For 55 years Anne Ward kept a secret...
In 1943 Anne gave birth gave birth to a son, John. She was not married to John’s father and suffered the stigma - strong then, almost non-existent now, of course - of
being an unmarried mother. Just over a year later Anne
discovered that she was pregnant again and at this news her
partner left her to bring up the two children alone. For a few
months Anne struggled to bring up her sons under extremely
difficult circumstances.
Eventually the pressure became to much for her and rather than risk losing both children to the social services and desperate to give them the chances they deserved,
Anne reluctantly gave up her new baby for adoption. She told Roger’s adoptive mother, "You’ve got to think of him as your baby now. I’m doing this so that he’ll have a proper family - he’s your baby. I promise you I’ll never do anything to interfere, to break that." It was a dreadful time for Anne, and for 55 years it was only her mother who knew of her decision. "I had so much guilt and pain over it, that I couldn’t talk about it."
Years passed and Anne met and married Frank, who brought up John as his own
son. As John grew older he became curious about his real father
and began asking questions. Anne kept quiet, finding the best way to deal with her secret was to block it out, "I did try to tell John once or twice - I thought I must tell him before I die but I just couldn’t. When I did tell him he had a brother called Roger, it was completely unplanned…" John was driving his mother in the car at the time, "I thought he was going to crash it," said Anne. "I felt awful," said Anne, "I wished I hadn’t said it - I had a feeling of terrible guilt - would they want to know me? I was so frightened - I could lose John too."
Although shocked, John was also thrilled, and set about tracking his brother down. It took John just over six weeks to find his brother, helped by the fact that he had managed to trace Roger’s adoptive father’s death certificate. On the certificate was a family address in Bristol, although Roger himself had lived in Jamaica in 1973.
Roger was astounded to get a call from his daughter-in-law who lived in the flat in Bristol to say that his brother had contacted them there, "I always thought I might get some sort of a call one day - but the news about my brother - that was stunning. It was such a shock." Once contact had been made, Roger and John, got on well, and a week later the family met up in London.
John recalled his first sight of Roger, "I stared straight down the hall at my grandfather! I remember my mother’s father in his mid-fifities, and as Roger is now - it was really very weird…"
Reassured now by her sons' delight at being re-united with her and with each other, Anne is beginning to let go of the dreadful fear that they would blame her for her decision all those years ago, "It was 55 years I’d kept quiet, was it right to open my mouth now?" she says.
Both John and Roger are unequivocal in believing it was the right thing to do, "The immediate feeling is one of relief and one of completion…" says Roger.
