This is an IHeart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Anyone who's lost a parent knows the sense of loss it engenders.

But for people who never knew their parents or one

of their parents, the feeling is quite different. Karen Olson grew up never knowing her father,

but her mom was reluctant to share any information about him. This developed a deep curiosity,

and she had a drive to know who was her dad.

Karen tried to fill in the blanks that her mother wouldn't.

Despite her effort, she came up empty until a chance encounter with a stranger.

Here's Karen to tell us the story. When I was growing up in Chicago in the 50s, I lived with my mother, her two sisters, and my grandfather. We lived in a six-flat

apartment building. We weren't very wealthy. In fact, we were pretty darn poor. When I went to

high school, I realized that my life wasn't like everybody else's. It was an all-girls school run by the same nuns that I'd had for however many years in grade school.

It was a familiar situation.

What wasn't familiar were things like the father-daughter dance.

What does this mean? I didn't even have an idea.

But when I found out that you had to have your

father bring you to this dance, I was just lost. I had no idea what that meant. So I asked my

mother. Everybody at my school had a father. And for this dance, I was expected to bring my father. Well, that was kind of a foreign concept to me.

I had cousins with fathers, but they were never around. They were always at work.

There was my grandfather, but he wasn't my father. So where was mine?

So I asked my mother, Mom, where is my father? Who is my father? Why isn't he living here

...