I’ve found out who my real father was after 64 years

A MAN from Goring who finally discovered the identity of his long-lost father says: “I feel connected now.”

Bryan Urbick, 64, was born in America after his birth mother had an affair when she was in her mid-twenties. He was put up for adoption when he was five and was brought up by a strict Catholic couple.

Mr Urbick, who is a member of Goring Parish Council, discovered his mother Delores Strohm in 2019 after seeking her identity through the courts in Washington State, where he was born.

He then connected with his two half-sisters, Beverley Langley and Belinda Eastham, who live in Georgia, and half-brother, Billy Moore, who lives in Montana.

Following the death of his adoptive mother in January last year, aged 90, Mr Urbick attended her funeral in Washington State.

While there, he was encouraged by his adoptive stepsister to complete a DNA test in an attempt to trace his paternal heritage.

By investigating his family tree, Mr Urbick was able to trace his father, Boyd Carter, who was born in 1924 and died in 2014, aged 90.

He used American biotechnology company 23 & Me, which was able to identify separate sides of his true family.

He said: “When I started to put together the family tree with the cousins I was related to by DNA, I was able to see my mother’s side, which was easy to confirm because I am known to them.

“The challenge was my father’s side but I had a lot of cousins, so I was able to use Ancestry and the information I had from 23 and Me to work back to find a common
relative.”

Mr Urbick used Ancestry to trace a cousin called Craig Moe, 74, who was born in Seattle in 1950 and now lives in Salem in Oregon.

He said: “I used Truth Finder, where you can find addresses and telephone numbers for people in the US and was able to reach out to those cousins. One answered.

“I got the phone number of that cousin’s daughter who had just moved to Tennessee with her husband and contacted them.

“He happened to have been visiting Tennessee in July and agreed that we could connect and that’s where it all started.” Last month, Mr Moe visited him for two weeks to reveal more about his father’s life. He had mixed feelings about what he discovered.

Mr Urbick said: “When I first talked to him, he had to make sure I wasn’t trying to come after the family for money but when I showed him the family tree that I’d put together, he saw that I knew a lot.

“Because of that, we started having weekly conversations and he decided in November that he’d like to come and visit.

“I burst into tears when I met him. Even though I didn’t really know him, I found it quite intriguing that he would come all that way to visit.

“We got to spend lots of time talking about different things and we have a fair bit in common, which is maybe surprising.

“When Craig came, he brought me some of his artwork for me to frame and have here, which was quite emotional.

“We sat down with the family tree and talked about different stories and we were able to bring things to life. I had to stop at times because it became a bit overwhelming.

“I think I feel connected now, which is a weird thing to say but I’ve never felt connected before. I feel different now.”

Mr Urbick said he was unsure if his father knew about his existence and felt sad about what he discovered about Mr Carter’s life.

Mr Carter lived on the west coast, had three marriages and had one other child apart from Bryan.

Mr Urbick said: “He loved to roller skate and apparently that’s where he met my mother and they had a fling, even though she was married and had three kids.

“I have been able to get my father’s death certificate to see where his ashes were sent. I’m trying to reach out to the family who got his ashes to see if I could learn more from them too.

“I know that he was in the Second World War and was in one of the attacks in Normandy. He was a paratrooper and he got caught in a tree. All his colleagues were killed but he got down and spent four months trying to find American Allied forces to reconnect with.

“He had a son seven years before I was born who drowned in a horrible accident when he was nine and I was two or three.

“According to my cousins, that changed him forever but I do wonder if he ever knew about me.

“It was sad because I cannot imagine being a father and having my nine-year-old son drown in an accident in a storm. My half-brother apparently looked just like me at nine when he died.

“I wore braces from a young age and he had the same crooked teeth and shape as me. It brings it all very close to home but it’s more sad than happy.”

Mr Urbick, who runs a consumer research firm with his civil partner, Abel Westerhof, was born in Seattle.

He was adopted by Wallace and Carol Urbick, who also adopted their daughter, Mari, who is three years younger than him.

When growing up in the suburb of Everett, he was often made to feel like an “outsider” as his adopted parents were strict Opus Dei
Catholics.

He delayed the search for his original family until his adoptive father’s death in 1999.

The two men had a difficult relationship as Mr Urbick was “rebellious” in his youth and when he came out in his mid-twenties his adoptive father struggled to accept that he was gay.

The men didn’t speak for a time but were reconciled and were on good terms when the older man died.

Mr Urbick said: “I didn’t get on very well with my adoptive father and mother. They were very religious and didn’t like someone who was gay and someone who was as liberal as I was so that created conflict.

“I’ve always felt like an outsider in the family. I used to feel that I was the way I was because I was rebelling against my adoptive parents but what I realise now is that there was something more ingrained in me.

“I sense that there are strands of positive eccentricities in my family and I’m proud of that. It’s not like anyone tried to fit into a mould.

“What’s fascinating is that my real father seemed to have a lot in common with me and when my cousin first saw me, he said: ‘Oh my God, you definitely look like him’.

“No one had ever said that to me before, so that was kind of jarring and exciting. I’m unable to put it into words as it’s all mixed up feelings. It was a mix of surprise, relief and a bit of fear.

“It’s a whole bit of my past that I knew nothing about.

“I now feel like I’m the same as my father. I keep worrying that maybe I’m post-rationalising it but I don’t think so.

“He was a researcher, an artist, did creative things and was an introvert. All of these things are what I am and none of my adoptive family was like that at all.”

Mr Urbick says he is largely at peace with his history but still has a lot of unanswered questions.

He said: “I’d like to go and see where my father lived, where he grew up, and see my grandparents’ graves, all the kinds of things that make it real.

“But I would say there’s a sense of satisfaction that if I died today, I wouldn’t feel like I horribly missed out on something that was important to know.

“My mum is dead and my father too but I think the second-best thing is being able to meet people who knew them and were part of their lives and I’m okay with that.”

Mr Urbick says he has made peace with his anger about his birth mother putting him up for adoption.

He said: “I feel sadness for a time when women were so ridiculed they couldn’t have children without all of the social shame.

“I have a profound sense of the whole nature-nurture argument, which is interesting.

“The anger I have is that she didn’t want to know me and because of that, I was never able to meet her or figure out my father.

“However, I get it because it was different for women in the Sixties having children and having affairs. Today there is less of a stigma and perhaps it wouldn’t have been such a horrid thing in this generation.

“It must have been dreadful to give birth and give away a child. It was a choice she made, not against me, but I think to protect herself and probably me at some level as well.”