Lost and found!
How Long Lost Family helped a brother and sister meet for the first time…
Born six years apart in Northern and southern Ireland, David Mcbride and Helen Ward had spent years independently searching for parents who had abandoned them in a car and a phone box as babies.
They were then amazed when a DNA database matched them as brother and sister.
Their astonishing story is told in this week’s Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace. Baby David had been found on the outskirts of Belfast in 1962, while Helen was discovered in Dundalk, south of the Irish border, in 1968.
DNA breakthrough
Both were happily adopted and went on to have children, but always yearned to find out about their biological parents.
‘You’re looking for a sense of identity,’ says David, 58, who lives in Birmingham with his wife and their three children. ‘Why you are the way you are.’
When David’s DNA was uploaded to an online database by the Long Lost Family team, the news came through that Helen was his sister.
‘I felt like a feather in a hurricane,’ recalls 52-year-old Helen, who lives near Dublin with her three children. ‘I’d spent a lifetime looking for my biological parents. To discover David was my brother gave me a great sense of relief, comfort and excitement.’
In an emotional scene, the siblings meet for the first time in the programme.
‘It was as if the world had stopped,’ says David.
The pair later learnt they were the product of an affair between a married Protestant man and a much younger unmarried Catholic woman, who both lived in Dublin, and are now deceased.
‘To know who our biological parents are has given me peace of mind,’ says Helen. ‘Now, another chapter is about to start.’