you are my answered prayer this is my
story of a 35 year old prayer that has
been answered
okay it's friday july the
17th and we're going to meet
mike's son after 35 years
and finally found him going to meet
kevin chitwood
where we going not well we're gonna go
up to iowa to see kevin
my son i hadn't seen in 35 years never
seen him
in person and uh so
we're gonna go see kevin today and his
uh
his mother his adoptive mother and visit
with them a little bit
so margaret miss margaret yeah
answered prayer yeah
going to oskaloosa iowa
yeah here we go what'd you say
i was just thinking i've been looking
for this day for
35 years you just don't even know what
it's been like all these years
wondering where my son was at
knowing that i had one out there
somewhere but
not really knowing where or how he was
or
how he was being raised or
if he was dead or alive or just not
knowing
but i've always had this prayer for all
these years that
god would allow me to be able to find
him before i die
and god is faithful he's
answered a prayer through dna testing
ancestry.com helped us
and so we're headed that way to see
i'm looking forward to it tell us what
happened well just to kind of give you a
backdrop on this 35 year old prayer that
i've been talking about
uh uh well i started to say i was just a
typical teenager but i really wasn't
typical and i still ain't typical
but anyway as 18 uh when i got
when i turned 18 i took off and went out
to west texas into the oil field
working in the oil field and you know we
worked out there for a pretty good
little while and then finally
the oil shut down boom the boom was uh
went to bust
and everybody was losing their jobs and
i ended up coming back to missouri
and uh started drawing unemployment and
everything we were making more
on unemployment than we were when we
were you know what most people around
that area was making on wages so you
know we were
footloose and fancy free most of the
time most of us kids that age
you know we were in the old as the old
saying goes sex and drugs and rock and
roll
and we were definitely into that back in
the 80s
and uh of course i was no different i
was
i was the type of guy that i'd pretty
much try anything within reason
i didn't get real wild with everything
but i was pretty pretty wild myself
and uh so i hung around there for a
while and uh
ended up working with one of my
brother-in-laws and sisters for a while
farming
and as that began to play out i decided
i would go to work for my oldest brother
and we were traveling around doing
commercial remodel work
uh for white's cafeteria as they were
called back in those days
years ago there used to be different
kind of cafe cafeterias around where
people would go in and eat piccadilly's
was one
and certainly wyatt's cafeteria is one
well anyway we traveled around and
we would do those uh remodel jobs at
night time
we'd have to sleep during the day and
work at night and the first one we went
to was in joplin missouri
and so you know being
my nature being hog wild and woman crazy
i guess you know and party just love to
have a good time
i wasn't out trying to cause any trouble
or anything but
anyway i got to you know flirting and
chasing around with girls or whatever
and
certainly did that and but anyway i met
a nice girl there in joplin and
we hit it off real good and started
hanging out with with each other all the
time well
as time went by uh
cindy was her name she ended up getting
pregnant and i didn't know this
at the time the job was over and we were
moving on to another
cafeteria in wichita kansas
and so basically in my eyes you know we
had broken off the relationship
i didn't know she was pregnant and back
in those days there wasn't
the type of telecommunication that we
have today
certainly wasn't smart phones and and uh
smart technology that we have matter of
fact back in those days there wasn't
even really cell phones to speak of
and uh you know we had pagers and that
that come later i didn't have a pager
but anyway you know it's back in the old
pay phone days where you had to have
you know a quarter to slug to pay phone
if you wanted to call somebody so it
wasn't so easy
to reach out and get in touch with
somebody if you didn't have
you know like a home phone number or
something like that
so anyway with me traveling around
uh with my oldest brother it was hard to
to get in touch with us
and uh so apparently she had gotten
pregnant
and had no way of reaching me or getting
in touch with me
and i guess she carried the child
to term naturally she did obviously
but apparently she put it up for
adoption
and so i'm thankful for that that you
know she had options she could have
aborted the child
and went on with her college education
and her career
i think she was uh looking in to a type
of career in law enforcement
uh investigations i think maybe i can't
remember exactly but anyway
um she didn't do that she carried the
child and put it up for adoption
and so the boy was adopted out and i
didn't
she was able to finally get in touch
with me three months after the adoption
had happened so i didn't find out about
having a son until three months after
now he was born
new year's eve in 1984
and so march of 1985 was when i first
uh found out about having a son
somewhere
never really knew exactly where i just
knew that he was adopted
and he was somewhere in iowa and so
at that particular time of course
several months had already went by
i'd already met another girl that i
liked a lot
and eventually that was march
march and actually two months excuse me
two months later in may she and i ended
up getting married that was my first
wife rebecca
and when we found out in march we left
texas
and uh because i had went back to texas
after that
and was building apartment buildings and
when i found out that there was a boy
we left texas and went back to joplin
missouri to see what we might be able to
try to
find out or or you know figure out or
see if we could even find him or
whatever the case was
well anyway i ran into some roadblocks
and wasn't able to do anything didn't
get anywhere at all never found out much
of anything
and so that's pretty much the way it's
been all these years
up until just recently so that's kind of
the way it was in 1985
you know in march of 85 i run into a
roadblock like i just said but
went back to uh my mom and dad's home in
northeast arkansas southeast missouri
over on the other side of the state from
joplin
and uh stayed there and worked with my
dad for a little while and like i said
me and the girl i was with at the time
we got married two months later on may
the 1st
1985 and we moved back to texas because
that's where
i had been working in the apartment
construction business and different
things and i wanted to go back because
it was a good
job paid work real well and everything
and i just like texas so i went back
there
uh my heart was always in truck driving
all my life
and so as the apartment situation kind
of slowed down a little bit i got into
trucking
and i've been trucking most all my life
since then
and but just over the years as time
has gone by it's always been rough it's
been something that's been in my
in the back of my mind it's been in my
gut it's been something that i've longed
for
to to know about him and to finally
eventually meet him and see him
it's been it's been depressing i'll just
say that
uh quite a bit there's been some some
some really bad times for me
thinking about it you know and seeing
other people other
friends and family different ones having
children you know and thinking wow
why lord why am i not able to have
children i know i have one somewhere but
i don't know where he's at is this some
kind of
you know payback for me is this some
kind of penance i'm having to pay
that i can't have children i don't know
this answer i don't know but it's been
35 years i just know
that god is faithful and he still has
answered this prayer
so i'm going today to meet him but just
to
kind of add a little bit more to that
all these years as they went by
i kind of got straightened out and
started going to church
and everything changed my life from the
party lifestyle
and uh just continued to follow the
teachings of jesus christ and studying
the bible
and i've been a pretty astute student of
the bible
over the years and i just know that
there's a god in heaven that loves us
and cares for each and every one of us
and cares about the little
intricate details of our life even my
new details
god is concerned about it and this was a
concern of mine
and so i voiced it pretty regularly and
as time would go by every year there
would be
uh you know father's day sunday at
churches and i never would go
because it was so painful for me i just
didn't like being around when they would
you know want all the fathers to stand
up to acknowledge them as
on father's day or whether they would
pass out a pen or a little
flower to put on their lapel or whatever
it may be
you know i just it just bothered me so i
just avoided that i never would do that
and i haven't went
to a father's day sunday service all
those years
ever since and just because of the pain
of it and
so anyway as time went by i've often
thought in the back of my mind one of
these days
i'm gonna get a knock on the door i just
kept thinking that
was the way it was gonna play out but
that's not the way it played out
and so here in just a little bit i'll
share a little bit more how this
actually came about how we were able to
find him well before i get into
telling you a little bit about how we
found kevin
i want to kind of bring you up to date
on the life
in that 35 year period uh of course i
mentioned rebecca as my first wife
when we we found this out and we
lived together for several years
traveling across the country in a big
truck
and at the age of 24 years old i bought
my very first big truck
and was self-employed and i've always
been a hustler as far as working goes
and
i was always trying to strive to be the
best at whatever i did
uh very competitive in a lot of ways a
lot of people said
matter of fact i even got the nickname
of being hogg that
you know i was hog wild i was always uh
going to one extreme to another on some
things and i am an extremist in some
ways
uh i have an addictive personality and
uh what i mean by that is
you know i just i can go from one
extreme to the other as i just said
and uh so me and rebecca worked all
those years running cross country
and uh did real well but as time would
have it and went by
different things went on i would have uh
i've often
had some issues over this thing of not
knowing where
my son was or whatever and i i
understand it now more than i ever did
before
because of the depression it would bring
me into some depression
times where i didn't want to have
anything to do with anybody too much or
didn't have a whole lot to say or
i'd fall into these deep bouts of
depression
and um rebecca and i stayed married
about 11 years or so we ended up getting
a divorce
and i married another young lady that
was
about 11 years younger than me her name
was jaycee
and jacy helped also to try to find
kevin
she was a little savage well real savvy
on the computer and of course computers
were new back in those days
and uh she did what she could do to try
to find kevin and
to no avail we wasn't able to get very
far on that either
and um she ran the truck with me for a
while and then
uh i ended up my mom and dad were
getting older and i wanted to move back
to arkansas from texas and try to be
closer to them
uh during their final years and they
both since passed on but
anyway i moved back home to try to be
closer to them
and uh jason come off the truck and i
ain't even
end up eventually selling uh
the last truck that i had uh well it
really wasn't the last truck but the
last truck i had while
she and i were together and uh
she like i said she tried to do what she
could do to try to find
uh kevin's birth mother which her name
is cindy
and she went that route to try to find
him but we
we never were able to get very far with
it
and so i got to give those two ladies
credit for trying to help
and about 10 years later
we we stayed married about 10 years and
she and i divorced also
and i went several years single by
myself i was kind of
just bouncing from here to there you
know i just
i was just kind of a lost soul really
bouncing around from here to there my
mother died
in 2006 and that was probably the
hardest thing that i've ever
went through in my whole life and uh
man it throwed me in a really deeper
depression for a long time
and i battled with it struggled with it
and i would mask it uh cutting up and
carrying on i'd mask it by
one extremely the other whether it was
women or whether it was
partying or whatever i fell back into
that and
god allowed me to do that for several
years until
one day i wrecked my harley i had a
brand new 2010
electric glide black electroglide and
and uh
i just uh was i went too far one day and
uh
god allowed me to uh to live through
that and i still wear the scars from and
i've got them on my face now
and it was just another addition to all
of this
i went through a divorce my mother died
i stayed single i bounced around from
women to win from one woman to another
never really any serious relationships
just really didn't care a lot i just had
this i don't care attitude
in a lot of ways and i'm really not that
way and i didn't it was a bad place to
be
and then a little bit later on
i bought another truck and i went out on
the road for just a little while
i made my rounds i went all around all
the way around the united states and i
even went up into canada
and when i got back from canada i knew i
was pretty done i didn't want to do it
anymore i'd been driving for
30 plus years and i was just tired i was
wore out
got rid of my truck and and uh stayed
around home there in pigott
area for a while and then i met my third
wife which is with me now and that's
theresa
and uh teresa's a good girl she's got a
big heart she's
she she'll help anybody do anything and
she uh
she's always been uh
real eager after i told her the story
and i told her the story early on in our
relationship
uh because she has one son noah and
that's all that she has she had a
stepson with her previous marriage
but he doesn't really have anything to
do with this much but
anyway she was very uh
eager to try to help and find my son the
best way she could and she had done a
lot of research herself
she's real good on the computer too and
of course technology
has changed and uh
[Music]
she uh she's done some research to try
to help find him
and uh here in just a little bit i'll
share some more with you how that
led up to um
how we've actually really got in contact
with kev well i just want to back up a
minute i thought about something i said
earlier
uh but both of my wives prior to teresa
they both had told me at different times
in our marriage that
they wished that i would uh be able to
find someone to have children because
i never was even able to have children
with either one of those
women and both of them we went uh to the
point of uh in vitro fertilization
and but anyway never had any children so
that was part of the depression
uh one other thing i said earlier i
thought about that was actually wrong in
a time table
uh before i had my wreck i had actually
bought another truck after mama died
i'd already went through my second
divorce with jc and i
mama died and i went back out on the
road and
then i ended up selling that truck off
and getting rid of it in 2008
uh 2009 and then i was just doing other
things from their own
working locally around our area driving
for different people and different
things
broker and freight also um and then
uh in 2010 i bought bought that hardly
and ended up wrecking it that's that was
a timetable
2012 i met uh teresa and we dated uh for
a couple years and then we ended up
getting married in the
october the 4th in 2014
and she's always been really
willing and able to try to help me find
kevin because she knew
the pain and uh she was afraid in her
own personal life she's told me that she
was afraid that
she might not have been ever able to
have children either but she ended up
having a child noah
and that's her only child a natural
child
and so she's had a uh you know a deep
heart for trying to help me find my son
and uh how this played out how we come
about
finding him was unfortunately
my brother next to me david his wife
passed away recently on
december the 13th of 2019
and we ended up going to the
funeral in kansas city where she grew up
and
we had taken one of my other sisters
with me marilyn
[Music]
that lives in the same town that we do
and
we were riding along and we were headed
to kansas city
maryland was in the front seat with me i
was driving and theresa was in the back
seat
and she got a phone call from her aunt
and
come to find out her aunt had been
adopted uh
as a girl and she had found her dad
but she was telling the story to teresa
uh that her son brad theresa's first
cousin
had some guys that either worked for him
or he knew that they they worked
together or whatever
but come to find out they had had a dna
test and it ended up that they were kind
to each other they were brothers
and so they were laughing and cutting up
and carrying on in the back seat about
that her
teresa was on the phone with her aunt
cutting up about that well when she got
off the phone
uh i just out of the blue said well that
sounds kind of like me
and marilyn said well what do you mean
and i said well didn't you know that i
had a son when i was 20 years old
and she looked at me with the weirdest
look she said no i've never heard this
and i had told my mother dad of course
me and rebecca had moved back from texas
we went to joplin to try to find him
couldn't do any good so we went from
joplin back to pickett arkansas
and stayed with mom and daddy until we
got married and we moved back down to
dallas
well marilyn knew never knew this i
never told her
and apparently mom and daddy never told
her either and a little while later she
called her husband my brother-in-law
myron and asked did he know anything
about it
he said no this is the first i've heard
of it so anyway it was kept secret
secret for many years
only people that really knew it about it
and family wise was me
my oldest brother johnny and his wife
karen and
later on my other sister brenda had
found out from karen
karen had developed lung cancer and was
uh
eventually passed away but she told she
uh she had told brenda that she knew
that i'd had a child
but we just never could find him so
that's kind of how that played out
and we talked about that on the way up
to kansas city a little bit
i kind of filled marilyn in on all the
details like i am you guys right now
and uh maryland is a has always been a
real
uh family person as far as
genealogy is concerned and and
everything like that and she's uh she's
always been real deep into
uh finding ancestries and and genealogy
and we're talking about ancestors she's
on ancestry.com
and uh when she got back or when we got
back home from the funeral
she happened to do a little research on
a computer on ancestry
and she had found a person that was real
close in the matches of the
uh the dna matches to her uh so close
that
he could actually have been her grandson
or even her
nephew or whatever and so she said it
was
uh her in her words she said it was like
a slap in her face
that she realized what was going on that
that was possibly my son because it was
a male
and he was about 35 years old and we
knew the time frame because i told her
what time frame this happened
in 1984-85 so anyway
as it turned out uh this person that was
not on ancestry but
had had dna done but there was someone
that was managing his account
and uh it turns out it was his uh his
aunt
uh brenda and uh marilyn had got in
touch with her and started
uh you know a conversation back and
forth about this situation about this
person
being so closely tied genetically
and so that's kind of how this is played
out and we just went from there
uh she called me and told me how close
the genetics were
in comparison to her own daughter and
granddaughter
and so she knew that he was very closely
related to us
and
[Music]
son so we proceeded to contact
and make contact with the person that
was handling his account to stay in
touch with him let him know what was
going on
and it just kind of progressed from
there then we
decided later on that we would have a
facebook
live meeting amongst ourselves and so
he and i and his mother his adopted
mother miss margaret
sweet little lady and theresa we all
four had a conversation together to
initially
uh meet one another on i mean we could
see each other but we've never met in
person
and so with this coven 19 situation
that's went on and everything there's
been a lot of
uh restrictions on travel and things we
just wasn't able to and the type of work
that i do now
uh in the farming industry as far as
fertilizing
uh crops and things it's a busy time of
the year when
spring of the year happens and we're
just uh we're so busy we can't really
take time off
and so now it's just been a time where
we were able to actually
slow down a little bit and i decided to
uh
take take a few days off and and go up
and meet him as as soon as possible and
so that's
that's where we're at today so we're
almost into oskaloosa iowa now
and uh we'll we'll fill you back in here
shortly
well we're getting ready to meet kevin
so here we are
oskaloosa iowa july 17th 2020.
wow here we go rock and roll here we are
oscar loose iowa in the motel room
waiting on kevin
we're going to meet him for the first
time 35 years in person
so hopefully we'll get that on video
here in a minute too
you nervous no i'm not really nervous
i'm
i'm excited i'm kind of anxious
but not really all that nervous yeah
i say that now but i may be i don't know
who knows what'll happen
we'll see shortly
what's up man how are you doing all
right all righty buddy
all right all right well here we are in
oskaloosa i
was i finished uh telling you last time
on a video we were on our way up here
uh to meet my son i've never met for 35
years
and so i just want to introduce you to
kevin shitwood
and we've been here a couple days and
we're getting ready to go back home now
but
we've had such a good time and
everything i just want to introduce you
to kevin so
we just want to say hello hi
i'm kevin is that all you're gonna say
what do you want me to say
hi i'm kevin welcome to my home
my humble commode
i've had to deal a whole weekend with
teresa
and her loud mouth making fun of me i
didn't think
[Laughter]
i like to make it fun teresa said the
nut don't fall too far from the tree
right
so i didn't make fun of you i just
hugged you a lot
yeah i i got a lot of affection that i
don't usually give
so she should feel lucky i do feel lucky
it was good meeting everybody here i'm
glad they came up and enjoyed their time
so bye peace
i don't know what i'll say
well we just left iowa a little while
ago how about kevin huh what do you
think about him there
he's kind of crazy ain't he a pretty
good guy good looking kid
well he ain't a kid he's a grown man but
anyway we had a great time visiting with
him and
and his mother she's such a sweet little
lady i never got to meet his dad
uh he passed away back last september i
think it was but anyway
i just thank god that he allowed those
two to raise him during this time
for whatever reason why i didn't get to
i don't know but
anyway i've had a 35 year old prayer
that has been answered
i've been able to find my son and and
meet up with him
in person and uh so we're
real happy about that we had a great
time getting to know each other and i
look forward to
growing our relationship from here on
out and uh so we appreciate you guys
watching this thank you for your prayers
and support
and before we go i just want to say one
thing to you
man don't ever give up don't ever lose
hope
you know i've always trusted in the lord
that he would answer this prayer
uh like i said it's been 35 years i've
been trying to find my son
and god finally answered that prayer for
me so don't give up hope
you know there's there's ways of doing
this we went through
ancestry to do this and uh it's a great
program
it's really helped us through dna match
up and
so anyway we appreciate you guys
watching this you guys take care
and we'll be coming back to you soon one
of these days y'all have a great day