Forced to give up her son for adoption, she spent her whole life thinking about him. Then a DNA test reunited them.

When Kevin Heyel walked off his airplane and out of Concourse C this fall, he embraced his mother for the first time in his 58 years of life.

“Nice to finally meet you,” he said.

Barbara Kreft reached up to his 6-foot-6-inch frame and laughed, overjoyed that the baby she had been forced to give up for adoption was in her arms at last.

“I was worried about you,” she told him. “All the time.”

Ralph Bultman, one of Barbara’s 18 siblings, and the one responsible for connecting mother and son through DNA testing, chimed in: “You’re a big boy!”

Barbara had seen Kevin only twice before this moment. Once, when she was 21 years old, she sneaked a look at her infant in a Washington, D.C., hospital nursery.

And once, a few months before they would hug in Milwaukee’s Mitchell airport, they unsuccessfully tried to chat over a choppy video call.

They both had so much to share with each other. After having Kevin, Barbara would go on to get married and raise three children in Milwaukee.

And Kevin would be adopted by a family who moved from D.C. to New Orleans to North Carolina.

Barbara and Kevin were family, but also strangers. This fall, over the course of a weekend, they got to know each other. Kevin and his wife, Anna Heyel, also met his new half-siblings and some of his roughly two-dozen aunts and uncles and 44 cousins.

Now, Kevin calls his “Mama Barbara” weekly to chat. Even when his adoptive mother fell ill last month and he spent the holidays with her in the hospital, he phoned Barbara and his half-siblings to wish them each a merry Christmas.

It’s surreal, and exciting, and a little bit exhausting to keep up with a whole new family, he said.

Sent to D.C., Barbara's aunts said her pregnancy was a shameful secret

The sixth-oldest child in the Bultman brood, Barbara grew up in a bustling home at East Burleigh and North Palmer streets in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood.

She met the man who would become Kevin’s biological father, Anthony, as a teenager.

The two rode the city bus to school together. Barbara, headed to Mercy High, would catch the bus first. Then Anthony, a Boys Tech student, would get on and sit next to her. Even after graduating, they danced together at St. Casimir church’s young adult dances.

“We were close. I think I was probably in love,” Barbara said.

When she became pregnant at 20, she told her mother Anthony wouldn’t marry her. Her mother was sympathetic, Barbara recalls. She said, “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of it.”

Barbara Bultman, upper left, is seen with some of her siblings in 1961, when she was 17 years old.

Soon, though, her mom got Barbara’s devout Catholic aunts Willette and Hazel involved, and Barbara was whisked to D.C. to stay with them, have the baby there in secret and attend data entry school.

“There was 19 kids in the family already. She couldn’t have another one,” Barbara said of her mother.

Anthony never married and died in 2004 at age 61, Ralph’s research indicates.

Barbara spent a lot of time alone in her room in D.C., often leaving only when her aunt Willette called her out for dinner. On the weekends, they’d go to the family’s house on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, where she watched the passing boats from the living room window.

Aunt Willette was stern. She said Barbara should never tell anyone about her baby. None of Barbara’s siblings even knew she was pregnant.

Barbara doesn’t fault her mother for sending her away, but she wishes she had more agency and had pushed back more throughout the ordeal. She was “scatterbrained” as a young person, she said, and felt her aunts made the decision for her to give up the baby for adoption.

“It was sort of set in stone that that’s what I was going to do, whether I liked it or not,” she said.

After she gave birth, she went down to the hospital nursery to glimpse her child. A nurse asked what she wanted to name her baby, and Barbara answered: Christopher.

Later, Willette stopped by the hospital and saw Barbara was crying. She admitted she’d gone to see her son.

“I told you not to go look at him,” Willette admonished. “You’re giving him up, and that’s that.”

Barbara then dutifully completed her three-month college program and returned to Milwaukee, where she got a job at JCPenney. After some time, she met her future husband, Darrell, at another dance.

They got married in 1966 and left for Germany, where Darrell was stationed for the Army. They’d go on to have three children, Jeff, Katie and John. Barbara later worked in data entry in the titles and deeds department at the Waukesha County Courthouse, then at a student loan company and at UPS.

Over the years, she told a few of her siblings and friends about the baby she’d hoped to name Christopher.

All 19 Bultman children gathered for a photo with their parents in 1969. Their mother, Ethel, died of cancer in 1971. Barbara is third from right, top row.

Barbara, her sister turn to the family genealogist for answers

For more than 50 years, she thought about her infant son, and how her aunt said she had to “let it go.” She hoped he was being raised by good parents and hadn’t gotten into trouble.

The adoption was closed, and her efforts with her trusted youngest sister, Janet, to find him over the years met only dead ends. There was no way to know what had become of her baby. But she and Janet remained hopeful.

Barbara is now 80 years old. She has trouble moving around. Her husband, Darrell, died 12 years ago from cancer. About three years ago, she and Janet decided to ask their brother, Ralph, for help finding her son.

Ralph’s hobby is genealogy, tracking the history of his sprawling family and digging into the information his DNA can tell him on Ancestry.com.

Janet told her sister: “We’re going to find your son before anything ever happens to you.”

Ralph hadn’t known Barbara had another child. He started looking, but he didn’t have success.

Then, in late July, Ralph called Barbara with the news he’d found Kevin. She’ll never forget that moment.

“It’s an answer to my prayer,” she told him. It’s a refrain she’s repeated often since they connected.

The Dec. 28, 1981 edition of the Milwaukee Journal featured a story about the 19 siblings of the Bultman family who reunited for a holiday meal for the first time in 10 years. The family grew up in Milwaukee's Riverwest neighborhood.

DNA match an astonishing connection for North Carolina-based son

After Kevin's adoptive father died suddenly in 2019, “something clicked in me,” he said, and he decided to try to find his birth parents.

A website called BirthParentFinder.com quoted him $2,800 for its experts to search for them. The site’s first requirement was that he put his DNA in Ancestry.com’s database. Kevin did that, but he wasn’t sure about the high price, so he hesitated on going forward with the experts.

Soon, on June 30, a match pinged on Ralph’s account. A possible nephew. But was it Barbara’s son? He fired off a note to Kevin on Ancestry’s messaging platform.

“I have noticed the DNA results from Ancestry and see that you are a very close DNA match to me. I do not recognize your name so I am wondering if your family is from Vincennes, Indiana? I live in the Milwaukee area. My father moved to Milwaukee in about 1936 from Vincennes, Indiana.”

Kevin didn’t respond until July 24.

“I am adopted, so I couldn’t tell you anything about my biological parents. I do know I was born in Washington DC on 02/22/1965.”

The message made Ralph realize: This was him.

The city was correct; Barbara had gone to the D.C. area to have the baby. And the date of birth was correct. Ralph responded quickly with an opening line that astonished Kevin:

“There may be a connection between you and one of my siblings. Have you ever had an interest in finding your birth mother?”

Kevin was interested — and a bit incredulous that it was really happening. “I’m just amazed by all this,” he replied.

Ralph soon detailed just what it would mean to join the massive Bultman family.

Kevin was gaining more than a mother and three new half-siblings. Each of Barbara’s 18 siblings had children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. And there were dozens of cousins and second-cousins, each with their own families.

In contrast, Kevin grew up with one adoptive sister. He has one step-daughter through marriage.

“Ralph threw so much at me at one time,” he said. “I was just astounded.”

Another DNA test confirmed the match and paved the way for Ralph and Barbara to tell more family members about Kevin.

Barbara’s daughter, Katie Oilschlager, attached the test results to an email: “99.9% her son! YAY for Mom!”

In an undated photo from the early 1960s, Barbara Kreft, then Bultman, posed for a photo with her four youngest siblings. Middle row: Linda, left, and Joyce. Front row: Janet, left, and Brian.

For Kevin, discovery of birth mother meant reassuring his adoptive mother he's there for her

Kevin, who now lives outside Raleigh, North Carolina, and works in merchandising for Lowe’s Home Improvement, said he understands and accepts why Barbara gave him up for adoption. He has been eager to assure Barbara that he had a happy childhood.

“When we were first introduced, I sent her an email thanking her for her sacrifice and that I was adopted by two loving parents,” he said.

Kevin and his adoptive sister were raised by high school sweethearts who couldn’t have children. Growing up in New Orleans, they owned and rode horses, and their parents were active in the planning of Mardi Gras.

The family moved to North Carolina when Kevin was in high school. He later met his wife, Anna, “a good old country girl” who always wanted a bigger family. Together, they suffered miscarriages and never had children of their own.

In recent years, Anna would tell Kevin, “I feel so alone. We don’t have any family. A lot of people are gone.”

A Southerner to her core, she had another concern when her daughter from a previous relationship moved away. “I don’t have anybody to cook for,” she would lament.

Once Kevin found out about Barbara, Anna encouraged him to meet her.

“She needs to know that you are OK. All her life she’s wondered if she did the right thing,” Anna told her husband.

The news that Kevin’s family had grown exponentially came last summer just as Kevin and Anna grieved the death of their beloved 15-year-old Boxer dog, Braxton, who was like a child to them.

“God wanted that for us. He knew I needed it,” Anna said.

Kevin was hesitant to tell his adoptive mother, Penelope Heyel, that he’d sought out and found Barbara.

Penelope went through some difficult years after her husband, Douglas, unexpectedly died in 2019 during a hip replacement surgery, and she endured health troubles of her own. Kevin takes her to doctor’s appointments and visits her every weekend.

“I’ve been pretty much the glue for my mother,” Kevin said.

He didn’t want to hurt her feelings or imply he wished he’d grown up with a different family. Eventually, when he did tell her, she took it well, he said.

“I was actually really choked up trying to tell her,” he said. “I said, ‘You are my mom. I love you. I will be here for you constantly. Nothing is going to change in regards to that.’”

In December, Penelope’s health took a downturn. She spent two weeks in the hospital and is making plans for more treatment. Kevin’s life has become busy as he coordinates her care and tries to keep in touch with Barbara, too.

How does he make sense of everything that’s happened in the last year?

“I process on the go,” he laughed.

Siblings Ralph Bultman and Barbara Kreft wait for Kevin Heyel and his wife, Anna Heyel, at the entrance to Concourse C at Milwaukee Mitchell Airport. The Heyels live in North Carolina and traveled to Milwaukee in October to meet Kevin's birth family.

Kevin and the Bultmans make up for lost time

Moments after Barbara and Kevin embraced in the airport, he and Anna and the Bultmans’ welcoming committee took over a nearby row of seats and began exchanging rapid-fire questions about their families and childhoods and careers.

How long had Kevin lived in North Carolina? And what had Barbara done for work before retiring? Did either of them get any sleep last night? (No.)

A jokester by nature, Kevin remembered the set of fake teeth in his pocket and popped them in with a grin.

Like the Bultmans, Kevin’s family was “pretty Catholic” too. He was an altar boy growing up, he told them.

“You’re a lot like a lot of my brothers,” Barbara’s sister Janet remarked.

So started a whirlwind weekend. There was sightseeing — the fall colors at Holy Hill, the Miller Brewery tour, the Harley-Davidson Museum ― and a lot of making up for lost time. The Wisconsinites gave Kevin and Anna grief about their strong Southern accents and introduced them to cheese curds. The first night, they had so much to talk about that they didn't leave dinner until the restaurant closed.

More than two dozen Bultman relatives met Kevin and Anna at a party thrown at Barbara’s daughter Katie’s dog-training facility in Waukesha.

Kevin insisted that everyone in his new family wear a name tag.

Later, when Barbara reflected on the weekend, she said Kevin looked so much like his two half-brothers that she could almost confuse them from behind.

“I was crying when he left. I said, ‘I just can’t believe it. I probably will never see you again.’

“He said, ‘Oh no, it’s just the beginning.’”

Kevin couldn’t make it to the Bultmans’ yearly Christmas party because of Penelope’s hospitalization. But he hopes to visit Milwaukee again for the family’s annual summer gathering.

And Barbara is making plans to visit Raleigh around Memorial Day.

In the meantime, they’ve got their weekly calls.

Barbara wrote and sent out 52 Christmas cards last month, she told her son over the phone. In each one, she shared the secret she'd held for 58 years.

"I had a good year this year," she wrote. "I found my son. His name is Kevin."

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee-area family connects with son through Ancestry's DNA testing