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Father finds out about children after 44 years

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Father finds out about children after 44 years

Wed, 09/05/2018 - 12:00 am
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    Pictured here are the category winners from the salsa competition at trade days on Aug 18 . From left to right, Wade Brooks (mild), Jeb Baxley (hot), Wesley Wright (fruity) and Melissa Baker (both traditional and unusual guacamole)

David Jakobot of Breckenridge got more than he bargained, when he recieved a call from his niece, Jennifer Strober, on June 25, 2018. Jakobot was told he had two sons. Identical twins who were 44 years old , who he never knew he fathered. After speaking with the boys, Jakobot decided to take a DNA paternity test offered on Ancestry.com. A few days later the results came in and with 99.999999 percent certainty he was indeed the boys’ father.

“I knew just by looking at you guys,” Jakobot said. “I was excited and shocked, I wondered what they were like, we are all a little shellshocked,” Jakobot said.

After a month or so of talking back and forth on the phone, Jakobot loaded up and flew to Connecticut to meet this new branch on his family tree. Jakobot fathered the boys when he was 17, and was never contacted about their existence by their mother.

“I never knew about the boys,” Jakobot said. “The boys mother passed away in 1984, when the boys were only 10 years old. I am glad that I now have two more sons and seven grandchildren. I’m not looking to take their dad’s place, but now they can have a father too.”

He wants to take his sons Joe and Lou to Beverly Hills where he used to live, and he wants to fly the twins and their families to Texas, and take them on cruises.

The original story, “For twins from Montville, a DNA test and Facebook search reveal biological father,” by Martha Shanahan of “The Day,” has been approved for publication in the Breckenridge American. We do not claim any part of the following story.

By Martha Shanahan of “ The Day

MONTVILLE - On the back of a placemat from a bar he owns,Joe Rogulski has drawn a family tree. At the top are his mother, Margaret, and the man who Rogulski always thought was his biological father the man who gave him and his twin brother the name Rogulski.

The family tree already had plenty of branches. Joe and his brother Lou took Tom Rogulski’s name, but barely had a relationship with him. Their mother, died in 1984, so the twins were raised by their grandfather, their uncle and the man she had married two years earlier, Jim Malarkey. They call Malarkey “Dad”. Joe claimed Rogulski’s Polish name when he joined Montville’s Polish Club-“I’am Polish and i’m handsome,” he wrote on his application. Lou’s nickname at work was “the Polish Prince.” But they never met any other Rogulskis.

“We talked on the phone (with Rogulski) couple times a year,” Lou said. “I might throw him a card in the mail.”

That had been the story, convoluted as it was, of Joe and Lou’s life. “We’re expert in blended families,” Joe said Sunday. His own family includes one adopted daughter, a son and children that his partner had from a previous marriage. Lou is married with two kids. They all hug a lot.

Colleen Rix, Joe’s partner, bought him an account on the popular DNA testing site 23andMe when she saw a sale online. The results were inconclusive but Joe was curious, so he sprang for another DNA test from Ancestry.com

When the results came into the Ancestry app at the end of April, Joe started to suspect he would be getting more than he gambled for. The app showed two cousins on his mother’s side had taken the test-that much was clear enough. But a cousin he knew was related to Rogulski and had taken the test- who should have been listed as a relative- wasn’t there. And two other names were on the list that Joe didn’t recognize. “That’s when I knew,” Joe said.

After a day or two of Facebook sleuthing and a text conversation with one of those new names, the Rogulski family tree had a new branch, and a new revelation: the twins weren’t Rogulskis after all. The first cousin from the app had one uncle, who if the results were accurate, would have to be their real biological father. Joe sent her a photo of himself and Lou.

“She looked at the picture,” Joe said and said “Oh, God. Do you even need a test?’”

Her uncle David Jakobot had blonde had from decades of living in California, but he had the same smile as the twins. The same nose. The same eyes.

Lou used to hold up a photo of Tom Robulski to his face and ask his wife if she saw any resemblances. “You always think you look like somebody- people would say, “Oh, you look like your uncle Cosmo.’ So do I look like this guy? It was always like, “Eh, no.’” Jakobot looks like them.

Within a week, Jakobot went from being a stranger- and East Lyme native who went to school with Rix’s mother, came back to Connecticut often and had even maybe visited Joe’s bar- to being part of the family.

The the three men spoke on the phone-feeling one another out, trying to understand.

“We had a lot of questions,” Lou said. “He never knew about us. I think we were all shell-shocked.”

“First of all, I’m wondering, “What are they like?’” Jakobot, 63 said in a phone interview Sunday. “ Geeze, I hope I’m not going to get a call like ‘Hey your my dad, can’t wait to meet you when I get out of jail.’”

The twins were not in jail. After a difficult, transient childhood, they both found stability. They were happy. They had thought little about their paternal family since Rogulski died in 2012. Plus, if you asked them, Malarkey was their dad.

But after a paternity test confirmed it, Jakobot was their father. At first shocked, then thrilled, Jakobot flew to Connecticut from his home in Texas with his sister and niece. The families organized a party at Lou’s house in Lisbon. They stared at each other, recognizing mannerisms,speech patterns, neat-freak tendencies.

“I was just so happy,” Jakobot said. “They looked like me.”

The family is looking forward, not back. The 44-year-old Joe and Lou still have a dad- it went without saying, but their bond with Malarkey hasn’t changed. They just now have a father,too.

Jakobot said he had no idea he had become a father at age 17. He had a son, Stephen, who died in a 2013 in Broward County, Fla. The crash left Jakobot alone with his dog and horses in Texas, managing an oil and gas business but wondering who he would spend the rest of his life with.

“He was my whole world,” Jakobot said. “All my dog wants to talk about is what he wants to eat tonight.” Now he wants to take Joe and Lou to Beverly Hills, where he used to live. He wants to fly the twins and their families to Texas. He wants to take them on cruises.

“Now, I have grandchildren, now I have a family.”