PALATKA, Fla. – A dining room table in Palatka is set.
Cookies cover the plate sitting in the middle while coffee is brewing.
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“I’m nervous,” Mark Robbins said. “I’m anxious.”
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Glancing out the front window, he’s patiently awaiting the arrival of his son whom he’s never met.
“I have so many emotions,” he said.
He was about 18 when his son was born, and Robbins said he wasn’t told about that child for over five decades.
“To think that I’ve had a son for 52 years and not known it,” Robbins said. “Not been there for his first baseball game. Not been there for when he was growing up.”
An Ancestry.com message to Robbins’ daughter, Kimberly Wagner, brought this discovery to light. She said the website revealed that they found a person who may be her uncle or a half-brother.
“I was like ‘wait and minute.’ Wagner said. ”What?"
She said there were tons of people on the family tree, but nobody had ever been that closely related that she didn’t know.
So, she reached out to that person and offered to do some tests. After some back and forth, it was confirmed Shawn Hall was her half-brother and the son of Robbins.
“It was mind-boggling, life-changing,” Hall said. “You’re hoping it is but you’re leaving that reservation just in case it’s not.”
For much of Hall’s life, he grew up not knowing his family’s full story. He said his mom, Linda Palmer, told him about his father when he was young, but he didn’t pay much attention to it.
When his mom passed away many years ago, the story went with her.
“It’s life-changing,” Hall said. “I’ve never heard of this happening and it’s happening to me.”
Having talked over the phone with his newfound father and sister, he decided to pack his bags and travel from Michigan with his daughter to meet the family.
When the car arrived in the driveway, the emotions were flowing.
Robbins and Hall embraced each other on Sunday for the very first time, sharing a hug between father and son.
“To call him my son,” Robbins said. “That’s a blessing.”
The family said there are still many questions to be answered and things to learn, but that means there is potential for more memories to be created.