For nearly 80 years, an Antioch man raised in Chicago by his adoptive parents believed he was an only child. And he was told his biological parents had died in a car accident.

But when John Clauson began looking into his past, he found that what he thought he knew was far from the truth.

After a roughly 25-year search Clauson, now 80, discovered he was the oldest of 12 siblings. Eight of them are the children of Hugh Engelman who had lived in Crystal Lake and who Clauson came to learn was his biological father.

Engelman died in 2010 at the age of 89, about 14 years before Clauson learned of him. Hugh Engelman’s children said their dad never knew he had fathered another child before meeting their mother.

‘I’d never looked like anybody’

When Clauson first walked into a gathering about two years ago his new siblings said they knew instantly he was their brother.

Clauson said they told him he looked “just like” their father. And for the first time, Clauson saw people who looked like him, and he cried.

“I’d never looked like anybody,” he said. “There are no words to describe the way I felt.”

The third oldest sibling, Mary Kay Kenney, 75, of Maryland, said when she first met Clauson, “I saw my father. I had the strongest connection to him through his eyes. It was very moving ... profound. It’s so evident that he’s part of us.”

The youngest sibling, Guy Engelman, 59, of Brookfield, said: “It was obvious he was an Engelman” from the first picture he saw of Clauson, whom they now call “JC.”

Guy Engelman said people have always said he was the “spitting image” of his dad, and Clauson looks very similar.

However, physical features are not the only way in which Clauson embodies their father.

“He’s just such a ... very kind, sweet man,” Guy Engelman said of Clauson. “He’s very gentle, like my dad. Even hugging him, it was like hugging my dad.”

At another gathering in Tennessee in May the siblings wore T-shirts with artwork depicting an eight morphing into a nine – representing the welcoming of the newest sibling – with the sentiments, “The Engelman Reunion” and “Together At Last.”

The last thing the siblings did together at the reunion was watch a home video of their father, also featuring the eight siblings’ mother Virginia Engelman, who died in 2007.

Clauson “ended up watching his father speak for the first time,” Guy Engelman reflected.

Clauson said watching the video surrounded by his siblings “was emotional ... so moving.”

The journey

Clauson, who worked in manufacturing and as an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University in Evanston, was born Aug. 10, 1945.

In his 50s, a health care professional diagnosed him as having separation anxiety and encouraged him to look into who his biological parents were.

In 2001, Clauson hired a private investigator. Initially, the search did not lead to the Engelmans, but he learned his mother’s name was Gerda Gregarek and that she was from Chicago. He also learned his mother had named him Larry.

He connected with Gregarek’s younger sister, his aunt, Marjorie Parewski. He also met cousins with whom he’s maintained a “loving” relationship, he said.

Parewski was a few years younger than Clauson’s mother and told him she remembered changing his diapers and caring for him. His mother “would go away for days at a time,” she told him. When he was a few months old, she left for the last time and was never seen or heard from again, his aunt told him.

Parewski showed Clauson a picture of his mother and he cried.

“I had never seen my mother, I had no idea who she was, and here is this photo,” he said.

In reflecting on the trauma caused by being separated from his mother at such an early age, Clauson said: “I still get moved when I talk about it. I was 50-something years old when I find out who my mom was and what she looked liked.”

“I did and still do have separation anxiety. It has affected how I behave and how I raised my children and it is still there. Some of the effects never go away,” said Clauson who with his wife, Darlene, raised two children.

Clauson discovered he was born under less than traditional circumstances. His mother was 19, living in her parents’ tumultuous home. She was married to a man serving overseas in World War II when she became pregnant, therefore, he was not her husband’s child, Clauson said.

Gregarek’s father did not want to care for a baby, so he took him to a police station and then he was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Chicago, a charity facility for unwed mothers and abandoned children. He eventually was adopted by Swedish immigrants named Helen and Helmer Clauson.

His adoptive parents were loving and he had an idyllic childhood in Chicago, Clauson said. But he never felt fully connected to his family. He never identified with anyone physically or otherwise, he said.

During his search for his father – which first turned up leads to a man in Iowa, but those turned out to be false – he was hesitant.

He had a “fear of rejection. Being an adoptee, that’s a big thing ... . I was worried about not being accepted,” he said in an online interview with DNAngels, a Carbondale-based nonprofit that helps people find their biological families.

Clauson used Ancestry.com and worked with volunteers at DNAngels. Through the genealogy platform, a woman contacted Clauson from Scotland. She said they were linked and that she suspected he was related to the Engelman family. Clauson gave that information to DNAngels, who narrowed it down to the Engelmans he now calls his family.

Wanting to know what Hugh Engelman looked like, Clauson searched online for a photo and found Engelman’s obituary. The obituary said donations could be made to St. Thomas The Apostle Catholic Church in Crystal Lake and that Engelman had worked at the Crystal Lake Public Library.

Coincidentally, the final step in meeting his siblings also involved Mike Higgins, a friend Clauson had known for a few years and who lived in Crystal Lake. Higgins had attended St. Thomas and had often gone to the library. Higgins told Clauson he may have even met Hugh Engelman or knew people who had.

Higgins said he spoke “with a number of people who knew Hugh, one of which had a picture of him” which he gave to Clauson. During the same timeframe, DNAngels was connecting Clauson to the Engelmans.

Nancy Weber, head of adult services at Crystal Lake library, said she knew Engelman, who in his retirement had worked there. His name appears in the library on a plaque that reads: “In honor of a gentleman and a scholar.”

“He was a gentleman’s gentleman,” Weber said. “I remember him being tall, like a gentle giant, and he knew a lot about history.”

Mia Souders, the second youngest sibling, said she found the plaque at the library “very appropriate ... He was very intelligent, very, very well read.”

In a DNAngels video where some of the siblings appear, they said they were initially shocked to learn they had a ninth sibling. But after meeting him, they said that shock was replaced with acceptance, love and empathy for Clauson’s journey. They say how much Clauson is like their father who one sibling described as “debonair and mild mannered.”

Biological father ‘would be very proud’

Souders, who lives in Wisconsin, said their father, who was an advertising executive, “would be very proud of the person John is and what he’s accomplished in his life, and what he overcame emotionally and the family he’s built.”

Clauson said the “main reason” the union with his Engelman siblings has been successful is because all of them are “magnificent people. They love each other, they respect each other, they work together, they are ... kind and loving.” Accepting him “was a natural thing for them to do because that is the way they are,” he said.

Laura Olmsted, founder and executive director of DNAngels, said “everyone deserves the right to know where they come from.” But she cautions that “truth-seeking can be emotionally complex.”

“When someone discovers that the story they were told about who they are isn’t complete or isn’t true, it can be profoundly destabilizing,” Olmstead said. “ForJohn, this wasn’t just about identifying a biological father or siblings; it was about finding a sense of belonging. It was about reclaiming a missing part of his identity and making sense of his own history.”

Clauson’s search also led to discovering that his mother had three other children with two other men after Engelman. She left them too, he said. The last known trace of her was giving birth in 1963 in North Carolina.

Clauson gave a presentation about his experience at the Antioch library entitled, “From One to 12.” He hopes to share his story at the Crystal Lake library, as well.

“I started out alone and now I am one of 12,” Clauson said. “It’s been a magnificent last couple of years. I’m glad to finally find out. I’m enjoying every moment of it.”

Though, he wishes he’d connected with his siblings “much earlier in life” he “is here now” and needs to make the most of the time he has, he said. “Someone said long ago, ‘You can look at the past but don’t stare.’ It happened. It’s done.”