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Ellen Had A Huge Surprise For These Incredible Gay Dads

Here come the tears!

If there’s one thing that Ellen DeGeneres loves more than scaring the ever-living bejesus out of people, it’s rewarding them for doing good deeds.

On Monday’s episode of “The Ellen Show,” DeGeneres welcomed Rob and Reece Scheer, from Darnestown, Maryland. The two dads with four children opened up about how they created their beautiful family and started a non-profit to help other foster kids.

The couple, who’s been married for seven years, told DeGeneres that they knew they wanted to create a family by adopting through the foster care system. When they got the call informing them about placement, they were offered a brother and a sister. Even though they had originally only wanted one child, they agreed to take both in order to keep them together.

“Within six months we got another call for a six-month old and a two-year old and the next thing you know we went from two guys to six people,” Rob Scheer said.

The children came from abusive backgrounds, including one child who suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome, but the Scheers were determined to provide a loving home for their kids. In fact, because, as Reece Scheer noted, survivors of fetal alcohol syndrome are believed to make significant developmental progress by interacting with animals and eating organic foods, the couple even bought a farm for the family to share.

“I don’t know if I was ready for [dealing with the kind of trauma our kids had been through], but we just made it work,” Rob Scheer said. “That’s what family’s about, you just make it work. They don’t care that we’re white and we’re gay, they care that we love them.”

He added, “People say all the time that our kids won the lottery… but we won the lottery.”

Even more incredible, the couple started Comfort Cases, a foundation to provide foster children with their own luggage filled with essentials ― a tooth brush, pajamas, a blanket, a book ― because so many children move around through the system carrying what few belongings they have in a trash bag.

The Scheers told DeGeneres that their foundation currently operates in Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C. but that it was their “dream” to take it nation-wide.

So, guess what Ellen did? She partnered with Samsonite to give Rob and Reece, who she said should be “the dads of the year,” $10,000 cash and another $40,000 worth of Samsonite products to help their organization grow.

“[Rob and Reece’s] story is one of the reasons I love my job,” DeGeneres told her audience.

Your job ― and your commitment to recognizing the beautiful acts of kindness that everyday folks are sharing across America ― is the reason we love you, Ellen.

For more info on Comfort Cases, head here.

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