Cross-country walker raising awareness of foster care, adoptive needs

Glenn J. Koster is a double product of the foster care and the adoption systems.

By the age of 6, he was abandoned, the only one of six children to be left behind by his parents, with his siblings having people to go to. He was soon adopted, then pulled from that home 13 months later and went back through the system, then was re-adopted when he was 10 years old.

He is in Havre Wednesday and today, taking a break for the Independence Day holiday during his cross-country walk to raise awareness of the need for foster care and adoption.

"This is my time to give - by walking to raise awareness," Koster said.

In 2012, Koster was working at Eaton Corporations in Hutchinson, Kansas, where he participated in a Get Fit Challenge. He succeeded in walking 280 miles and has been walking ever since.

He walked from Oklahoma to Nebraska in 2014 just to see if he could walk long-distance, covering 187 miles in 10 days. By the next year, for his 60th birthday, he wanted to walk from Missouri to Colorado to raise funds for central charities relating to children. The goal for the walk was to complete it in 22 days to finish it on his birthday, but got delayed three times due to medical issues. The walk was 487 miles and raised almost $10,000 for local charities

He began Charity Steps in 2015 with his wife, Charlcie L. Koster, and formulated the idea "Let's Walk Across the Country."

The focus for his 2018 "Across the Country" journey is to raise awareness for the need for foster parents and adoption, and how anyone can help. The walk is completely funded by Koster and his wife - they are not asking for donations, but if people want to donate, they encourage them to donate locally to something related to foster children.

He said he is walking to raise awareness for adoption and foster care because he cannot help himself.

"I followed the footsteps of my father, my birth father. I am a recovering alcoholic, sober since March of 1989, and a recovering spousal abuser, violence-free since May 1989," Koster said. "But because of those two things, I cannot be a foster or adoptive parent."

He started his journey in south Miami Beach, Florida, and will be walking all the way to the Seattle area in Washington state, which is a total of 4,400 miles. Koster plans to be finished by late August. He decided not to take a diagonal route, which would be 3,600 miles.

"I chose the route that I did because it is the most difficult route in the country and foster kids don't have an easy route, an easy life, so I wanted to mimic some of that," he said. "I chose it because when I'm done I will have more miles than you have if you take the shortest distance from north to south plus the shortest distance east to west. I will eclipse that to show that this is a nationwide issue."

He provided statistics to show how big of an issue this is the U.S., indicating that the country has 520,000 children in foster care right now.

Montana has 1,600 children in foster care, he added.

Koster tries to walk a total of 22 miles a day and his wife follows behind him in an RV, keeping track of the total of miles and so on. He makes a map every night before of where he is going to be walking and the locations he and his wife can connect.

He said that every time they have crossed a state line they have experienced some sort of weather phenomenon, except for coming into Montana.

"Montana is so far the longest walk of any state I had done," he added.

Koster said he will not walk if the weather conditions are hurricanes, lightning, hail, tornadoes and snow. He is not afraid to walk in these conditions, but is concerned if the weather would be dangerous for his wife to drive. He walks six days a week, not on Sundays and not on holidays.

"The hardest part about all of this is driving and passing the time. I have read a total of 105 books, will do puzzles, visit town museums and cemeteries," Charlcie Koster said.

After they finish this walk, their goal is to make it to the 65th anniversary of Disneyland as that day matches his wife's birthday.

Koster is a writer and published columnist. His fist book, "Life is a Long Story Short," was published in March 2016. Subsequent books are in the works and are due in early 2020.

He provides to any foster or adoptive child or foster siblings he comes across with a dedicated signed poem he wrote:

"Alone in a world I do not understand

With no one to walk with me;

None to hold my hand,

I do not belong.

I am constantly moving from place to place;

Never staying long, nor learning to love.

I barely remember a face.

I simply cannot belong.

Struggling, excelling, hurting, and crying;

Living in fear that I will have to go it alone,

But I keep on trying

To prove I belong.

Growing, maturing, learning, and yearning;

Hoping for the day that I know will come

My own way in life I'm earning.

But I still don't belong.

God wrapped His arms around my soul

From somewhere beyond my world;

His love enough to make me whole

Surely now I know ... I have always belonged!"

Points along the way on this trip that he considers significant include the Atlantic Ocean, crossing the Mississippi, Mount Rushmore - with more to come.

People interested in tracking his walking and training progress can do so at http://www.facebook.com/ksCharitySteps and http://www.facebook.com/glenn.koster/.

"Charity Steps because charity always begins with a single step ... and because adoption and foster care matter," he says in his brochure.