BRICK – Imagine being an only child for your entire life, but then suddenly discover you have not one, but two brothers?
Brick Township resident Kate Booth shared her story about meeting her brothers for the first time and how they changed her life.
Kate grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey, and moved to Brick Township in 2007. All her life, she was an only child who didn’t know much about her birth father. She had her mother, and during her teenage years is when a stepfather became present in her life. She shared how her mother passed in 2007 due to cancer and her stepfather suddenly passed in 2016.
Fast forward to 2017 when Kate decided she wanted to take a 23andMe DNA test to learn more about her ancestry.
“I always knew that I was Irish, but I never knew anything about my birth father. Like what his nationality was, that type of information. So, I wanted to do it out of curiosity,” Kate said. “When I took the test, I was not looking to find any relatives.”
Kate received her results in January of 2018, but one month later she wasn’t expecting to receive one of the most important emails of her life.
“The email said ‘hey you might be my half-sister,’” Kate said. “Now I’m 50 years old at the time, and I just stare at the email thinking ‘what do I do?’ How do you respond to this?!”
The email was from a man named Gary Prescott, which happened to share Kate’s father’s last name. After emailing back and forth asking questions about her birth father, Kate discovered that Gary was her brother.
“This is real. This is my real brother,” Kate said.
One month later, Kate and Gary found out they had another half-sibling through the ancestry test. They found their brother Rance after he replied back to an old email.
“In a matter of three months I found that I had two brothers. Let’s just say we were meant to find each other,” Kate said.
The siblings met for the first time on Mother’s Day in 2019. They shared all of their stories and learned that growing up, they didn’t live far from each other.
“My older brother Gary grew up in Morris County. My younger brother Rance lived in the same town as me for a couple of years,” Kate explained. “We were probably less than a mile away from each other… my younger brother and I probably went to the Maplewood pool together and wouldn’t have known that we were related!”
She even said how despite having the same last name “Prescott” growing up, their paths never crossed and she had no idea she had two brothers.
The three last saw each other in November 2021. Kate said it’s tough to get together because now Gary lives in California and Rance lives in Maryland.
“It’s tough, but we talk over the phone almost every week and of course we text every day,” Kate said.
Kate explained how surreal this experience has been and how she’s happy to be a part of a large family with two siblings, two uncles and multiple nieces and nephews.
“Now that they and their families are a part of my life and my family’s life, I cannot imagine life without them,” Kate said. “We all needed each other at the time we all came into each other’s lives. The support that we give each other, whether it’s over the phone or through text message, it’s something none of us ever knew before. It’s really special.”
