{"id":9496,"date":"2022-02-16T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-16T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9496"},"modified":"2022-03-10T07:56:03","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T12:56:03","slug":"who-are-you-really","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9496","title":{"rendered":"Who Are You, Really?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Being bitten by the genealogy bug gives you a ticket to the vast carnival midway of life, with all its delights, haunted houses, and proofs of strength. You can wander into any number of enticing alleyways, all in the name of \u201cresearch.\u201d Recently, I participated in a Zoom lecture by author Paul Joseph Fronczak who\u2019s written books about his strange history, which was made into the CNN documentary, The Lost Sons<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ten-year-old Paul Fronczak found some newspaper clippings from the mid-1960s hidden in the family attic. They described how a woman disguised as a nurse had kidnapped a day-old baby boy from the maternity ward of a Midwestern hospital. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fifteen months later, a toddler boy was found abandoned in northern New Jersey, identified as the missing child, and returned to his parents. The stories he\u2019d found were about him, Paul Fronczak. Although raised in a loving home, Paul always felt like an outsider. In later years, he convinced his parents to get a DNA test, to make sure he was really their missing child. Short answer: he was not. But who was he?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He embarked on a quest to find his biological parents and, if possible, the kidnapped Paul. Again, DNA provided answers as well as new questions. The author Paul\u2019s birth name was Jack Rosenthal, and he was born in New Jersey. (Ironically, he\u2019s grateful to have grown up in the Fronczak home, because the Rosenthal family \u201cwas a nightmare.\u201d) Jack Rosenthal\u2019s birth certificate revealed a new mystery. He had a twin sister, as yet unidentified. After six years of effort, Paul did find the Fronczak\u2019s biological son, called Kevin, living in Michigan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the Fronczak case weren\u2019t convoluted enough, The Washington Post<\/em><\/a> (paywall) recently covered the story of the Bryntwick family of Montreal. Anne Bryntwick was a single mom in the 1950s, who for a decade had an occasional liaison with a man named Mike Mitchell. Apparently she saw him frequently enough, because, as her son Bob says, she gave birth like clockwork \u201cevery year, year and a half.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anne raised five children herself, but six of her babies disappeared. As DNA-testing became more popular, information on what happened to these babies began to appear when two of the adopted-out siblings found each other. And they found their brother Bob. All but one of the adopted-out siblings were raised as only children, and, even though they are now in their 70s, they enthusiastically embrace their new-found brothers and sisters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems Mitchell, their father, was selling some of Anne\u2019s babies for $10,000 apiece to U.S. and Canadian couples desperate for adoption. Laws at the time didn\u2019t ban such sales, and poor, uneducated women like Anne were ripe for exploitation. Meanwhile, Mitchell was married to another woman, with whom he had eight more children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDNA doesn\u2019t like, people lie,\u201d says one of the adopted-out sisters. And lying was easier when people didn\u2019t discuss certain things. Some families still don\u2019t. The other Rosenthal children are not interested in meeting their brother Paul, nor are most of the Bryntwick half-siblings, children of the married couple. Both of these sagas are eye-popping reads!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

True Identity<\/em><\/a> by Paul Fronczak<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Being bitten by the genealogy bug gives you a ticket to the vast carnival midway of life, with all its delights, haunted houses, and proofs of strength. You can wander into any number of enticing alleyways, all in the name … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Families finding themselves--ready or not--through DNA. Secrets cover a lot of pain.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,366,35,186,104],"tags":[1952,1951,1461],"class_list":["post-9496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-drama","category-real-life","category-technology","category-the-morgue","tag-adoption","tag-dna","tag-kidnapping"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2ta","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9498,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9496\/revisions\/9498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}