Family history: A missing father, a faraway war and a presidential connection

When Washington native Jim Nailon embarked on a DNA technology-assisted quest to find the identity of his father, an unlikely chain of events led to him having lunch with President Michael D Higgins

Jim Nailon at his father’s grave in Kilconly, Co Galway

This is the story of an American man who used DNA technology to discover his long-lost links to Ireland, the Korean War and Áras an Uachtaráin. Jim Nailon knew nothing about who his birth parents were, and the odds against him ever discovering the names of both of them were slim.

But thanks to the advances in DNA matching, he would eventually embark on a journey that would reveal his Irish roots and bring him ...