David Funck ’82 and his wife Lisa swear they never saw it coming, and, honestly, who would?

David, 65, has stepped into retirement. Lisa, 60, is settling into the slower, looser rhythm people talk about when the kids are finally grown and living their own lives. The backpacks and wet mittens and cereal explosions were long behind them. What remained in the Cincinnati house was a quiet that felt hard-won, if occasionally hollow.

Their two grown children were out building their own lives. The house in Cincinnati finally felt quiet again — maybe too quiet.

What they couldn’t have predicted was how retirement would turn into a crash course in family court hearings, trauma histories and bedtime routines for children who showed up with little more than a trash bag of clothes. Nearly a decade passed like that — more than 100 foster kids moving in and out, each leaving some trace behind. Some stayed only long enough to catch their breath. Others settled in long enough to reshape the household’s rhythm. And then there was Brayden, the baby who arrived at eight months and stayed long enough for the house to feel full again.

Earlier this month – National Adoption Month – David, Lisa and a bow-tied Brayden stood before a Hamilton County, Ohio, judge who made official what everyone in the room already knew. At an age when friends were bragging about grandkids, the Funcks were becoming parents all over again.

“This was not something either of us thought we would ever do,” says David. “But it feels right. We wouldn’t change a thing.”

A decade earlier, none of this was on their radar. The Funcks’ biological children, Adam and Caitlin, had graduated and moved. The couple was, as Lisa puts it, “typical empty nesters … trying to figure out what comes next.”

Becoming foster parents wasn’t on any list. It started when a woman from their Quaker meeting asked if Lisa could help a young mother headed to prison and a grandmother working overnight hospice shifts. They said yes to watching an infant girl — a temporary favor, they thought. It lasted 11 months.

When the the child was reunited with her mother the Funcks found themselves looking around a house that suddenly felt too quiet again.

So they took the classes, got licensed and stepped into foster parenting. Not to be saints, they both insist. Just two people looking for what came next.

Over nearly a decade, their two-story home on a cul-de-sac in Cincinnati turned into something like a revolving refuge — books, blankets, braces, toddler tantrums, teenage worries and eventually the goodbyes no class can prepare you for. The only constant, David says, was need.

“There was always a child who needed support,” he says. So they kept saying yes.

Always a "yes"

In 2020, one of those yeses turned out to be an 8-month-old named Brayden. He arrived with a diaper bag and a file so thin it practically fluttered. He and his biological mother had been sleeping in a car. No stable relatives. No plan. Just a baby who needed a safe place.

The Funcks did what they always did: they set routines, provided stability and showed up for supervised visits with biological parents. Sometimes the parents showed. Sometimes they didn’t. Eventually, they stopped altogether.

A grandmother stepped forward briefly, but the county rejected her bid to adopt Brayden. Each time the system opened a path, it closed again. And each time it closed, Brayden was still living in the Funcks’ home.

Months turned into years. Brayden hit every early milestone in their living room — walking, words, wobbling backpack on the first day of Head Start. And with each month, the question grew louder: What now?

“We were essentially the only family he’d ever known,” David says.

By the time the county moved toward permanent custody, Brayden had been with them almost four years. Now came the harder question: could they adopt him? Should they? Their friends were easing into grandparenthood; the Funcks were staring down preschool and permission slips.

David didn’t arrive at Guilford as a Quaker. That would come later. He spent the last two years attending New Garden Friends meetings. He says the exposure to Quakerism while at the College influenced his life. “I left Guilford with the idea reinforced in me that, continuing on my path after college, was this desire of wanting to help people.”

Brayden was the moment when all of that — Guilford, Quaker values, a lifetime of service — came due.

Devoid and Lynn talked it through in kitchen chairs, in courthouse parking lots, in the quiet moments after Brayden fell asleep. “Do we feel we’re capable of doing this?” David says. “That was the question we kept asking ourselves.”

The Funcks have done the math. David will be 79 when Brayden graduates. Lisa will be 74. “We may be coming to  the ceremony using walkers,” she jokes.

Brayden is almost 5 now — wiry, imaginative, waking up every day like someone shot out of a cannon. “Let’s just say he’s active and leave it at that,” says David, laughing. “I need to get some of his energy.”

He loves all animals and is convinced his biological mother is a crocodile — or a shark. He watches PBS' Wild Kratts, an animated adventure series that explores the animal world, with the kind of devotion most kids reserve for superhero movies. His imagination runs ahead of him, the way children’s imaginations do, filling in gaps he’s not old enough to understand.

He knows he isn’t the Funcks’ biological child. He knows they are “David and Lynn” to his face and “Mom and Dad” when talking to strangers. And that’s fine with all three of them. “At some point, he decides whether he wants to use mom and dad,” Lisa says. “That’s fine with us.”

The Funcks’ adult children needed time to adjust, too. Slowly, they have. Families bend more easily than they break.

And now another routine has taken hold: school pickups, jackets by the door, brushing teeth, reading books, lights out, one more drink of water; repeat. The quiet house is gone for good.

Thanksgiving as It Always Was

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a time to remember your blessings and family. The Funcks say the day will feel no more momentous this year than any of the previous holidays with their new son.

“Brayden doesn’t know any different,” David says. “He’s been with us since he was eight months old. We are his family … and we don’t feel any different.”

Thanksgiving isn’t a marker of something new. It’s just the latest snapshot of a child who has spent nearly every holiday of his life with the Funcks. The only real difference, David notes, is logistical. Now that Brayden is their son, the Funcks don’t have to ask the county for a letter if they want to travel out of state.

Beyond that, tomorrow is what it's always been — food, noise, routines and one excited 5-year-old racing around a house that’s busy again.

“The adoption was just paperwork,” David says. “We were a family long before that hearing.”

The Funcks knew that years ago. This Thanksgiving only reminds them again.