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Detroit police are investigating whether a man suspected of shooting two officers Wednesday night is connected with the fatal shooting last year of a Wayne State University policeman. Wochit

Collin Rose(Photo: Wayne State University)

Detroit Police todayconfirmedthat DNA evidence ties a suspect in this week's Detroit police shootings to the death of Wayne State police officer Collin Rose.

Detroit Police Chief James Craig said a man being held in connectionwith a Wednesday shootout with policethat injured twopolice officersis the prime suspect in Rose's death.

Wayne County ProsecutorKym Worthy today charged Raymond Durham, 60, of Detroit, in connection with the shooting of the two male officers Wednesday. Police and prosecutors say that about 8:30 p.m., the officers stopped to do a pedestrian investigation of Durham on Ash Street near Tillman. While he was detained, police say Durham fought the officers and pulled a gun from his front waistband, firing at the officers and leading to a shootout.

One of the officers, a 20-year veteran, suffered multiple gunshot wounds, while the other, a 4-year officer, was shot in the leg, police say.

Police found Durham a little more than two hours later at Vinewood and Michigan Avenuewith multiple gunshot wounds. He was hospitalized at remains under treatment in police custody, Worthy's office said, adding that he'd be remanded to jail once he's released from the hospital.

Durham ischarged withtwo counts of assault with intent to murder, two counts of resisting and obstructing the police causing serious impairment, one count of felon in possession of a firearm and five counts of felony firearm. He was arraigned in a localhospital by 36th District Court Magistrate Laura Echartea. A probable cause hearing is set for March 24.

Detroit police are looking for Raymon Durham as a person of interest related to a shooting of 2 police officers on the city's west side.(Photo: Detroit Police Dept.)

"We are able to charge this case today because of the round-the-clock collaboration with the Detroit Police Department, the Michigan State Policeand many others who worked tirelessly on this case," Worthy said. "Any time a police officer is injured is a stark reminder of how much law enforcement puts on the line every minute of every day."

Police from multiple local, state and federal agencies "worked very hard to get to this day," Craig said of Durham's link to Rose's death, but given that much more investigation must be done, "this does not signify closure."

Also read:

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Police: Sex crime suspect killed in Warren by fugitive team

Rose was killed on Nov. 22 in the area of Brainard and Lincoln in Detroit's Woodbridge neighborhood just west of the university. He was shot in the head about 6:35 p.m. that day after stopping a man on a bike. Police said Rose had called for backup just before he was shot by a man who fled on foot. The 29-year-oldofficer died a day later.

In December, prosecutors dropped charges against a man initially charged in the case after an investigation eliminated him as a suspect.

Wayne State University Police Chief Anthony Holt said it was too early for him or other university or city police officers to feel a sense of satisfaction about the DNA link, particularly because two Detroit officers remain hospitalized from this week's shooting. Craig said their conditions continue to improve and both are in good spirits. Police have declined to identify the officers out of sensitivity to their families.

Police, in a manhunt that included more than 200 local and federal agents, arrested Wednesday's shooting suspect on the city's west side about two hours after a gun battle that left the two officers wounded. Both the 60-year-old suspect and officers are in stable condition with bullet wounds.

The suspect in Wednesday's shooting was later found on the ground with a loaded .38-caliber revolver, and he was "preparing to engage" police when they arrested him.

Craig declined to go into specifics about the details of the DNA match, saying he didn't want to undermine the investigation into the shootings. He also wouldn't discuss whether the suspect had been among those police were looking into as possible suspects in Rose's death before the DNA match was made.

Police have sent the gun for ballistics testing.

Craig acknowledged the importance of the DNA link but called it a first step in the investigation of Roses killing.

Whenever theres a forensic match, its significant, Craig said, but he said its one component of the investigation, along with interviews and other evidence gathering police have done.

He said the investigation into Roses killing had been gathering steam recently, but he acknowledged a strong possibility that Durham might have remained on the streets had it not been for this weeks shootings of the two officers.

Craig said he planned to visit with the injured officers today and get updates on their conditions. He said the more seriously injured officer, who was shot in the neck, was expected to have toundergo several surgeries. Craig said that officer told him at his hospital bedside that he believed the man who shot Rose to death was the same man who shot him and his colleague.

"I don't know if that was cop instinct, but he felt very strongly about it, and I just looked at him and I said, 'Well, we're going to work hard, bring some closure,' " Craig said.

Holt said he would wait for evidence to be presented to Worthy's office before he would be ready to be excited about having solved Rose's killing. He said he and his officers are "taking a wait-and-see approach."

"Keep in mind we had two officers who were gravely wounded and are still recovering," Holt said. "It's a little too soon to be doing any celebration right now."

Contact Matt Helms: 313-222-1450 or mhelms@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @matthelms.

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Detroit chief: DNA links shooting suspect to death of WSU officer Collin Rose - Detroit Free Press

Have you considered having your DNA tested? If you havent, maybe you should. But first, some explanation is needed.

We each have 46 chromosomes, 23 from each parent. One pair of the chromosomes determines sex. All babies inherit an X chromosome from their mothers. Babies who inherit an X chromosome from their fathers are XX and therefore female. Babies who inherit a Y chromosome from their fathers are XY and therefore male.

There are 3 types of DNA tests: Y-DNA, mtDNA (mitochondrial) and autosomal DNA.

YDNA Since only men have Y DNA, only men can take this test. It traces the sex-determining chromosome that passes from father to son, tracing the straight male line, father, fathers father, etc. It doesnt provide information on any other lines.

MtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) Both men and women have X chromosomes so anyone can take this test. It traces the chromosome that passes from mothers to all of their children regardless of the childrens gender, tracing the straight female line, mother, mothers mother, etc. It does not provide information on other lines.

Autosomal DNA This test is done on the 22 non-sex-determining chromosomes called autosomes. Anyone can take this test, which provides a broad overview of a persons ancestry. A number of companies do this test. Among them are Ancestry.com, 23andme.com, and familytreedna.com.

The autosomal DNA test can identify the parts of the world from which your ancestors came. People from all over the world have been tested, allowing scientists to identify certain markers or slight differences that are associated with people from certain regions. By looking at these markers, scientists can use DNA to tell you the regions of your ancestors.

Most continents can be divided based on DNA into a number of regions. Each region usually encompasses several modern countries. In Europe, for example, Ancestry DNA lists a number of regions including Great Britain (mainly England); Ireland, which includes Ireland, Scotland and Wales; and Europe West, which includes Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.

In Africa, Ancestry DNA has North Africa and eight sub-Saharan regions including Ivory Coast/Ghana, Cameroon/Congo, Nigeria, and African South East Bantu among others.

Asia is divided into Asia East, which includes China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and several other countries; Asia West, which includes the Middle East and the Caucasus; Asia Central, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan and others; and Asia South, which includes the countries of the Indian subcontinent. There are also listings for Polynesia and Melanesia. The entire inhabited globe is covered. It should be noted that many countries in Europe and elsewhere are admixed, which means that natives of those countries usually have some DNA from other, typically neighboring, regions.

If you have ancestors who have been in America for many generations, it can be very hard to cross the ocean through record research to find out from where they came. Colonial and 19th-century record-keeping (or lack or destruction thereof) can make it difficult. DNA leaps across the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean as if it wasnt even there.Apart from Native (aboriginal) American DNA, America hasnt been settled long enough to have its own DNA, so unless you are Native American, your DNA will take you across the ocean.

If you have a researched tree and have had your DNA tested and have them both on-line at a site such as Ancestry.com, the DNA can also:

1. Help to confirm your research. If you have DNA links showing that you match a number of people who descend from a certain ancestor, it indicates that your research is most probably correct and that you actually do descend from him. If he is a fairly recent ancestor and you dont have any matches who descend from him, you may need to re-check your research.

2. Help you find some unknown ancestors. If you dont know a particular female ancestors maiden name, for example; but you find a number of DNA cousins whose research shows that they descend from one man, say John Franklin, and he lived in the area where you suspect your female ancestor lived and is the right age to have been her father, you may have just found her father. You can then do research to confirm or disprove this hypothesis by checking a name you would never have thought to check before. Not only may you have found her father, but your DNA cousin may have traced the line several generations further back. If so, some websites, such as Ancestry.com, let you see this and let you contact your DNA cousin through his screen name. DNA is still relatively new, and genealogy websites are still adding helpful new ways to search it for connections.

What can DNA testing not do? It cannot tell you the actual names of ancestors or when they came to America. To find the actual names of ancestors you have to do genealogical research.

We dont get DNA from all of our ancestors. We have DNA from our parents, grandparents, and a few generations further back. Beyond that we each get DNA from some of our ancestors, but not from all of them. Each generation receives only half of its parents DNA. The other half is dropped. Genealogists distinguish between a genealogical family tree that is basically a list of all known ancestors and a genetic family tree that is basically only the ancestors from whom a person has DNA. Even if you are descended from, say, Charlemagne, after so many generations you probably dont actually have any of his DNA. Only a very small percentage of his descendants do.

You should not have a DNA test done unless you are sure you want to know and can accept whatever it tells you. If you or one of your ancestors were adopted and dont know it, your test may make you realize it when you find you arent related to the people you thought you were. It may have been a matter of adoption (formal or informal) or a wife having a child from a prior marriage that you didnt know about, or a matter of marital infidelity in some prior generation.

Genealogists even have a term for this, Non Parental Event (NPE). You may also find that you have a small percentage of DNA from a race or ethnicity that you didnt expect. Some people have concerns about confidentiality. Most sites have rules posted on their websites about confidentiality.

How is DNA tested? The person who wants to be tested orders a test kit. The kit has a cotton swab, a test tube, a package to mail it back in, and simple instructions. The person follows the instructions, swabs the inside of his cheek with the cotton swab, puts the cotton swab into the test tube, seals the tube, puts it into the pre-addressed package and mails it to the company. In a month or so, the person gets his results. The cost is usually about $100, although the tests sometimes go on sale.

DNA testing does NOT by any means take the place of a researched family tree, just as having a researched family tree does NOT take the place of DNA testing. The two complement each other, providing a much more complete picture of your ancestry. Paired with a carefully researched family tree, DNA testing can be a powerful tool for the genealogist.

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Augusta Genealogical Society: DNA can unlock family connections - The Augusta Chronicle

It seems thatin todays society, being an entrepreneurmakes you some sort of rockstar. The title itself has an appeal that makes anyone and everyone with an idea suddenly want to call themselves an entrepreneur.

But being a true entrepreneur is not an easy road. Most entrepreneurs have made money --and lost money. It's normal to have had struggles and successes. The question is whether you have the DNA tosee it through, or if you feel compelled to stick with asecure office job as soon as your first venture idea fails. And honestly, theres nothing wrong with that -- entrepreneurship isn't for everyone.

Here are five indicators that will help you determine whetherthe tough road of entrepreneurship is right for you.

A very common theme I have found among my entrepreneurial network is that the vast majority of entrepreneurs learn by doing. This is why you hear about successful entrepreneurs failing out of school. Not because they wanted to prove a point, but because the school environment did not serve them. They werent learning anything fromsomeone else talking at them.

The need to get your hands dirty is a crucial trait of an entrepreneur.

Kids with entrepreneurial spirits often get labeledas being impatient. They cant sit still. They have low attention spans. But as these kids get older, they developwhat is better described as the ability to be patiently impatient. They dont want to slow down -- and they shouldnt. But they also are very good at waiting for the right time to pull the trigger on decisions.

If you can be both at the same time -- patiently impatient -- then you are right where you need to be.

There is a difference between being obnoxiously persistent and humbly persistent. The people who get told no and refuse to acknowledge helpful feedbackare grandiose dreamers, not grounded in reality. But the people who get told no and then take the time to listen, learn, adjustand keep moving forwardpossess a true gift for persistence.

One of the big reasons that people with entrepreneurial spiritsstruggle in corporate environments is because they feel as though they dont own their work. Its a combination of either not being given enough creative freedom, or having so many checks and balances in place that nothing actually gets done effectively.

Being an entrepreneur is tough, but the ability to take charge ofyour work is the real reward.

Your intention sets your path. You have to know what your motivations and goals are, otherwise youll chase the wrong things and end up somewhere you arent thrilled about.

True entrepreneurs seek freedom -- and the definition of freedomis subjective. Its more about a lifestyle than a benefits package or an end-of-the-year bonus.

Chase the lifestyle, not the paycheck.

Brian D. Evans is the founder of BDE Ventures and Influencive. He is an award-winning serial entrepreneur, online marketer, mobile app advisor and accomplished writer. Evans has been building and advising startups for over a decade.

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5 Ways to Know Whether You Have the DNA of an Entrepreneur - Entrepreneur

Britain's Newcastle University says its scientists have received a license to create babies using DNA from three people to prevent women from passing on potentially fatal genetic diseases to their children the first time such approval has been granted.

The license was granted Thursday by the country's fertility regulator, according to the university.

In December, British officials approved the "cautious use" of the techniques, which aim to fix problems linked to mitochondria, the energy-producing structures outside a cell's nucleus. Faulty mitochondria can result in conditions including muscular dystrophy and major organ failure.

"Mitochondria diseases can be devastating for families affected and this is a momentous day for patients," said Doug Turnbull, director of the research at Newcastle University. The university has said it is aiming to treat up to 25 patients a year.

To help keep women with mitochondria problems from passing them on to their children, scientists remove the nucleus DNA from the egg of a prospective mother and insert it into a donor egg from which the donor DNA has been removed. This can happen before or after fertilization. The resulting embryo ends up with nucleus DNA from its parents but mitochondrial DNA from a donor. The DNA from the donor amounts to less than 1 percent of the resulting embryo's genes.

The license granted to Newcastle University relates only to the clinic's capacity to perform the techniques, Britain's fertility regulator said. The clinic must apply for each individual patient to be treated and no patient application has yet been approved.

Last year, U.S.-based doctors announced they had created the world's first baby using such techniques, after traveling to Mexico to perform the procedure, which has not been approved in the United States.

Critics have raised concerns about the treatment, saying it will put people at unnecessary risk of an untested procedure. Some say women with faulty mitochondria should choose simply to use egg donors and that using the new techniques will open the door to genetically modified "designer babies."

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UK grants first license to make babies using DNA from 3 people - Chicago Tribune

LONDON (AP) Britains Newcastle University says its scientists have received a license to create babies using DNA from three people to prevent women from passing on potentially fatal genetic diseases to their children the first time such approval has been granted.

The license was granted Thursday by the countrys fertility regulator, according to the university.

In December, British officials approved the cautious use of the techniques, which aim to fix problems linked to mitochondria, the energy-producing structures outside a cells nucleus. Faulty mitochondria can result in conditions including muscular dystrophy and major organ failure.

Mitochondria diseases can be devastating for families affected and this is a momentous day for patients, said Doug Turnbull, director of the research at Newcastle University. The university has said it is aiming to treat up to 25 patients a year.

To help women with mitochondria problems from passing them on to their children, scientists remove the nucleus DNA from the egg of a prospective mother and insert it into a donor egg from which the donor DNA has been removed. This can happen before or after fertilization. The resulting embryo ends up with nucleus DNA from its parents but mitochondrial DNA from a donor. The DNA from the donor amounts to less than 1 percent of the resulting embryos genes.

The license granted to Newcastle University relates only to the clinics capacity to perform the techniques, Britains fertility regulator said. The clinic must apply for each individual patient to be treated and no patient application has yet been approved.

Last year, U.S.-based doctors announced they had created the worlds first baby using such techniques, after traveling to Mexico to perform the procedure, which has not been approved in the United States.

Critics have raised concerns about the treatment, saying it will put people at unnecessary risk of an untested procedure. Some say women with faulty mitochondria should choose simply to use egg donors and that using the new techniques will open the door to genetically modified designer babies.

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UK grants 1st license to make babies using DNA from 3 people ... - WDEF News 12

Its not just you its been a miserable winter because of rain. You shared with us your rain stories and how you cope (or dont cope) in essays, poetry and photos. Bottom line: Oh, boy, did you answer.

Enjoyed the few days of partly sunny skies this week? Look out the window: The rains back.

We asked for your stories about dealing with our rain, which at the beginning of 2017 is about as bad as its ever been.

We heard from newcomers (surprise, some are not depressed) and some natives (some are really depressed).

You answered with essays, poems, a haiku, reminiscences, photos.

Some of you were like Mike Ristow, an electrical contractor born and raised in Seattle but currently residing in Kailua Kona, Hawaii, and couldnt resist gloating. (Weekend forecast for the Big Island, high 80s.) His email included a link to a video of Its a Jimmy Buffett Christmas!

And then there was Owen Ashurst, who lived six decades in Seattle. He now lives in San Diego (weekend forecast, low 70s). He sent a photo of himself on the beach. His cell number still has a 206 area code. Just to remind me!

We have particular reason for gloomy thoughts about this winter and our incessant rain. This February (8.85 inches) is the wettest on record since 1961 (9.11 inches). And in the first two weeks of March, we got nearly as much rain as is average for the entire month of March (3.55 inches versus 3.72 inches).

You can see by the accompanying historical rainfall chart for our Februaries that for a few years we get lulled into thinking its not so bad. Then, bam!

As Jerry Seinfeld once said, Seattle is a moisturizing pad disguised as a city.

And its not just the rain.

In Seattle, it always seems to look like its going to rain. In March, through the first 14 days, 12 saw at least 80 percent of the sky covered with clouds.

Rain and more rain is in this regions DNA.

The book Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition includes excerpts from explorers writing about our coastal weather. The rain continues, with Tremendious gusts of wind, which is Tremendious. The winds violent Trees falling in every direction, whorl winds, with gusts of rain Hail & Thunder, This kind of weather lasted all day, Certainly one of the worst days that ever was!

The tribal peoples had a different attitude.

The book explains that the Indians went about their daily routine knowing that wind, rain, and thunder were but spirit forces making their powers known for all to see. Paddling canoes that defied the worst waves and wearing hats and capes admirably suited to wet days, the Chinookans may have paused to wonder why the bearded men in the log lodge feared the weather and hid from it.

We had better get used to more Februaries and Marches like weve experienced.

A Seattle Public Utilities study predicts that because of climate change, the Seattle shoreline will rise 7 inches in the next 30 years. Plus, expect warmer and wetter winters.

You know the rainy street scene in Blade Runner with the unremitting drizzle? The future!

Time for your responses.

I used to tell newcomers that they had an 18-month whining period. After that you need to realize that the clouds and rain are not an aberration, and that you have to adapt, says Rick Platz, who now lives in Denver for family reasons.

In this area he worked in marketing. My personal epiphany was when I realized I wasnt looking at layers of gray every day on my commute from Bellevue to Seattle on the I-90.

The epiphany was about finding beauty in all that gray! Such beauty that Platz wrote a poem. It begins, Passing waves of pillows, Cascading from the skies, Layers of gray and light, Floating past our eyes, Evolving through the night

Then there is Meighan Pritchard, the pastor of Prospect United Church of Christ on Capitol Hill. She offered a haiku, based on her daily bicycle commute:

Bike through the monsoon Dry clothes await arrival Oh look daffodils!

Theres something about the rain that inspires our creativity.

Author Tom Robbins wrote in Edge Walking on the Western Rim, a collection of essays by Northwest writers:

Im here for the weather.

In the deepest, darkest heart of winter, when the sky resembles bad banana baby food for months on end, and the witch measles that meteorologists call drizzle are a chronic gray rash on the skin of the land, folks all around me sink into a dismal funk. Many are depressed, a few actually suicidal. But I, I grow happier with each fresh storm, each thickening of the crinkly stratocumulus. Whats so hot about the sun? I ask. Sunbeams are a lot like tourists: intruding where they dont belong, little cameras slung around their necks. Raindrops, on the other hand, introverted, feral, buddhistically cool, behave as if they live here. Which, of course, they do.

Says Brooke McDaniels of Fife who, for existential purposes, considers herself part of Rain City:

I have been a Seattle native my whole life 34 years to be exact! When youve lived here your whole life, the rain isnt something you think about much, unlike the newly implanted here. You make do the best you can rain or not. You drive in it, play in it, work in it its our life as a Washingtonian. I plan on raising my kids here and, well, Im pretty sure theyll grow up just like I did.

Writes Michael Hamilton, a Green Lake resident of Seattle:

I am a native Seattleite Swedish (Medical Center), class of 1944. Always loved the many moods of rain sprinkles, showers, downpours. Each brings its own light, smells, sounds and tastes. To fully appreciate rain, I suggest one has to listen closely to its rhythm and blues. When I catch its beat on my skylights, like a jealous lover demanding to be let in, I drift away into a deep relaxing sleep and awake refreshed, thankful for the experience.

For Owen Ashurst, who now lives happily in San Diego, the unrelenting grayness of Seattle became too much.

Over the years I found dealing with the wet, gray oppressiveness of the late fall, winter and early spring became, quite simply, unbearable. At some point, I found that using the pressure sprayer to blast away the moss and mold from the deck, sidewalk and other surfaces in the spring had lost its sense of romance and accomplishment, he writes. The overriding sense of color was well 50 shades of gray. And I dont mean that in a sensually stimulating way.

Jill Hammond, a Seattle-area resident until four years ago, emailed from Tasmania, Australia (weekend forecast, 79 degrees, sunny), where she works as a document controller for a local utility:

I had no idea how normal people lived around the world; that is, with clear skies and daylight. Here, if it rains it is usually for part of a day. There might be clouds in the sky, but there are sunbreaks as well. Light gets through. It is remarkable how much of a difference it makes to ones mood. I cannot believe I put up with the gray drizzle for so long.

Says Cyndi Aiona, a contract manager with Amazon: I went to college in Oregon. I got a job in Seattle, and I had been here a couple summers before. Summer is different, tell me about it. Ive been here since 1985, my two kids have been raised here. I still have not gotten used to the weather. She also co-produces the annual Live Aloha Hawaiian Cultural Festival in Seattle.

Seattle is fine, she says.

But returning home to visit friends and relatives in Hawaii, like she did in October, and feeling the warm air as she walks out of the airport: I just feel different. My body is alive again.

Rodelyn Coppock has moved here from the Bay Area for a job ahead of her husband and kids, wholl stay in California for another year.

Three months straight with all this rain, my scooter has only left the garage three times and Im starting to feel Stay in pajamas and sweat-socks and watch movies all weekend kind of blue. Im downing vitamin D, now every night turning on the sun lamp I told my husband I wouldnt need, and trying to feel some regret that I left sunnier California for this wet and cold adventure.

But

I love my new job and my team at my new office. Ive got a large and cute studio apartment in a cool, family-friendly neighborhood with a library, several bars and lounges, a small bookstore, coffee and ice cream shops, a church I like, a Kens Market and a bus stop 4 blocks away where I catch an express bus that takes me downtown every day.

A few weeks ago I texted a girlfriend, I love it here. Im never leaving.

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Rain, and more rain, is in our DNA: Your Seattle survival stories - The Seattle Times

By Kati Marton By Kati Marton March 17

My daughter gave me a DNA-test kit for Christmas. I dutifully spat in the vial provided and mailed the contents to ancestry.com. A few days ago, I received the shocking result: I am half European Jewish, half Anglo-Irish. This is surprising news, considering my sister recently did a similar test that found her to be of 89percent European Jewish stock. How could two sisters be of such dramatically different ancestries? My Jewish half made perfect sense: My Hungarian mother and father were both Jewish. When did the Anglo-Irish strand infiltrate my DNA?

It was the second time I was shocked by my identity. At age 30, while interviewing a Hungarian woman rescued by Swedish Holocaust hero Raoul Wallenberg, I learned that my family was not Roman Catholic as I had been led to believe but Jewish. More painfully, I learned my grandparents had perished not under the Allies bombs as I had been told but in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

This revelation was a source of pride, and relief, too, at being in possession of my family history. It drew me back to the homeland I left as a small child. Hungarys violent, hate-filled history became the subject of several of my books. For my parents, it was a different matter. They were part of a generation of secret-keepers, with much to forget. They had twice suffered as a result of their identity. First, as Jews in anti-Semitic Hungary, where they barely survived the Arrow Cross reign of terror. Then, in the 1950s, they were labeled Enemies of the People (a label invented not by Stephen K. Bannon or Donald Trump, but by Joseph Stalin) and jailed as American spies for the crime of being brave reporters who supported the West during the Cold War. For my mother and father, identity was a minefield, and America was their last chance.

Now, thanks to ancestry.com, my own identity is again shadowed. Was my beloved father not my biological father? If not, who was? Searching dusty files of letters crisp with age, I found a copy of a letter (the original is in the Budapest secret police archives) that my father had written my mother from jail. Your only goal must be to leave with the children, he instructs my mother, unaware that she was by then an inmate in the same maximum-security prison in Budapest. Mathew Crosse should come and marry you. Your responsibility for the children and for yourself is to leave me. Heartbreakingly brave words, but who is this Mathew Crosse? Might he be the source of my 50 percent Anglo-Irish blood? Should I search for him? If I were to find an Englishman who visited Budapest in the late 1940s or his offspring what then?

All day I walked around in a fog of disbelief. I felt unmoored. But my family stayed calmly in character. My sister cheered that we had cause to celebrate St. Patricks Day on Friday. My analytical son and daughter suggested we do a DNA redo, using a different company. True Americans Anglo-Irish Canadian in addition to Hungarian they knew who their grandfather was: Papa, who barely survived the fevered identity politics of his Hungarian youth but taught all of us to ski and play tennis (though he failed miserably at teaching us to fence). His proudest achievement was not his career of stellar journalism but leading us to sanctuary in the United States.

In a couple of weeks, my family will celebrate the day a refugee transport brought my parents, my sister and me along with hundreds of other Hungarians to Camp Kilmer, N.J., in 1957. I was the youngest refugee, and it was my birthday. The Marine who processed me noticed this and produced the gift of a silver dollar. I still have it.

(YouTube/Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies)

My ancestry.com shock lifted the next morning. Regardless of the accuracy of this test, I know who I am. Family is about more than DNA. Identity used as a weapon of exclusion leads to hate, and once before it led to ashes gusting from Europes factories of death.

Why search for clues to an Englishman who may or may not be my biological father? Why redo a DNA test? I know who my father was, and I know who I am. I am Papas American daughter.

Of far greater concern than my own, is our countrys DNA today. Would a little girl arriving after an even more perilous journey still be greeted with a smile and a silver dollar?

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A DNA test upended everything I knew about my identity. Now who ... - Washington Post