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Long-lost family re-united after 60 years

Long-lost family re-united after 60 years

A family have been re-united after 60 years after a mother's World War II love affair ended in two children being given away.

Fred Hodgkins had spent a lifetime looking for his long-lost family, an illegitimate brother and sister that his mother, Gladys, had had while her husband was away in Egypt as part of the war, the Daily Mirror reported.

Fred said: “I remember coming home from school when I was five years old and there was a rifle and kit bag at the bottom of the stairs.

“I thought my dad was home. But instead my mother was upstairs with another man.

“It always stuck in my head but my mother never said anything about it.

“Months later, I came home from school again to find my mother upstairs holding a baby. My gran and my aunt were there, too.

“Mum said, ‘We’ve only borrowed this little boy’ and I held him in my lap.

“I knew deep down he was my brother - but I never saw him again.”

The boy, named Grahame, was given up for adoption and re-named Fred Ford by his adoptive parents.

A year and a half later, another child was born. She was given up to Gladys's best friend Connie Atkins who couldn't have children of her own.

Fred began the search to find his long-lost siblings after an aunt told him he had a sister that he didn't know about.

Little did he know that, at one stage, he lived just over 91 metres away from his half-sister Carole.

Fred struggled in his search, until the adoption agency said they had been contacted by Fred Ford.

“Fred Ford and I spoke over the phone and the next day he came up from his home in Wales,” says Fred.

“We got on so well that he stayed for the weekend.”

But it wasn't for another 18 months that they found Carole.

“We all met at my house and it was marvellous. Carole came with her husband and son, and our brother Fred came, too," said Fred Hodgkins.

“It turned out Carole grew up just around the corner from us in Sheldon.

“She had walked past our house every day going to school but I had never known who she was.

“Years later, she and her husband Ken used to drink in the Marston Green Tavern, where I was the landlord.
“I felt as though a part of me had been missing before I met Fred and Carole.

“Now it’s as if we’d never been apart, even though more than 60 years had gone by.

“I look back and feel sad that we didn’t meet years ago.”