THERE were emotional scenes when two sisters who lived separate lives on opposite sides of the world met for the first time. 


After 64 years apart, Lesley Fagan, who lives in Ballinamallard, and her sister Joan Lesley Crawford met at Dublin Airport after she arrived from Australia last week.


Joan, who described meeting her sister for the first time as “absolutely amazing”, is staying with Lesley for three weeks so the pair can spend some time together.


“I just felt like I was going to burst,” she told the BBC. “All my life I was an only child, all Lesley’s life she was an only child, we just had this immediate connection, there is just no other way to describe it.”


Lesley, who is originally from Lancashire, said it felt like a miracle and explained how she began her search for Joan in 1989 after her mother told her she had a half sister. Almost 28 years later and she found her in October 2015 when she had been on the verge of giving up.


Lesley told BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster: “Although my mum was not a teenager at the time, she was one of six girls who lived with their father because their mother, my grandmother, had passed away some time ago.

"They were from a really, really, strict Catholic community, my mum desperately wanted to keep the baby. Another sister said it would bring shame upon the family and that it would kill my granddad.”


She explained that when the nun left the room at the mother and baby home, her mother saw the name and address of the prospective parents and told her the details 40 years later.


“Just before my mum had to sign the papers she had a look on the desk where she was sat and she found the names of the adoptive parents and also the exact address where they lived and she kept that with her for 50 years or so. How she remembered that and never forgot, I just don’t know, but that was unbelievable.”


Lesley later made an appeal on Facebook which was later picked up by two genealogists in Australia.


Joan told the BBC that her daughter had been contacted via Facebook and described the night she was told about her sister.


“My daughter said ‘mum I have got to come over, I have got something to tell you’. I was terribly worried, because she was so stressed and she said ‘mum, do you know that you are adopted?’ My parents had never told me, but I did find a letter when I was a little girl.

"It was enormous and it was enormous for my daughter as well. I was in tears, but then she said wait mum there is more, did you know you have a sister?’ It was very emotional.”