I will never stop thanking Stacey Dooley for helping me find my dad
TV star’s DNA show boost for Maureen
Maureen Blaize always beams with pride when she hears son Tommy belting out hits as a singer on Strictly – but she could never fathom where his musical gift came from.
But thanks to his friendship with former ballroom contestant Stacey Dooley, she discovered it had its source in her birth dad’s family .
Maureen only discovered at the age of 19 the man she thought of as her father was not her biological one.
Stacey and Tommy helped the 79-year-old find out her birth dad was a US serviceman stationed in Britain during the Second World War.
Maureen says: “To get to this age and find out who my father was is mind-blowing. I’m still pinching myself. I used to lie in bed at night thinking, who am I? Where have I come from? Now I start every day kissing my dad’s photograph.
“I will never stop thanking Tommy and Stacey for all their help in finding the missing piece of me.”
Maureen, from Toxteth, Liverpool, grew up with a sense of being different to her elder siblings. But cultural norms of the
50s and 60s, and her mum’s personality, meant she was never told the full truth.
She adds: “I always had a strong feeling I didn’t belong. I just didn’t gel with my elder siblings. My mum was white and my father, as I knew him, was black and from west Africa.
“When I was 19 and needed both parents to sign a form, that’s when the bombshell dropped. My mother broke down and said, ‘He’s not your real father.’ That was all she told me. It hit me like a brick.
“In those days having a baby out of wedlock was one of the biggest shames ever.
She didn’t tell anybody except her best friend.”
Maureen questioned her mum’s pal but hit a dead end. She says: “She told me she knew Mum was seeing an American serviceman who was over here during the war. Nothing else. By the time my mother was pregnant he’d already gone back to America.” Tommy, 59, and brothers Tony, 58 and Darrin, 56, had tried to research family trees but finding their grandad without a name seemed impossible. Tommy says: “Me and Stacey became friends on Strictly and when we toured together we became even closer. When I saw her present the first Family DNA Secrets series I dropped her a line to tell her about Mum and producers got in touch.” Maureen, who lost her husband Tommy four years ago, gave a sample of DNA to the country’s top geneticists. But while waiting for the results, her health took a turn for the worse. She says: “I had two strokes then open heart surgery. “I did say to the doctors, ‘I haven’t finished what I was doing, I need to come back.’”
When Stacey returned to Maureen’s home she told her the DNA had matched first cousins on her paternal side and had pinpointed her dad as Augusta Walls, an African American born in Tennessee in 1914.
Augusta was a farmer before the war and had no other children. He died in 1978. Maureen says: “Hearing my dad’s name and seeing his picture was a moment I will never forget. It’s hard to describe the happiness.”
Not only did relatives still live less than a mile from where Augusta had grown up, they were desperate to meet the new member of the family.
And that shed light on where Tommy got his musical talent from.
Finding I had a new family has changed me for ever
MAUREEN ON LEARNING WHO BIRTH FATHER WAS
He says: “Stacey discovered that Mum’s cousin Joe Nathan Walls was a musician who played the saxophone with Howlin’ Wolf, a legendary blues singer Now we know where our family’s music came from.
“She showed us a film of him and it blew me away.”
Maureen now enjoys Zoom catch-ups with her cousins and is getting to know more about her dad.
She adds: “Finding I had new family was wonderful. Being accepted by them with open arms was something I never dared dream. Stacey and Tommy helping to find my dad has changed me for ever. Finally I’m at peace.”
■ DNA Family Secrets is on tonight at 9pm on BBC2 and iPlayer.