A brother and sister story

These siblings went through the U-M dental school one year apart but never knew about each other until 30 years later

Imagine being in your mid-50s and finding out you have a sister or brother you never knew about. You learn that you share very similar family details, chose the same profession, and are nearly the same age.

But here’s the really amazing thing: You discover that 30 years ago, for three of the four years you were earning your dental degree at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry, your sibling was walking the halls with you.

This is the unusual family history story for Danielle (Wheatley) Gehlert, who graduated in 1991, and David Grife, who graduated in 1992.

After dental school, they both stayed in Michigan to build their careers – she practices in St. Clair Shores and he in Coldwater – and to raise their families. Advances over the last 30 years in genetic testing and computerenhanced methods of tracing genealogy led to their family connection as half-sister and half-brother.

Dating back to his second year of dental school, Grife had made extensive efforts to learn his biological family history because he was adopted. His adoptive parents married in the 1950s and struggled to have children after their first child was born. They adopted David in 1965, when he was a few months old. They decided that transparency was crucial, so David knew from age five that he’d had other parents.

Grife grew up and attended high school in Hartland, Michigan, and then went to U-M for his bachelor’s degree. He had a loving, normal life with his adoptive parents, but he had always wondered about his biological parents. “Things were good,” Grife said, “but you always have that kind of question –it doesn’t go away as far as who those people are.”

In 1989, as a second-year dental student at U-M, he contacted the adoption agency, noting in his query, “Hey, it’s my 25th birthday, can you help me?” In an unlikely coincidence, he spoke to the same person who handled his adoption case 24 years earlier. She remembered the parents of his biological mother, who became pregnant in high school, as “a nice family.”

It was a closed adoption, with only so many details that could be shared. But the case worker was able to provide papers that offered some details, such as the ages of his birth mother and father, their siblings ages at that time, eye and hair color, and interests. “There was no information regarding the identity of my birth mother and father, but it was more than I’d ever had before, so I was pretty happy about it,” Grife said.

Grife finished dental school and began practicing. He tried a number of times to get some health history, but made little progress. Then, in 2014, a dental hygienist he’d been working with for 20 years offered a suggestion. Her son had worked with a company called 23andMe, a genetics and biotechnology company that helps people track ancestry through DNA testing. Grife signed up, but initially could only find relatives at a very distant level.

In 2021, in one of Grife’s periodic 23andMe updates, the name Scott Grace showed up. The percentage of DNA match with Grace was 6 percent – higher than anything Grife had seen before. Grife contacted Grace, who lives in Colorado, and shared details from the adoption paperwork he had obtained in 1989.

Not only was Grace interested, he is also a genealogist, which is yet another fascinating and beneficial quirk of the story. Grace began reviewing the possible family connection.

Having the birth father’s age and his siblings’ ages from the adoption papers was the key to lining up the match. Grace already had a cousin in Michigan who was a dentist – Danielle Gehlert – but now there was another Michigan dentist who seemed to be a biological family member. On March 5, 2021, Grace shared the newfound information with Danielle’s younger sister Nicolle, who texted Danielle late that night to share Grife’s name and hometown.

Gehlert sent Grife an email the next day, sharing her academic path and noting that she was Danielle Wheatley back in dental school. Trying another channel to connect, Gehlert found that Grife had no social media presence, but his wife, Shana, had a Facebook account. So Gehlert contacted Shana with the question: “Was your husband by any chance adopted?” The answer: “Yes.”

From those brief initial contacts, Gehlert and Grife began corresponding and sorting through how a family connection was possible. The foundational fact was that they had the same father. Gehlert distills the research down to these basic facts of life: Their father had two girlfriends while in high school, one a year younger than the other. One of the girlfriends, Grife’s biological mother, became pregnant and gave him up for adoption. Then, a year later, Gehlert’s mother became pregnant and married Gehlert’s father.

Thirty-two years from when he first started pursuing his biological history, Grife had arrived at an answer about his biological parents, thanks in part to his newfound cousin Scott Grace. “If not for the 1989 information, he would not have picked up on this,” Grife said. One unfortunate aspect of the story is that Grife would not be able to meet his father, who died about 15 years ago.

Brother and sister met for the first time later in 2021, at the Gandy Dancer restaurant in Ann Arbor. As they exchanged stories, delicious similarities piled up: Both put themselves through U-M, first as undergraduates and then as dental students. They were married the same year. They graduated high school the same year, he in Hartland and she in East Detroit. Each had three kids, two of whom had already graduated from U-M. They even both had a black and white dog. Most astonishing, they had been in the U-M Dental School at the same time, with Grife both arriving and graduating a year after Gehlert.

“When I first came to U-M, I thought, ‘This is a big place. I wonder if I’m related to anybody,’” Grife said. “We must have walked past each other. When I started delving into my family history in 1989, she was right there in the same building at the dental school.”

Gehlert said the regimented dynamics of the dental school’s classroom and clinical schedule keeps students interacting mostly with their same-year classmates. “You really are glued to your class of 100 students.” explained Gehlert. “I didn’t know anybody in the class below me.”

But they know each other now, and the resemblance is clear. She just turned 59 in November and he hits 60 in late December. The two share a tan, athletic glow and have fabulous smiles befitting a dentist. With so much family history to sort out and share, they don’t talk much about their common profession. Grife is a partner in his practice in Coldwater, while Gehlert, who lives in Grosse Pointe Shores, has been an associate for 30 years and with the same practice in St. Clair Shores for the last 16.

And now that they’ve had a couple of years to let it sink in, how do they feel about the family expansion?

“Blessed – that’s how I feel. I can’t believe it,” Gehlert said. “He’s the kindest, sweetest, and most generous man I’ve ever met.” Not counting her husband, Guy, she adds.

Grife said having a new half-sister is meaningful on so many levels that is hard to put into words. “I adore her to pieces,” he said. “I’m so proud of the woman she’s become, and is. Having her in my life kind of gave me a reassuring affirmation of what I chose to do.”

Their children are delighted as well, relishing the fact they have some new cousins of the same age. Danielle says Dave is a lot like her husband, which has made it easy for the siblings and their spouses to socialize. The crew gets together for family activities every few months, including sharing a love for anything on the water. They also share U-M football fandom, and enjoy meeting in the ideal midpoint of Ann Arbor.

Grife is a fan of the legendary rock group The Who, and Gehlert loves the group Counting Crows, which gave rise to what she terms “about the best birthday present in my whole life.” Grife arranged for a personalized celebrity video on the website “Cameo.” “Dave made it happen that the lead singer from Counting Crows sang to me personally and wished me a happy birthday,” she said. “I literally had tears in my eyes.”

The latest family flourish came this September, when Gehlert’s oldest daughter was married in Charlevoix. Grife attended the wedding, sat at the family table and savored the time meeting his newly expanded network of relatives and their families. Among those he met was Danielle’s 78-year-old mother.

“I was a little nervous, but her mom is adorable,” Grife said. “She said we should exchange phone numbers so we can do text messages.” Gehlert said of her mother’s reaction: “She thinks the world of him.”

Brother and sister agree. “You don’t often get wonderful people to come into your life at this stage,” Gehlert says. “I just think it’s fabulous.”

“It’s been really special,” Grife said, summing it up in one word: “Serendipity.”

“Ironically, that’s my favorite movie,” Gehlert says of the 2001 film with that title, “and the thing that happened in my life.”