My quest to find my real mum and dad

THE WORDS on the telegram were plain to see but Christina Gracie could never quite accept their reality.

Short and to the point, the letter from the Canadian Royal Air Force simply stated: "Regret to inform you that your son, Sgt William Brown Gracie, is reported missing after air operations overseas on August 5. Letter follows".

Filing the telegram away, Mrs Gracie anxiously awaited further news of her son. A few days later, when an article appeared in her local newspaper detailing William's disappearance, she was moved enough to cut it out and make a note of the date - August 12, 1944.

Meanwhile, on that exact same day, thousands of miles away, a baby was born and placed in the care of the Salvation Army-run Strawberry Fields orphanage in Liverpool. He was later hand-chosen by Hilda and Malcolm Cothliff from a room full of orphans as the little boy they wanted to grow up as their son.

The baby was called Ken, and to this day he says he will always regard Hilda and Malcolm as his real mum and dad. But his desire to find out the truth behind his natural parents led him to start a personal crusade which would take him across continents and which, to a certain extent, he still wages today.

His investigation would reveal, among other things that his real father was a Canadian war hero, William Gracie, who was shot down just one week before Ken was born - Ken's birthday falling on the same day as Mrs Gracie's newspaper cutting about William's disappearance.

But, as Ken describes, the road to discovery was not always an easy one and, looking back, he says that factors which now seem obvious clues to his real background were apparent from early childhood.

"It's like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle," says Ken.

"I never used to be a fatalist but I was suddenly in a situation to see how pieces of my life seemed to fit together."

First, there was his interest in aviation, which he would later discover echoed his father's career as a flight sergeant during the Second World War.

Says Ken: "Ever since I was a small boy I was interested in planes, and when I was 15 I joined the Royal Observer Corps, which I remained a member of for 32 years."

Now Ken runs a thriving aviation business called Air Supply in Yeadon's High Street, he is display director at York's Elvington Air Show, and is a widely recognised authority on aviation history.

There was also his interest in music - while most teenagers in the Sixties were hankering after the latest releases from the Beatles, Ken harboured a passion for swing jazz. Another later discovery revealed that his natural parents had named him Glenn after their favourite jazz musician Glenn Miller.

But it wasn't until 1977 that the floodgates on Ken's investigation into his past finally began to open.

Hilda and Malcolm had told Ken about his adoption at an early age, but it wasn't until he'd started to have family of his own that his desire to find out more became apparent.

"I don't think those who have grown up with natural parents can understand why people who are adopted need to find out more," says Ken.

"So many questions need answering, like why are you the person you are, why do you do the things you do?

"I'd reached a certain stage in life in the Seventies when I needed to discover more. As it happened, it was the time when legislation in England which allowed adoptees to find out about their natural parents was being relaxed."

By chance, Ken happened to see a programme on TV about the new adoption laws featuring the Lancashire and Cheshire Child Adoption Council. He contacted the council and within 24 hours was presented with his own adoption file.

The key to his past was slowly beginning to unwind. The file told Ken that his real father's name was Sergeant William Gracie from Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, and that his mother's name was Emma Murray. The couple had met when Sergeant Gracie was sent on active duty in Liverpool where Emma was building Halifax bombers at the Rootes aircraft factory in Speke.

With this snippet of information, Ken wrote to Canadian air force authorities and consulted public archives to find out more about his father. He still gleans the Public Records Office to this day to build the complete picture surrounding his father's death.

And his painstaking search was soon to prove fruitful.

He discovered that Sergeant Gracie was shot down on a mission to bomb an underground flying bomb factory in St Leu D'Esserent in France on August 5 1944. He was 23.

His aircraft was the only one out of 742 to have been hit and he was later to be decorated with the France and Germany Star, the Defence Medal, the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal, the War Medal and the 1939-45 Star.

The last time he'd seen Emma, he'd given her an engagement ring, not knowing he would never see her again.

The pinnacle of Ken's search came when, through contacts in Canada and the adoption agency in England, he was finally able to arrange a meeting with his real mother and grandmother.

"Meeting Emma was an emotional time," says Ken.

"She hugged me and wept as she apologised for putting me up for adoption.

"I was perhaps less emotional because I had tried to keep my emotions out of the situation in an effort to be as pragmatic about it as I could.

"The relationship between Emma and William was a good one - they had been seeing each other for six months, they were in love and had found a close bond.

"The situation simply fell prey to the fortunes of war. I was one of thousands of children to have been adopted after the war. Emma found herself in a situation at that time which was very difficult."

Ken has also been able to travel to Canada to meet Christina Gracie and his father's brothers and sister.

"From the moment she saw me, grandma instantly recognised me and always accepted that I was William's son," says Ken.

"She always felt that her son was fighting in a war which had nothing to do with the Canadians as far as she was concerned. William wasn't conscripted and he just went away and never came back. He could have been anywhere in the world as far as she was concerned."

Emma and Christina have now died, but Ken still keeps in close contact with his half-brothers and sisters, Jean, David and Tom. In 1994, he made a pilgrimage to his father's grave at St Leu D'Esserent, where he was looked after by veterans of the French Resistance who had tended his father's grave.

He is still looking for information about other crew members who flew with his father on that fateful mission.

"It's been a personal crusade for me to find out where I really come from and I'm still finding out more information," added Ken.

"It's hard to comprehend what my emotions are now - you have to be very dispassionate and pragmatic about the whole thing otherwise it could destroy you.

"At the end of the day it's been worth it. Like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, it's all fallen into place."

Ken is still looking for information about two further crew members who were killed when his father's plane was shot down - Warrant Officer B Clarke from Bierley, Bradford, and a G Beresford who could have been from Harrogate. Anyone with information should contact the T&A on Bradford 580493.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.