The Secret Lives Of Terrance O'Connor: One Family's DNA Discovery

BETHESDA, MD —Bethesda resident Sarah Libby decided to try out a 23 and Me Kit in April, looking to find out more about her family’s medical history.

Her mom found out last year she has Alzheimer’s disease — the first person in the family to receive the diagnosis. Libby herself has a connective tissue disorder that no one else in her family has, which made her wonder if there’s anything else she doesn’t know.

“We know my mom's history but know nothing about my dad's dad,” Libby said, since he left the family when her father and his brother were 4 and 5 years old.

Libby, 36, chose 23 and Me because it promises its users detailed health reports, including indications of predispositions to late-onset Alzheimer's disease, Type 2 diabetes, carrier status for sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis, to name a few. Libby was relieved when she got her results. Her report didn’t show she was predisposed to late-onset Alzheimer's disease.

In addition to health reports, 23 And Me gives people the option to connect with relatives who have uploaded their DNA information. When Libby made her account, she authorized the company to share her results with DNA matches and didn’t think much of it afterward.

The day Libby got her health reports back, she also received an unusual notification from 23 And Me. It didn’t have anything to do with her health — it was an unknown familial match.

The message told her the app found a cousin on her dad’s side, one she had never heard of. Libby knew all her cousins; her dad, Robert, only has one brother, Michael, and she knows all of his kids. She wasn’t sure what to do. The cousin’s last name was O’Connor, which was Libby’s father’s surname before he was adopted by his stepfather as a child.

Libby surmised her grandfather — the one who left her dad and uncle when they were just little boys — had another family. The idea wasn’t a total shock to Libby, as she’d never even met her grandfather.

Still, she had no idea what this woman knew. What if the woman knew nothing of her grandfather’s past and Libby contacting her shattered her idea of her family?

Libby considered what to do, and then decided to send a message.

Connecting

Sarah O’Connor was in high school when she decided to try out 23 and Me to find out more about her family’s heritage.

“I kind of forgot about it, but this year they updated it and they're like: ‘Hey, check out your updated profile,’” O’Connor, 23, said. “Then in the profile you could allow family members to
contact you. So I did it and I didn't think anyone would ever contact me.”

A few months ago O’Connor was waiting to go into a job interview in Connecticut when she saw a notification on her phone. It was from 23 and Me, from a woman named Sarah Libby, who was asking about her grandfather. O'Connor messaged back and then closed her phone and went into the interview.

When she got out, she and Libby started sending messages and pictures back and forth. Libby said she had matched with O’Connor on 23 and Me, and believed they were first cousins on her dad’s side. O’Connor had known her grandfather, albeit not well. He had left her dad and uncle when they were kids, and she had only seen him a few times. He had died in Florida a few years prior.

Her first call was to her older brother, to see what she should do. Then, she went to her dad.

Who Was Terrance O'Connor?

Terrance O’Connor Sr. was from County Cork, Ireland. From what his descendents knew of him, he was a laborer who picked up odd jobs to survive, rarely holding one for a long time. He was a drinker. He married Libby’s grandmother and had two sons, before taking off when they were only a few years old.

Libby’s father remembers Terrance Sr. returning one time — he gave his two sons baseball gloves and that was it.

When the elder O'Connor moved to Connecticut and met Sarah O’Connor’s grandmother, she found out about his previous family in Maryland. O'Connor says her grandmother never told anyone, but encouraged him to stay in his children's lives.

Sarah’s father, Terrance Jr., once saw a photo of his dad standing with two little boys. On the back it had their first names only, and from then on he had his suspicions, but didn’t know where he could even begin to look for them.

The elder Terrance left his second family when his two sons were a few years old, and moved to upstate New York. He saw them occasionally throughout the rest of his life, meeting their children a handful of times and eventually moving to Florida. Mostly, he was out of the picture.

Libby hoped finding out about the other O’Connor family could give her dad some solace after the trauma of being abandoned by a parent. He was adopted by his mother’s new husband, meaning Terry must have given up his parental rights.

“I said, you know, he did the exact same thing to that family that he did to your family — our family,” said Libby. “I feel like that should somehow bring you some peace. It wasn't just you guys. It wasn't that he didn't want you. It's that he couldn't be a dad.”

Both of the Sarahs — who note the peculiarity of the coincidence their dads unknowingly gave them the same name — say their fathers were taken aback by the news of their other family. It was a shock to find out they had half-brothers, even though they didn’t grow up having their own father present in their lives and even suspected he may have had other children.

“He was just amazed because he said, you know, he always figured he had other siblings out there but he had no way of knowing how to contact them,” said O’Connor. “It was kind of like two worlds colliding, because it was just a mystery to him for so many years. So, he was just more dumbfounded.”

Libby’s uncle, Michael, who is her dad’s full brother, is excited about the possibility of meeting his new family members. He’s texted O’Connor a few times, and would like to meet his half-brothers someday. O’Connor and Libby’s dads are proceeding at a slower, more cautious pace.

“My dad is much more reserved,” said Libby. “And as it would have it, so is Terrance Jr. Sarah and I will talk about our dads and like they handle it exactly the same.”

Libby, O’Connor, and O’Connor’s brother have communicated a lot — talking in a groupchat, sending photos back and forth and comparing notes on their families. They planned to meet up sometime this summer, but logistics got in the way and they’ve pushed it to the fall. Right now they think it might just be the cousins, but they’re hoping their fathers and uncles will eventually be open to meeting.

"I Have His Eyes"

One of the first things O’Connor noticed when Libby messaged her was her eyes. They were a piercing blue, just like Terrance Sr.

“When I clicked on her profile I saw his crystal blue eyes that she had,” said O’Connor. “And I was like, yeah, we’re related.”

Before talking to O’Connor, Libby had never even seen a photo of her grandfather. When she saw it, it was another jolt in the line of shocks she experienced since sending in her DNA.

“I just cried because here's this man that is made up of my blood, you know I have his eyes,” said Libby of when she saw the photo. “I am made from him. I have no idea who he is.”

Libby said her dad worked to be the man his own father wasn’t. When he and Libby’s mom got married, she already had another son who now calls Robert “dad.” When Robert and Libby’s mom divorced, he married a woman who had two children of her own already. Libby said he treated everyone like his own biological child, helping to support them and put them through college.

“My dad’s literally just started being a dad to everybody else,” said Libby. “So I guess he did kind of try to break the chain.”

Libby never met her grandfather. She wishes she could see him, to ask him why he left two families, to tell him about the damage he left in his wake and the ways his children succeeded without his help.

Libby said her father is an amazing man despite Terrance Sr.’s absence. He put himself through college by cleaning carpets and became a fire protection engineer. More than that, Libby says he has an amazing heart. But Terrance Sr. will never know that.

“I just wanted to meet him and be like, your kids turned out awesome,” Libby said. “And it's a shame you didn't get to meet us.”

The two families — the Libbys and the O’Connors — aren’t taking their fateful DNA match for granted.

“I think it's just really nice that we have our whole lives to get to know each other and start a relationship,” O’Connor said. “We're open to it. We're not like, like, ‘Oh no, don't talk to us’ type of people. We're embracing it.”

O’Connor has texted with Michael — Libby’s father’s brother. He’s asked her about her favorite baseball teams (the Yankees, of course), where she went to school and her hobbies. One question, though, stuck with her more than the others.

He asked if his half-brother ever tried to find him, once he suspected he was out there. But there was no Google back then, and Michael was no longer an O’Connor — he was a Libby.

“There was no way for my dad to even look, you know?” said O’Connor.

Is It Worth It?

Both Libby and O’Connor believe in karma. Libby is a believer in signs and spirits. One night a few months ago, she woke up in the middle of the night and smelled cologne that an old man might wear.

It was 3 o’clock in the morning, and she suddenly had to run to the bathroom. She still smelled the cologne and felt some sort of presence when she got to the bathroom, she said. Then she heard a “WHOA,” and the smell was gone.

The next night she smelled it again, and she said “you can go.” She hasn’t smelled the old man’s cologne since.

“Nothing pulls you out of the afterlife like all of your kids finding out they have each other,” said Libby with a laugh.

DNA testing has opened the world to connections that may have been inconceivable before. Parents find out they have kids they never knew about, people realize their parents are not who they said they were.

Wired recently reported on sperm donors from decades ago who are being traced by children they never thought would find out about them. USA Today told a story about a man who found out he had a sibling his dad had never told him about. That article asks, “is it worth it?”

“I give them a warning like you don't know what Pandora's Box has for you,” said O’Connor about people who ask that question. “Be prepared, talk to your family before. I didn't really talk to my family before I did it.”

Ultimately, she says to do it. Libby agrees. She was nervous to contact O’Connor, worried about what pain she might inflict if she reached out to someone who might not be ready to hear what she had to say. Instead, she found a new family.

“Everybody go spit in a tube,” she said with a laugh.