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| From left to right: My son, me, MY SISTER! and my brother |
While one of my three brothers and I are fairly close, we just don't call one another. We have a hang up about using the phone...it's a thing. So when he called me out of the blue one morning I answered in a rushed panic, "Who died?"
"Well," he said, "nobody died...somebody was born...in 1952."
My brother then began to explain that he had taken an Ancestry.com DNA test. It was mostly for fun, because he already knew a great deal about his genetic profile. In addition to our large family stretching over multiple generations, I have done some extensive research on our family linking us directly to Captain Myles Standish of the Mayflower. There is also a book written about the Peck branch of our family which can be purchased on Amazon.com. So when my brother released his DNA for research and gave his consent to be linked to relatives, he was fairly certain he would know everyone he connected to, even the 3rd and 4th cousins. And he did know the connections for the most part...
Except...a woman in Hawaii had also released her DNA for research and she had given her consent to be linked to relatives. She certainly wasn't a 3rd or 4th cousin, no, she shared more DNA with my brother than our niece (she'd taken an Ancestry DNA test too). What did this mean?
I consulted my research on Ancestry.com which has linked census records and military records. There were two men on my mother's side. Census records placed her father in Missouri and her brother in Michigan in 1951.
There were five men on my father's side. Poor farmers from Iowa did not generally fly off to Hawaii in the 50's not to mention that the Korean War would have made travel even more challenging. I could easily account for 4 of those five men - they were of course in Iowa. In addition to census records though, I had access to military records. My brother and I knew that our father had served in the Navy during the Korean War. I even had the name of his ship PC-1172 (it wasn't given a "name" until after the Korean War). Well, it just so happened PC-1172 spent a great deal of time in Hawaii in 1951.
What did this mean? That much of a DNA match might mean niece, but the lovely lady in Hawaii was older than my brother and I. That much of a DNA match might mean Aunt but the two grandfather's were accounted for. That could only leave one possibility, our Korean War veteran father must also be her father. I stalked her Facebook page and one click was all it took for me to see the resemblance. If you look at the picture above you will see matching jaw lines, identical noses and similar eyes. There can be no denying that we are all significantly related. Even strangers who encountered us as we gallivanted around Las Vegas this September were sure we were family. They had no idea that we had just met! We felt an instant connection. We just all clicked, like little cogs on a mystical machine falling into place.
One memorable highlight from our interaction was that I admitted that I don't really answer to my name of Amy Alice because my brothers and my parents always called me "Sister." What a coincidence to discover that her brothers in Hawaii also called her "Sister" and she doesn't really answer to her given name either!
And she doesn't like talking on the phone...so random...
DNA is science but what stops it from being magical? Especially when it offers the chance to give you the gift of a sister? It's a rhetorical question of course, but if you must have the answer, then it is nothing. Nothing stops science from being magical. Magic is simply those unseen connections that simply exist whether or not we know they are there. Sounds a lot like the science of DNA to me.
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Have you had a DNA Magical Moment? I hope you will share your experience in the comments.
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