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Family History Show: Who Do You Think You Are?

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Gregzs:
Josh Duhamel next Monday.

Gregzs:
Regina King

Gregzs:

--- Quote from: Gregzs on October 23, 2014, 10:11:37 PM ---The series on PBS Finding Your Roots started airing the current season in September. Ben Affleck's ancestry was covered on last week's episode.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/finding-your-roots/

--- End quote ---


Sigourney Weaver, Amy Ryan, and Justina Machado join Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on #FindingYourRoots tomorrow! Tune in at 8/7c on PBS to find out why their family histories are filled with secrets and lies.

IroNat:
Of course you only want to know about your good ancestors.

You don't want to know about your great-great-great-great-grandfather the ax murderer.

Gregzs:
N.J. man’s 9 kids all meet for the first time thanks to online DNA testing


To say George Papageorgiou was a rolling stone is an understatement.

A Greece-born Lothario driven by the allure of women, his travels across America left a trail of broken hearts, unfulfilled promises and fatherless children.

But with just one-click of an online DNA testing link made nearly two decades after his death, the ashes of Papageorgiou’s scattered sins rose as a Phoenix, connecting the nine pieces of a fractured family’s heart.

“My aunt said to me, ‘Demetre, it’s not like your father killed anybody. He just had sex with a lot of women,’” says Demetre Papageorgiou, 46, George’s second youngest son and the co-director of documentary short "9 Degrees.”

The doc, a Tribeca Studios film set to premiere at the New Jersey Film Festival on Saturday, tells the story of five brothers and four sisters, separated by distance and decades, coming together for the first time thanks to 23andMe.com.

“My mom kept calling me,” Demetre remembers, harkening back to the day in February 2017 that changed his life forever.

“When I finally called her back she tells me, ‘This guy named Chris Bone from Dallas, Texas, called and said, I know this crazy, but I think your dead husband is my father.’”

Though shaken by the news, Cynthia Papageorgiou, George’s long-suffering widow, was not altogether surprised to learn of her unfaithful husband’s extramarital child.

Escaping the abusive father who ripped him from his 12-year-old mother’s arms at birth, a 22-year-old George jumped a merchant Navy vessel out of Poulitsa, Greece landing him in Elizabeth in 1958.

After marrying his first wife, Mary Lou, and having four kids with her between 1960 and 1963 — one of which was given up for adoption as a baby due to financial issues — George abandoned his family for the nomadic life of traveling salesmen.

It wasn’t until 1972, after welcoming at least three more children with as many women during brief dalliances, that George met and married Cynthia in Chicago.

The couple welcomed sons Demetre and Charles Papageorgiou in 1973 and 1975, respectively, with the fragile nuclear family bouncing from home to home throughout the Midwest.

George’s cheating never stopped. His incessant adultery not only strained his marriage, but also caused an irreparable rift between him and Demetre. Their relationship remained troubled until George died of cancer at 65 in 2001.

Though initially indifferent to having a face-to-face with his dad’s alleged son, Demetre, at the urging of his younger brother Charles, agreed to join him in meeting Chris and another half-brother he’d connected with through 23AndMe.com, retired Mt. Olive police officer Sgt. Mike Pocquat.

At first sight, the four men knew they were family.

“Me and (Charles) go to a Marriott to go meet (Chris Bone and Mike Pocquat). We walk through the door and we see two guys walking towards us,” Demetre recalls of the moment he first laid eyes on the men claiming to be his dad’s sons in March 2017.

“My brother goes, ‘That’s not them is it?’ and I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s them.”

Immediately, Demetre saw the late George Papageorgiou’s physical features, mannerisms, and even the way he walked perfectly mirrored by two men who’d never met his father.

He was sure Chris and Mike were his brothers.

“I knew right away. It was undeniable.”

From there, Chris — who spent most of his life in desperate search for a dad he never knew — spearheaded a siblings meet-up with George’s three children from his first marriage, his oldest son George and two daughters Denise and Darlene Papageorgiou, all living in Florida at the time.

Mike, the fourth child of George and Mary Lou Papageorgiou, was the baby given up for adoption.

As the seven siblings begin bonding, Chris discovers two more sisters, Shelley Dunlap of Phoenix and Angela Smart of Culver City, California, through online DNA testing.

Within months of George’s nine kids all learning of each other’s existence, Mike invites his newfound relatives to his home in New Jersey for a first-ever siblings meet-up.

“It was overwhelming,” Demetre — who tapped longtime friend and fellow filmmaker Kalim Armstrong to video document the brood’s big reunion — says of being under the same roof with all eight of his brothers and sisters in July 2018.

“There’s an immediate sibling connection. Like you’ve known these people, but you’re still conscious of the fact that they’re strangers. But they don’t feel like strangers,” Demetre recollects.

“Everyone was just kind of open to it all and into it, which is one of the things that’s so unique about our story.”

As chance would have it, Kalim — co-founder of production company Vacationland Studios in Brooklyn — just so happened to be sharing an office space with two award-winning documentary filmmakers working on video projects for 23AndMe.com

“When I first started discussing doing a documentary with Kalim I learned most stories of long-lost DNA relatives (reconnecting) are not like ours. Most of these stories are not happy stories because a family is fractured ... and usually, there’s an unhappy (event that caused it).”

After hearing the sordid tale George Papageorgiou and the Papageorgiou nine, the “9 Degrees” documentary came to life, seeing cameras capture everything from the tribe’s introductory interactions to their emotional family pilgrimage to George’s small hometown in Greece.

“This is the single greatest thing that’s ever happened to me,” Demetre rejoices of his newly conjoined clan. “It’s completely changed my life in every way. For all of us it has.”

Though the Papageorgiou pack isn’t sure whether their infamous and long-departed daddy is responsible for any other left behind little ones, the nine siblings — almost all of whom have one or more online DNA testing profiles — are happy to welcome more of their biological brothers and sisters into the fold.

“I used to joke that the only thing I got from my dad were these incredible genes that help me look 20 years younger than I actually am,” laughs Demetre. “But it turns out I was wrong because I have this incredible family as a result of it all.”

The New Jersey Film Festival is being held at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

https://www.nj.com/news/2020/02/nj-mans-9-kids-all-meet-for-the-first-time-thanks-to-online-dna-testing.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=nj_facebook_njcom&utm_campaign=njcom_sf&fbclid=IwAR1auRg-7XrH8pGlweVBlVJXP722Ixx4-86Kav4_zg3oczPZde2MX56h5uA

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