What would you feel if you learned that your best friend since the 6th grade is actually related to you? Just like the story of this two best friends since the 6th grade who later found out that they’re actually related to each other.
Walter Macfarlane (left) and Alan Robinson (right) from Honolulu first met when they were in prep school and became close to the point of being inseparable. The two played football together in high school and their friendship is like a bond of a family.
6 decades later, Robinson, 72 and Macfarlene, 74, found out that they were actually related to each other, as brothers. Yes, you read it right!
Robinson was adopted as a newborn and Macfarlene have no idea growing up. That’s why the lifelong best friends became close to each other since then because they have the same blood running through their veins.
In hopes of finding his biological father, Macfarlane picked up a DNA ancestry test and came up with something unexpected. That’s the time when he found out that Robinson was actually his biological sibling.
Macfarlane picked up a DNA ancestry test in hopes of finding his biological father that he stumbled upon something which came as an even bigger surprise. He found that Robinson was legitimately his biological brother. “I knew it when we compared hairy forearms!” said Macfarlane jokingly.
“I knew it when we compared hairy forearms!” said Macfarlane jokingly.
To which Robinson said “That’s true. How did we go for 60 years without knowing we were related? It took those DNA tests and some really good sleuthing by our families to put it all together.”
According to Good Times, Walter Macfarlane was born in 1943 which was a chaotic period in time as Honolulu was still recovering from the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack. Macfarlane’s biological mother, Genevieve, wanted to give him up for adoption but her parents found out and decided to raise the child as their own. It is a Hawaiian practice in which a family can informally adopt a child called ‘hanai’ and so Macfarlane’s grandparents decided to do just that.
15 months after Macfarlane’s birth, Alan Robinson was born and immediately given for adoption. He has no idea about his biological parents but said:
“it was great for me. I was raised by the best people you can imagine. But when I had my own two children I did wonder about family history, because I can never answer any health questions on official forms.”
They lived few houses away from each other and grew up as best friends. Decades later, both of them decided to have their own families and still managed to be close to each other. They even go on vacations together that made their children grew up close also. A few years ago Macfarlane received two sets of DNA tests for his birthday, one from 23 and Me and one from Ancestry.
The source also states that when the result came back, it showed about 800 people he might be related to and he thought that was “sort of neat”. His daughter Cindy then looked at the results and sorted through them to find the highest match rate. She found the user Robi737 to have the strongest DNA relationship which the test said would be a half-brother.
Curious who the user was, Martha, Macfarlane’s wife, had an idea and told her daughter:
“Have Dad ask Uncle Alan because he flew 737’s for Aloha Airlines and everyone called him Robby back then.”
Through a phone call that it was confirmed that Robinson was the owner of that username. It was surprising that the two lifelong best friends are actually biological brothers.
Watch the video below:
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