For years, veteran Bob Nore looked back at his experience in the Vietnam War as wasted time.

The North Dakota native and longtime Huntsville resident received the shock of his life this year when he discovered through DNA analysis that he unknowingly fathered a son with a young Vietnamese woman with whom he had a brief relationship in Saigon.

That child – now a working musician in Los Angeles – had been searching for his dad for years when Ancestry.com sent Nore the following message: We have found a very high probability of a father-son relationship between you and Son Vo.

Although Nore's memory of Vo's late mother is foggy, he knew the 45-year-old was his as he was born only six months after he left Vietnam. Nore, concerned Vo may not want a relationship with his biological father, waited for his son to reach out.

It was about two weeks later Vo sent Nore, 67, a message about the DNA match. A dialogue started and Nore's feelings about the war began to change.

"Apparently, something good came out of it," he said.


Nore and Vo's story is becoming more commonplace as an increasing number of people turn to DNA databases to learn about their origins. Nore would have never uncovered the father-son link had his wife, Debbie, not encouraged him to complete an $89 test called AncestryDNA, which measures a person's entire genome at over 700,000 locations.

After sending off a sample of his saliva, Nore learned in March he is descended from British, Irish and Scandinavian stock. The information wasn't a surprise to the retired engineer, who was collecting material for his family tree.

He didn't think any more about the test results until Ancestry.com sent him the fateful message. In California, Vo received a similar note but didn't see it until a couple of weeks later when he logged into his Ancestry.com account.

Vo, whose wife also purchased an AncestryDNA kit a year and a half ago to help him trace his roots, couldn't believe it when he learned the news. After giving up the search for his father a month earlier, he said it felt like winning a $200 million lottery ticket.

"To me, it's nothing short of a miracle," he said. "It's a testament to the advancement of mankind and technology. You can't even dream this stuff up."

http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2016/10/bob_nore_son_vo_dna.html#incart_river_home

Things like this could get real interesting when folks start finding out who the real daddy is.

Not according to some of the things I have read about the Green Zone.