Brit's adoption search finds American brothers unknown for 75 years
Craig Dunderdale (center) meets his retired brothers Dan and Frank in America. ____________________ As I grow older, I have become more curious about relatives and friends in my past whom I never met or had lost contact with over the decades. I grew up knowing little about my late birth father, Anthony (Tony) Monce, and his side of the family. I remember seeing him when I was three in 1943. Then, my parents divorced and I was totally out of touch with him until my twenties. After graduating from Denver University, I relocated to California to work for Walt Disney as PR manager for WED (Walt E. Disney) Imagineering. I learned from Tony's s sister that he lived lin southern California. So, I wtraveled south to visit him. We had quite a reunion. Over the following years our families visited back and forth. Then he died of cancer in 1980. With the advent of desktop computers, I started searching the internet in earnest for more information about him and his ancestors. Many years later, in December 2019, I began a new search. Ancestry.com soon notified me of my "strong" DNA match with a "first cousin" whose name I did not recognize. So I ignored it. Then, two or three days later, I received an email from the "first cousin," named Craig Dunderdale. Ancestry had notified him of our DNA match. Surprise, surprise: It turned out that he was not a cousin, but my half brother on my birth father's side. Craig is retired from a career in the Royal Air Force. Among other adventures, mostly in the middle east, he was a member of The Queen's Flight (squadran). He now lives in England with his lovely wife, Jill. We frequently exchange emails. For more than two years Covid 19 restrictions in England prevented them from flying to America to visit us. But, by July, 2022, restrictions were lifted, allowing Craig and Jill to fly all the way from England to visit my family in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. We look forward to another visit in September, 2023. My local newspaper, The Mountain Mail, ran a front-page story on us. It was followed by front-page spreads in several UK newspapers. One of those was the Rutland Times:
Read The Big Interview after the following page. THE BIG INTERVIEW A man’s 40-year journey to uncover his true heritage led to him meeting siblings he never knew existed. At the age of 11, Craig Dunderdale’s world was turned upside down. The woman he believed to be his mother suddenly revealed he had been adopted at birth. Jill and Craig Dunderdale at Snowmass Ranch during their trip to America.__________________ She died a week later and, within a year, Craig’s adoptive father met another woman who moved into the family home with her own children. Craig could barely comprehend what he had been told about his roots and it wasn’t until he reached his late 20s that he became curious about his true identity. He said: “I’d had a happy upbringing in Lower Hampstead. I didn’t even know what adoption was, so it came as a total shock.” Craig Dunderdale enjoys his time at the family ranch._______________ In 1976 the law changed to allow adopted children to trace their birth parents, paving the way for Craig. At the time he was in the RAF, living in Cambridge with wife, Jill. The couple had two daughters Tanya, now 48, and Abi, who died of cancer eight years ago, aged 36. The family contacted a team of social workers who traced Craig’s birth certificate. It revealed he was born Anthony Slater on June 15, 1945 to Eliza Slater of Dagenham. The certificate stated 'father unknown'. It was weird to see the birth certificate showing my name,” he said. "I suddenly found myself with a different name and remember it feeling like having a split personality.” Craig later discovered Eliza was married with two children. Her husband had been fighting in Germany and Craig was the result of an affair with an American soldier. When Eliza’s husband returned from war to find his wife pregnant with another man’s child, he insisted the baby be put up for adoption. Craig was adopted in March 1946, at about nine months old. In his thirties, Craig tried to contact is birth mother, but her husband refused to accept a letter from him and she has since died. When the door closed on that relationship, Craig set about tracing his father. He joined Ancestry.com, which helped him to trace a first cousin once removed on his birth mother’s side. Craig discovered he had been referred to during his mother’s pregnancy as “the American boy”. In October 2017 Craig decided to have his DNA tested. He had almost given up on the idea of tracing his family but his wife, Jill, persuaded him to stick with it. The DNA test proved a turning point in Craig’s search and alongside hundreds of distant matches, it uncovered a half-sibling. Craig tentatively made contact with Frank Allnutt, not wanting to raise his hopes. After swapping a few details by email, the pair realised they were indeed half brothers. Craig’s birth father, Anthony Monce, was an American flight crewman stationed in England during the Second World War. Monce had divorced his wife, Gwendolyn Cook, the mother of Frank and Dan, in 1944 and she later married William Allnutt. Her sons are the half-brothers Craig never knew he had. Craig, who lives in Oakham, said: “It’s unbelievable. My journey started with me trying to find who my father was but I never expected to find two brothers.” The men chatted via email and video calls for two years during covid restrictions before Craig and Jill travelled to America last month. Craig said: “It was like an out of body experience. I felt a bond with them like I’ve never felt before. They welcomed us with open arms and other relatives drove for miles to meet us. “I feel as if I belong with them. I’ve never felt that warmth.” The family live on a ranch in centrral Colorado's Rocky Mountains. Brothers Frank, 82, and Dan, 81, share the original ranch house with their extended family living next door. Frank, an author since the 1970s, wrote the bestseller, The Force of Star Wars, and many other Books. Dan is a woodburning artist and retired realtor. The three brothers have been in constant contact since their first email exchange, and Craig is keen to visit as much as he can. He said: “It has been the happiest time in my life. There’s nothing else I wish for now. I wanted to find out who my father was but I got more than I bargained for. “There are a lot of people out there in a similar position to me and I’d urge them not to give up. I faced an impossible task because no one knew anything about me but the DNA never lies. “I’m so fortunate to have a happy ending.”