By Morgan ZC

haitiantimes.com

I had no idea who my father was for the first 74 years of my life. Given up for adoption, all I knew was what the adoption records stated: that my father had died before I was born.

I often wondered who he was? How did he die? Had he even known he was going to be a father?  Since I was born in 1944, was he a soldier? Did he die in the war? Was his death the reason I was put up for adoption?  

My adoption papers, offering no clues, merely stated about me: 

“The boy is a dark-complexioned child, thin and wiry with curly brown hair and large somewhat solemn eyes. On…the day before his third birthday, the child…was brought to the house of adoptive parents. Nothing is known of this child’s life up to this date.”

Seeking to find the answers that have eluded me all my life, I submitted my DNA to Ancestry.Com.  When the results came back, I got my first clue: the DNA showed that my father was of African heritage and that my paternal DNA matches in the database were all Haitians. Unfortunately, because so few Haitians have submitted their DNA for testing, the matches I had were few and only distantly related. 

So I hired a professional genetic genealogist, John F. Suggs, to help me in my search. It was from him that I finally learned who my father was: Lionel Durand, an eminent Haitian journalist.  Sadly, I also learned that my father had been alive and well for the first 17 years of my life but had never known of my existence.

Lionel Durand had been denied his right to know me – and I him – and to be named as my father on my birth and adoption documents.

So who was my father? Read more here>>>>

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