A sailor and a nursing student met once. At 54, their daughter finally found her father
GRAND CHUTE, Wisconsin — For 54 years, Melissa Kelly's birth certificate read "FATHER UNKNOWN," two words that, though matter-of-fact, left her hurt and ashamed every time she had to present the form.
Those words carried a lifetime of questions. Nobody ever said she looked like her mother, so whom did she look like? Was her father alive? Could she find him? Was he kind? Could he ever love her?
In place of a father was the story her mother told her: how she, a nursing student at University of Wisconsin-Madison, met a young sailor one fateful night in the '60s and never saw him again. Nine months later, she gave birth to a baby girl and named her Melissa.
"When I was about a year-and-a-half old, she tried to contact him through his family," Kelly said. "His father gave her the news: He recently married and they had a six-month-old girl. She decided not to tell him. She didn't want to interfere with his life."
Throughout the years, Kelly made efforts to find him. Her mother had given her a name, Ronald Lee Burns, but without internet or computers, her search always hit dead-ends. And even after she got her first computer in her late 20s and explored early iterations of the world wide web, she couldn't find what she didn't know.
"I knew when I started asking questions that I had a sister, but I didn't know her name," Kelly said. "I had nothing to go on with her. I just knew I had a sister who was a year-and-a-half younger than me."
And so, life went on. Kelly, originally from Kenosha, Wisconsin, married a dairy farmer, had four kids and moved to Grand Chute, where her family has lived for 30 years. But the litany of question surrounding her father continued to linger as she watched her children grow and have children of their own. She couldn't bear the idea of never finding her father, even if it meant learning he had long since passed.
Her search continued.
Then, she learned about 23andMe, a company that specializes in mapping a person's genealogy through a saliva sample. She ordered a collection kit.
She matched with thousands of relatives, never anybody closer than a fifth cousin, Kelly said. Complicating the matter, because she was female, she didn't inherit the Y chromosome that would have given her easier access to her paternal side. Tracing her father's line, while not impossible, required much more digging.
On 23andMe, Kelly filtered and clicked, clicked and filtered, for around 12 years, navigating a sea of distant relatives. In that time, her husband retired from his dairy farm job and she got a license to practice reflexology out of her Grand Chute home. She called her business Reflexology Wellness Spa.
In 2021, she lucked out. She found a cousin on her father's side on Ancestry.com by filtering out her mother's side, but his last name was itself a discovery. Ron Lee Burns, as he had lived in her imagination, was actually Ron Lee Bures. He was not only alive, but living in Grand Island, Nebraska.
"When I saw his picture, I thought, 'Oh my gosh, there's no denying this,'" Kelly said. "Whenever I'd look in the mirror, I didn't identify with my mom. Seeing my dad was confirmation for me. That was him."
'I'd gone my whole life without my father's hug'
"Well, we sure had beer goggles on," Ron Lee Bures said with a hearty laugh as he reminisced about his encounter with Kelly's mother. In 1967, Bures was fresh out of the service. He was in his 20s and enjoying single life when he met Kelly's mother.
That phase of life came to a close when he met and married a woman in Madison, Wisconsin. He went on to have six children. Fifty-four years later, he'd retired from his life as a traveling salesman, where he picked up a passion for kayaking around the country. Today, he can be found on virtually any given body of fresh water with a fishing pole at the ready.
Two years ago, he got an odd letter from a woman named Melissa Kelly claiming to be his daughter. He assumed it was a hoax. That is, until his cousin asked him if he'd read the letter, and vouched for Kelly's story.
His first communication with Kelly was on Facebook messenger, with a hand wave emoji. They started talking and realized quickly they had the same temperament, the same attitudes, the same rollicking humor. Bures invited her out to Nebraska, where he agreed to take a DNA test.
When Kelly met him, it only further confirmed her intuition. They were both tall, sturdy and big-boned. Kelly's mother, by contrast, was a petite, smaller-framed woman. And though her stepfather raised Kelly and her four siblings, and continues to serve as an important part of Kelly's life, the two fathers "couldn't have been more opposite."
Bures ushered Kelly around his town, introducing her to family with a big smile. Everywhere they went, friends and family embraced her. There was a seamless kinship and nobody in his family seemed that surprised to learn he had a long-lost daughter.
"I was a little bit wild when I was young," Bures said. After a big chuckle, he impersonated one of his kids and said, "Dad, are there anymore?"
Before she left, he told her he loved her and gave her a big hug.
"I'd gone my whole life without my father's hug," Kelly said. "It was indescribable. It was mind blowing."
The DNA test came back confirming the connection. Their relationship grows with every phone call, Bures said.
Since that first visit, the father and daughter regularly visit for holidays, and vacation together with their big families. Bures even had a chance to meet Kelly's mother again, although, half a century later, neither recognized the other. Kelly said her mother was nervous about meeting him in such a wildly different context, but part of Bures' charm, Kelly said, is his ability "to go with the flow."
The last time she went to Nebraska, she brought her adult son Cornelius and a trove of photos and memorabilia. When Kelly shared Cornelius' high school photo with Bures, he couldn't believe the resemblance. The romping sailor of Bures' earlier life could have easily passed for Cornelius.
"It's just been awesome," Bures said. "Melissa's such a sweet gal. She's got a lot of love in her heart. I was so happy for her because she finally found me. She'd been looking and looking and looking for quite some time."
Looking back at her decades of searching, Kelly said it was worth every minute spent in the quest. The cloud of mystery she saw as a constant companion has lifted.
At 56, Father's Day hits much differently these days.
"Sometimes I have to stop and say, 'Wow, I have my father. My father is in my life,'" Kelly said. "It just makes my heart happy. I can celebrate these days with my father who I thought I would never meet."
Bures signed Kelly's birth certificate after they received verification. In place of FATHER UNKNOWN, finally, is her father's name.
Natalie Eilbert covers mental health issues for Paste BN NETWORK-Wisconsin. She welcomes story tips and feedback. You can reach her at neilbert@gannett.com or view her Twitter profile at @natalie_eilbert. If you or someone you know is dealing with suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text "Hopeline" to the National Crisis Text Line at 741-741.