For Sharon Van Zandt, it’s never too late to find family.
Van Zandt was born to Marion Wietor and grew up in both Chicago and Ingleside, Illinois, with her brother, Michael, her grandmother and aunt. Van Zandt was raised believing the man who fathered her brother — a man who Van Zandt said wasn’t very present in either child’s life — was also her biological father. Whenever Van Zandt would pose a question about her father, her mother would remind her that they divorced when Van Zandt was 6 months old.
About 20 years ago, while rummaging through her mother’s paperwork after her death, Van Zandt began to discover that things she once believed to be true weren’t.
“I found her divorce papers, found Mr. Wietor and found out they were divorced a year before I was born,” said Van Zandt, 73. “I knew then that something was not right.”
She consulted her aunt, who told her that her biological father was actually a good-looking Italian man who met her mother at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom, a popular dance location.
“[My aunt] didn’t know his name,” Van Zandt said. “I had no name at that time. In 1996, there wasn’t a lot of ways to think I could ever find him without a name. My daughters pushed me to do things like contact Oprah. I knew the odds were so astronomical.”
In December 2014, Van Zandt submitted a DNA test to ancestry.com.
“Even then, when I did it, I thought, ‘The odds of this are a million to one,’” she said.
This February, Van Zandt discovered that there was only one match for her DNA in the system — Terry Feinberg, a genealogist — and that Van Zandt and the match were likely first cousins.
“She looked at our DNA tests together,” Van Zandt said of Feinberg, “and she thought there was more to it than what ancestry did.”
Feinberg, who plans to open a genealogy business next year, sent their tests to the International Society of Genetic Genealogy Facebook group and received more than 50 replies that concluded that she and Van Zandt are not first cousins, but that they are half-sisters who share Ashkenazi Jewish blood through their father, Irving Feinberg.
For several days, Terry Feinberg and Van Zandt emailed back and forth regarding the information about their biological father. Van Zandt learned that he died in 1993 and that Feinberg was raised with her siblings Brad and Wendy, who is deceased.
Feinberg said it was no surprise that her father was mistaken for Italian because people often thought he was, and he even went by an Italian name, possibly to avoid antisemitism.
Neither Van Zandt’s mother nor father was married at the time Van Zandt was conceived, and Feinberg said her mother, who is also deceased, would have loved to learn of Terry, Brad and Wendy’s newfound sibling.
“My mother, my father — both were pretty easygoing people,” said Feinberg, who lives in Freeport, Illinois. “My father was a jokester, not a prankster, but a jokester. He was the center of attention everywhere he went — a social butterfly beyond belief. I honestly don’t know anyone who didn’t like him.”
Van Zandt said it’s amazing that her one genetic match from ancestry.com turned out to be a genealogist.
“In the very beginning, I wasn’t sure I believed it when I got the first email from her, and more started coming, and more started coming,” Van Zandt said of the DNA match. “But then, it was like, ‘OK, DNA doesn’t lie.’ And she actually even sent me a chart that showed me DNA and the similarities in it, and you could tell. Even as a layperson, I could look at that and understand there is more to this than a cousin.”
Feinberg said many people were amazed that she accepted Van Zandt so quickly and easily.
“A lot of people have a great difficulty accepting your parents aren’t perfect,” Feinberg said.
In June, Van Zandt was able to meet Terry and Brad in person. In September, Brad, Terry and Van Zandt were also able to catch up in Rockford, Illinois, at Portillo’s, an Italian hot-dog and burger restaurant that is a favorite among the three of them.
Van Zandt said there are many similarities between her family on her biological father’s side and the family she created with her husband, Butch.
“Our first daughter, we named Wendy because we just liked the name,” she said. “We found out also that my half-sister was a beautician, and so was I when I was first married.”
Terry Feinberg said that not only does Van Zandt look like their father, but they also share similar personality traits in regard to humor. Through Facebook, Feinberg saw that Van Zandt and Butch were dressed as a brain storm and chicken cordon bleu for Halloween, respectively. Van Zandt wore a hat with a brain and rain clouds, and Butch sported a blue shirt with a chicken around his neck.
“This would have been something my dad would have done,” said Feinberg, who added that Van Zandt expresses her emotions similarly to their father, too.
Van Zandt, who is a Christian, said many people question if her feelings toward her faith have changed since discovering her Jewish lineage.
“Honestly, I don’t have a huge sense of anything except I’m just glad I found him,” she said. “It’s not going to change me. [Terry said our] father — they called him ‘Pop’ — he didn’t really follow the faith a lot as [she and her siblings] were growing up.”
Ashkenazi Jews originated in Eastern Europe, tend to have undiluted DNA and can be traced back to 330 people in the middle ages, according to a 2014 study by Nature Communications.
“Our oldest daughter, [Wendy], battled breast cancer twice, and she was a part of a study on genetic breast cancer,” Van Zandt said. “She said that when she was in this study, every form she filled out asked if she had any Ashkenazi Jew in her history. At the time, she had no clue that she did. It was amazing that she was asked that in this study.”
By the time Van Zandt had discovered more about her father’s side of her family, her brother Michael had died. However, Van Zandt said, he knew they were half-siblings and that she’d always be his sister.
Today, Van Zandt said, she doesn’t see a need to use “half” when describing her siblings.
“In the beginning, [I would say], ‘This is my newfound half-sister,’” she said. “I’m comfortable, and [Terry] is, too. And Brad, I call him my brother. I don’t think ‘half’ goes into it.”
Through her aunt, Van Zandt also learned that “Mr. Wietor,” the man she originally believed to be her biological father, was listed on her birth certificate out of necessity. Her mother gave birth in a Chicago hospital that did not allow any woman to deliver there if she did not have a father’s name to list on the certificate.
“He was in the service at the time overseas, and he heard that she did this, and he was not happy,” Van Zandt said. “He wasn’t happy that she used his name, but his mother was a super nice lady, and she just said, ‘She’s just looking for a name for this baby, so let it be.’”
Van Zandt said she is unsure why her mother didn’t tell her the truth, especially since her mother was a very understanding person.
“She was gone already; she had passed. I was angry at her for a short time; it didn’t last,” Van Zandt said. “I wish she had told me because maybe I could have contacted him while he was alive. Terry did say that he was the type of man that if he had known I existed, I definitely would have been in his life. That was nice to hear.”
Van Zandt said that because of her Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, the Department of Defense has contacted her regarding participation in a genetic study aimed to help improve technology to find those missing in action. She has agreed to participate.
Van Zandt said she would advise others who are interested in their ancestry to submit a DNA test, no matter their age or stage in life.
“It still amazes me that I was able to find my biological father,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve been heavily impacted at all. I’ve accepted it. The chance to be able to meet [my siblings] is wonderful. We’ve been blended together now as a family.”
Staff writer Syd Hayman can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or shayman@arkansasonline.com.