Raised by five fathers: An unusual journey through family, loss and love

Two years ago, a DNA test overturned something I had believed for more than seven decades.

Tony "Packy" Lednovich, the man listed on my birth certificate, was not my biological father.

The discovery stunned me. It stunned my older sister Helen, who turned 80 this year. It stunned members of the Lednovich family. And it left me questioning an identity I had spent years researching.

For decades, I had traced the Lednovich family tree, convinced I was uncovering my Russian-Polish roots. I spent countless hours researching names, dates, immigration records and family connections. I had the death certificate of my grandfather being killed in a coal mining accident after immigrating from Poland.

Then DNA stepped in and informed me that I wasn't a Lednovich at all.

The evidence points instead to Italian ancestry and a likely surname of Buono.

In one moment, the family history I had carefully assembled no longer explained who I was.

Or so I thought.

On this Father's Day, I find myself thinking less about DNA and more about the men who occupied the role of father throughout my life.

The first was Tony "Packy" Lednovich, who owned The Spur Tavern and and was a bookmaker in Harrison, New Jersey. The tavern was adjacent to a huge naval pump-manufacturing plant and the workers crowded into Packy's bar following their shift to lay down bets with their draft beers.

Packy was not part of my upbringing. We did not have a father-son relationship. When I was 19 years old, I sought him out because I wanted to know something about the man whose name I carried.  So I drove from South Florida to Harrison to spend time with him. When we were together, he was gracious but I never felt the bond of father-son.

There is no mention of me or my sister in Packy's 2008 obituary. Now I know why.  Packy was not my biological father.

Yet the name Lednovich remains part of who I am. It is the name under which I built a career, raised a family and wrote thousands of stories.

My second father was Jack Carter. He's the mystery man because I was 5-years-old at the time. All I remember was Jack giving me a fishing pole and soon thereafter another man stormed into the house, irate over that gift, and snapped the pole in two over his knee in a rage. That's my lone recollection of Jack Carter.

Now he exists more in family history than in memory.

Then came John Ling.

John was a U.S. Air Force major, a bombadier in World War II. And of all the men who entered my life, he was the closest thing I had to the traditional image of a father. We lived on Manhattan Beach Air Force base in Brooklyn. John taught how to iron a pair of slacks and hang them to keep the creases intact. How to properly starch a shirt and tie a military-style knot. 

He provided stability. Structure. A sense of family.

When he retired from the Air Force, we moved to Florida. Some of my best memories of growing up come from those years.

And for a while, life felt secure.

Then in 1963, everything changed.

My mother began an affair with Ray Francis. At 15 I had no idea what was happening.

The John Ling marriage ended, and with it the family structure I had known.

I was a sophomore in high school when it happened. At an age when teenagers are already struggling to figure out who they are, my family was coming apart. My older sister, Helen, quit high school and got married at 17 to escape the turmoil. John Ling would die six years later at age 50.

I was angry. And I blamed Ray Francis. Suddenly I was in a another house with now a third stepfather. 

For years, we battled. Our relationship was marked by resentment, arguments and distance.

There were frightening incidents. Once, a friend of theirs visited and I washed his car. While cleaning the inside of the Chevy Malibu Supersport I discovered a revolver with a silencer under the driver's seat. I never said a word about it. Another time, I came home late at night and once inside turned the corner in the darkened hallway heading for my bedroom. There was Ray with a handgun,  fearing I was an intruder.

By the time I was 18, I had moved out on my own to find my place in the world.

Looking back, I realize I was not just angry at Ray. I was angry at what had been lost.

The family I thought I had.

The future I thought was ahead of me.

The stability I had known under John Ling.

Yet life has a way of rewriting stories.

As the years passed, Ray and I slowly found common ground. The battles subsided. Understanding replaced resentment.

By my early 30s, we had reconciled and then my mother Glorida battled and died of bone cancer. Ray and I cared for her until the end and made the funeral arrangements together.

In 1982, when I married Shari, Ray Francis stood beside me as my best man.

That fact still amazes me.

 Ray Francis at our wedding party in 1982

The man I once viewed as the person who helped destroy my family became one of the most important people at the moment I began building my own.

And then there is the fifth father.

The man whose DNA I carry.

The man I still cannot identify.

The DNA evidence suggests an Italian heritage and a possible connection to the Buono family, but after all these years, the mystery remains unsolved.

At 78, I may never learn his name.

There was a time when that thought bothered me.

Today, not as much.

Because I have come to understand that fatherhood is more complicated than biology.

One man gave me a name.

One gave me memories.

One gave me heartbreak.

One taught me forgiveness.

And one gave me DNA.

All of them, in one way or another, helped shape the person I became.

So this Father's Day, I find myself reflecting on five fathers.

Four whose names I know.

One whose name I may never know.

I have only 'one' family photograph with me and a father -- from 1965 at age 17 after I graduated high school, an event my parents didn't attend.

If there is one lesson hidden inside this story, it is that life rarely unfolds the way we expect.

The father whose name I carried was not my father.

The man I loved most as a father figure did not stay.

The man I fought for years eventually stood beside me as my best man.

And the father whose DNA I carry remains unknown.

Yet somehow, despite all the twists and unanswered questions, life turned out better than I could have imagined.

I found my way. I built a career. I married Shari. We built a family of our own with two amazing daughters.

The mystery of my biological father may never be solved, but I no longer see that as the defining chapter of my story.

The defining chapter is what came after.

The life that was built.

The people who stayed.

The love that endured.