The calendar read March 12, 2011. It was a rainy day and Meryl Jenkins was lost in thought having lost his wife just last September. A bit of the foggy weather that cold spring morning, a bit of the heavy mood from the great loss he had experienced, and Meryl felt the need to look for his ...roots.
Born 68 years ago, in a small mountain village, Meryl was found a few days after his birth abandoned on the steps of a church, Panagia Pantanassa. Unique piece of identification, a handwritten note that read: "...he is baptized, his name is Mitso". It was on November 25th, at 6pm when he was found and almost 24 hours later he was taken to the Patras Orphanage, from where he was adopted by an American couple when he was 11 months old, setting him on a new path in life, many thousands of kilometers away from where he saw the first light of day.
Mitsos, later named Merrill Jenkins, received lots of love from his adoptive parents and grew up carefree riding his bike and playing endless hours with the neighborhood kids in Cedar Hill, a small town near Saint Louis, Missouri, USA. He made his own family and even though he always knew he was adopted and was Greek, he had never felt the need to find his biological family until that morning, when the tangle of his story began to unravel. What brought him a decade and more later to celebrate his sixty-eighth birthday, for the first time with his Greek family, in a surprise party for him!
The search lasted a decade
"That morning I was sitting in front of the computer and decided to type "Patras orphanage", looking for information. I've done this 2-3 times before, with nothing interesting coming up. This time, in the list of results appeared a New York Times article from 1996, talking about the "stolen" children of the Patras orphanage. I had never heard anything about it. I read the article with my mouth hanging open... I felt the need to start digging into my past and see what I could find. I went down to the basement and looked for my adoption file, which my parents had kept, and spent the rest of the day in front of a computer screen," recounts Merrill, who immediately contacted an organization in Greece to help him. in his research, while at the same time he looked for the file with his information in the records of the relevant US social service.
"I was hoping to find information in this file but unfortunately there was no other information or names," he says, and looking back he remembers how he always knew he was adopted. "In second grade I told my teacher that I was adopted. I don't remember exactly when my parents told me, but I always knew that I was adopted and that I was Greek. I was, in fact, very proud to be Greek, although at the time I didn't know exactly what that meant."
Two years later, in 2013, he decided to take a DNA test on Ancestry, but all he could find were some very distant cousins. And although several years passed, he did not give up and in 2018 he decided to upload his details to other relevant websites, such as My Heritage, to see if he could find anything more. It was then that Eftychia Noula (Linda Carol Forrest), the active president of "The Eftychia Project" (a non-profit organization, which since 2019 helps children of Greek origin adopted in the USA to find their roots) and close Meryl's friend advised him to take another DNA test, this time at 23andme, which led to him finding a first cousin.
It was then that for the first time he felt that the tangled tangle of his short life in Greece began to unravel... "The results came out a month later and luckily Eftychia was at my house that Saturday when I opened my computer around noon and I found myself in front of the screen looking at an email from 23andme, unable to believe what I was seeing,” he recalls. His cousin lived in Montreal, Canada, but unfortunately for Meryl, his father, with whom it seems they had blood ties, had passed away... Communication with him "faded" little by little, but neither did the hope that he will eventually find his biological family. And he was right! One of the searches brought him into contact with a woman who lived nearby in the United States, whose husband was apparently Meryl's cousin. Steve was originally from Drosia, a small local community in the wider municipality of Erymanthos, in Achaia, and it was this element that finally "unlocked" the riddle of Meryl's story.
Wanting to help her friend, Eftychia, together with Maria, a volunteer at "The Eftychia Project", found themselves at the beginning of last September in the cafe of Drosia to drink coffee and answer the persistent questions of an old man about what brings them at the village. "Drosia is a small mountain village in Tritaia. It's not a pass, when someone goes there, they go for a reason. That's why the man asked us: what are you girls?", describes Maria in a smooth way. So they answered him that they had come from the United States to see the village of a friend of theirs. "He asked us his name, we answered him and from then on he told us everything!", he says enthusiastically, explaining that luckily the whole family (from the father's side) lives in Patras, while one of the cousins he owns a tavern in Vrachneika.
"We went to the tavern and there we had to tell the truth. We explain to her who we are, what we do, and whether she can talk her aunts and uncles into agreeing to a DNA test. The girl was shocked as she had never heard anything related. At one point, in fact, he cried," explains Eftychia who remembers like today the day when Meryl's cousins took the test and the results came out. "They started saying 'he is ours, he is our brother' and anxiously asking when he will come to Greece!", emphasizes Eftychia - also adopted in the USA - who has been enjoying the love and comfort of her own biological family for years .
Meryl came to Greece to meet his cousins on October 31, with Eftychia meeting him at the airport. It was not the first time he visited the country in search of his biological family, while reports in the local press, as well as an appearance on the show of Aggeliki Nikoloulis "Light in the Tunnel" may have caused his phone to ring constantly from people who believed that they had some kinship with him, but unfortunately to no avail. In 2018, in fact, Meryl and Eftychia had visited the priest of Panagia Pantanassa in Patras as they believed at the time that he had been found as an abandoned infant on the steps of that church. Eftychia does not forget the emotion they experienced when the priest called the faithful at the Good Friday service to help Meryl find his family, but the answer to the priest's call was silence. A silence that Eftychia later understood the reason for, since during her visit to Drosia she discovered that the Panagia Pantanassa mentioned in the police record for the day little Mitsos was found was the one of the small mountain village and not of Patras.
The welcome that filled his soul
A day after his arrival in Greece, Meryl was surrounded by dozens of members of his extended biological family (primarily cousins and their children), who organized a large welcome party in a Patras restaurant to welcome their man and " drown" in flowers, hugs and kisses.
"The first time I met them in the tavern in Patras, it was something special. The love they showed me was unprecedented. Greeks are very warm, especially with their family. I immediately felt like I had returned home. They are all great," says Merrill to APE-MPE, the emotion in his voice evident.
"Some of the adopted children in America who are looking for their family in Greece are looking for that very warmth that they may have been missing. I was one of the lucky ones. I wasn't missing anything before, but finding my Greek family is amazing. It was like a bonus from life!", he emphasizes.
The return to Drosia and the father who died ... cold
One of the most emotionally charged moments of Meryl's journey was returning to his village. "I had seen what Drosia looks like on google street view, but it was another thing to see the village up close, knowing the ties you have with it. I love the mountain scenery and looking at the houses and the surrounding area I thought what it would be like if I had stayed there. I really liked the feeling of "belonging" that I felt when I arrived at this place", he says.
Returning to the village may have been emotionally charged, but perhaps the hardest part for him is knowing that his father died without having any more children and without knowing his own existence. "Apparently his father was a bachelor, never knew he got some girl pregnant, got married, had no children and died not knowing that somewhere in the United States his biological son lives. In fact, he had many nieces, whom he adored," explains Maria.
"Eftychia" who brought happiness (and) into his own life
Despite the fact that she has helped in various reunions, Eftychia Noula feels the same emotion every time. In fact, this time, as he tells APE-MPE, he experienced to the highest degree the love with which Meryl was surrounded by his family. "One of the moments that was very strongly etched in my mind was when one of his cousins, who learned some English to be able to communicate with him, hugged him and said: I love you, cousin! (I love you, cousin!). It was very beautiful and every time I think about it, I cry."
Unable to describe the feelings she herself experienced until the whole effort was successful, says Maria. "It is very important to know that a man who has been searching for so many years, with little evidence, finally finds his family and is embraced with so much love. The feeling is indescribable", she emphasizes, explaining that in her partner's family two brothers have also been lost in the same way. "I feel that there is hope that we too can find our loved ones," he says.
As for Meryl, at the big party he threw to say goodbye to his family in Greece, he told them that he can't wait to come back at Easter so they can all celebrate together at his father's house in the village!
Source: RES-EAP