HEWITT, Wis. (AP) - Amanda Anderson is 35 years old and had never met her dad until this winter. He never knew she existed.
The meeting was “mind-blowing,” she told the Marshfield News-Herald (https://mnhne.ws/2kvaPNG ).
Anderson, a Spencer High School graduate who now lives in Madison, was raised by her mother and stepfather. She never knew her biological father, Randy Jones, but she believed he was out there somewhere. For almost all of her life she was consumed with the notion of meeting him and getting to know him. On Jan. 28, that day had come, and she was so excited it almost felt like she was going into shock.
“It was like, ’I don’t think you’re real. Oh, my god, you are real,’” Anderson said. “And it was strange, some of his mannerisms, the funny little things he does. It was like watching myself. Things like, he mispronounced words on purpose. His facial expressions.”
The experience was just as astonishing for Jones, 58, who lives in a tidy ranch home in the small town of Hewitt a few miles east of Marshfield. Until the end of December, he didn’t know he had another biological child, and meeting her for the first time “was wonderful,” he said. “It’s odd. It’s been like she’s (always) been a part of us without her ever having been here. I just can’t explain it.”
Jones and Anderson’s mother started going out in 1980 and the affair was short.
“We broke it off abruptly,” Jones said. “I had just gotten out of the service, and I went off to Colorado to live.”
Anderson’s mother was pregnant, but she never told Jones, then or ever.
“I don’t know why,” Jones said. Neither does Anderson. She asked her mother, but never got an an answer.
Anderson’s mother went on with her life, met another man and married him. Anderson was in grade school when she learned that her stepfather was not her biological father.
“I had a sister younger than me, and kids would ask me, ’How come your last name is different than your sister’s?’” Anderson said, because she used her mother’s maiden name, Greuel. When Anderson asked her mother, she was told that she had a different biological father, no more.
The family was troubled. They moved a lot, living in various places around central Wisconsin, Anderson said. There was no money. There was fighting. And as Anderson grew into her teen years and her relationship with her mother and stepfather grew even more difficult, she often felt miserable. Her thoughts kept returning to her “real” father. Where was he? What did he do? Could he have offered her a better life?
“I would ask my mom pretty frequently about him, and she would usually shut the conversation down pretty quickly,” Anderson said.
Once, when Anderson was in her early teens, her mother told her that her biological father’s name was Randy Jones.
Anderson turned to the internet, and started to search for Randy Jones using an email address directory. There were a lot of them. But Anderson’s relationship with her mother and stepfather was particularly troubled at the time, and she started to write to each Randy Jones, one by one.
When her mother found out, Anderson said, “she told me that Randy Jones was not my real father’s name.”
That deception disrupted Anderson’s search for years.
By the time she was in her early 30s, Anderson had graduated from college after fits and starts; gotten married and was working in Madison as an analyst for a health insurance company. Her mother had died in a car crash in 2003.
It wasn’t an easy road, but Anderson was resilient and felt fortunate. She said she had a good job, was married to an “awesome” guy and living in a city she enjoyed. But she struggled emotionally, wrestling with the difficult family life of her childhood and the unanswered questions about her father.
“I guess you could say I felt incomplete,” she said. “I felt I had this question mark hanging over half of myself. … I think there was a big part of me still like that 14-year-old girl who wanted a daddy.”
She spent a few years piecing together a genealogical family tree and had mostly filled in her mother’s side. Her father’s side was a blank. Anderson decided to take a DNA test from a company that uses genetic exams to help track down biological relatives. Through that test, she found a second cousin on her father’s side. She contacted him, and he helped her make more links. Through his help, she found Randy Jones.
“My cousin had found Randy on Facebook. When I saw (his photo), it almost felt like a lightning bolt going through my body, because he looked so much like me,” Anderson said.
This was in December. She thought about the implications of her next move and sent a Facebook message on Christmas Eve.
Jones was stunned when he opened his Facebook account on Christmas morning and found Anderson’s message.
“It took me a while to digest it all,” Jones said. He’s been married for 35 years, with two grown children.
He looked at the message again. He talked with his wife and children about the situation. He scrutinized Anderson’s message and finally decided he needed to answer her.
“I wrote, ’I think you’re right. I think I could very well be your father,’” Jones said.
He’s been a truck driver all his life and currently works for a freight company based in Tomah. Ordinarily, he works long days with an hour commute tacked on each end. But before Christmas, he had hernia surgery and was recovering for the entire month of January. That meant he had plenty of time to communicate regularly with Anderson.
They connected frequently, always by text or through Facebook. Jones has a romantic streak, and early on he asked Anderson not to call him.
“I want to hear your voice for the first time when we meet face to face,” he told her.
It took time to find a good weekend for the meeting. But Anderson and her husband, Scott, drove the evening of Jan. 27 to Marshfield from Madison and spent the night in a hotel. When they went to Jones’ home around mid-morning the next day, they literally were welcomed with open arms.
There was an instant connection, fueled by hours of texts back and forth in the prior weeks. That all set the stage for hours of talk on that Saturday a couple of weeks ago, a meeting that included Jones’ other adult children, and Jones’ wife.
“So there is this new addition to the family, and every single one of them was so accepting,” Anderson said. “It restored my faith in family.”
Jones said Anderson is part of the family now and forever.
“It’s not something we’re walking away from,” he said. “I told her, there’s no way we can make up for the past. But what lies ahead is what we make of it.”
Anderson said it all turned out to be beyond her hopes.
“I spent so many years of my life in anguish,” Anderson said. “I used to say that I guess I wasn’t meant to have a good life. I can’t say that anymore. This has been a miracle.”
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Information from: News-Herald Media, https://www.marshfieldnewsherald.com
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