My family’s Irish heritage made me proud — then my sister got a DNA test

I have a confession to make. I have been living a lie.

The fraud has persisted for over a half a century, although it has only come to light this past year. And I need to come clean about it before March 17.

That is, of course, St. Patrick’s Day, which for my birth family has been a holiday on par with Christmas in importance and veneration.

It was the only day when my five brothers, two sisters and I felt entitlement because of our last name. My parents, who sometimes struggled to procure enough milk, bread and cornflakes for a family of 10, always managed to purchase plenty of green derbies, neck ties, carnations and four-leaf clover pins for us to wear to school to show off our ethnicity.

Uncle Don McGrath, for whom my father worked as a salesperson, permitted his employees and their families to watch Chicago’s annual South Side parade from behind the store’s display windows as the marching bands and floats with leprechauns made their way down Ashland Avenue. This was a heady perk, especially when March in Chicago came in “like a lion,” and everyone else lined the sidewalks in the frosty outdoors.

When St. Paddy’s fell on a school day, my mother, Gert, whom we could never fool by faking bellyaches to ditch school, had no hesitation when it came to writing notes to eight different teachers to excuse our absences for the celebration.

And in our teens, when we joined other South Side Irish youth in chugging quart bottles of beer on summer nights at Kennedy Park, even the police seemed sympathetic to the tradition, issuing warnings, confiscating our Blatz and Old Style, but never calling parents or hauling us in.

My father, Charlie, the head of our clan, was the life of every party, telling stories and prompting laughter with his twinkling eyes and charm. He was elected president of our neighborhood association, trustee of Evergreen Park and offered a job on radio, all thanks to his gift of blarney.

He bequeathed his powers, and my siblings and I became the eulogists, speechmakers and toastmasters at funerals, anniversaries and other social functions. I was repeatedly drafted as master of ceremonies for retirement parties at both schools where I worked, and I hosted the campaign kickoff event for our school administrator whenhe ran for Congress.

I was even asked to do “stand-up” at the Christmas gala my friend threw for his employees. I flopped, having overestimated the open mindedness of the audience which wanted to run me out of the banquet hall on a rail — all in jest, of course.

In the tradition of world heavyweight champion James J. Braddock, Charlie Jr. was our Irish strongman and brawler. Kenneth and Kevin inherited Dad’s tart wit. And following the lead of legendary troubadours, from Irish tenor John McCormack, to rockers Bono, Sinead O’Connor and Van Morrison, my older brother, James, entertained U.S. troops with his band, “The Unclassified Three,” at Army bases all over Europe during his military service.

Predictably, I had Marianne’s father, Tom, paged at a parish St. Patrick’s Day party to ask for her hand, proposing marriage to her later that night at a romantic dinner at the Italian Village. The next day we learned that Tom and his wife, Ruth, won a trip to Ireland in the parish raffle. I’ve chronicled it all at the Chicago Tribune, and I’ve published half a dozen other stories about the Irish bloodline and the stereotypes manifest in our family history.

Most of which I must now retract, for I fear it’s all a lie.

Last spring, on a whim, Nancy treated herself to a DNA test from Ancestry.com, just for fun. Instead, it felled our family tree: 35% German; 33% Russian, Pomeranian; 13% Baltic; 9% English (and northwestern European); 5% Greek, Albanian, Peloponnesian; 3% Balkan; and 2% Swedish and Danish.

For the first time in our lives, we were speechless. My desperate hope was that the 9% portion that included northwestern Europe, indicated, at the very least, a smidgen of Irish blood. But the shaded portion of the DNA map which included the United Kingdom and Scotland, steered totally clear of the Emerald Isle.

James thought that there may be an explanation and is researching the possibility either that our father was adopted, or that there was a mix-up at the hospital at birth. But photos of Grandpa Ray, all but indistinguishable from photos of Dad at the same age, call his theory into question.

Subsequently, James had his own DNA tested with findings similar to Nancy’s.

What does it all mean? Is it a definitive resolution of the age-old debate of nature vs. nurture? Does the power of suggestion trump chemical and genetic composition? Did our presumption of Irishness hypnotize us into cultural assimilation? Even worse, cultural theft?

Can we McGraths no longer do what we do? Be who weare?

As for me, well, I don’t know. As a former Irishman who tends to believe in a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow, I read up on the Pomeranians and found they were especially fond of folk dancing.

And lately, and especially after both of my hips were replaced last year, I’ve been feeling a mysterious urge to shuffle and shimmy.