What better place to start a post on the fathers in my family tree than with my own. I have two, to be honest, not an odd situation in modern American families. I differentiated between the two by calling one Daddy, and the other Dad. It was Dad who made me and Daddy who raised me, and no one can make me choose between them. Except my mother, she could be very consistent in that area, and I don't fault her.

Families are what they are, and by measure, I believe I was blessed with a good one. People are what they are, as well, and no one is perfect, we all make mistakes. It's how things end up at the end that matters the most, I believe.

Melvin Eugene Lambert was born December 11, 1939, in the small community of Aquadale, NC, in Stanly County. He graduated from Aquadale School, although between the time he was born and the time he graduated, he had lived all around from across the Rocky River in Anson County, to the Cannon Mill Village in Concord, to the old Cottonville community where his mother had attended the Old Davis School and his father had been raised by aunt, Mattie Lambert Smith. Dad's mother, Bertha Virginia Lemmons, was the stepdaughter of one Duncan Burris. His father, Burley Melvin Lambert, was the son of Rowena Burris Lambert, Duncan's sister. So, that's how his parents met. Dad was the firstborn of three children. He had a younger brother, Leon Dickson Lambert, born in 1941 and a sister, Midred Olene, born in 1945. They're all deceased now, Aunt Mildred, the youngest was the first to go, Dad was in the middle and Uncle Leon was the last.

My mother grew up in Albemarle, NC. As a teen she enjoyed hanging out at the local YMCA. They had a pool, a skating rink in the Pavilion, a bowling alley in the basement, a teen club, a library and a playground. One day, she was hanging out with her friend, Ginny, and two boys from South Stanly drove up. One was my Dad, and the other was his cousin, Edgar. I always referred to Edgar as Uncle, and they were close as brothers, but he was actually a first cousin. Mom ended up marrying Dad and Edgar married Ginny.

Dad had enlisted, or had been drafted by then,

Stanly News and Press

Albemarle, North Carolina • Fri, Jan 30, 1959Page 20

The marriage took place on January 30, 1959 in South Carolina, where many local couples went to get married because the South Carolina laws were less intrusive.

They first lived in Phoenixville, PA, at the Valley Forge base, after an initial boarding with my grandparents. Thereafter, Dad was transferred to Stuttgart, Germany. When my mother became pregnant with me, she transferred back to the Valley Forge base, where I was born to avoid all the issues with dual citizenship.

War

Dad was very much a military man. He was a Militaty Policeman (MP) in the US Army. He served during both the Korean and Vietnam Wars. I would stop short of saying he was career military, like his brother Leon, who was recalled into his sixties, but he was in for a significant part of his working career and the fact and a huge impact on his personality and preferences. He loved books, movies and documentaries with military themes. I can recall him watching synchronized marching on his computer during his later years.

Pauline

There was an important part of my Dad's life I didn't know about until about six years ago. When my mother and I were Stateside and my Dad was stationed in Stuttgart, he met a beautiful British lady named Pauline. Pauline was in Germany for military reasons as well, but I can't recall what her exact position with the British troops were. By this time, my parents marriage was already on the rocks for other reasons. I was a very young child, so I was totally unaware of the particulars.

Dad and Pauline fell in love, had a long period of contact, and traveled together. My mother never knew about Pauline and I believe Pauline wasn't told the truth about my mother and myself. All of this fell strictly on my father. I loved my Dad, still knowing what kind of man he was in his younger years. He was very young when I was born, but was a Romeo well into middle age. He loved the ladies.

Pauline became the mother of his second child and oldest son. Vinny was born a week or so before I turned three. I know that he kept promising to divorce my mother and marry Pauline. I also know she flew all the way to Canada to be closer to him. But Vincent grew up in Leicestershire with his mother and maternal grandparents. We were able to find each other through DNA before our Dad passed away, and he was able to meet Dad in person.

The Divorce

Stanly News and Press

Albemarle, North Carolina Friday, April 02, 1965

In 1965, my mother filed for divorce from my father after a two year separation. We were living in North Carolina with my maternal grandparents and my Dad was still in the military. Infidelity was only one of the issues. My Dad would appear on rare occasions and visit me at my daycare. Mrs. Holt, who ran it, was a sentry to ensure he did not abscond with me, but I don't think he ever had any intentions to. I remember a few small gifts he bought for me during that time, a group of Disney stuffed Dalmatian puppies in various poses, a Cinderella watch with a matching porcelain figurine. Things like that.

Stanly News and Press

Albemarle, North Carolina • Fri, Apr 26, 1963Page 4

In 1963, my Dad had been arrested for no support. I didn't know about that until I saw it in the newspapers as an adult.

My mother never kept my father's identity or things she knew about his life away from me. He had sent photos of himself from various countries he'd traveled to. There were several, like the one of him in Buckingham Palace, of him in the UK. My brother had identical photos of him. I hadn't known that Pauline was the one who took them.

Wanda

Dad married his second wife in 1967. She was a local girl. She and my mother shared an uncle as her father's brother was married to my mother's aunt, my granddaughters sister.

I don't know how true it is was, but I was told that Dad had fallen in love with Wanda when she was only thirteen. He would have been 18, so that was a no-go. He then met my mother. When Wanda came of age, he began to pursue her.

Stanly News and Press

Albemarle, North Carolina • Tue, Sep 19, 1967Page 15

I never met Wanda, but came close a few times. They always reminded me of Paul McCartney and Linda Eastman. Dad was a very handsome man in his youth. Wanna was blonde, but kind of plain. She was tall and slim, with a long face, rather horsy.

This began the no contact years. Wanda wanted all of Dad's attention and resources. She didn't want him to have anything to do with me or my mother. He was obsessed with her, and obeyed her wishes.

They had two sons, the first when I was twelve, and the second when I was 16. When I was a senior in Highschool, this marriage also ended. When I turned 18, the no-contact order ended. Dad sent me a dozen roses and a card, stating he would like to meet in person and get to know me as an adult, well an almost adult. I would not, at this stage of life, call the 18 year old me and adult.

Curious, I took him up it. My mother wasn't too happy about it, but as I told her, whenever she got mad at me, she would say I was just like him. I wanted to know what that meant. I have my father's brown eyes, as my mother had beautiful light blue ones. Otherwise, I look just like her, just taller.

So, after an absence of a full decade, I got to know my Dad. He regressed a bit as a single man in his late thirties, and took on some habits of a younger man for awhile. He dated several ladies during this single spell. One was a girl I knew, who was two years my junior. When he asked me what I thought of a stepmother two years younger than me, I was brutally honest. The girl was a wonderful person, but she was only 22. I was 24. She already had one child and I told my Dad she would probably want another, with him, that he was too old to be having another kid, which of course he wasn't, and that he had enough and didn't need to be starting over with another, which was true. He was paying child support for two already.

This was the time I got to know my brothers, as children. Dad would get them on weekends, twice a month. Both were tall and slim, but the oldest was very reserved. He looked so much like his mother. The younger one looked a great deal like the other, but had Dad's dark eyes and hair. He was the sweetest little thing, all smiles and laughter, only four when I became a mother myself.

During Dad's single years, I had married and had two children, three years apart. He dated several nice ladies more his age. One named Lynn, I absolutely loved, and wished he had married her. They dated for a significant amount of time.

I'm not sure why that relationship ended, but I recall afterwards that he introduced me to a lady named Carol. It wasn't that long afterwards that it was no longer Carol, but Jackie, a lady with a little girl. After a number of months, he announced he was getting married again, and it wasn't to Jackie, but Carol. I can't remember exactly what happened there.

The third marriage was to a divorcee with three teenagers. My two children were two and five when they were married. Dad still got the boys on weekends. One weekend, they crawled out of the window during the middle of the night and walked to their mother's parents house. And that was the end of that. I don't know the whole story, I'm sure, and probably never will, but the boys and Dad became estranged.

Everything was fine as long as he was single, but as their mother hadn't wanted him to have anything to do with me and my mother, she didn't want her boys around another 'mother' figure and her children. What ever plot was concocted, it worked.

The boys grew up to be intelligent, well- educated young men with successfull careers and families of their own.

Career

When Dad first left the military, he became a police officer, a natural transition, as he had been a military police officer. During this time, he suspected his second wife of being unfaithful and has become a private investigator. After the divorce, he returned to college and got a degree in computers and later worked at a manufacturing company in their computer lab until his retirement.

His third marriage started out happy. They traveled together, built a successful business together and it felt like a family for a good long time. They lived in there different, increasingly nicer homes, even purchasing a vacation home. That lasted about a decade. His wife was excited when I had my third child, as it was the first grandchild she could experience from birth. During this marriage, my first husband died, and they were very supportive. I would remarry and have my fourth and final child. Soon after, a year later, she would have her first grandchild and that's when things first started going south. When it went bad, it went horribly bad, and this one wasn't on him. She lost her mind to the point of criminality, and it cost him dearly in more ways than one.

Dad was single again, and by this time he was a senior citizen. He had a number of health problems during this time, including cancer and heart trouble. His hearing started getting worse, although it was never good due to old war wounds. He was in a jeep that hit a landmine and killed the driver. The Jeep flipped due to the blast and became a sheild for Dad, but his hearing was damaged for life. One of his army buddies wrote a book, and the story of Dad and the blast was in it.

Dad may have been absent for an integral part of my life, but he made up for it in the years since. He was a wonderful grandfather to my children and great grandfather to my grandchildren.

Dad and my grandson Linus

Dad stayed active, even after his retirement. He acquired an electric group of friends. He frequented restaurants and went to dances and hung out with a group of older folks I called 'The puzzle pack'.

That's where he met Ellen. By the time he married Ellen, I was already a grandmother, my first grandchild being about eight months old. Ellen was a widow with two grown sons and two little grandsons. She lived a County over way out in the country. This one would stick

I do believe the decade my Dad spent with Ellen was the happiest one of his life. She was the only wife he was loyal to. They lived in a quiet, woodsy area surrounded by farms. They loved to go dancing and socializing with friends. I was gaining a few inlaw kids and grandkids during this time.

The DNA tests

I took a DNA test some 13 years ago now. The first puzzling DNA match was through GEDmatch. A girl about the same age as my oldest daughter messaged me asking if I had recent German ancestry. At that time, I really didn't understand the numbers. I told her I had German ancestry, through my Starnes and associated lines, but they had came to America in the middle 1700's. We couldn't figure out the connection, so lost contact. She was from Stuttgart. Remember Stuttgart? Now, I believe she could have been a half-niece, or at least a first cousin, as my uncle had also been stationed there.

Several years later, I understand the metrics of DNA a little better, knowing the definition of segments and centimorgans, and roughly what range of them applies to closer relationships. One day a close genetic match pops up. My British brother had decided to take a DNA test with the same company I had and found me. Several months later, his family flew over and met their American kin. He wasn't sure Dad was still alive, being 78, but he was. I'm glad they had that time together.

My brother looks so much like Dad, just taller, and Dad was tall.

He also met a new granddaughter, my brother's child.

Since then, I believe another strange match made contact. And it begins with a memory. During Dad's last marriage, my two daughters were digging through a box of Dads pictures, at his welcome, of his military days. They found a picture of Dad with a Vietnamese woman and a couple of children. My oldest daughter asked him who they were. He said they were his friends family. My daughter said, "Papaw, that boy has your nose!" My stepmom, my other daughter and I all laughed, but Dad didn't. The moment escaped my mind until more recently, when another match popped up. This one was half Vietnamese, and half, well pretty much everything I am. Add to that, a strong resemblance to my Dad, as much as my brother and even more than his other two sons. I was very inquisitive and excited, but this time, it didn't go as well as the last time. We spoke. His English was 'broken', but I understood him fairly well. His childhood had been bad. He had married and had several children, he was now on a second marriage, a recent one at that. He said he would have a sob call as his English was better. And after that, he disappeared. Maybe he wasn't expecting a DNA test to find a welcoming family. But they are out there. I'm waiting to find the rest of my international siblings.

Dad died in March of 2021 at the age of 81. His widow survives. He may have missed 10 years of my childhood, but he spent the next 43 making up for it.