A former Yorkshirewoman has been reunited with the family she thought she would never see after almost 50 years and a continent apart.

Gene Medlicot, nee Tierney, was a baby when she was adopted after the tragic death of her father Albert in Australia.

The last time her aunt, Cal Tierney, saw Gene was during an overnight stay at her Beverley home in the 1950s.

Since then, the Tierney family had no idea what had happened to baby Gene.

But in July last year, Cal's nephew Paul, of Park Avenue, Beverley, got a telephone call from a hesitant Canadian woman who said her surname was Tierney.

Gene, now 48, was visiting her half sisters in Halifax, West Yorkshire, and a midnight meeting was set up between her and Paul before Gene had to fly back to Canada.

Now, after many tearful transatlantic phone calls, Gene has been reunited with her long-lost family members, including her uncle, Harry "Horace" Tierney and his wife Cal, of Citadel Court, Beverley.

A grand reunion party is planned for the Cricket Club in Swinemoor, Beverley, tonight, when the whole family, including Gene's great-great nieces and nephews, will have the chance to meet her.

Harry and Cal Tierney's daughter, Gillian Blackburn, of Kings Square, Beverley, said: "Gene found the name Tierney on her adoption papers when she was 11, but only last year did she find the Tierneys when she was in England - she had grown up not knowing that she had this other family."

Cal Tierney said: "Gene was brought back to England when her father died, and was then adopted.

"At 21, she met a Canadian, Tom, and they were married in 1975 after emigrating to Canada.

"To meet her is a fairytale. We are now looking forward to the reunion party - there will be lots of tears."

Gene, who now has two grown-up sons and a daughter of her own, said her heart was pounding when, after years of fruitless searching, she managed to track the Tierneys in the Hull phonebook during her visit to the UK last year.

But after calling Paul and realising they were cousins, years of heartache were erased.

Gene said: "The tears flowed but they were tears of joy."

And for the first time, thanks to the Tierneys, Gene now has photographs of her biological father, Albert Joseph Tierney, who died of cancer in May 1953.

She said: "For the first time in my life he had a face, it was my dad - my heart is full of love for a man that I had never had the opportunity to know or talk to."

This story first appeared in the Lincolnshire Echo

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