Naomi Wilson and her father, Vandory Neal, in Long Lost Family (UK), Season 2 Episode 4. Supplied image matches the PBS episode photo.
Cherry Durbin went to Jersey with her birth mother’s name and the hope that it might lead to someone she was related to. It was 1983. A notice for her grandmother’s funeral led her to the undertaker, who gave her a list of mourners. For the first time, Cherry could put names to a family she had never known.
That search eventually took her to her birth mother, Daisy, and gave her the name of an older sister, Sheila. Nearly three decades later, Long Lost Family picked up the search for Sheila. The episode, which aired on ITV1 on May 3, 2012, also follows Naomi Wilson, who had last seen her father on a walk through Norfolk when she was five.
The child who stayed on Jersey
In 1940, as German forces approached, civilians were offered a chance to leave Jersey for the British mainland. Daisy left, and Sheila, then about two, stayed with her grandparents. Sheila remembered the hunger during the occupation and seeing German troops march up her street. Cherry was born on the mainland three years later and grew up as an only child with her adoptive parents.
Cherry eventually found Daisy in Leeds, but her mother shared little about what had happened to Sheila after the evacuation. Daisy died soon after they met. By the time Cherry asked the programme for help, the most useful record she could offer was Sheila’s birth certificate.
The clue Sheila brought to the search
A search under Sheila’s birth name went nowhere. Then the researchers found an online family tree that listed a Sheila born in Jersey on the date they were looking for. The woman who posted the tree turned out to be Sheila’s daughter. Sheila was living near Portsmouth and agreed to speak with Nicky Campbell.
Sheila told Nicky something Cherry had never heard. Daisy was already several months pregnant when she left Jersey. The dates pointed to a baby born in 1940, years before Cherry. Researchers found a birth registration in Lancashire. An adoption intermediary traced the child, now named Valerie, to Alicante in Spain.
Valerie had grown up as an only child too. When Nicky showed her photographs of Cherry and Sheila, she noticed the resemblance straight away. The three met for the first time at Danesfield House, near Cherry’s birthplace of High Wycombe. They talked about their likenesses and joked about who would have been the bossy one if they had grown up together.
The name Naomi’s father used in Texas
Naomi Wilson remembered the red Wellington boots her father bought her in Downham Market. She was five, and her feet had grown cold on their walk. He told her he would see her again, but his U.S. Air Force posting had ended and he returned to America. By the time Naomi was 25 and had a young son of her own, she still wondered why she had never heard from him again.
The team knew her father’s full name, Urelus Vandory Neal, and that he came from Texas. Searches under his first name drew a blank. A Houston listing under his middle name gave them a number to call. He confirmed who he was and told Nicky he had gone by Vandory since leaving England.
Vandory told Nicky he had returned to the United States to look for work. He said he had meant to come back and acknowledged how much of Naomi’s life he had missed. When he flew to England, Naomi chose Downham Market for their reunion. He apologised when they met. The town she remembered for one walk with her dad was where they finally got to spend another.
Sources
- PBS episode and transcript
- Genes Reunited’s original ITV1 listings
- Genes Reunited’s 2012 episode recap
- Jersey Heritage on the 1940 evacuation and occupation
