TCNJ

38 The College of New Jersey Magazine S ometimes even a DNA test taken for the most innocent reasons can yield life-changing results. Just ask Gretchen Lenehan '13. She and her husband, John '13, had their DNA tested by 23andMe in 2016, shortly after getting engaged. "We joked with each other," Lenehan recalls. "'Let's make sure we're not related.'" (For the record: They were not.) Lenehan's results showed a genetic match with a New York City woman named Diana Jones, but the connection didn't register as anything out of the ordinary. "I have a pretty big family," Lenehan says. "I was not blown away that I might have a second or third cousin I've never met." In a subsequent exchange of emails on the 23andMe site early in 2017, Jones laid out her story: She'd been adopted at birth, spent the early part of her life on Long Island, and found her birthmother and extended family in 1985, including her maternal grandfather, who played guitar with Chet Atkins. Jones herself was a noted singer/songwriter whose musical influence stretched deep into Appalachia and whose coal-mining ballad, "Henry Russell's Last Words," was once covered by Joan Baez. Yet three decades after that reunion, Jones was still searching for her biological father. She had a name of a man she thought was him, but it didn't sound familiar to Lenehan. After more correspondence, Lenehan suggested that Jones talk with her grandfather, John Murphy, who had grown up with four brothers and spent his entire life on Long Island. Lenehan approached her grandfather cautiously, explaining her DNA test and her genetic link with Jones. Although she said she would A RECENT ALUMNA LEADS AN AWARD-WINNING SINGER/SONGWRITER TO HER BIRTHFATHER First cousins, once removed Lenehan, left, and Jones, a songwriter whose caliber, Joan Baez told The New York Times, comes along only every so often.

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