Family reunited after 25 years apart
Published: October 9, 2005
A father and daughter have been reunited after 25 years apart - thanks to the Evening News.
Earlier this week we reported that Ashleigh Johns had not seen her dad Allan Christopher Johns since her parents’ acrimonious divorce when she was just two years old.
Now 25 years later the single mum said she was yearning to catch up with her dad to introduce him to his grandsons Matthew, seven, and Logan, four.
That could now happen sooner rather than later after the Evening News tracked Mr Johns down to a mobile home park in Stratton Strawless, about five miles north of Norwich.
We passed on his daughter’s phone number to him, and the two then spoke together for the first time in 25 years on Thursday night.
Mr Johns, a landscape gardener, said: “It was a bit emotional speaking to my daughter. It just came out of the blue.
“I have known about her all the time but I would really like to keep it as private as possible at the moment. It’s all new to me and I’ve got to get used to the idea.”
The pair are bound to have a lot of catching up to do. Until now Miss Johns had known next to nothing of her father except his name and what he looked like from a tiny wedding photo.
The mother-of-two contacted The Evening News because she believed her estranged father lived in the Norwich area.
Since her plea several people contacted us with news about Mr Johns, who is believed to have family in Norwich and once to have been a postman.
Miss Johns, who lives in Caerphilly in Wales, had been trying to track him down but she had only ever reached dead ends.
When her maternal grandmother mentioned last year that Mr Johns’ mother lived to Weobley in Herefordshire it became the start of her search.
Finally Miss Johns, who has no memory of her father, had a breakthrough when a computer search linked him to Norwich.
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