

Every relative has a story attached.

And I continuously work on this and I continuously update

this all the time so it's an ongoing project, basically.

I also believe it's a way of keeping their memory alive.

They might have passed away but it's important to keep

their memory to know who they were, what they were,

how you were related because it's part of you.

It's important. It's important to know these things.

So, it's all kind of, like, wow.

-But you've gained a whole, a complete, like, new family...

-Yeah.

..that were always there in the background.

With all these stories to go with it that are just amazing.

-We've got Simon to thank for that, haven't we?

-Yeah, definitely.

-I'm getting emotional, sorry.

-Aw.

After making contact with relatives he never knew he had,

now, Simon is embarking on the next chapter of his ongoing

journey to find out more about the Groundsell family.

He's making the 4,000-mile trip from Israel to the

Isle of Wight along with his partner, Yuval.

Tomorrow, he'll be reunited with his new relations again

and hopes to fill in even more of the blanks in his family history.

I'm going home and it's always exciting to be with your family

and to come home.

I've got some new information for them and to share with them

and maybe they have some new information for me so it's quite

exciting to see what they have and, also, to share what I have.

But this morning, before the reunion,

Simon has one very important stop to make.

The graveyard where his grandfather, Bernard, is buried.

It's important to visit my grandfather's grave and to...

for me to keep his memory alive.

To help find exactly where his grandfather is buried,

Simon has turned to the internet for help again.

Online, there are records of every graveyard in the UK.

To find the right plot, Simon and Yuval have downloaded a map.

-According to this, it looks like four graves in if this is the path.

-These are the trees.

So, it's on a bit and to the left.

But even with a map,

finding the right grave in an old graveyard is easier said than done.

I think it was more this way.

But while searching for his grandfather,

Simon stumbles on something unexpected.

By chance, I've just discovered my great grandfather's grave,

George Young Groundsell.

Died November the 28th, 1915.

Aged 74.

Well, that's really quite shocking, actually, in a pleasant

kind of way, to discover their grave by accident.

It's as if it's meant to be.

Just stumbling along here and there we are.

This must be the Groundsell row, I should imagine.

And here we are, we're standing right next to it.

-Would you believe it?

-This is the grave.

-This is the grave.

Think all these years have passed.

Since 1949.

But it's important to visit the grave and to remember.

After finding the graves of his grandfather

and even his great-grandfather, Simon's heading to meet

some of the surviving generations of the Groundsell family.

CHATTERING

Hello. Oh, so many people here. Hello.

Come in for a hug.

-You look lovely. How are you, Jane, how are you?

-Lovely to see you.

-Hello, Simon.

-Hello, how are you?

Thanks to Simon's work, everyone here has now been reconnected

with family members they never knew they had.

Now Simon can share the latest edition of his family history book.

And also his latest discovery, made just a few hours ago.

It took us a while to find the grave.

We were, sort of, hunting and asked, "It all looks the same?"

And then, while we were looking, we came across our,

-let me get this right, great-great-grandparent's grave.

-Oh, wow.

-What? No.

-By chance. Of George Young Groundsell and his wife, Sarah.

-No way.

So that was interesting, yeah.

And cousin Jane has been carrying out some research of her own.

I brought this along for you to see, Simon,

because I know that some of the pictures you wanted... I've been up in the attic.

-Have you?

-Looking at...

-What did you discover in your attic?

-That's an early picture of my father there...

-And who's this little cute one?

-Ah, I was about three months old, I reckon.

-Ah.

All of this new information will be added to

Simon's ever-expanding archive

and the next edition of the Groundsell family history.

I've got some new information for you...

..regarding the Groundsell family house.

So, this is the house in its day, in the early 1900s.

-I think in its day it was quite a grand residence...

-Mmm.

-..by the looks of things. It was...

-I think they had servants.

-Mmm.

And this is the house, today, as it stands, so little has changed much.

We could have passed each other in the street umpteen times.

We live ten minutes away from each other

and because of Simon, we've got to know each other.

On behalf of us all, I'd like to say a huge thank you,

Simon, for bringing us all together and for organising all of this.

So, I'd like you all to raise your glasses, please. To Simon.

-Thank you.

-And to the Groundsells. Cheers everybody.

Cheers.

Simon's mission to uncover his family history continues.

But today marks the successful conclusion to the chapter

that began his story 20 years ago.

I felt I've reconnected to my grandfather and part of

researching the family tree is to keep the memory of your relatives alive

and to realise, this is your heritage. It's very important.

It's like the end results of my research

so it's been a really fun day.

Lynn Lewis had been hoping for her own happy family reunion.

Through an adoption agency,

she thought she had found the older brother, David,

who her mother had given up for adoption 60 years earlier.

Now, all Lynn could do was wait and see if the man the agency believed

was her brother, would respond to her letter.

This letter appeared and a few photographs from Lynn

of her family and brothers and sisters.

And it took me quite a while to read this letter cos it was very emotional

and every time I read it, now, it still brings tears

to me eyes to think about, you know,

what it meant to Lynn to write this and for both of us anyway.

So, I treasure this. I keep this. I treasure this. And I always will do.

"Hello David, it's hard for me to describe how it feels to

"actually be sitting down writing this letter to you.

"Knowing that you are going to read it.

"You can't imagine how many times I have gone over what I would say.

"If this time ever came."

I can't. I can't read it.

Oh.

"I totally understand that you need to take things very slowly,

"as do us all.

"I have tried many times to look for you."

"When I received the phone call with the wonderful news that you

"had been found,

"I went through a rollercoaster of emotions, as I expect, did you.

"I have spent more than 20 years not knowing

"whether this time would ever come.

"But hoping very much it would.

"I'm so looking forward to receiving a letter back from you.

"In your own time.

BOTH: "Until then, may I wish yourself and your family well.

"Love, Lynn."

After reading that letter, I just wanted to get in touch

with her as quick as possible, really, then.

If we're going to meet, why drag it on any longer?

We've waited all these years.

Lynn had found her long-lost brother, David.

Now, the adoption agency could put the two in touch directly.

They said, "We found your brother." And they said to me,

"We have a phone number for you.

"He wants you to get in touch with him."

And I was, "Oh, my goodness, no. It can't be happening."

I was so excited.

I was bursting so I went upstairs into my bedroom

and a million things went through my head,

what I thought I would say to him, and I practised it and practised

it and practised it and, then, I rang the number

and just before I put the last digit in,

I put the phone down and if I did that once,

I must've done it 20 times before I finally dialled the number

and the phone rang and my stomach was turning

and I was close to tears and this voice answered the phone.

I said, "Is that Dave? It's Lynn."

And he said, "Hello, Duck."

Erm, cos he's a proper country bumpkin

and I just said, "You wouldn't believe how long I've been trying to find you."

Erm, and we just went on from there and we talked and we talk...

And we must've been on the phone for two hours.

We just seemed to click and we just hit it off.

From within seconds,

we were laughing at each other's little jokes and things and...

You'd have thought we'd have known each other all our lives and, yet,

it was the first time we'd ever spoken.

After his mother, Maureen, had to give him up, Dave grew up

with his adoptive parents on a farm in the Peak District.

I loved it. I loved being out in the country.

We was out all day, everyday, when we were kids.

I found out I was adopted at the age of around seven.

When I think me mum thought we'd possibly understand what

she was telling us and what it was and we've always known

and I've known as much as she knew.

Erm, and, I mean, I did ask many years ago if we wanted to find out

any more but, you know, you're a small child, then, and Mum and Dad was

Mum and Dad and you never thought no more about it as a small child.

And it was left like that and before I knew any more, I had a letter

and a phone call and Lynn had been looking for me, me sister.

As Dave learned more about his birth family,

there were several surprising revelations.

Not least, that his birth parents had stayed together after

he was born and that Dave grew up just a few miles

away from where they lived in Buxton.

It was

a shock to even find out that they had, actually, gone on to get married...

..a few years later and have a family of their own

which then became my full-blown brothers and sisters.

When I found bits about me birth father then,

obviously, I found his name was Alan and so on and...

That was a shock to know that they got married

and lived together, happily ever after, and raised a big family

and I'd only been, literally, teens of miles away from them.

All those lives I'd never known but,

sadly, I never got to meet Alan.

He died before I got the chance to meet him.

Although it was too late to be reunited with Alan, Dave wasted no

time in getting together with Lynn and the rest of his birth family.

Including his mother, Maureen.

It was about a week, something like...about a week before we met, something like that.

That week seemed to drag and, then, it went quick and, then, it dragged

and, then, the emotions and, then, sleepless nights thinking and...

All sorts of things was going off.

Things that you never even think of, you know.

All sorts of things was flying through your mind.

It was the 1st of February, 2006

that, at 7pm, we'd arranged to meet

in the Red Lion pub so I went along with my mum and my sister, Paula,

and we got there before they did.

We got there early so we wouldn't be late

and we sat down with a drink and we watched through the window

and, then, all of a sudden, this 4x4 pulls up

in the car park and out pops this strapping bloke.

Erm, round to the other side of the car, opens the door and this little

old lady gets out so I said to me mum and Paula, "This must be them."

Lynn and Paula had seen me come in.

Unbeknown to me and as we walked through the door, they grabbed me. Ha.

They bounced on top of me, erm...

So that was very emotional.

We just hugged and cried and looked at each other and didn't want

to let each other go and it was just amazing that my mum and my sister

got up and came over and we all hugged and cried and, then, his mum

and my mum started talking.

And me mum walked round the back and Maureen was sat there very,

very frightened, nervous like the rest. Like we all was really.

She walked straight up to her. Put her arm around her.

Said, "It's been a long time. But he's here now."

Maureen died a few years after they were reunited

but Dave still wants to learn more about his birth family

and, especially, his father, Alan.

Today, Lynn has arranged for Dave to meet their aunt,

Alan's sister, Beryl.

-Hi. Hello.

-Lynn, good to see you.

-How you been?

-Hiya, you all right, love?

-Yeah, what have you been up to?

Gosh, I don't know what's going to happen today, really.

-Oh, it's going to be a well exciting day.

-I know.

-I can't wait to see Auntie Beryl.

-I know. I know.

Today will be Dave's first real chance to find out

more about Alan's side of the family.

-Me dad confided in Auntie Beryl...

-Right.

..when he was 15 so she's known about you and the circumstances

while you were adopted, right from the very beginning, I think.

Meeting Beryl's going to be...

Probably a bit emotional, that'll be...

Knowing that she was part of me dad, as you might say.

And I'm hoping that she'll know different things that happened

because, obviously, they talked to each other, brother and sister.

At that time, they were only kids, I suppose, themselves, weren't they? So...

Erm...

She might be able to fill in a few gaps that...

I don't know, I mean, I know quite a bit about Mum's side

but I don't know a lot about Dad's side so...

Every little bit helps.

This is going to be a really good day.

A really good day.

Alan would have been overjoyed at this meeting.

Oh, it would have been a joy for him. A real joy for him.

We'll find out a bit more about each other.

And catch up about the family.

Just get hold of him and hug him.

Cos you didn't...we didn't have the opportunity to hug, really.

You know, it's so lovely. Give him a kiss and a hug.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-Come on, darling.

-Aw.

-Come on, David.

-Hello, Auntie Beryl.

THEY LAUGH

-Oh, dear, dear, dear.

-Oh, we'll have a nice little chat now, won't we?

-Oh, yeah, I hope so.

-Oh.

-Come on, sit down. Sit down with me.

-How special this is going to be.

-How special is it?

A very special day for me.

-I can't find it!

-Ha-ha.

-Now, don't he look like me mum and our Alan?

Yes. Yes.

He's more like your mum than our Alan.

Dave's keen to find out exactly what happened to his mum

and dad after he was born, from someone who was there at the time.

-So, can you remember what actually happened after...?

-Not really.

No, it was more or less taboo, you know, I mean...

-Did Dad get into trouble...can you...at the time?

-Yes, he did.

Because they actually met again when they probably shouldn't have done

-and, well...

-Well, I don't thi...

-..as you know, they got married.

-..I don't think they ever stopped.

-So did Dad get told he had to keep away from her or...

-Yes.

-..was there things...?

-In fact, there was a really big do...

-Right.

-..you know. He got really...

-Into trouble.

-Yeah.

-He did. Yeah.

Mum said that Dad actually got to see Dave...

..when she... Before she gave him away.

-Oh, I didn't know that.

-Well, I didn't. Right.

-She snuck...

She snuck out.

She was allowed to take him on short walks

and how they managed to keep in touch with each other through

the pregnancy when she was there, I don't know, but they must have done

because Mum said Dad, actually, got to see him just the once.

They met up when they shouldn't have done

and she took him for a walk in the pram just before he was given up

for adoption.

See, Mum told me that

when they wasn't supposed to be seeing each other

-and meeting at all...

-They were. They were on the sly.

-..they would go to the pictures

and Maureen would sit in one row and Dad would sit in another row

and they'd hold hands in the dark over the top.

I didn't know that. She never told me that.

-There were just little, crafty meets that they had...

-Ah.

-..and I just wondered...

-Yeah. Yeah.

-..if Auntie Beryl knew about things like this, you see.

-I know they...

Now, they did... I know they did meet up because I mean they were...

-They weren't kept apart. No.

-No. No matter how much they tried, it wasn't working.

-No. No matter how much the family tried.

-Yeah, it's good. That's good.

-No. They did meet up.

-Was everybody happy, then, when they got married?

-Did...

-He did, sort of, give up by that time.

-Yeah.

-Yeah. Yeah.

-Yeah, families had got over it and...

-Well, it has to be. It has to be.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They were a unit. There was no other word for it.

They were meant for one another, you know.

They did everything they could to be together.

It was a one, true love.

Like Heathcliff and... All over again.

Let's have a look at the photographs, then, Auntie Beryl, that you've brought. You start.

This is your dad. That was taken at Rhyl.

-I remember that.

-Wow.

-Wait till you see what I've got of my lads.

We all look the same and me when I was small, believe it or not.

-There's your mum and dad at the wedding.

-That one there, you mean?

-Yeah, yeah.

-You can have that because...

-Can I?

-..because I've got a couple of them. Yes.

-Lovely, thank you.

-Yeah.

Look at Dad's hairstyle, there. The Teddy Boy style.

-Hey, hey, I've got that cut as well. I have as a baby.

-Have you?

This is me with one of them hairdos.

THEY LAUGH

Let's look at your photographs, Dave.

-Oh, my God.

-Oh, my goodness. Look at that.

Wow.

-Looks so much like we did when we were babies.

-Mmm.

-Oh, if only Mum and Dad had've seen these.

-Mmm.

-Me mum seems to think that was me on me way home to the farm...

-When you were a...

-..the first day. Yes.

And the clothes I'm wearing there,

believe it or not, are in here.

The day that we met, the very, very first time,

we all sat there talking away and getting on really well

and me mum went down to her bag and come out with this.

And I'd never seen it.

And she said to Maureen, "You recognise these?"

Oh, my God.

And Maureen said, "Yes," she said, "Because I embroided them."

And she couldn't believe me mum had still got them.

-And that's what I came...

-So that's...

-..That's what I came home in the first day.

-..That's what you came home in.

-Oh, my God.

Mum said, "How is it you've still got it?"

-And she said, "Cos I... I just wondered and thought maybe one day I could show you back again."

-Mmm.

Wow.

It really is amazing.

That is beautiful.

I can't believe she kept it.

I can't believe, after 30 odd years or whatever it is,

that we'd be sat round a table sharing memories

and photographs, the three of us together.

-It really does mean the world to me.

-It does to me, as well, because you are part of Alan, you see.

Absolutely.

-So you got a little bit of him back again for a while now...

-I have.

-..haven't you?

Dave hasn't just been reunited with a sister and an aunt...

Let's have a group hug.

..he's now part of a large, extended family that

until a few years ago, he didn't know existed.

-Who is all these presents for?

-Are they yours, Elizabeth?

-Me.

-Wow.

-Birthday girl.

Dave seems a lovely man. Very pleased to have met him.

And to think he's part of me family so that's rather nice.

It's been a very good weekend.

I didn't expect half of what was going to happen and it's happened

and it's been good and, obviously, I've met more family so that's...

It's been a good ending to the story. And a new beginning.

ALL: Woo.

What a day. It's been absolutely fantastic.

I can't believe that it's took all these years...

FIREWORKS CRACKLING ALL: Woo.

..but, yeah, amazing.

Absolutely amazing.

I've loved every minute of it.