FIRST STAGE
On September 14, 2018, Hurricane Florence landed in my home state of North Carolina. The storm’s path tracked directly over the small farming community where my mother grew up…
This storm inspired me to resume my search for my biological father.
In October 2018, Midway through my 72 Names of God Angel Meditations, I made some exciting discoveries.
First of all, please know that I love my mother very much. Although she passed away eighteen years earlier, on January 10, 2000, I was not trying to tarnish her reputation; I was trying my best to find out who my biological father was and how he related to my story. I understood that life was messy, and I was not judging anyone.
The first thing I needed to figure out was if my mother was in Tabor City, North Carolina, nine months before I was born. My aunt (my mother’s sister) was a newspaper columnist for the Tabor City Tribune. Her column was called “Bethel News.” After digging through the archives at – https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ I found the following articles.
According to my Aunt’s article, my mother visited her parents in the Tabor City area in late October 1960, nine months before I was born. Our father was not present. It was my youngest brother’s 6th birthday, October 22, 1960. I Want To Be Wanted by Brenda Lee was No. 1 on the Billboard charts.
After entering my birthdate of July 22, 1961, at https://www.calculator.net/pregnancy-conception-calculator.html, I learned that the most probable conception dates were October 24, 1960, and October 28, 1960. The most probable dates of sexual intercourse that led to the pregnancy were October 21, 1960, and October 28, 1960, when my mother was in her hometown. I was born nine months later. Tossin’ and Turnin’ by Bobbie Lewis was No. 1 on the Billboard charts the day I was born.
While searching the archives, I also found a photograph of Mr. K. J. Ray.
I then compared his photograph to mine. The picture on the left is K. J. Ray from the Tabor City Tribune archives. The two photos on the right are of me, around the same age.
Then, I did a father-son photo comparison of me as a child. I had a powerful feeling that K. J. Ray was my biological father.
According to the Tribune articles, Mr. Ray was a county commissioner who owned a barbershop and a car dealership in Tabor City. Coincidentally, my mother’s father owned a gas station and barbershop 7 miles outside Tabor City in the Bethel-Clarendon community.
A few days later, we received the DNA results confirming that my sister was my sister and not my biological mother. This was a huge mental relief for me. After five long months of holding my breath and losing my mind, I could exhale just a little.
On the morning of October 8, 2018, I found Mr. Ray’s official obituary, in which I learned that he died in June 1995. This was interesting because in March of 1995, after working for Duke University for the last six years, I quit my job and left North Carolina once and for all. That June, while I was living in Seattle, Washington, my mother’s closest sister paid my mother a visit to her nursing home. The timing was interesting. This particular aunt rarely left her home in Bethel, so I wondered if she was driven four hours to deliver the news of Mr. Ray’s passing. After all, it wasn’t something she could mention in a letter or a phone call. Even more interesting was the fact that my aunt and my sister got into a nasty altercation that same weekend.
As I dug deeper, I found photographs of another Ray, a deceased son of K. J. Ray. I compared his pictures with mine.
At this point, I felt 99.9% certain this was my half-brother on my biological father’s side. We had the same eyes, ears, smile, and nose—uncanny. But I still did not have proof. I needed to be sure.