Who’s my daddy?
After decades of questioning his parentage, one man reveals how he tracked down his birth father thanks to DNA testing
DNA-mapping Web sites have boomed in recent years, allowing people around the world to learn of their ancestry and any inherited medical conditions they may carry — and also discover relatives they never knew they had. Here, The Post’s JANE RIDLEY meets Michigan native David Alquist, 56, whose DNA helped him find the biological father and two half-brothers his mother had long tried to hide.
WAITING in the lobby of a Chicago hotel, I could hardly believe I was about to meet my biological father after solving a mystery that had haunted me for 37 years.
Then, he walked through the door — a smiling, bespectacled gentleman accompanied by two stocky guys who looked like carbon copies of me.
“Wow, this is something,” my father said, fighting back tears. “Now I got three sons. Can I call you son?”
In that moment, as we hugged, I felt a huge weight lifting off my shoulders. Although I had a great relationship with the family I grew up in, I always felt like I was the odd one out. But now that I had discovered this whole new family, I could finally figure out who I was.
Growing up, I took it for granted that I was part of a happy
family. I lived with my parents, John and Pauline, in the Upper Peninsula in Michigan with four siblings. I was nothing like my brothers and sister — they were short and slim, while I was thickset, and they had passive Type B personalities while I was Type A and feisty. In fact, it was a running joke in our family that my older brother Bill would introduce me as his “adopted brother.”
That all changed when I was 17. My mother and father were about to get divorced when, one day in May 1977, my mom took me aside after a bout of heavy drinking. “David. I have always loved you the most,” she told me, staring deep into my eyes.
“Why’s that?” I asked, never expecting that her answer would shock me to the core.
“I’m not sure that you are your father’s child.”
Suddenly the adoption joke didn’t seem funny anymore.
After she sobered up, she tried to take it back. When I asked my dad, John, he just sadly shook his head. I didn’t press him, as he’d always been the best dad to me.
Over the following years, I struggled with my sense of self. I joined the Army and had a daughter, Connie, in 1982 when I was 22. Things didn’t work out with her mother, but I went on to marry my wife, Carolyn, in 1988, and was always a hands-on dad.
In 1997, when Connie was a teenager, I confronted my mom again, as I was concerned about hereditary problems that could arise. This time, my mom told me the name of a local man. He agreed to meet me, but we looked nothing alike, and he said the timing of my conception made it impossible for me to be his son. I believed him, though Mom insisted he was lying until her dying day, in January 2007 at age 69.
After 37 years of wondering who my birth father was, I realized I was never going to find out without help. In October 2013 I signed up for 23andMe.com, the DNA-testing service where you can enter your results into a database and connect with relatives who also used the service. I thought this was my last chance to find any clues to my paternity.
To my surprise, I was soon connected with a first cousin, John Schulget, who shared my paternal genes. Turns out, he was not related to my younger brother, Bob, also a member of 23andMe. It was the proof I needed that what I had suspected was true: My brothers and sister were in fact my half-siblings. And the man who’d raised me wasn’t my dad.
At John’s urging, his cousin, Gregory Peterson, now 53, soon tested with 23andMe, too. The six weeks waiting for the results were the longest of my life. I had to prepare myself for the possibility of finally finding a brother — and consequently a father — I had never known. Then, on May 10, 2014, I got a phone call from John: “May I be the first to welcome you to the family!” he said. Gregory was my half-brother.
Within hours, I was talking to Gregory on the phone, and then with his older sibling, Kevin, who was born just four months after me. We all hit it off immediately.
My biological father, Harry, now 78, had met my mom at a hunters’ ball in fall 1958 while visiting the Upper Peninsula, but could no longer remember her due to a surgery that altered his memory. He had recently lost his wife, Marge, and while he wasn’t proud that he had cheated on her, he was thrilled to learn that he had another son.
Later that month, Carolyn and I traveled to Chicago to finally meet Gregory, Kevin and Harry. The first thing I noticed? Gregory’s Tasmanian Devil tattoo on his left bicep, nearly an exact copy of one I have on my right bicep. We continue to see each other four or five times a year, and even go hunting together in Wisconsin.
Despite the joy that had flooded into my life, there was still heartbreak. It was difficult telling the father who had raised me since birth that I had traced my family, but he took it in stride.
Though my dad hadn’t known Harry, he had always suspected that I wasn’t his, but he had vowed to bring me up the same. I’m so grateful that he has been so supportive throughout my life, when he so easily could have disowned me.
“You’ll always be my dad,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter that I’m not your flesh and blood.”