Call from brother is big shock for family
A Black Country family had the shock of their lives when they got a call out of the blue from a relative none of them ever knew existed.
Six months later, Eileen Shelly has finally met her long-lost brother, and her family have spent the past week getting to know Seamus Fogarty, who spent nearly 50 years trying to trace them.
Her daughter Paula Luton, aged 46, of Firth Park Crescent, Halesowen, said: "It was such a shock."
Mr Fogarty, 75, lives in Baltimore but travelled the world working aboard ships.
Born in Dublin, Mr Fogarty – christened James Curtis – spent his first few weeks in a hospital for young single mothers before moving to live with his grandmother and other cousins in Tipperary.
Until he was 17 he called his grandmother Mum and did not know which of his aunts was his biological mother. His father James Morris was rarely mentioned. In 1964, he met Angele Sweelssen, now 69, whom he married and had two daughters Carmel and Chantal. It was due to Carmel's insistence that he started researching his family again, and he tracked down his father's death certificate, stating he died of a heart attack in Dudley.
He then set about calling the number of every Morris he found in the phone book, before he stumbled across his long-lost half-sister Ann.
After that first conversation in May, Mr Fogarty spent many hours talking to Ann and his other sister Eileen Shelly – and logged on to Facebook to chat to his niece and Eileen's daughters Paula and Denise, as well as Denise's daughter Katie.
