Adoptee to run ultramarathon to raise funds for adoption community

Dan Smith, 45, was unloading his groceries into his Parma home in 2013 when his phone started ringing.

“Yeah, hold on one second,” he yelled out loud, goofing around.

When he finally reached his phone and answered the unknown number, he stopped in his tracks. It was his birth mother.

“Hi Dan, it’s your mom,” Bush said.

Donna Bush was also bringing her groceries in and had just opened her mail to find a letter he had mailed to her, introducing himself as her son.

After some quivering, Smith responded, “Oh, hi! How are you?”

Three months later, Smith traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio, to meet Bush in person — but it wasn’t exactly a meeting. This was the woman who had given him life.

From that moment on, his journey to finding himself had begun.

Though Smith’s story is unique, he is one of 5 million Americans who are adopted, according to the Adoption Network. After reuniting with both of his birth parents, he has spent his time giving back to the Adoption Network Cleveland community, a nonprofit that helped him in his search.

Now at 57 years old, Smith is raising money for the ANC in an extreme way: by running a 24-hour ultramarathon at Lake Metroparks Chapin Forest Reservation. On May 2, for every hour he runs, he hopes to raise $1,000.

Leading up to the race, he wants to spread as much awareness about adoption as possible.

“[Adoption has] given me so many answers to who I am,” Smith said.

Discovering the Adoption Network Cleveland

Smith enjoys spending time outdoors, fishing, running and riding his motorcycle. He retired from firefighting at 49 years old after 30 years.

His parents adopted one other son before him. Growing up, he spent much of his time at his aunt and uncle’s home, as his at-home life was difficult.

In 2012, a friend on his volleyball team told Smith that her dad had recently reunited with his son, who was adopted. She shared information about the ANC, and it piqued his curiosity.

“I never cared about being adopted,” Smith said. “I knew my entire life I was adopted, and it didn’t bother me in the least.”

That night, he looked up the ANC. It just so happened that there was a meeting five days later, and he decided to go.

“That day, I kind of forced myself to go and had to give myself a pep talk to actually walk in the building,” he said.

Smith’s friend told Linda Bellini, the past program and volunteer coordinator at the ANC at the time, that he was coming ahead of time. Each meeting was set up with a big circle of chairs so everybody could face each other and be heard.

Bellini said when she saw a man sitting outside the circle against one of the walls, she went over, introduced herself and encouraged Smith to come sit next to her.

As everybody went around the circle introducing themselves, Smith said it was like a “punch right in the eye” to find out that there were actual birth parents in the meeting.

“I just about fell out of my chair, like, oh my God, these mythical people are real,” he said. “I’m like, I’ve never seen a birth mom before in the wild.”

Two hours later, the meeting had ended, and Smith found himself sobbing in his car, completely overwhelmed.

After the meeting, Bellini had given him her card in case he ever thought about searching for his birth parents.

“You’re always curious, but no, I had never really given it a serious thought,” Smith said. “I just didn’t know what to do, but I did know that I had to go back to the meeting.”

He knew there was something there for him — it was a place to begin the process of understanding who he really was.

How Dan reunited with his birth parents

Not long after this meeting, Smith decided to start his search with Bellini. He almost never missed a meeting going forward.

They conducted his search the old-school way, going to the library and looking things up.

“It was literally like detective work,” Smith said. “They would just keep putting the pieces together until it was undeniable.

It only took Bellini about a month to find his birth mom. Smith was able to find his mother’s relatives from there, and he made a whole family tree.

“I could just see him changing as he went through this process about learning more about his background, his nationality, just getting some of the information that he didn’t know about,” Bellini said.

Smith wrote a letter to Bush and gave it to all the birth parents in his meetings to proofread and edit.

Bellini said she prepared him for all the possible outcomes of sending the letter: Bush could be thrilled, or there could be a refusal to accept contact.

“I was so nervous of saying the wrong thing in that letter that it sat on my counter for a couple months,” he said.

When he finally connected with his mom and visited her, he found that they laughed at all the same things.

“Neither one of us could get words out of our mouths fast enough meeting each other,” he said. “We just wanted to know everything about each other, and it was so much fun sharing ourselves back and forth.”

Smith learned that Bush’s parents both died in a car accident when she was 14. She was sent to her grandmother’s house, who didn’t want her there. At 19, she married an abusive man, and they had a baby, who is Smith’s half-brother.

While working as a bartender in Cleveland, she had a one-night stand and became pregnant with Smith.

“She was living on the streets with a three-year-old, and she couldn’t take care of another kid, so she made an adoption plan with social services,” Smith said.

He was adopted right away by two parents who had adopted another child about three and a half years before Smith.

Smith’s birth mother never told anyone about him, and he didn’t pressure her to do so once he entered her life.

“I’ve gotten more than I want already,” he told her. “I got to meet you, … so I’m more than happy.”

A few years after reuniting, Bush was diagnosed with cancer and passed away.

Once DNA tests started to come out, Smith decided to try taking one. In doing so, he connected with his father and his wife, who live in West Virginia, through a first cousin. He said the process was a lot easier the second time.

“He is the nicest, sweetest man,” he said. “They have that absolutely hillbilly accent that is hilarious and beautiful.”

They met in person in 2019. Today, they don’t go longer than a month and a half without talking on the phone, and Smith plans on visiting this summer.

Smith said after meeting each of his parents, there was a sort of “honeymoon phase.”

“Once all the stories are done, then it’s just the same relationship basically you have with your dad,” he said. “You have to learn how to manage that. … Now we know we can call each other and talk to each other any time we want, and neither of us are going away, and it’s okay.”

“I had to learn how to not want to call my mom every five minutes,” he said.

Giving back

Smith said he went from not really caring about being adopted to it being a huge part of his life. He feels he has a debt he can never repay to the ANC.

He co-facilitates meetings once a month for the ANC, and he volunteers, doing maintenance. He even got an ANC tattoo on his leg.

Betsie Norris, who founded the ANC in 1988 after searching for her own birth parents, said Smith is extremely helpful to have around. He adds to the ANC community, which is built on 12 staff members and a couple of hundred volunteers every year.

The network has a variety of programs aimed at helping everybody under the adoption constellation, including adoptees, birth parents, birth family members, siblings, adoptive parents and more.

“It’s about finding the truth of your life and your origins and your identity and how to integrate that,” Norris said. “It’s so healing to be able to change things for people and to watch the world open up in so many ways so that these things are more out in the open and more socially acceptable.”

To get involved or receive support from the ANC, anyone can call the organization at (216) 325-1000 or send an email to hello@adoptionnetwork.org. There are also resources on its website. They hold multiple fundraising events, including the upcoming Over the Edge event in August.

Smith said he hopes people in the adoption world will come out to his ultramarathon in consolidation and walk a lap, eat dinner with him or share their adoption story. The run will take place at 10381 Hobart Rd. in Kirtland, Ohio, on May 2, beginning at 8:00 a.m.

He hopes to connect with those who have stories similar to his own.

“[Adoption has] now become everything to me,” Smith said.