By PAUL LOCHER
Staff Writer
WOOSTER -- A first-ever celebration and group discussion for adoptive families was held Saturday at Parkview Church of Christ under the auspices of the Christian Children's Home of Ohio.
According to Rhonda Greer, supervisor of adoption for the home, the purpose of the gathering was to enable adoptive families to get together in a relaxed setting to talk about common problems and challenges.
"We wanted to give these families an opportunity to explore what families that got involved with adoption expected, and what the adoptees expected from their families," said Greer.
Speakers for the gathering were Gary Porter, executive director of the Christian Children's Home of Ohio, and Joy Hall, an adoptee who works with a residential treatment center in Mansfield.
Porter, who was adopted as a child, said the Christian Children's Home has been an adoptive agency since 1997. He said when he was born in 1945 to a single mother, things were nothing like they are now.
"It was a rough thing," he said, adding back then being an unwed mother was not accepted by society and adoption was "not an acceptable place to be" either.
Porter said he was adopted by his grandparents -- whom he called Mom and Pop -- and his birth mother continued to live with him in the same house, though he was only permitted to refer to her as his sister.
Porter said he never learned until he was in grade school the woman he referred to as his sister was his mother -- a fact, he said, that raised a few eyebrows at school.
Rejected by his biological father, he said he missed having a father figure in his life, with his grandparents being too old to do much with when he was young. Eventually, he said, a minister became that father figure.
"This," said Porter, "has helped me understand the necessity of ... people's need for permanency."
Hall talked about being born in 1986 to an abusive family in Cleveland. "My childhood was rough; drugs and gangs. I was in survival mode from the get-go," she said.
Hall described years of being in and out of one foster care family after another, always with the same result -- she was so consumed with rage no family could handle her.
"I was thrown around, tossed around and found to be unloving and unloved," she said.
She said her life began to slowly turn around when she was placed in the care of a Christian family whose rules were, "Know God, know who you are and know where you're going." That family, she noted, brought strong "standards and structures" to her life, though she still struggled with bouts of extreme anger, depression, suicidal tendencies and had attention deficit disorder and other psychological problems.
Hall said it was only when she grasped the concept that "the past doesn't determine your future" that her life began to change for the better.
Ultimately Hall, who is black, was adopted by a white family, which caused "lots of hushes and pointing." Finally, she said, she "gave into love, made that leap of faith and tore down the walls" with which she had protected herself.
Porter said there are 3,000 children in Ohio "awaiting a permanent family. They need a place to go for Thanksgiving and Christmas. They need somebody to walk them down the aisle."
He added they needed to be adopted before "aging out of the system" at 18. "That is not something any child should have to endure," he said.
Reporter Paul Locher can be reached at 330-682-2055 or e-mail at plocher@the-daily-record.com.