A MOTHER and baby home survivor who has longed to find his family for decades has finally been reunited with four blood relatives he never knew he had.
Bradford-based Fred O’Donnell was separated from his mother shortly after he was born at St Patrick’s Mother and Baby Home in Dublin and spent his youth being passed between orphanages, foster parents and Christian Brothers schools.
He never met his mother but documents found by his daughter Theresa Wardley last year revealed that she had been sent to a Magdalene laundry in Co. Cork, where she spent almost 60 years before her death in 1996.
It also revealed that she had had another son; born in another mother and baby home two years prior to Fred’s birth.
Mr O’Donnell visited his mother’s grave last year.
It was then that the father-of-three, with the help of his children, decided to search for his long-lost sibling and any other relatives he might have.
Late last month his long-held dream was realised when his cousins, the children of his Uncle Frederick, came to meet him at his daughter’s home.
“We found dad’s cousins living just 10 miles away from us,” Theresa told The Irish Post this week.
“They are the only blood family we know that dad has, so it was quite an emotional thing. He was quite shocked, as you can imagine, when we told him.”
Mr O’Donnell, who came to England in 1960, has still to track down his long lost brother James – or ‘Jimmy’, but was delighted to meet his cousins and their families at the reunion on October 18.
