COVINGTON, Ga. — Ed Sanders could not believe the news he received in March.

It had been more than half a century since the events leading up to it had occurred. The Michigan native and his wife had been married 55 years and he at first discounted it, he said.

But Sanders, 74, found out earlier this year that he had a 53-year-old biological daughter in Michigan he never knew existed. 

Then, the retired Georgia Power employee, wife Nancy and son, Eddie, “drove up during this COVID thing and took a chance.” They traveled 900 miles in July to meet his newfound child, Tina Sherbutt, and her family.

“Ed was a nervous wreck,” Mrs. Sanders said.

Sherbutt was expecting them, but Sanders said he greeted her on her doorstep with a dozen pink roses and a hug — despite the pandemic that can make such actions hazardous.

“Wonderful week, wonderful family,” Sanders said. “They’re coming down to Covington (in September) to bring their family here to see where we live.

“For our account, it went from absolutely shocked to just euphoria. It’s wonderful to be 74 and have a daughter you didn’t know you had,” Sanders said.

Sherbutt, who lives in Fort Gratiot, Michigan, said she was to meet the Sanders’ daughter, JaNiece Sopha, this weekend after meeting the Sanders and their son in July. 

“They’re truly wonderful people — I hear from Ed every day,” she said. “He’s really incorporated himself into our family.”

Sanders found out about Sherbutt from Sopha, who happened upon her using the AncestryDNA testing service.

A Maryland resident, Sopha, 47, first used the Ancestry service to submit DNA because of questions about her grandfather.

She learned about her grandfather but the DNA service also showed she was somehow related to Sherbutt — who also had been curious about her family tree and had submitted DNA to Ancestry in 2018.

Sherbutt also lived near the town where Sopha’s parents grew up. In March, Sopha used Facebook to contact Sherbutt and they hit it off. 

Then Sopha, on the same day, contacted her father to tell him what she found, Ed Sanders said.

“I got a text … that said, ‘Daddy, you’ve been a great dad, you’ve been a wonderful father … but Dad, you’ve got some ’splainin’ to do,’” he said.

He later took the AncestryDNA test and confirmed they were father and daughter.

Nancy Sanders, who is retired from Lifeway Christian Bookstores, said she “really wasn’t surprised” when she got the news. She contacted Sherbutt and told her she was happy they were related, even before her husband confirmed it with a DNA test. 

Mrs. Sanders told the Port Huron Times Herald newspaper she initially was bothered by the revelation but believed their marriage should not be sacrificed for something her husband did when he was 19.

Ed Sanders told The Covington News he entered the military on his 17th birthday. When he was 19 and recently returned to his hometown of Port Huron, Michigan, in 1966, he met Sherbutt’s mother for what was a one-time “indiscretion.”

The Sanders later moved to Atlanta around 1970 and Ed went on to a career with Georgia Power Co. and the Rockdale County Sheriff’s Office before he retired.

“God turned around what the devil could have used to destroy our 55-year marriage into a wonderful blessing for all of us,” Ed Sanders said.

Sherbutt, meanwhile, grew up in Port Huron — a town northeast of Detroit that literally borders Canada at the southern tip of Lake Huron. She is an accountant for a natural gas company there and is married with three adult children.

She said she long felt the man who raised her — who died in 1991 — was not her biological father but could not confirm it until an aunt told her after her mother’s death in 2009.

After that, she discovered she was possibly related to Sopha and her sister, Alabama resident Shelley Walden, before Sopha contacted Sherbutt in March.

“I was thankful for JaNiece opening that door,” Sherbutt said.

“Everyone’s so amazed by it,” she said. “It’s wonderful news at a time when there’s not a lot of good news.”

When the two families met in July in Michigan, they had to be extra careful about how they greeted each other in the midst of a pandemic. Sherbutt’s husband is medically fragile and underwent a stem cell transplant in March.

But the two families had more than DNA in common. Both Eddie Sanders, a South Carolina resident, and Sherbutt’s husband Ron are Navy veterans. Sopha’s husband is from Michigan. 

In September, the Sherbutts will bring two of their children to meet the Sanders and their three other children in Covington.

Sherbutt admitted her family had not been close growing up. 

But both Sanders and Sherbutt are glad a new relationship has been discovered between grandparents and grandchildren. She said it means her children will have grandparents again after many years.

“This is nice,” Sherbutt said. “It’s different for them because … it’s been a long time since they had grandparents.”

Ed Sanders said the turn of events “has been a blessing to our entire family.”

“(Sherbutt’s parents) and her husband’s parents died over 11 years ago. The grandchildren now have living, loving grandparents,” he said.

Sopha said on her Facebook page that she got more from the AncestryDNA test than she “could have ever dreamed.”

“This is just the best story and we are all so blessed to find a piece of our lives that was missing!” Sopha said.