Top photo: Tim Green from Bradford, UK / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Some searches end with a hug at a garden gate. Others end with a grave, a photograph and a stranger who turns out to be family after all. On 5 May 2011, the third episode of ITV’s Long Lost Family showed both.
Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell followed two women. One had been looking for her little brother for most of her life. The other had spent 25 years wondering whether she had done the right thing for her son.
A Little Boy in Post-War London
Jeannie Elgar grew up in London in the late 1940s, in a small rented flat in Pimlico. Her mother was raising Jeannie and her younger brother Geoffrey on her own, and money was always short.
When Jeannie was eight and Geoffrey was four, a couple calling themselves Mr and Mrs Smith came and took Geoffrey away to be adopted. Jeannie watched him go. It was the last time she ever saw him.
One letter came from the Smiths afterwards. It had been sent from a ship called the Orion, which was heading for the Pacific island of Fiji. After that, nothing.
Thirty Years of Searching
Jeannie never stopped looking. For around 30 years she followed every lead she could find. Two years before the programme was made, she found the passenger records for the Orion from 1950. They confirmed the Smith name, and showed that the couple had another adopted boy with them, a baby of about six months.
The programme’s researchers picked up the trail from there. Government records showed that Arthur Smith had been posted to Fiji as a customs controller. A book about Bermuda led them to his wife, Edith Irene Smith. Finally, a newspaper advertisement brought a phone call from Robert, the other little boy on that ship.
The News Jeannie Feared
Robert had the answer Jeannie had waited a lifetime for, and it was a hard one. Geoffrey had died in 1979, at just 34 years old, in a power boat racing accident.
He had grown up in a well-off family in Bermuda, gone to boarding school in England, and become a record producer. And Robert shared something that meant the world to Jeannie: Geoffrey had often talked about his big sister, and he had tried to find her too.
Jeannie was heartbroken. But she took comfort in knowing that her brother had never forgotten her. She later travelled to Bermuda to meet Robert, and she came home feeling that she had gained a brother after all.
A Secret Kept for Nine Months
The second story belonged to Kirsty West from Leighton Buzzard. In the summer of 1984, aged about 15 or 16, she became pregnant. She hid it from everyone, including her parents, until the night her waters broke and her mother had to call a doctor.
During labour, Kirsty made the hardest decision of her life. She would give her baby up for adoption. She named him Stephen. He spent six months with foster parents before he was adopted.
For 25 years, Kirsty asked herself whether she had done the right thing. She was never able to have another child, despite years of trying. She posted appeals online, but the adoption records kept her son’s new name out of reach. An intermediary with legal access to those records finally traced him.
A Walk in Stockgrove Park
Stephen had grown up as James, raised by an Italian couple near Bedford. He had found out he was adopted at about the age of seven, had a happy childhood, and held no grudge. By then he worked as a tree surgeon and had a young family of his own, with another baby on the way.
He agreed to meet his birth mother. They met at Stockgrove Park in Bedfordshire, went for a walk together and shared a meal at the park café. Kirsty said afterwards that the day had changed her life.
Two Endings, One Message
This episode showed that Long Lost Family does not only tell happy stories. Sometimes the truth comes too late. But even then, it can bring peace, and sometimes a new family member, too.
Have you ever searched for someone you lost touch with long ago? Did you find the answer you were hoping for? We would be honoured to hear your story.
Sources
- TVmaze: Long Lost Family 1×03
- PBS: Long Lost Family, Season 1 Episode 3
- Digiguide: Jeannie Elgar and Kirsty West
- Genes Reunited blog (6 May 2011)
