A DNA test reveals family secrets she never imagined

Second of two parts

In the year and a half since a DNA test had revealed she was born as the result of artificial insemination, Shari Keith learned that she had five half-siblings, all sisters.

Now Keith waited at her Ahwatukee house to meet one of her half-sisters for the first time. She was nervous.

She hadn’t known artificial insemination was a practice in the 1950s. Her research told her it was often done in secret. Her parents took the secret to their graves. The sperm donor also was dead.

This woman who shares half her DNA was her link to learning about her biological father, and herself.

Judy Greenfield was the youngest of Walter Greenfield’s three daughters with his first wife. He also had a daughter with his second wife. Then there is Kalfus and Keith, both the result of sperm donation.

Walter Greenfield’s family had known he was a sperm donor while attending New York University. They didn’t know he continued to donate while working as a research chemist in the same building where Keith’s mom’s obstetrician practiced.

As soon as Greenfield arrived from Denver, Keith said, “I feel like I know you.” Greenfield felt the same.

Keith, 62, is an artist and Greenfield, 60, an object conservator. They both enjoy hiking. They’re both bad with computers. They have the same brown eyes. Greenfield had brought pictures. “That’s our father,” she said.

Her discovery doesn’t change how Keith thinks of the man who raised her. He’s her dad.

She wonders if her existence helped pave the way for fertility treatments.

Mostly, she wonders if her mother went through so much to have her, why wasn’t she more caring?

“What does keeping a dark secret do over the course of someone’s lifetime?” Keith said. She’ll never know.

“Growing up, I always wished I had a sister,” Keith told Greenfield.

Keith’s family is bigger now. She wonders how much more it will grow.