Saturday Jeremy Martin of Chapin, South Carolina, celebrated his 47th birthday and got the surprise of his life. At his party at Timberlake country club, Martin had no idea that his biological parents were there to meet him for the first time. His biological father, Monty Swicegood, and mother, Wendy Dunn, were teens when Martin was born back in 1976 and weren’t given the option of keeping him, so he was adopted when he was three days old.
Martin went on to have a successful and happy life. He met his future bride, Stacey, when he was 17 and grew up to become a real estate attorney and settled in Chapin.
When his wife learned that he was adopted, she promised to track down his biological parents for him one day.
The years-long search ended when a DNA test matched Martin with his father, which led to Martin learning about his mother. It turned out they’d only been separated by a short distance with both parents living within a couple hours drive. At the birthday party, they seemed like a family that’d always been together. Martin now encourages others looking for their biological families to not give up: "Don't stop. Know where you come from,” he says, “It's been a great journey. It's been a lot at one time finding family members, but I wouldn't trade it for anything."
Jeremy's dad Monty explained to WLTX "In 1976, we were in high school - Wendy was 16 and ended up conceiving. At that point in time, quite different than they are now, you weren't really allowed much input relative to what was going to happen. Parents basically said, 'Sit down, shut up, this is what's going to go down.'"
Jeremy's mom Wendy says he was adopted at just 3 days old and amazingly all 3 of them were pretty close to each other for the past 4 decades. Wendy was in Greer SC, Monty in Lexington and Jeremy in Chapin.