For whatever reason, my cousin Jamie never had any children. While his brother Jeff, his cousins Aaron, Rose, and myself all have been enjoying the joys of parenthood seeing our children grow into fine adults, Jamie could never share those same feelings. Now 50 years old and with the regret of not starting a family early in life, Jamie had longed for a child of his own.

A few years ago and 82 miles away from Jamie, a man named Mickey Bennet took a 23andme test that helped him locate some of his distant relatives. Then in 2022, Mickey took an Ancestry DNA test. The results of that test helped Darcy Bennet, Mickey’s wife, find out the identity of his real grandfather. You see, Mickey was an adopted child who never knew who his real father was and wanted to find out. Being a person who loves to investigate things, Darcy thought it was time to know the truth about her husband’s parentage.

This is how she did it in her own words:

“A few years ago Mickey took a 23andme DNA test to learn more about where his family came from. Mickey was adopted at birth and it was a closed adoption because the mother was under 21 when she gave birth so Mickey’s parents didn’t have any information. When he took the 23andme test he learned about his heritage but was also connected to distant relatives (mostly 2nd cousins). Mickey talked to one of his second cousins and they told him that their father had a cousin, Patty Prehall, who lived in Allentown around the time that Mickey was born. At first, we thought that she was his Mom so I did a bunch of research and found some other relatives of Patty Prehall. I got to a dead end at one point and there were no updates until I got Mickey to take the ancestry DNA test. There he was connected to Bill Kulls, who originally showed up as Mickey’s first cousin. I looked up Bill on Facebook and saw that he was older than I expected so I looked up his friends with the last name Kulls. That’s when I found Jamie and I was shocked. So I sent him a message and I found Steve Kulls and sent him a message too. I found out that he was Bill’s half-brother and that Bill had three kids, Jamie included. Since we thought that Bill was Mickey’s cousin we thought Jamie was a 2nd cousin. I wasn’t convinced that Jamie was a cousin so I went back on the ancestry site and clicked on the connection to Bill. It ends up that Bill is Mickey’s grandpa. So that narrowed Mickey’s dad to be either Jamie or Jeff. I did some more research and found out that Jamie graduated high school the same year that Mickey was born, so that lined up with his biological parents being under 21. Then I found out that Patty Prehall is Jamie and Jeff’s mom so I was like “Wow”. Then Jamie replied to me and more things lined up with the timing. He came to visit NY and then we got the paternity test done and he was a match!”

It took 33 years for my cousin Jamie to find out that he was a father. Today is the first Father’s Day in all those years that Jamie can truly celebrate parenthood.