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The E-mail
October 4, 2012
The day my life changed forever began as just another day. Isnt
that always the way? Earthquakes and lightning bolts strike without warning. If you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong
time, nothing is ever the same again. My life wasnt altered by an
act of God. Instead, it was changed by the revelation of a deep
dark family secret that, like a time bomb, had been ticking my
whole life, and it just happened to go off on the random day when
I received the e-mail.
The date was October 4, 2012. A Thursday. I was 56 years
old at the time. My wife, Cindy, and I had been happily married
for thirty years, and our two children were grown. Our son, Chad,
was 23 and our daughter, Carlee, was 21both great people of
whom we were very proud. I had also enjoyed a long, successful
career to that point as a TV news anchor, most of it spent at the
cable news channel CNBC. I had everything I could have hoped
for, both personally and professionally, and I thought I had life all
figured out. But it turned out I didnt have a clue.
At noon that day I was sitting at my desk in the CNBC newsroom in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, eating a sandwich while
I looked over the news wires on my computer, completely oblivious to what was about to happen. In an hour the networks car
service would take me into New York City to the New York Stock
Exchange, where I co-anchor a one-hour show called Closing Bell.
At the time, my co-anchor was Maria Bartiromo. We affectionately refer to those final minutes before the bell rings as the most
important hour of the trading day. So much can happen: mergers
are suddenly revealed, CEO resignations are announced, and
sometimes there are rumors floating around the trading floor that
cause the market to move. It is a traders job both to anticipate
and to react. My job is to explain a storys significance as it was
happening. I had gotten pretty good at that over the years.
The Stranger in My Genes
Bill Griffeth
of it. I might as well have been a thousand miles away. I felt a deep
and profound aloneness.
I read the e-mail again. I had no idea what Doug was talking
about. This was a story I could not explain. What were these
haplogroups he referred to? I was an I1, he said, but I was supposed to be an R1. What did that mean? It was all just a bunch of
scientific gobbledygook.
His last sentence, though, came through loud and clear:
Your father was not Uncle Charles.
This was Dougs conclusion? Just like that? How could he
so hastily reach such a troubling and scandalous and life-altering
judgment? Impossible! I thought. There had to be another explanation. Maybe the lab got my sample mixed up with someone
elses. When I sent mine in, the DNA testing service was running
a special offer. That was how Doug had enticed me to submit my
sample when I did. DNA testing is not cheap. So I could imagine
that the lab had been flooded with Q-tips all at once, which would
have increased the chances of a mix-up. That had to be it.
Looking back, I am struck by the absurdity of that moment.
There I was, sitting at my desk eating a turkey on whole wheat,
and out of the blue I received an e-mailan e-mail!telling me
that my father wasnt my father. (He couldnt call me?)
I fired off a reply to my cousin:
You will understand my great skepticism on all of this. Im
going to have to get a second opinion through another DNA
testing service before I draw any definitive conclusions.
He responded immediately:
Good call. Shall I compile a list of other companies who do
paternal testing? Happy to do so.
I had to talk to somebody. I picked up the phone and called
Cindy. She had long been the steadying influence in my life. I took
my emotional cues from her, and I badly needed to hear her voice.
Bill Griffeth
Hey. She sounded upbeat and busy and distracted when she
answered, probably packing for our trip. Whats up?
I told her.
Thats crazy! she shouted. Now I had her full attention. Her
words were forceful, almost combative, and I thought, This is how
I should have responded.
But what if its true? I asked.
There is no way, she said. Youre going to tell me that your
mother had an affair? Think about what youre saying. She had
no doubts. I exhaled. Of course there had to be a mistake. We
would straighten it all out. We hung up.
Now what do I do? I could tell my producers that a family
emergency had suddenly come up and leave, but where would I
go? And what would I do when I got there? My day was already
in motion. I had a show to do in two hours, the Wharton folks
were counting on me that evening, and Cindy and I had a plane
to catch the next morning. I didnt have time to dwell on this. I
finished the items on my to-do list and headed outside, where my
car was waiting.
The trip from CNBCs headquarters in Englewood Cliffs to
the stock exchange takes roughly forty-five minutes when traffic is
light. I typically use the time in the car to go over research material for the days show. But not that day.
Ordinarily when I get in the car I chat with my driver for a
few minutes about the weather or local sports teams, and then he
leaves me alone to do my homework. But on this day I wasnt in
the mood for small talk. No words were spoken. We crossed the
George Washington Bridge from New Jersey into New York City
and took the Westside Highway south along the Hudson River
all the way down to the financial district at the southern tip of
Manhattan. My research sat beside me, untouched.
There were two voices echoing in my head.
Your father is not your father.
Your mother had an affair? No way!
My cousin and my wife were both convinced of their respective positions. For Doug, the science did not lie. My Y chromosome
The Stranger in My Genes
did not match his, and there could be only one explanation: what
geneticists delicately refer to as a non-parental event. In simple
terms, my mother had strayed. But for Cindy, just knowing my
94-year-old mother as she did was enough to tell her there had
been a mix-up at the DNA lab. Mom had been a shy teetotaler her
whole life, raised by a puritanical father and a devoutly Christian
mother. She went to church every Sunday, and she read her Bible
every day. She was not the type to even look at another man,
much less.... One of the voices in my head had to be wrong.
Either there had been a mistake with my DNA test or my mother
was not the person we all thought she was.
I watched the familiar sights go by as my car made its way
down the west side of Manhattan past the West 79th Street Boat
Basin, then the Intrepid Museum, then Chelsea Piers. It was a
beautiful fall day in the city. Puffy white clouds drifted through the
blue sky and temperatures were cooling but still comfortable. But
I was too distracted to enjoy any of it. The initial shock of Dougs
e-mail was still very strong. I felt numb and disconnected.
When we were a few blocks from the stock exchange, I
checked my Blackberry and found another message from Doug:
Bill, I apologize for being so blunt in my previous post this
morning....Very sorry.
I smiled.
No need to apologize, Cousin... :), I wrote back.
Unsettling, yes. I have to believe theres something amiss in
the testing process, but well get to the bottom of it one way or the
other.
I was putting on a good face, just like I did on television. But
inside I was feeling a dark emptiness.
The car dropped me off at the corner of Broadway and Wall
Street, the most historical part of New York. Dutch merchants
who came to the area in the mid-1600s called their colony New
Amsterdam. During my genealogical research I had discovered
that my ninth great-grandparents, George and Rebecca Woolsey,
were married here in 1647, and for a number of years they lived
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Bill Griffeth
the backseat and realized that it had been a whole hour since I had
thought about Dougs e-mail, and just like that, I felt the disorienting sting of that bizarre moment all over again.
My driver headed north up the Westside Highway toward
Midtown and the hotel where the pre-dinner cocktail reception
was just getting under way. I looked over my program notes, but
it was impossible for me to focus on the task at hand. I picked
up my Blackberry, opened Dougs e-mail again and read it for the
umpteenth time.
Your father was not Uncle Charles.
I have given speeches for dozens of historical societies and
genealogy clubs over the years. My message has always been the
same: Genealogy is the pursuit of truth, and if you choose to begin
researching your familys history, you had better be prepared to
accept whatever truths you uncover. But now, suddenly, I wasnt
sure I could do that myself. What in the world was going to
happen next, I wondered. Where was all of this going? Sitting in
the back of the car that evening, I had no way of knowing that
this was only the beginning of a long journey that would include
more startling turnsa journey that would ultimately lead me to
the discovery of a deeply unsettling truth. My real truth.
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Bill Griffeth