Meet my Dad

Before I go deeper into the journey of my DNA discovery that my Dad wasn’t my biological father, I want to tell you a little bit more about my Dad. And just to clarify — when I use the word “Dad,” I am always referring to the Dad who raised me and loved me.

My Dad was a very sweet, uncomplicated, and gentle man. He never raised his voice to any of us kids, and I never even heard him use bad language. In our house, Mom was the disciplinarian. Dad just didn’t have it in him to be cross with us. So, as you can imagine, there were times we took advantage of that and knew we could get away with a lot around him. But it was never over any significant things.

My Dad, Robert Loehwing Horner, was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1923 but spent much of his childhood living in Windsor, Connecticut, in the same town I grew up in. His father, Merritt, got a job in Massachusetts when Dad was in Junior High School. The family moved up to Wellesley, Massachusetts and lived there until Dad was out of college.

Dad was crazy about anything to do with aviation and sports cars. He built model airplanes since he was a kid and into adulthood. He spent many years volunteering at the New England Air Museum (then called Bradley Air Museum) in Windsor Locks, CT, and knew every history of every airplane there. As for sports cars…he had many second or third-hand ones throughout his life when the budget allowed for it. I especially remember his Jaguar parked beside the wood-paneled family station wagon in our driveway. Dad believed all vehicles should have stick shifts and not be automatic, and he made sure I knew how to drive a stick when I got my first car in college.

Dad wanted to be a pilot, but my grandfather didn’t think that was a stable enough profession and talked him into going to school for mechanical engineering. Dad enrolled in college at Norwich University, a military academy, in Vermont in 1941. By 1943 World War II was in full swing and the draft age was dropped from age 21 to 18. Eager to participate, Dad and most of his friends enlisted. Dad enlisted in the Army Air Corps (later known as the Air Force). He was a 2nd Lieutenant pilot stationed in Oklahoma, flying B-24s and B-29s for most of his service. Before he could be sent overseas, he contracted tuberculosis and spent the rest of the war in a tuberculosis sanitarium in Wallingford, Connecticut. As strange as it sounds, that overall time period during the war were some of the happiest days of Dad’s life. I think it was because he was living his dream as a pilot but was spared the reality of combat.

When Dad returned to Norwich University after the war, he met my mother on a blind date set up by his roommate. My mother attended Vermont Junior College, a two-year all girl’s college just down the road. It was considered the “sister” school to Norwich, and many dances and events occurred between the two schools. My mother was taking business classes and planned to become a secretary.

Mom and Dad married at First Church Congregational in Swampscott, Massachusetts in 1950. They moved right away to Hartford, Connecticut. Dad had a good job as a mechanical engineer in the aerospace industry at Hamilton Standard in Windsor Locks, CT. Eventually, they had enough money saved to buy their first house in Newington, CT. My two brothers and two sisters were born while they lived there. In 1960 they moved to Windsor, CT, to the house I grew up in.

I was born in 1965. Mom was 37, and Dad was 42 when I was born. Because there is a six-year age gap between me and my brother born before me, I was always told my parents weren’t planning on having any more kids and I was a “happy surprise.”

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This is my NPE story of discovering in 2015 that my Dad was not my biological Dad. If you’d like to follow along, I encourage you start at my first post of the series HERE.