Children from the heart

  HenryBurtStevens                               

Two articles ran in the Sun-Herald in November that caught my eye, “Couple hooked on Foster Parenting,” and “Children seek good homes.”  Adoption and Foster Children have always been of interest to me, even though I am a natural child.

My father, Joseph Kent Stevens, was adopted.  His first surname was Kent and my grandparents wisely made it his middle name when they adopted him at age seven.  My grandparents, Dr. Henry Burt Stevens and Bertha Reese Stevens had an older natural daughter named Esther.  They also had a foster child living with them named Herbert Anderson who was two years younger than my father, Joseph.  This was the family and they lived in Roxbury just outside Boston, MA where my grandfather was an eye surgeon. This was during the years prior and during World War One.

Esther went on to an Ivy League education, Dr Stevens died in 1925, and Bertha kept the house, rented part of it. Bertha eked out a living and raised the two boys, eventually adopting Herbert Anderson who became Herbert Anderson Stevens.

My parents Joseph Kent and May Clark Stevens had two natural children, myself oldest and my 14 month younger brother Murray who died in 1998.  When Murray and I were 11 and 12 years old my parents adopted a baby girl who they named Barbara May Stevens.

I married Patricia Osborne in 1956.  Patricia’s mother was adopted as a baby when her mother died. Her five older brothers and sisters went out as foster children.  Years later all the children reconnected.  

My brother Murray married a girl who was adopted.

All these stories have been intertwined into my life as I always knew my father was adopted.  I saw my grandmother Bertha Reese Stevens often as a child.

Bertha was a firm, determined woman.  She had served as a medical nurse during the Spanish American War.  Her daughter, Esther, was also a strong, determined and very intelligent, so you can see that they could and did clash by holding opposite opinions on a number of issues.  But one of the issues which eventually drove them apart was that Esther married very well and Esther wanted her mother to send the boys back to the orphanage so Bertha could escape poverty and be part of the upscale life Esther enjoyed.  Bertha didn’t do it.

I say all this in preparation to the story I really want to share with you.

Around the corner from me these days live Dave and Fran Kuhn.  Dave and Fran during the years they lived near Mansfield, Ohio had three natural children, five adopted children and one hundred seven foster children.  Their license was for 10 children total, although sometime emergency conditions put them over 10 for a few days.  If a child needs a home starting nights or weekends the Kuhn’s answer was always “yes,” and they’d get back to 10 or under during regular business hours the following week when Children’s Service was open for business.

The Kuhn’s family started in 1947 with the birth of their first child.  Shortly after their second child arrived a neighbor phoned for some eggs to be delivered.  When Fran arrived at the neighbors to deliver the eggs she found that the neighbor was waiting to go to the hospital for a gall bladder operation. The neighbor’s sister would take her two children, but there were two foster children who had no place to go on a Saturday afternoon.  Fran took the two foster children with her and reported their whereabouts to the County Children’s Service who said they would make further arrangements next week when the office was open.

The next week there was still no space at any foster home and so a case worker came out and licensed Dave and Fran as foster parents. Their very young family went to four children at once, an 8 month old, 1 year old, 2 year old, and 3 year old.  From then until 1986 there were always children living with Dave and Fran, thirty-nine years.

One day after they had been doing foster parenting for many years Dave stopped at a gas station and the man in charge said, “Dad Kuhn,” and Dave recognized a foster child of many years ago.  The man said, “Just a minute,” and called to the back room and a young man came out and the man introduced his foster child to Dave, his foster parent.

The man had taken a number of foster children over the years, but always an older boy, one at a time.  The man taught each boy auto mechanics till they went out on their own.

The way it turned out in my family was that my father helped Bertha maintain herself in her later years.  Bertha wouldn’t take anything from Esther; Herbert was a country minister in Souhegan, ME and about able to maintain his own family.  I ended up with the only grandparent I ever knew, Bertha, and I have to this day her personal copy of Emerson’s essays, complete with her pencil underlines and her newspaper clippings.  My life has been richer because Bertha chose to make my father’s life richer.

Bertha said, “There are two kinds of children; from the tummy or from the heart.”

Henry Burt Stevens