June 27, 2001
Finding family
Seneca County native finally finds her way home
By Greta Hale
Staff Writer
Growing up moving from orphanages, to a foster family, to an adoptive family and then to a girls' home was hell for Dawnel Kuhn.
But Kuhn finally was able to come to peace with who she is when she met her father's family on Father's Day.
"It's really scary going through life not knowing who you are," Kuhn said.
Kuhn was born Dawnel Louise McDonald on April 30, 1973, in Tiffin. Her father, Gregory McDonald, died in a car crash when Dawnel was seven months old.
McDonald was 23 when he died in a car crash on River Road June 27, 1973. He lived in Republic at the time.
"They say that every bone in his body was broken except for his collar bone," Kuhn said.
He was rumored to have been drag racing when he crashed, which was not uncommon in those days, said Tim Weber, Gregory's half-brother who was 11-years-old when McDonald died.
McDonald hit a mailbox, a telephone pole and went into a ditch. Then the car went to the other side of the road and crashed into a tree.
A passenger in the accident survived.
Within a year of the accident, baby Dawnel moved to Denton, Texas, with her mother and her father's family never heard from her again.
Until now.
"There wasn't a day that went by that I didn't think, 'Where is she?' " Weber said about Kuhn.
Kuhn had been looking for her family in phone books from Akron.
Then, on May 30, "Something told me to look back at my social history paper," Kuhn said, refering to agency documents.
She realized from the paper that she was born in Tiffin, not Akron.
She looked up all of the McDonalds in Tiffin. There were 11 listed online. She first called Daryl McDonald, who is Gregory's brother.
Daryl called her back.
"It is a wonderful feeling to know that you have family left," Kuhn said.
Gregory McDonald's family had saved mementos of him to give to Kuhn. They saved Greg's lunch box, his car keys, a photo of him from the Marines, a letter from Kuhn's father to her mother and a topper to her parents' wedding cake.
All of this time, Kuhn had thought her father died in a motorcycle accident. She visited her dad's grave site on Father's Day.
Kuhn tearfully explained that when she visited her father's grave, she told him, "I finally found you."
"He would of been my best friend," Kuhn said about her father.
She said her adoptive family called her a flower child, and she thinks from the photos that her parents were hippies, she said.
Meeting Kuhn has meant a lot to the entire family and is like a new beginning, Weber said.
To Kuhn, it feels like her dad has been there with her, she said.
"Greg has been gone 28 years. It's like this is as close as we can get to our brother," Weber said.
"I notice every once in a while the family members will look at me and see my dad," Kuhn said. "I've had people say I act just like my father in so many ways."
Kuhn and her father are similar because they are both head strong, determined, but with a soft side, Weber said.
Weber said it seems like Kuhn has been in Tiffin with the family forever.
It was a shock to Weber that Kuhn was a 28-year-old woman with kids of her own. Weber had frozen her in his memory as an infant.
"It's like a ghost from the past," Weber said. "Somehow Greg has reached the family through his daughter."
After moving away from her dad's family to Texas, Kuhn's mother was remarried and divorced there.
"She was bounced all around the United States," Weber said about Kuhn. "She went through hell."
She was sent to an orphanage in Fort Worth, Texas, after her mother was divorced.
Then, at age 3, Kuhn got lucky. She was sent to live with a foster family, Richard and Linda Lira in Fort Worth. Richard was a Delta Airlines captain and Linda was a nurse.The family had three little girls and one of them, named Jennifer, was Kuhn's age. Kuhn vividly remembers living with the Liras. They wanted to adopt her.
"I was being taken care of so well and I loved it there," Kuhn said.
But, According to Kuhn, Catholic Social Services, which was handling Kuhn at the time, wouldn't allow foster parents to adopt children.
Therefore, at age four, a police officer came and took Kuhn away from her foster family.
"It was a really, really horrific day because they just yank you away," Kuhn said. "After this happened, they never had another foster child again," Kuhn said about the Liras.
Meanwhile, back in Tiffin, Kuhn's deceased father's brother and his wife, Dennis and Debbie McDonald, were looking for Dawnel and wanted to adopt her. They went to Texas to try to find Dawnel. But Catholic Social Services told them she had already been adopted, according to Kuhn.
"Catholic Social Services had lied to my family," Kuhn said. "It was more about money than anything."
After being yanked out of the loving arms of her foster family, Kuhn, at age four, was flown to Kansas where she was adopted three months later. But, Kuhn was so stressed from the constant moving that she never really bonded with her adoptive family.
"To me, the Liras were my birth family," Kuhn said.
From age four to seventh grade, Kuhn was with her adoptive family. Then, they had a horrific divorce and put Kuhn in a girl's home the next year. Kuhn stayed in a girl's home until she contacted the Liras her junior year of high school.
The Liras wanted Kuhn to go back to Texas and live with them. So, she moved to Gainesville, Texas, for half a year. She then moved back to Kansas so she could graduate from high school. Staying in Texas would of delayed her graduation because not all of the credits would transfer.
In Kansas, she worked three jobs as a waitress and decided she did not want that kind of life for herself, she said.
After graduation, Kuhn joined the Navy for four years.
Kuhn now has two kids of her own and works for a phone company in Jacksonville, Fla.
She said she got out of an abusive relationship with her husband.
Kuhn's biological mother, whom she hasn't seen since she was a baby, took a bus from Denton to meet her in Findlay last week.
It turns out her mother was living in Denton the entire time.
When Kuhn was living in Gainesville, she used to go to Denton to go the movies and bars.
"I could've walked past her and never even knew it," Kuhn said about her mother.
Her mother asked her to forgive her for not being there for Kuhn all these years.
"I said, 'There's nothing to forgive,' " Kuhn said.
Kuhn, however, does have a lot of animosity towards the Catholic Social Services. The agency should have let her stay with the Liras or move to Tiffin with her father's brother and his family, Kuhn said.
She said the system has improved since the 1970s.
Kuhn plans on moving with her two children to Tiffin so she can be near her family. She wants to live in a small town where her children -- Brandon, 5 and Jasmine, 7 -- can play.
"I want a simple life for my kids," she said.