Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: New voices for children

Thursday, March 30, 2000 | 9 a.m.

Let's hope that sometime this century a compassionate governor and a sensitive director of Human Resources will repair the damage done in recent years by their predecessors. The closing of the children's homes at both ends of Nevada was done by selfish legislators with the quiet approval of the last administration and the political game playing of Director of Human Resources Charlotte Crawford. The legislators found plenty of self-served pork for themselves, but showed no concern about children needing a home. They were selfish and never took time to get to know and love the children or they wouldn't have destroyed the homes.

I say this tragedy will eventually be rectified because of an enlightened evaluation now taking place nationwide. Articles in both the Los Angeles Times and USA Today last week assured me that good orphanages to meet the needs of some children are on the road back. St. Cloud's orphanage in the movie "The Cider House Rules" helped trigger this attention. Writer John Irving, when researching material for the screenplay, went into the project with the idea that orphanages were bad places where kids were mistreated. When interviewing former residents he found out different. He told USA Today, "To a one, they said that the people who ran these orphanages were wonderful. That they (as children) were extremely well treated."

Irving's findings remind me of a letter from Marci Lynn Manta, a 1986 college graduate, who lived in the children's home in Boulder City for eight years where she found a "stable and loving environment." Marci wrote me three years ago:

"My life would have been quite different had I not lived at the Children's Home from 1972-1980. Before the Children's Home, my brother and I were placed in foster care from 1965-1972. Not one home, but so many I have lost count. Many states and different families, for varying lengths of time. My brother and I moved from one home to another because with foster care it is not a permanent living situation. As I remember, the care was mediocre and I never bonded with people because I knew we would be moved to another foster home.

"The last foster home was particularly abusive and neglectful and was the reason my brother and I were placed at the Southern Nevada Children's home. I have heard similar accounts of children raised in foster care and it is hauntingly familiar. Most individuals think the Children's Home is for delinquent kids that are continually in trouble. However, there are so many that are good children but the parents could not take care of them."

USA Today's story centers on the 108-year-old Connie Maxwell Children's Home in Greenwood, S.C. Among the letters campus administrator Iris Bullard holds dear is a little lad's prayer after a year at Connie Maxwell. "They teached me to swim. ... They fixed my teeth. ... They like my mother, even if she ain't married."

Professor Richard B. McKenzie, a respected author and editor, surveyed 1,600 middle-aged and elderly alumni from orphanages to draw his conclusions about their value. "As for adoptions, Congress has done much over the past two years to encourage adoptions out of foster care, even giving child welfare agencies bounties for each 'system' child adopted.

"However, as fully evident in 'Cider House,' it's a mistake to assume that all children are adoptable. Often the decision that prospective parents make on who to adopt is almost arbitrary, perhaps even, as one child in 'Cider House' lamented, based on the color of a child's eyes."

McKenzie's article in the Times gives future abandoned and neglected children hope. He writes, "In a way, 'The Cider House Rules' is both a glimpse into the nation's child care past and into its future. The good news is that existing children's homes are expanding, and new ones are being organized, albeit at a slow pace. The country needs more children's homes like the one in 'Cider House.' That means more private, civic, religious and charitable organizations will need to step up to the plate and do what was done for children decades ago, only do it even better."

Maybe, just maybe, the Silver State will return to doing what is right and had been doing for most of the last century.