Dorris Vick had just come home from church on Easter when she received a special gift from her son.

“My son sent me some pictures of two guys and I said, ‘Who is that?’ He said, ‘Are you sitting down? These are you grandchildren.’ And I said, ‘What?’ I was a zombie,” the Russellville woman said, laughing. “It was a shocker. I was a zombie for two weeks. Everybody was saying, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ He even sent the DNA results when he sent the pictures so I would know.”

She met the boys for the first time this week.

While she was overjoyed with the idea of having grandchildren – something she thought she’d never have – she had lots of questions. How could her son, Demonse Vick, who now lives in Virginia Beach, Va., not have known he had twins?

A summer romance

Demonse Vick was 15 years old when he spent the summer in Virginia Beach with his father. He met his sons’ mother in a nightclub.

“I wasn’t the perfect angel kid. (My father) didn’t know I had used someone’s ID to get in the nightclub. (The woman) had no idea I was 15 when I met her,” he said. “She had to have been 22 or 23. I knew she had to be at least 21 because you had to be 21 to get in the club.” 

Demonse Vick saw his children’s mother the whole summer.

“I told her when I was getting ready to leave that I was only 15. I think she was somewhat embarrassed because she already knew she was pregnant,” he said. “I was 6-foot (tall) in high school. I was mature for a 15-year-old. The only thing that didn’t add up for her was why I seemed to be hanging around this young boy. He looked 15 and probably acted 15. She probably thought I was his mentor.”

When Demonse Vick was leaving Virginia Beach, he told her his real name – he had been using the name Dontae all summer – and gave her his address. She wrote him a letter letting him know she was pregnant. He told her he was joining the U.S. Army. He waited to hear back from her but never got a response.

“The person who let me use his ID to help me get in the club told me it was questionable I was the father. She was having another person tested,” he said. “When I didn’t hear from her I thought maybe they aren’t mine.”

Life goes on

Jalil and Rakim Lawrence, both 27, of Norfolk, Va., knew they had a father out there somewhere. They had been told his name was Dontae.

“I guess she forgot his name over time and then out of nowhere she kind of remembered,” Rakim Lawrence said. “She never hid anything from us, but she never went into detail. As we got older she figured we’d be ready to understand it.”

The twins have three sisters. They didn’t have too much guidance because their mother worked a lot, Rakim Lawrence said.

“We didn’t have a lot of restriction. We’d have babysitters,” he said. “We were good kids. When we got to be teenagers we didn’t have anybody watching us.”

As they got older, the twins didn’t think much about the fact that their father wasn’t in their lives.

“Me and my brother forgot about it all the way up until we turned 26,” Jalil Lawrence said.

Rakim Lawrence and his girlfriend were eating out one day and she wanted to know why he acted in certain ways.

“She started asking about my biological family. I said, ‘Just ask my mom about it,’ ” he said. ‘I guess they got to talking. They didn’t even tell us about it.”

Life also went on for Demonse Vick. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees. He worked with the U.S. Postal Service. He now works as a claims adjuster with State Farm. In college and at work, he began going by his first name – Marlon.

“No one in Virginia knew me by the name Demonse. When Facebook came out, it was set up by Marlon,” he said. “A lot of my friends in Kentucky, everybody knew me by Demonse. I changed from Marlon to Demonse three or four years ago. That’s when the mother found me.”

Family found

It was Christmas Eve when his sons’ mother found Demonse Vick on Facebook.

“She said she was looking for someone who was in Virginia Beach in the ’80s. I went to look at her page. I responded back that she had the right person,” he said. “When we talked on the phone, she told me she had a set of twins and they were mine.”

Demonse Vick immediately wanted to know what she had told his sons about his absence in their lives.

“She had always told them who I was. I appreciate her not telling them I was a bad father,” he said. “I told the boys we’d get together the first of the year.”

Jalil Lawrence got the phone call that changed his life on Christmas Day.

“I got a phone call and Mom said she’d found our pops and that’s how it kind of came about. I thought it was a lie, a joke,” he said. “I’ll never forget. It was Christmas Day at 8 p.m. and I was sitting on the couch. I was like, ‘Mom, stop lying. How did you find him?’ She got to snooping on Facebook and found him.”

“When she found him, she knew it was him,” Rakim Lawrence said.

The men met in January, but they were cautious.

“At first I was like, I don’t know,” Rakim Lawrence said. “We have completely different complexions and skin colors, but we’re going to do this because we’re already here.”

Demonse Vick agreed.

“When the mother sent pictures of the boys growing up I said, ‘Now I see it.’ We didn’t immediately start building a relationship because we didn’t know for sure. I felt since we didn’t have the DNA tests back we wouldn’t get close,” he said. “We would pull back and not make the relationship too strong. We waited to get the results back before we spent time together.”  

The trio took the test in February and got the results back right before Easter. It was a 99 percent match, Demonse Vick said.

“I was happy. I’m at that stage of life where I had given up that I was going to have children. I really wanted some,” he said. “I was meeting women and they made it clear that they didn’t want any children. I never really dated a younger woman. Now I don’t have to. I can date who I’m comfortable with dating.”

As soon as he got the results back, Demonse Vick called his parents.

“My dad is a minister in Virginia. He was excited. He asked when it happened. I told him it happened on his watch,” he said. “He was going through a divorce. We were staying at a hotel across the beach. He worked at night. I met a lot of different ladies going across the street to the beach.”

The twins’ mother said if she had known Demonse Vick was only 15, she would never have talked to him, he said.

“I said, ‘Yes, you would have.’ There were plenty of other women her age I had dealt with that summer. Everyone was 21, 25, maybe 30. That maybe set the phase where I couldn’t deal with women my age or younger,” he said. “She probably assumed I had a job. I must not have anyone staying with me. She never saw (his dad). I can see how she was blindsided.”

They are establishing a friendship, Demonse Vick said.

“She’ll call me and say something is going on with the boys. Right now she’s in Texas,” he said. “She’s coming back to Virginia in a couple of weeks. She may be moving back to Virginia Beach to be close to the boys.”

Getting to know his sons has been “good,” Demonse Vick said.

“The guys are great. I feel maybe they feel the same way about me. It’s still a learning experience. I see a lot of me in the way they conduct themselves,” he said. “They’re pretty private people. I think that’s good. I think the more time we spend together the more we’re going to learn about each other.” 

There has been a lot of love shown that he wasn’t expecting to get, Jalil Lawrence said.

“I love everybody. The first day (Doris Vick and he) met I knew she was so strict. She ran up and pulled my pants up. I never had anybody put that kind of authority on me,” he said. “I really got to be good and watch myself around her. I love my grandma for real. Me and my brother never had a grandma around to do stuff like that. She got me feeling like a little kid again. Me and my brother never had family on our side.”

When she sees them “sagging,” as some young people wear their pants, Dorris Vick pulls them up.

“I was strict with my son. They’re gonna know me. They’re getting used to me. I tell them things that will help them in life,” she said. “I don’t care how old they are. My son and daughter know I’m not gonna put up with certain stuff. It’s all good. I love them all.”

Rakim Lawrence said he loves and appreciates everyone.

“My sisters know their family, but it’s different when you know family from your own bloodline,” he said.

Becoming ‘Grandma’

Dorris Vick said she loved her grandsons dearly from the first time she saw them.

“I’m shocked, but I’ve always wanted grandchildren,” she said. “I thought I wasn’t going to have them at this point. I’ve worked with youth all my life.”

Having grandchildren has been bittersweet, though, Dorris Vick said.

“I was happy and I was sad. Twenty-seven years is a long time. I missed out on birthdays, Christmas. So many people left and they didn’t get to see them. I used to live in the (housing) projects. I told them if I’d known about them everybody in the projects would’ve known about them because they’d have been in Russellville every summer,” she said. “You never know why things work out the way they do. I could have been gone and never got to see then. I’m blessed. I thank God for it.”

During a visit this week that ended Thursday, Dorris Vick took time to get to know her grandsons and showed them everything she does in Russellville as director of Concerned Citizens of Logan County.

“I called in the other family members. We did a cookout Tuesday. We haven’t had a lot of time because everybody wants to meet them. I took them to the bank. They told me to bring them by to see them,” she said. “Quite a few people have seen them, but a lot of people haven’t. I put it on Facebook, so a lot of people have seen them there. I took them to the KP Hall. They stayed there for quite a few hours. A lot of people came there. They went to Franklin with my niece.”

Dorris Vick is proud of the men her grandsons have become, and she credits their mother.

“She’s done a great job with them. I told her that. They respect people,” she said. “I’m proud of them because they’re in college and working two jobs. I missed so much, but I’m making the best of it now.”

Dorris Vick’s grandsons plan to return to Russellville during Thanksgiving week.

“Virginia is such a long way from here, 12 hours,” she said.

Dorris Vick said she’s “on cloud nine.”

“I would’ve been shocked if somebody had told me I had one grandchild, but two and identical – I got a double blessing,” she said. “I’m just blessed, blessed, blessed to find out I had grandchildren this late in life.”

– Follow features reporter Alyssa Harvey on Twitter @bgdnfeatures or visit bgdailynews.com.