A Family Tree Blossoms

Long-lost sisters find one another thanks to online DNA-databases

By Andrea Agardy

Luella Hubert spent the first 75 years of her life certain she was an only child. And then one day, the Bryan resident got a message that changed everything she thought she knew. She had submitted a DNA sample to ancestry.com, the popular genealogy company that helps people trace their family trees. She later received a message through Ancestry that another user wanted to contact her. On that fateful day, she accepted the request and read the message.

“He said, ‘You don’t know me, but I think I’m married to your sister,’” Hubert recalls.

Surprise Siblings

The email was from Jon Blazek of North Carolina. He was reaching out on behalf of his wife, Karen, who had recently had a stroke and was searching for blood relatives to fill in some blanks about her family’s medical history. Karen Blazek was born in Indiana in 1947, and she immediately went into an adoption situation. She knew little about her biological family apart from her birth mother’s name, Dorothy Hensley.

Hubert was born in 1941 in Terre Haute, Indiana, also to Hensley, an unmarried housemaid. When Hubert was 3 months old, she was adopted by Leon and Hannah Woody, who raised her in nearby Clinton, Indiana. Hubert says Hensley often visited the Woody home when she was a child, although her parents told her the woman was a friend of the family. When Hubert was just 6 years old, Hannah Woody told her about her adoption, but details on her birth parents were tightly held secrets for much of Hubert’s life.

She didn’t discover Hensley was her birth mother until she was 20 years old. By then, Hensley had died. In subsequent years, Hubert came to know several of Hensley’s relatives. One of those, Hensley’s cousin, contacted Hubert and told her that her birth mother had wanted to keep her but was unable to do so after Hubert’s biological father, a married man, refused to provide $500 for their child’s care.

Hubert was always interested in discovering her biological roots, but when she sent in her DNA sample to ancestry.com, discovering long-lost siblings never crossed her mind. After reading Blazek’s email, Hubert called him, and he sent her a photo of Hensley as a child.

“Well, I couldn’t tell anything about the little girl in the picture, but she was sitting in a chair with her mother, and I could recognize her mother,” Hubert says.

The realization that she had a sister was beginning to sink in.

“I grew up as an only child,” she says. “This was really a big deal to me!”

Meeting the Family

Not long after the two sisters discovered one another, Hubert and her husband traveled to North Carolina to meet the Blazeks. The visit with her newfound family was warm and friendly. Hubert recalls her initial meeting with Karen Blazek: “I just said, ‘Hi, I’m so glad to finally meet you!’ I hugged her, and she hugged me back.”

The sisters kept in touch, and about a year later, Jon Blazek called Hubert again with more life-changing news.

“He said, ‘Are you sitting down? You have another sister,’” Hubert recalls. “That was, again, a shock.”

The third sister, Dee Ann Nevares, of Florida, was born to Hensley in 1946. Nevares had submitted her DNA to 23AndMe, another genealogy site, which connected her to Karen Blazek. The three women got DNA tests and confirmed they are all half-sisters.

“I think I was 75 at the time I met Karen,” Hubert says. “I’d been an only child for 75 years, and what is this? I’ve got a sister! And then the next year, I’ve got another sister! It feels so good. It really does. I’ve got blood relations, which I never thought I would ever have.”

Before health issues made traveling too difficult for Nevares and Blazek, the three sisters spent time together near Nevares’ home in Florida and most recently at Hubert’s house in Bryan in 2018. The Texas gathering was an extended family get-together with many of the womens’ children and grandchildren in attendance.

“It feels great to think that I’m not alone. There are others that share things with me, and I think it’s just wonderful,” Hubert says. “Dee says she feels the same way. We send each other little things that say ‘sisters’ on it for birthdays and Christmas. We’re always sending out ‘I love yous’ and things.”

The Power of the Internet

Without online DNA databases, it’s unlikely Hubert ever would have learned about her sisters.

“Considering that we live in North Carolina, Florida and Texas, I don’t think that we ever would have run across one another,” she says.

Not only did the internet bring them together, it’s helping them stay connected.

“Dee and I are on Facebook, and she’s a prolific Facebook answerer,” Hubert says. “She puts comments on everything, and she sends me a Facebook message every day.”

Hubert encourages other adoptees curious about their origins to seek out information on their birth parents.

“It answers so many questions that I think every adopted kid has, like, ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Where did I come from?’” she says. “It’s true you could find people who don’t want to be found, but all in all it’s been a great experience for me, and I would recommend it to anyone.”