How DNA connected Rockhampton grandma Donna Clifford with family
A Queensland grandmother has found eight siblings she didn’t know existed. Now her granddaughter is helping her go to the other side of the world to meet them.
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Discovering a long lost family and flying across the world to meet them is something that sounds like a movie storyline.
But for 78-year-old grandmother Donna Clifford, it’s real life and something she didn’t think of in her wildest dreams.
Last year Donna, with the help of her family, got in contact with eight siblings she never knew she had in Idaho in the United States of America.
Now her granddaughter Kassie Hooper is doing what she can to help fly her ‘Grammy’ to meet them.
“Grammy had a bad fall on Christmas Day and I think it just made me freak out a little bit and she’s just a really good woman and deserves to meet her family,” Kassie said.
Growing up Donna knew limited information about her father Lyle Belnap.
The only information she had was his name, that he was a US soldier and that he had died in the New Guinea war in 1944.
“In 2006, my husband, my brother and his wife used to have a BBQ every Thursday night, we were just talking about family and decided to Google him (Donna’s dad),” she said.
“We found he was still alive so we sat down and wrote a letter just saying who I was, when I was born, my Mum’s name...I never heard back but I didn’t worry.”
In 2008 when Donna’s husband passed away she looked up her Dad again only to learn that he had also passed away that year.
When Donna found out her father had passed she thought “that was it”, until her daughter did an Ancestry DNA test last year.
“A few months after she did the test she said to me ‘Mum I don’t know if you’re going to like this but I found your family in America’,” she said.
“After that she organised the Facetime and they’ve just been so open and welcoming.”
“They were just so eager to meet Grammy as well,” Kassie said.
“It’s absolutely heartbreaking she’s lived her whole life not knowing of this other family, or who she is, or where she comes from.”
Since their first video call last year Donna and Kassie and their family have been in regular contact with their new-found relatives.
Donna said she never thought something like this would happen to her.
“It’s unreal,” she said.
“It was just a silly night having a couple of drinks we decided to write that letter...I’ve since found out at that time my father was suffering alzheimer's.”
Since starting the GoFundMe last week, with a goal of $7500, $3600 has already been raised.
Kassie also runs a mobile tanning business where she will be donating half of the money from every tan to the travel fund.
She will also be doing special challenges at her gym along the way.
“It’s amazing, I only put it up on Monday night and I was expecting to get the amount of reactions and the messages I did,” she said.
“I’m so determined to get her over there.”
If you’d like to donate to help Donna fly to the USA, you can visit the GoFundMe page here.
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