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FOSTER CARE :
SIBLINGS :
SEPERATION :
LARGE FAMILIES:
The Children of Strangers
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The Children of Strangers
Sue and Hector Badeau adopted twenty children who needed a homebut there
were always more.
By Larissa MacFarquhar
AMERICAN CHRONICLES
August 3, 2015
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/03/the-children-of-strangers
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When Sue Hoag was twelve, she read a book, The Family Nobody Wanted, about
a couple in the nineteen-forties who adopted a multiracial posse of twelve
children, despite having very little room or money. Sue thought it would
be wonderful to be part of such a family, and she begged her parents to
adopt. They had only four kids in their family, she pleadedsurely there
was room for more. Her parents said no. But Sue kept thinking about the
book, and by the time she was fifteen she had met her future husband,
Hector Badeau, and by the time she was eighteen she and Hector had planned
their family: they would have two kids and adopt two. By the time they
were four years out of college and four years married, they had had the
two kids and adopted the two kids and thought their family was complete.
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But there were more than two children in the world who needed parents.
There were so many children who, because they were too old, or too
violent, or too traumatized, or unable to walk, or too close to death, or
the wrong color, or had too many brothers and sisters, were unlikely ever
to be adopted; and when Hector and Sue thought about what those childrens
lives would be like without parents, lives that were already unimaginably
difficult, they could not bear it. So by the time Sue was twenty-eight and
Hector was thirty, they had had two kids and adopted nine, and by the end
of the following year they had had two kids and adopted fourteen; and long
before they adopted their last, twenty-second child, eleven years later,
the four-child family they had imagined in high school was a distant
memory, and something wilder and more explosive, more exhilarating and
more crushing and unfathomably more complicated, had taken its place.
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Terrible, painful things happened that they were not able to preventthree
children dead, two in prison, teen-age pregnancies, divorces. But there
were also birthday parties and weddings and graduations; there were
grandchildren and great-grandchildren, most of them still living in the
same neighborhood, within a few blocks of one another and their parents,
in and out of one anothers homes all the time, minding one anothers
children. And every Easter and Fourth of July and Thanksgiving and
Christmas and New Years the children and the grandchildren and the
great-grandchildren gathered with Sue and Hector in the big house they
still lived in, although they couldnt afford it, and ate a meal together.
And though some were missingthree dead, two in prisonstill, most were
there, year after year, and, for everything that had happened, they were a
family.
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Twenty-two children didnt seem as strange to Hector as it did to most
people, because he came from sixteen. His mother, Delvina, was born on a
farm in Quebec, and went to school through the eighth grade; his father,
Philorum, left school in Montreal at nine to earn money chopping wood.
Philorum married Delvina and moved to Barre, Vermont, in search of work,
though neither of them spoke English. He found a job in the quarries as a
stonecutter. Of their sixteen children, fifteen livedthe fifth died at
three, falling down the stairs. Hector was the twelfth, born in 1956. They
were poor: the most Philorum ever made was a hundred dollars a week. The
younger boys slept six to a bed.
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Philorum was a harsh father, strict and unloving. He drank a lot, and was
often gone all weekend on a bender. When he came home, sometimes he beat
the kids with a horsewhip or an electrical cord. By the time Hector was
twelve, he had decided that he disliked his father, and that when he grew
up he would be a father who spent time with his kids and told them he
loved them.
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The Badeau boys were known for hockey, but Hector was the best of them,
the star of Spaulding High School. He had curly hair, and in high school
he grew it out into a giant seventies Afro with a mustache to match. The
coach wanted him to try out for the pros, but by then he had met Sue. He
spotted her in the fall of 1973, playing field hockey. She was prettyshe
had been crowned Junior Miss of Barre, and was first runner-up in the
state beauty pageant.
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In their town, Sues family seemed well off. Both her parents had gone to
college; her father was an engineer for the state highway department, her
mother was a dental hygienist. They led Brownie troops and Girl Scout
troops and coached Little League. Their house was nicely decorated and
exceptionally clean. Sue came from the kind of family Hector wanted to
belong to. After six months, he knew that Sue was the girl for him.
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Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
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Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
jwne@xxxxxxxxxx
http://workface.com/e/daviddillard
Net-Gold
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RESEARCH PAPER WRITING
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INTERNSHIPS
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HOSPITALITY
http://guides.temple.edu/hospitality-guide
DISABILITIES AND EMPLOYMENT
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INDOOR GARDENING
https://groups.io/g/indoor-gardening
Educator-Gold
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K12ADMINLIFE
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PUBLIC HEALTH RESOURCES INCLUDING EBOLA
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Social Work and Social Issues Discussion Group
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Copyright Research Guide
Copyright, Intellectual Property and Plagiarism Sources
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Fair Use
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Blog
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Articles by David Dillard
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Information Literacy (Russell Conwell Guide)
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Nina Dillard's Photographs on Net-Gold
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Twitter: davidpdillard
Temple University Site Map
https://sites.google.com/site/templeunivsitemap/home
Bushell, R. & Sheldon, P. (eds),
Wellness and Tourism: Mind, Body, Spirit,
Place, New York: Cognizant Communication Books.
Wellness Tourism: Bibliographic and Webliographic Essay
David P. Dillard
http://tinyurl.com/o4pn4o9
Rail Transportation
https://groups.io/org/groupsio/RailTransportation
INDOOR GARDENING
Improve Your Chances for Indoor Gardening Success
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/IndoorGardeningUrban/
SPORT-MED
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/sport-med.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sports-med/
http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/sport-med.html
HEALTH DIET FITNESS RECREATION SPORTS TOURISM
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/healthrecsport/info
http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/health-recreation-sports-tourism.html
