Danny Vann is a musician, an Alumni of the Elvis Presley Impersonator Hall of Fame, author, and former foster youth. He tells his story of where he came from and the struggles that he faced.
However, he doesn’t stop there. He is actively trying to give back and help current foster youth. His ebook is aimed squarely at kids aging out of the system and provides knowledge and resources that they can use to begin their own path in life.
Danny is also the author of a physical book. His book My Journey in the Shadow of the King is available on Amazon (link below).
Danny’s Links
My Journey in the Shadow of the King
Danny Vann’s Facebook Group for Foster Care Survivors
Foster Care: An Unparalleled Journey
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Transcript
foster care nation listen up this is foster care and online
strength for the powerless courage for the fearful hope and healing for wounded hearts hello welcome back to foster care and unparalleled journey today’s guest we have danny van with us danny how are you doing today awesome awesome glad to be here i’m glad you could make it today is is a story about a guy who knows a thing or two about some foster care stories um beginning a couple years back with your own right yes that’s right yes um been through a lot how did you end up in the foster care system um well the i suppose typical uh broken home syndrome uh parents had a violent uh divorce uh back in the late 60s mom got all six kids um tried to struggle along uh you know jobs for uh women back then weren’t really that glamorous and so she kind of struggled uh to to keep us fed and stuff and we went through uh they didn’t have wic back then so we had korean war surplus powdered eggs powdered milk brick cheese all that good stuff struggled to get along she couldn’t really make ends meet so she started farming us out to family so we went through what they today call the kinship process and those didn’t last very long before we wound up back at mom’s she remarried and this is all before foster care remind you right she remarried that failed uh after about a year year and a half uh everything then she got depressed everything kind of fell apart at that point the house got condemned and she took us to a catholic orphanage st vincent’s home in saginaw and we spent a cycle there i say a cycle about a year and from there they put us out foster care and so by this time i’ve been in five or six different school systems uh my five siblings and i were split up boys and girls at the home uh but it was a blessing i i can still remember walking up the steps it was great big huge like you see in the movies those great big huge brick you know majestic buildings and 14 steps to lead up to the front door and uh man we went up there and guess what we got new clothes we had food every day we had people caring about us and watching over us and uh and i was pretty tall at that point for my age i was about 10 11 years old uh maybe 12. and so i was one of the taller people on the playground so the bullies all i had to do was have a little chat with them and they kind of left my family alone so we survived pretty well there so that was the stepping out of all of that chaos into a foster home that that leads you up to me entering the foster home itself so well that had to be scary for a young kid how old were you when when you ended up when your mom ended up starting farming you guys out and then you stepped into a foster into the foster system itself it was i was i’m the oldest of six and i was about uh nine ten years old when all this started
and so you know again being the oldest of six kids i was groomed to be the caretaker mom bragged that by the time i was four i could change a diaper so even at four years old i was mom’s right-hand man you know and so i was the caretaker you know looking after everybody making sure everybody was safe and taken care of and it was crazy just totally crazy well i imagine that you mentioned walking in that you were surprised even happy that you’re seeing food on a regular basis and new clothes and things like that but i imagine that had to be frightening as well for a kid of any age but eight or nine 10 years old you’re you’re probably still in a place with some fear yeah it was it it really was but here here’s the good thing we had been raised uh if if mom didn’t do anything right the one thing that she did do was take us to church every sunday we went to catechism we you know so we got the basics and that that was awesome right so we were around the catholic church and we saw the the priests and the nuns and when we walked up those steps to that great big huge building that i i agree with you under normal circumstances would be very intimidating to a youngster you know uh but we got dropped off and all of the people that met us at the door were nuns in the old traditional habits right and and they had a couple of priests um and uh you know with the great big smiling faces they had knights of columbus volunteers so i mean it was it was a happy place believe it or not i mean i hate to i hate to pull the annie card out but i mean it was it was a decent place you know i mean uh and and and it was stable environment for us you know so scary or not it was still it if you’re talking about little orphan annie um if you’re just listening to this i promise you guys he doesn’t look like a little orphan annie she she was a lot cuter no offense but she was that’s all right i get it so you know i talk to a lot of people about their their journeys and a lot of kids are very angry about the journey that they went through and they place that anger in different places whether they’re angry at their parents or they’re angry at the foster parents or the system itself where did you have that where did you place that anger as a kid you know when it first all started our anger really first was pointed at dad because he’s the one that left right and you know we we didn’t understand what was going on because of her age and because they you know all i knew is that leading up to the divorce there were a lot of fights and arguments so uh our my anger and the anger of most of my siblings at the beginning was was a dad then when mom dropped us off you know uh there was a lot of confusion when we were going to the relatives but at least we were around people we knew and they for the most part were okay with having us around at least at the beginning uh of course then when they had to send us back then you got more anger because now you’re angry at the people who could have shoulda would have helped right but they only did a little bit and it wasn’t enough so now you’re angry at them uh because they didn’t step up uh and trust me our family were italian you know so mom had eight brothers and sisters i had eight aunts and uncles and there’s only six of us you know they all had pretty good-sized families though to be honest but so dad we targeted dad then we got mad at the relatives and then when mom dropped us off it was like see she got pregnant when she was 15 i was born when she was 16. by the time she was 22 she had six kids wow so none of this should be a surprise to anybody right when she finally dropped us off at the orphanage it was i suppose for her somebody took a couple thousand pounds weight off her back and she went and flew like an eagle we didn’t see her for quite a while and when we did see her it was hit and miss excuse me and you know it so then the anger went back to her too it’s it’s like who does care about us you know uh i was fortunate the foster homes that i was in i was in only two of them uh were were very good and the people were good uh some of my siblings that wasn’t quite so lucky but um you know so the anger pretty much goes back to the parents you know and and we carried that back and forth for quite a while um as life went on because there’s a lot more to the story it you know it does turn out pretty darn good uh you know god god has a plan we don’t understand it at the time but uh it did turn out good so the anger part yeah yeah it was it was the parents and the relatives they they they could have shoulda would have done more i know it’s a common thing to see did you ever find yourself angry at god for putting you in that position as a kid were you in that mindset i i can’t say that i was because i like i said we were we were brought up with god and so i kept begging god to help i kept begging god to help me understand you know i kept begging god for the miracles you know give us a miracle uh but no i don’t think myself i never really got mad at god because you know i know he’s in control of it all i never understood it so what i did was i i prayed for understanding and uh and i got it eventually yeah unfortunately that understanding part usually takes a hot minute to get to yeah it takes yeah it takes a few hot minutes and that’s that’s i asked that question you know not to to point anything at cod there but i know a lot of people especially when their kids have a hard time understanding that long game that seems that god’s plans are usually long game plans they are long game plans and here’s the thing is you know i i wound up studying a lot more to me god was the thing that helped me together god and my music i love music okay so you know even as a little kid before everything fell apart uh you know i was mom was in love with with elvis singing i became infatuated with his music who i mean it’s kind of who wouldn’t love that all that fun kind of fun music as a kid you know you get to jump around and all that so god to me was part of my anchor and knowing that he had a plan and that something was going to happen that would work out even though we had all these circumstances things worked out with things good things happened along the way they weren’t all everything i wanted or everything that we want every every kid wants everything go back the way it was and for it to be good but that’s not life you know that’s not normal uh rarely does that happen to my observation but i learned a lot about god in that those people that that he loves he chastens and and and even you go back and look at some of the big stories about joseph he was in prison all those years for something he didn’t do you look at david and and here he was anointed king and he had to run for his life and hide in caves for years you know so when i started looking around and saying well you know these are these are the big guys in the bible and look what god did to them to get them ready you know so i kind of look at it again i’m an optimist so to me it’s not only about it the glass looks half full to me it’s like it’s half full on its way to being filled up because there’s more i know there’s more you know and if i if i work at it if i’m positive if i try to find people that can help make it better it can get better and it does you know sometimes most of the time it’ll get better well i don’t know if you’re familiar with carol dweck’s work at all or not but she’s the author of the book mindset and she talks a lot about the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset you know the difference between life sucks or life is difficult right now you know it’s not better or it’s not better yet and that’s a mindset that most kids don’t stumble into how did you find that dad dad in in in the priests and the nuns at catechism god has a plan he’s working things out my dad always told me you can do anything you want if you put your mind to it and so i put the two of those together and it’s like i’m gonna get through this i know we can make it better and the other thing is i had five little brothers and sisters in tow so i’m the kid out front chopping the weeds and pushing people out of the way to protect my family from a very young age you know so i had a lot of motivation i can believe that for sure now did you ever get a chance to reconnect with your with your bio family yes did you reconcile those those issues with them uh after a lot of struggling we finally did yeah it took a while and like i said more than a hot minute because uh excuse me um it it took a while because there was denial there was you know uh you know as a kid you you kind of sort of want to blame yourself but then you get to grow up and you start looking at things through an adult’s eyes and you look back and you go wait a minute why did they do that and i write about that in my book my journey in the shadow of the king there’s a whole chapter on recognizing that my parents are people too and they were doing what they thought at the time and i’m not gonna use the word best because some of it was pretty crappy you know but they did what they had to at that moment in time for them you know to survive and do what they could for us whatever it was and again i’m trying to avoid the word best because that’s a judgmental call but i i it was a revelation to me to discover in my parents case that when my mom uh who was a product of the depression the great depression she was a child in that and so was my dad they were both born in the middle of the depression okay so they had little when my mom’s parents couldn’t feed all nine of the kids they farmed mom out to aunt marion’s house for a year or two so guess what mom did when she got stranded with six kids and couldn’t feed him anymore out you go that’s the way we do things and i i didn’t put that together honestly until i started writing the book i had gone back and talked to mom i had asked her why did you do this and of course the answer you usually get is well that’s the best i could do and i’m not going back there it’s too painful yadda yadda right it’s like well yeah it’s painful for you but i’m trying to figure this out here for the rest of my life well just let it go it’s like no it doesn’t work that way i got to understand you know and this understanding came to me and um and it turns out that parents are people too and they make mistakes and unfortunately when they have kids we get caught in a crossfire oh unfortunately you’re very right there so how long did you were you in foster homes i was in between the the the kinship care in the the couple of foster homes it was a probably about four to five years total uh and by the time the quote-unquote rescue came this was really heavy because um you know in that fourth or fifth year uh my two of my sisters were being put up for adoption and that was just crushing i was devastated it’s like what’s gonna happen i’m ever gonna see him again you know and so i’m crying out to god what what are we gonna do now you know and next thing i know uh there’s a paper that shows up at the foster home that says dad has repurchased the family property and is in the process of getting it re-certified as a living place again and he’s going to get all six of us kids back maybe he did wow oh yeah yeah so the problem is is he hadn’t really healed from all of his problems so we went back into more violence more alcohol a step mom that he met at one of the corner bars who was supposed to originally be our nanny and wound up being our stepmom and she was an alcoholic over their 30 years of marriage he broke her jaw three times
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so when we went back into the house it was kind of a little bit of a honeymoon very short honeymoon and then kaboom the fight started the arguing started the the fist through the doors started again and it was deja vu all over again you know but this time the difference was i was about 15. right and i went to the caseworker in the front of the court and i said this crap ain’t working this is not a healthy place i don’t want to be there anymore because i saw healthy when i was in the foster home right i saw healthy at the orphanage relatively healthy right and so i’m going i don’t have to i i can’t do this again you know and so we did bounce back and forth when when mom heard that dad uh bought the house and was fixing up getting those kids back all of a sudden out of wherever it was she flew to she flew back and she wanted the kids right of course those are my kids what are you doing with them it’s like well you left them you know so that started up and uh mom hated the stepmother and police were called and you know fights broke out um mom opened a pizzeria i wonder where she got the money from i finally found out dad had to pay her off on the house because it was her house you know so uh this story i mean so mom’s closing the pizzeria going to meet uh dad and the stepmother because they punished one of my siblings and mom had so many rolls of quarters in her purse and uh and the scuffle ensued and mom just swung her purse and money you know the coins went flying everywhere after it made contact with step mom who went flying head over heels i wasn’t there for it but we heard all the details and so it was just chaos more chaos you know because you know and i know i know like dr john degarmo and some of the other folks out there are talking about reforming the system this is one of the the bugaboos is yes you wanna you wanna reunite the family but you don’t wanna reunite the fire you know and this was chaos chaotic fire that was just flaming all around so it bounced back and forth between the parents several times um sounds to me like you experienced a lot of dysfunction and violence and problems in your in your original family and so these problems as we all know tend to be generational issues they they don’t go away for kids usually and so how many times have you broken your wife’s jaw no none no you might have some catching up to do on that one no i don’t i broke that chain i there were moments you know where i i lived what i learned and and you know my my conscience got the best of me my my my studies my bible studies and and uh in the fact that i had sworn that i would not walk that same path you know so i worked very hard at it um that’s the real question i think is is you saw that you knew it’s you know it’s a generational thing typically it goes on and on and on until somebody breaks it i know you said you chose not to do that what was your catalyst for change in that moment that you said okay i am putting my flag in the ground here and i will never do this again right i what that catalyst for change was is my my absolute phobia of the d word i did not want to get a divorce i did not want to to ex have my kids experience a family being ripped apart like that uh was i successful uh not entirely but that’s another story but i did go to counseling as a result of that i knew that that something wasn’t right i did discover i couldn’t control myself for some reason of course i you know i did come to realize i had pent up anger i came to realize i had bad examples you know but i’m an adult now i can make better choices wanting to make better choices is not the same as walking that and figuring out what do you do because i didn’t know what to do you know other than explode throw something break something you know that’s was the pattern i was shown but i i went and got counseling um there wasn’t as much self-help back then you know as there is today uh we you know we didn’t have the internet i didn’t have youtube i didn’t have all these you know dial a counselor stuff like they have these days but uh so i did i i found a counselor and to this day i’ve been through over 15 years of counseling on and off during different periods of my life to resolve different waves of issues
well that’s amazing that you’ve been able to do that and had the the foresight to realize that this is where i’m heading and i don’t want to do that i don’t want to repeat this so you said you had you had a family that you’ve created how many kids do you have two wow i have two natural kids i’m married now and uh i have four four adult step kids you know but uh yeah i have two natural children yeah okay okay send so your kids got to see you struggle through that and and turn your life around
they didn’t see as much of it as i did because i wasn’t as bad um and i also worked very hard at if i had an issue i tried to put it behind closed doors um one of the things that i recall in my book my journey in the shadow of the king is that we witnessed when i was growing up uh physical violence right in front of us i mean it wasn’t you know uh we it got to the point where you know being italian we had tossed salad you know most meals and in our house it was literally tossed everything was thrown mom was italian dad was bigger than her so she just threw stuff at him so at our house the tossed salad was a normal thing you know and so she would shoe us upstairs uh toward the end just before they got divorced we had an upstairs uh stairway that had a door on it with a slide bolt you know where the sliding flips down and she would put us upstairs when the arguments broke out uh so that none of us got hurt because i tried to stand up to dad once nine nine ten years old i got in between him and mom and found myself in the other side of the room on my head because he just backhanded me and of course him being an adult sailor you know with his physique and everything i i just flew like a like back to the ragdoll you know um but yeah i i took this to a different place with my kids and to the point where you know unfortunately i did file for divorce uh and the kids were totally shocked it’s like what what happened you know so they you know i pretty well hit it you know um but the good news is i’ll flip ahead and again i was so thrilled when i put this book together last year uh that my son agreed to write the final chapter here and i’ll just i’ll just flip to it if i if i may do that because he tells the story and encourages other people that are angry with their parents to not carry that because i had a heart attack i had heart surgery first open heart surgery at four to five scripts did you know stress kills people with heart attacks and stuff i’ve heard that i’ve heard that well guess what i lived through that too thank god that i lived through that but anyway he uh he wrote this uh addendum to my book and in there he says when i had that heart attack when he saw that his dad had a heart attack and could possibly uh open heart surgery could possibly not be around anymore it was a major wake-up call to him and so he at that point had decided that he wanted to reopen our relationship and so uh it’s just a thrill to have it’s about a page and a half in here but my son closes the whole book by saying that he learned that uh there’s bigger things and that that you know for me that that uh that parents are people too and make mistakes you know so it was awesome sounds to me like one of the things you taught was generational growth yes and that’s amazing because this is one of the things that that’s always been a one of one of the uh one of the drives inside of our journey through foster care is that i know that i might change the kids today right and maybe they’re tomorrow and maybe 10 years from now or 20 years from now and their kids tomorrow and their grandkids tomorrow yes so just that ability to create some level of of experience that’s positive in the world goes on long before our death no yeah beyond our death not before it yeah yeah right yeah long after yeah yeah yeah so so it’s that ability to really transcend time with with our behavior and and our dedication to to doing the right thing and helping out others and that’s what you’re doing you right here right now today telling your story and and having this book that you’ve uh you’ve got there what can you tell us about what drove you to write this book oh thank you for asking that’s that’s a fun story um i i got into entertaining as i said i wanted to be a musician um so i got into entertaining and and i was driven as if you couldn’t tell uh it was like i’m going to be successful i’m not gonna follow in my parents footsteps i’m gonna make things better and have a better life for me and my kids and so i got into entertaining and um was able to actually ultimately perform in las vegas i i performed uh here in michigan as a headliner at the royal oak music theater on what would have been elvis’s 50th birthday and i got to sing heartbreak hotel with the with the co-author tommy durden we actually sang heartbreak hotel together on that stage what a thrill amazing yeah it was it was just incredible and in in between all of that i had struggles i had failures i had successes i you know i sang in in driveways of midas muffler opening celebrations and and and and i i was the headliner at the claire county fair one year you know so i i went the gamut but it was all fun for me and the thing i discovered is that if i take my pain in my issues and my problems and look at other people that either have that or worse and try and help them it actually makes me grow and makes me feel better about myself and it takes the the focus off of my pain when i go help someone else’s pain and so as an entertainer i didn’t realize it at the time but every time i got applause it wasn’t just for me it was i was out making other people happy which is how mom grew me i didn’t change her diapers like i did at home but my job was to go take care of people and make them happy and make please them so over the years i entertained and finally probably in my 40s uh because i’m i’m 67 now in my 40s it hit me that you know the story started for me musically in the orphanage when we were there a volunteer local band came in and performed for us kids and and of course i’m wanting to be as a big star someday right so a live band to me at 9 10 years old was like wow these guys are musicians and so when they got done with their little mini concert they came off the stage jason and they shook my hand and it blew my mind that that these musicians would take this time to do this so when i started entertaining do you know that i jumped off the stage during the concert and that one handshake i was counting it last night in my sleep get ready for today’s interview i have shaken over 10 000 hands and probably a third of those were kids in parks and rec shows in family concerts and all so one handshake turned into ten thousand and i can’t tell you how many people have come up to me over the years and thanked me for doing that in in people little kids that were five years old back then i got him up on stage to do blue suede shoes with me right because i was always about including the kids right and i and now here’s a 25 year old 30 year old person walking up to me i remember when you did that do you know what that did for me and so over the years those things happened well in my 40s i decided it was time to go back to st vincent’s home and be the person that showed up on stage for those kids and guess what this was in probably the 1990s i want to say yeah because i was so in the 1990s i went back to to do a concert for the kids at st fences home and guess what they told me no they said we got mostly boys here now and they’re they’re these guys are having problems and this is 1990 whatever year it was and they’re going they don’t care about elvis you’re not going to do them any good and so they told me no and i went i you know once again i look up at god and i go god i want to give back now what do i do on my way home i drove through saginaw and there was a michigan boys lutheran boys home and i thought you know what i’m just gonna drop in and see what if they would want me to come and encourage their boys and they said yes and so i performed there and what i did was of course you know you’re talking to ddv in here not joe smith so i didn’t just show up with my guitar to sing i showed up with my guitar i sang for the boys i got to know them i got to know the counselor this was just me and them and my guitar right and i talked to the counselors and they said yeah a lot of these kids christmas is coming they don’t have families that don’t have anything to do i said really i said okay do me a favor get a wish list from each boy three things that if they could have anything they wanted for christmas what would it be and tell them we’re gonna try to get at least one of those form right so i set up a christmas concert at a local uh restaurant okay they donated all the food for the kids and the counselors and the whole staff they set up a head table for these kids like you were at a wedding and i went out into the community and raised money and got donations and we literally got every kid everything on their list in in all kinds of stuff for the home itself they needed a pickup truck to take everything home when we were dumped the concert did that three years in a row and the second year when it was over uh in the spring and we were talking about the third year the director of the home’s name was gordy uh gordy kakulas called me up and he said danny he said one of the kids just was in my office and wanted to know who this danny man is why he cares about us and i said gordy you go back and tell that young man when i was his age i was in a home where he is and somebody came and did this for me
and now it’s my turn to do it for you and when you grow up it’ll be your turn and he went back and told him that they they called me uh later that year and wanted me to come to their uh annual uh recognition dinner and they gave me a certificate which i told them i didn’t want but they said too bad you did this we want to recognize you and they wanted me to tell my story and afterwards i told probably a lot of what you just
heard there foster care nation if you’d like to find yourself in a group with like-minded people head over to facebook and you can find us at facebook.com groups slash foster care uj we’ve got a group over there where we talk about foster care we talk about adoption and we talk about all the things related if your podcast player allows it you can also reach down and hit that subscribe button so you get notified every week when we put up uploads every tuesday a new episode comes out we’d love to see you next week now back to the show and gordy came up to me and he goes danny he said we want you to tell a story about what you’ve been through and and i didn’t understand at the time and i said why and he says do you realize how encouraging it is to these kids in this home to know that one of them made it to where you are that the counselors who are trying to help these kids it encourages them to know that one of these kids could grow up and do this in the future he said your story needs to be heard and this was in 2000 i want to say 2003 right well in 2013 10 years later i had a heart attack and it disabled me and i spent a year and a half on my sofa a zombie fight trying to figure out i lived through the heart attack thanks to my fabulous wife who saw that saw my face when i came home from work that day and i was gonna go lay down uh er said if i would have laid down i never would have got up so i owe my life to my wife you know so anyway i’m sitting on the couch asking god again what now what what do i do now i can’t entertain anymore i can’t work anymore what do you want me to do with the rest of my life and all of a sudden gordy’s words kept coming back your story needs to be heard and so i started writing the book and that’s and it’s in fact gordy agreed i got back in touch with him all those years later and he agreed to write the forward of the book so gordy uh put his words in front of the book as far as his version of the story and the first box of books that i published uh went to the the wellspring lutheran family services group they they took 60 books and have been encouraging foster families and
the homeless shelters and some of the other people that they support they pass these books out to long answer sorry that’s all right what a testament to the value of one guy shaking a kid’s hand isn’t this something just that much kindness to reach out and acknowledge a kid who’s in a difficult place yeah yeah these are the things that i struggle with when people say i could never do foster care i could not do that i can man sometimes sometimes a handshake does what yeah take an hour and just go visit somebody you know i mean that’s all these band people did and i couldn’t even tell you the name of the band or the person that shook my hand yeah you know but look what he did and and consequently you know i i don’t again it’s not about credit it’s about having love for people you know that’s it when you when you reach outside of yourself no matter how much you’re hurting you’re it’s going to help you heal that’s my message i i don’t disagree with you a bit there that’s that’s the power of of our world i think is that we live in a society and a culture that’s really really interested in making certain that we we get what’s owed to us and we tell everybody how good we are and how amazing we are and sometimes just reaching a handout helping someone else that’s the greatest thing we can do for ourselves for the people behind us and the future generations yet to come yep listen for that whisper because there’ll be a whisper that says go go talk to that person go give them your your gift card that you just got go give it to this person and there’s a whisper in there and one of the other stories for me is at a really down time in my adult life i was struggling and decided to go visit an old friend of mine who’s out in arizona and uh you know again another turning point another i call all this my journey and the cover of my book has got a long road on it leading up to a bible with a crown on it so you know we’re leading ourselves to this everlasting you know joy that’s going to come if if you’re a bible reader flip back to the back of the book i i have read the back of the book you know i like doing that and you go all the way to the last two chapters and i got great news everybody we really do all live happily ever after because he comes back he restores the world the garden of eden is restored and he sets up his kingdom and we really do all live happily ever after anyway i went to arizona and met with an old friend of mine who was one of the early guitar players back before my parents got divorced used when i got my first guitar oh no i take that back it was after my parents got divorced because i got my first guitar when i was 15. it was the one thing that my stepmom did that really changed my life she bought me my first guitar so i got to give her that when she really in her older age she really did care a lot about us and she reached out to us a lot but i went to arizona and while i was there again crying out to god dead end road potholes in my road you know life is life sucks right and uh having a little bit of a pity party and i cry out to god you know i i just i don’t know what to do i don’t know if i can do this anymore and all of a sudden at about two o’clock in the morning i’m playing my guitar just trying to get through the night right and um because my buddy was a guitar player we had played guitar for about five hours and he went to bed and i said i’m not ready yet and i’m sitting there and i’m i’m asking god help me i don’t know what to do and all of a sudden i hear i’m listening and it was incredible it was like i could hear almost like swirling heart music and a brand new song was born i hear an angel whispering telling me he’s listening so everything i say and do should be fit for an angel too and that song is on the front page of my website i started doing it at my elvis concerts and it was one of the most popular songs that i did and i sold no matter how big the audience was 10 of the audience would buy a copy of a year in angel whispering it was unbelievable unbelievable so it’s there to console people and when god gave it to me he said i’m giving you this new music not to make you famous not to make money not to make you rich it’s for you to go help people
that’s what we’re missing in this world yes people willing just to help people i think those connections are made through story and it’s been that way for for thousands of years if you go back and look at cave paintings right what were they doing they were telling stories tell me stories what are we doing singing songs don’t forget the music oh there’s that too that’s true story and song so from cave paintings to zoom meetings in this current coveted world you know we we have nothing but stories to connect us with our past our present our future and all the people around us and when we share that we get to connect with others and that seems to be the thing that makes our life worthwhile yes to share our meaning with others so yeah what a story man what a story i know you you told me that you have an ebook that you’re you’re coming out with now too yes yes i you know as as i started once i wrote this book i was still in elvis mode thinking look what i did you know because i went from a garage band with uh my first guitar at 15 years old and and made it to vegas i i was inducted into the original elvis impersonators hall of fame uh uh you know back it back in the 80s uh and i thought wow you know you know and then gordy said your story needs to be heard and i thought okay my story’s about what i was able to accomplish in spite of it all right and so but as i was writing the book uh i began to realize that there’s lessons in here there’s these little life lessons you know uh if you can find a job you can find two jobs you know if you can help a person you can help a group of people you know all these little things that i’ve learned along the way i put in this book as little life lessons and then i tried to get out there and get some attention by telling people look what i look what i’ve done it went back to my old elvis contacts right and then a couple of them yeah that’s good that’s interesting we didn’t know that about you blah blah blah and then it just kind of like fell off the cliff and i’m going okay i got the book my my kids and my grandkids are going to know my story now so that came out of it uh i got this this lutheran boys group who who took 60 bucks and they’re that’s going to help if you help one person you it’s you’ve done good right so how much is enough now right so i’m still thinking there’s more to do and all of a sudden i’m sitting in my kitchen table and on the tv news comes this this uh dr john de garma which i guess you said has been on your broadcast uh sometime during the past year and by the way congratulations on your one year anniversary thank you and so dr john degarmo comes on and he’s talking foster care me and my ears perk up and he’s on the news and he wants to help reform the system and help get some of the bugs out of it and make it better and fix some of the problems and he said here’s my website here’s my cell phone call me if you want to help and i’m thinking aha dr john i wrote a book and he goes that’s nice you know he said i’ve got a lot of info he says i i’m you know of course by this time he’s been doing this 10-15 years and i’m sure he’s seen dozens and dozens there are a lot of people like me out there who you know have have struggled and they’ve written about it and they want to encourage people and that’s all good we’re all we’re all on the same team here trying to help each other but he has a mentoring program and uh he said i will help you uh become a speaker um so that you can go out in and put your message out there and i’m thinking one of the things i learned in life because we skipped over my corporate life because not only did i entertain and go to vegas but i also took a steady job people not just a dream job i also got a job uh at michigan bell a t and i worked in corporate america for 35 40 years and became a mid-level executive there so they paid for my college and helped me do all this but john de garmal comes along and he says i’ll help you get into the speaking circuit and i’m thinking one of the things i learned is if you want to be successful in anything here’s another life tip folks if you want to be successful in anything go find somebody that’s already successful doing that and try to learn from them find out what you can follow what they do and it’s easier to do now on the internet than it was back when i was growing up right so as all part of that john degarmo suggested that i create an ebook with some of my more focused tips and give it away free to anyone who wants to join my newsletter to get involved and maybe we can bring them along and help them to help others right so i wrote this ebook and i just finished it last week and uh it’s up on my website dannyvn.com two ends in both names and if you go there you can sign up for my newsletter free right it’s gonna right now it’s gonna probably come out three four times a year nothing major but you get this ebook which i wrote which focuses on foster care youth survivor basics man if i would have known that at 17 years old when i finally left my dad a note on the phone when he went camping that weekend the note said you’ve done enough i’ll take it from here and i had some people who loved my singing agreed to take me in i packed everything i own and three grocery bags and they drove me a hundred miles away to cadillac michigan and i started my life as an emancipated miner i didn’t have this stuff i didn’t know other than these people are taking me and now i got somebody else taking care of me but i did get a job i went through co-op at school i knew i wanted to be a singer so i already had a career in mind so i started thinking about what dr john said i said you know as i go out in facebook and i’m you know i’m on facebook and in youtube and uh not so much linkedin i do see some stuff on linkedin but the facebook groups of the foster kids of of the former foster kids in in some of the foster parents that are struggling there most of the struggle that i’m hearing is what do we do after they age out what happens to them when they don’t get adopted you know they don’t have a pattern they don’t have a the training they don’t have a career so i put this ebook together of foster care survivor basics uh survive to strive and it has over three dozen links in there to all kinds of uh services um housing planning a career i wrote an article by the way on how to follow your passion into your career there’s government programs there’s grants there’s there’s even a suitcase uh organization out there uh rob sheer has a free suitcase for for foster youth that are coming out of the system don’t send them out in another plastic bag he is his organization gives him a free suitcase i foster phone program all this uh american bar association has free foster legal services and so i put all this together to help not only the the youth the kids but also the foster parents who have a heart for the kids but can’t carry them into college years and beyond and you know for whatever reason they’re not adopting them you know uh so that’s the e-book and it just came out i just came out with it last week and uh i hope it helps well i don’t hope i know it will i know it will well i have a couple questions that i’d like to ask um just real quick questions you know if you had a magic wand that you could wave and fix one thing in foster care what would you change
i i i kind of touched on it a little bit earlier i think the thing i would like to see changed is the the reunification requirements i mean it was great that dad got us back but as i said it was it kind of backfired uh because even though he got the house back and he got another woman to help take care of us he didn’t get any healing he didn’t he didn’t fix any of the problems that caused the whole thing in the first place you know and i’m not sure how to make all that happen you know going forward but that’s why it’s a magic wand yeah that’s why the magic wand but boy if we could in and this is part of what some of the organizations that i’m hearing out there that are wanting to help repair that whole system it’s one of the things that i am hearing resonating out there is it isn’t just about helping these kids or fixing these kids or or or coaching the kids or mentoring them or counseling them you got to get back to the whole family the whole family needs help and some of them don’t want it obvious you know unfortunately but we need to work on the whole problem not just a piece of it that makes sense makes sense what do you wish people understood about your story that you think most of them don’t
that’s a tough one because my my the people that i’m trying to help are in on both sides of this story i’m trying to help foster parents as much as foster kids and i i think that the biggest problem in all of this even all the way back to my family his dad was an agnostic his dad was not god-fearing okay uh grandma was my mom to some extent was i think the thing that i wish people knew about about me is my resilience my hanging in there my positive attitude comes from my knowing at the very core of me that there is a god and even though he quote unquote allows these things to happen he’s a very loving god a very loving father and he’s doing a work in all of us that we’re each at a different place in a different time but one of the things that’s way down at the beginning of all this even all the way back to the garden of eden is he gave mankind free will it’s our choice unfortunately when we choose what what the bible calls evil or bad because it’s not god’s way if we don’t choose love if we don’t choose to honor and obey our creator then there’s consequences and now all these thousands and thousands of years and generations in families that have come since then have just you know just imagined chaos on chaos and garbage on poison on chemicals on ugliness for all these years and generations you got a mess and that’s why he’s going to come back and restore things someday but my resilience is because i know there’s a god and i know that ultimately what he’s putting me through and my family is is for good i do i understand 100 of what that good is right at this moment in time no i have a better understanding now than i did when i went through it but we can all look backwards and say oh well i see why that happened to me because look what i learned
well the last question i have here is what does support look like for you
what does support mean my support yeah as you as you were supported going through your journey either as a kid or on up till today what’s what’s been some of the most valuable supports you’ve received
um it’s it’s been those those unexpected smiles um it’s been a a a nun in an orphanage that’s irish that that hums irish tunes under her breath and she’s handling these monsters who are all acting out because they’re angry and frustrated it’s been the the knights of columbus volunteers that show up with a pickup truck full of ice cream in the middle of the summer it’s been the protestant minister in cadillac after i became an emancipated minor and got kicked out of the house i was in uh because i wouldn’t marry their daughter it’s in the book it’s in the book there’s these stories man i could go on so i daddy saw dollar signs when he heard me singing like elvis anyway when when when i got kicked out of that house i went and lived on my own because i had a job i i carried my own weight carry your own weight if you don’t work you don’t eat okay carry your own weight so i did that uh another reason why the dad kicked me out of house is i was bringing groceries home and he wasn’t he was disabled and he got angry because i was doing more for the family but irregardless it was the right thing to do but all of a sudden i get called in the principal’s office in high school and he says i’m sorry you can’t go to school here anymore and i went what you don’t live with that family anymore you’re 17 you can’t go unless you live with the taxpaying guardian or adult and this high school english teacher came forward her husband was a protestant minister and they agreed to take me in those moments were so awesome god god was there i know but these people had to say yes i’ll do it that whisper had to be answered and converted into action all through my life there have been these kinds of situations that have happened people have told me no i’ve been discouraged i’ve been angry because i wanted to do something and i wanted it now and i learned five years later that had i gotten it i would have destroyed whatever it was i would have gotten right because i wasn’t mature enough i wasn’t ready and then when i finally got it i looked back and i understood those moments those smiles those people those foster parents right those advocates that that say you know what i’ll try it or i’ll do it once or i’ll drop something off just get involved do something and then the kids that came along in in the ones that that locked arms and said i’m not going to be defeated i’m going to beat this those those are those moments that encourage me and restore me and have helped me keep going wow that’s a mouthful that and and i’m sorry but the story about not marrying the daughter that’s worth the book in and of itself i think
oh man danny i want to appreciate you for coming on today and telling your story with so much vulnerability and and reaching out and trying to help others because it’s the one thing that that everyone can do it may be different for you than it is for me but we all have a play a part to play in this game and you’re definitely playing your part and we appreciate that well thanks for having me i really appreciate it oh yeah all right foster care nation i want to thank you for listening to danny’s story i hope you have gained some knowledge and wisdom that you can bring into your life and your family be sure to come back next week we put up new shows every tuesday if you’d like to share your story as a guest you can reach us at foster care uj gmail.com you can connect with other like-minded people at facebook.com groups foster care uj don’t forget we have a patreon where you can support our mission at patreon.com foster care nation and as always i thank you guys thank you for listening you are so super awesome
you
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