How I Found My Dad in Texas: Dna Never Lies

By John W. Nelson Jr.

John W. Nelson Jr. reveals How I Found My Dad in Texas

Story about how French man found his father, his American family after 28 years of searching

PARIS, France In How I Found My Dad in Texas (published by Xlibris), author John W. Nelson Jr. shares a very personal story of how he found out about his birth father and his American family after 28 years of searching. Using his real name, Nordine Mohamedi, he details in the book how he was lucky enough to meet his cousins and his aunt in Texas for the very first time in March, 2017. The story tells how he found them all.

This story is the one of Mohamedi, who was born in France to a North African mother and an unknown American father. Mohamedi spent more than half his life looking for his father whose name was the only thing he knew of him. In 2016, at the age of 50, he eventually found the truth. His father had been dead for a long time, but Mohamedi, from France, was able to get in touch with his Texan family, whom he was eventually lucky enough to meet in person later on.

It's a story about perseverance and love. It took time to find the truth about someone that the main character missed for his whole life. When he discovered his American family, it was such a miracle, says Nelson on what he thinks is his books appeal to readers.

Nelson invites readers to get to know his story and find out how hope and perseverance paved the way in finding the truth about his father who he has not known since birth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543434385

John W. Nelson Jr.

Television reporter and News Broadcaster, John W. Nelson Jr was born in 1966 in Châteauroux, France. Born to a North African mother and to a Texan father, he works for French public television since 2004. He is a former sports correspondent for Canal Plus channel, he has covered several soccer, tennis and Formula 1 events in France, Europe and Africa. How I found my Dad in Texas is his first book published in the United States. John W. Nelson Jr has five children, four daughters and one son. [e-mail] Twitter : @JohnWNelson

Book preview

Chapter I

The Pillar of My Childhood

We are of our childhood as we are from a country.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

In me is a part of somebody whom I have known well—my mother. I have another part that is more mysterious—my father. This second part, my father, is one whom I have only vaguely heard about. For fifty years, I was never able to put a face on this man who knew my mother well enough to get her pregnant. Let me set the stage: it was in the heart of the sixties, somewhere in France. It could be said that this story begins in a city, the name of which is a synonym of a small prefecture where we never linger too long—Châteauroux (a two-minute stop is what the stationmaster usually says). Here the administrative center of the department of Indre was nevertheless one of the enclaves of the United States in France from 1951 until 1967. During these sixteen years, the GIs gave the tempo on the spot. The city lived by them and for them. Everything turned around the NATO base of La Martinerie where planes landed in the daytime and at night, transporting servicemen whose names, dates of birth, or digital prints were not known to the French authorities. At the time, this situation profoundly annoyed the French president Charles de Gaulle. Not knowing who set foot on the territory made him furious, it seems, and he became the first of the French leaders to send the Americans back home. Thus ended the American period of Châteauroux, France, and out went the integrated military command structure of NATO. The town returned to a normal way of life after it had celebrated more than 450 French-American marriages there. Many children, born from unknown fathers, began their long and sometimes painful apprenticeship to adulthood with the absence of a paternal model weighing heavily on them. I was one of them. I had to grow up without a father. This is nothing very original, actually, as I was not the only one.

As I had no father to give me a surname, my mother, who was not of French origin, gave me hers; therefore, I entered the world with a typically Muslim name. I had no patronymic reference to America, a land from which I was also a native. I was a baby with clear eyes, skin white as milk, and a name from Maghreb. This complicated things a little more. I would experience it much later in life as well. The first three years of my life probably did not create any problems for me. A child of this age only sees through his mother; she had been left alone to raise me. A cuddly fluff, toys, a park, affection, and maternal love—what more could one ask for? It was certainly not the time to worry about such questions as Why isn’t Dad coming home tonight? or rather Why isn’t Dad ever coming back? The questions would come later when it became necessary to compare myself to the other children at school. This comparison happened far from Châteauroux, in the northwest suburb of Paris where my maternal grandmother raised me from the age of three and a half years. I have no memory of this day when my mother, whose professional schedules did not allow her to continue taking care of me, entrusted me to her mother. I certainly had to live this moment as an injustice (the first one that I would have realized), but the lady who was now going to have to help me to become a well-brought-up boy was also of my blood. My grandmother fulfilled this task very well. With her, love did not disappear. It was quite the opposite! She was just a little disappointed in me during my first (terrible) school day in September 1970. At the age of four and a half years old, I was now entrusted to the outside world. It is this world that frightens us because we do not know it. Did she have a choice? All children go to school one day. And so did I. At that time, mothers did not work as much as they do today. Their role mainly consisted of taking care of their offspring at home, preparing meals, and doing laundry. The fathers were busy at work. They were garage owners, factory workers, or stationmasters. Actually, we did not see them very often at school. The question Why do the others have a father and not me? would come even later. However, some kids’ games already made me think about other families. When we would play house on the playground, there was always a role for the mother and the father. Really? So there is a dad and a mom? I know my mom well, but I did not know what a dad was. So I had to ask my mother the question for the first time when she came to me (from Central France where she still lived and worked) when I was five.

Her answer was perfectly clear: Your dad died. He was American and was called John Wayne Nelson. I still had questions. I wanted to know what died meant, which led me to ask about death.

My mother explained to me that death meant that I would never know my father. My mother told me, We should have gotten married, but one day, one of his friends told me that he had been killed in Vietnam.

Died in the war? Yes, it was clear to me then. In the school’s courtyard, we would play war. And sometimes we played dead (for two or three minutes, and then the participants had to get up to return to the classroom). Thus, I had to satisfy myself with this explanation. I had no reason to doubt my mother’s words. I just had to get used to the idea that I had no father and that I would never have one. I knew that unlike our school-yard game, my father had not gotten up after he died in the war. Children are really quite adaptable. They always have to live as they are requested to.

I’ll give an example as evidence. My school friends at the time had a father, a mother, two grandmothers, and two grandfathers, while I had half of this (which was not a big deal to me anyway). I just allowed myself to ask my mother from time to time (when I saw her) to verify the story that she had told me about my father. She would always give me the same version, and life continued under the high and friendly authority of my grandmother. This pillar of my childhood consoled me, and she made it clear to me that the absence of a father was not a problem. A kid, a fatherless orphan, can live happily if he is surrounded with affectionate people. In many ways, my grandmother took the place of my mother, whom I saw only too rarely because she worked more than 150 miles from the place where I lived.

When she came to visit, I suffocated her with affection, and when she left after two or three days, I cried my eyes out. Eventually, life would resume its quiet pace. What would I have become if there had been no grandmother?

Chapter II

The Truth about My Father

Honor your father, your son will also honor you.

—Oriental proverb

I will probably never know for sure how much I owe my dear grandmother, who ensured that I grew up in my maternal family. In January 1966, my mother came to the hospital of Châteauroux to give birth anonymously. And so she did! Her newborn child was going to be entrusted to welfare services because he was fatherless. Why this birth without any paternal recognition? Who will ever know? I came to find out that my father’s mother died a few days before my birth (on January 11, 1966). Maybe he had been authorized to return to Texas to attend her funeral? Maybe he had already been sent to Vietnam? Maybe he had (temporarily) left my mother? Anyway, it would be unfair to blame a twenty-year-old young man for shirking his responsibilities at the time. Accidental births were numerous, especially because people thought less about contraceptive methods. If we deal with the case of my conception, knowing that I was born after my due date (a ten-day delay according to my mother), it would be necessary to go back to April 1965 to place their sexual act and my conception.

My father was, in April 1965, nineteen years old. There is no reason to compare a nineteen-year-old man enlisted in the US Army in the sixties with a young person of the same age today. His experience in the American army had certainly made him a much more mature chap than any kid hardly out of adolescence nowadays. But still, nineteen years old and already a father! Far from home, from his native Texas, and with a woman who did not speak his language and who knew almost nothing of his culture! This birth to come was maybe accidental. One of the two protagonists may have wished it more than the other (my mother, without any doubt). But I wonder what my father’s reaction was when, as according to my mother, he found out about her pregnancy. Even now, fifty years later, their son understands this situation. The legend, for me, remains: he really wanted to marry this woman seven years older than him and to whom he had given a part of himself. He would do it at his return from Vietnam, according to my mother. He had no reason not to do so, but he never returned. It is unknown to me how long they loved each other and actually lived together—a day, a week, a month? And then?

So now it is left to me to determine how to pass along a beautiful love story