In These Foster Homes, Children Are Seen, Heard and Also Helped

One day last year an elderly woman knocked on the front door of Melvin and Joyce Simmons’ two-story home in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles. With her was an 11-year-old boy.

“We had the boy with us six or seven years ago. The woman said she was his grandmother and had brought him by so he could say ‘thank you’ to us. That meant so much to us,” Joyce Simmons said recently as she cradled a 2-month-old baby who had arrived only three days before.

Family Stands Out

Of the thousands of people in California who care for abused and neglected children, the Simmons family stands out.

As she held the baby, Joyce Simmons smiled at his 20-month-old half-brother playing nearby in the living room.

“When he got here, he had the most tragic, forlorn look in his eyes. That was just three days ago,” she said.

The two siblings are the newest foster children in the Simmons family, which includes three adopted children. The Simmonses were commended recently by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for fostering more than 200 children in the last 15 years.

Another foster child under the care of the Simmonses is a 16-year-old deaf boy. They are also the legal guardians of a 7-year-old autistic and deaf boy.

“It has been a fulfillment and a real joy for the whole family because it is truly a team effort,” Joyce Simmons said. “And I also believe that we have no choice in what we are doing. I believe we should give.”

At a time when the number of abused children needing foster care is escalating, families like the Simmonses are indispensable. Families like the Simmonses, and like Vernon and Nina Coake and Tim and Lesly Bird.

On the outskirts of Fontana, in western San Bernardino County, the Coakes operate what is practically a baby farm.

More Than a Thousand

The Coakes, who moved to California in 1950, have taken care of 1,028 foster children in the last 35 years. They usually care for three to five children at a time.

In Yorba Linda, the Birds have been foster parents to more than 100 children in the last six years, have adopted two others and are caring for a sick little girl they also plan to adopt.

The Coakes were unable to have children of their own after they married in Arizona. They adopted two boys before moving to California. They adopted a little girl here. And together, Nina, 62, and Vernon, 65, have saved their share of lives.

Although he has been slowed by a recent stroke, Vernon Coake still helps his wife by feeding, burping and changing diapers for the infants. They now are caring for a 5-month-old boy who is on a heart monitor, a 4-year-old boy who was sexually abused and a toddler who was abandoned.

“They call us because we won’t turn up our noses at anything,” Nina Coake said. “We’re used to bed-wetting, cussing and fighting. We’ve seen just about everything.”

‘A Super Woman’

“Nina is just a super woman,” said Sally Lewis, San Bernardino County supervisor of foster home services. “Not all can be like her. She and Vernon are uncommon people.”

But even after the Coakes’ many years of sacrifice, there are traumas that never seem to go away.

“Some of them leave such a gap because you take them through so much. You really miss them when they leave. Others aren’t here long enough to miss. The thing is that someone is calling you about taking in another before one is even out the door,” Nina Coake said.

And there are those who are so badly abused that even a man with Coake’s experience cringes.

“You think you’ve seen it all and then you get a kid all beat up. Once I got a call from the social worker who asked me, ‘You want a child whose father played drop-kick with him?’ Of course, I said yes,” Coake said.

Lesly Bird became a foster parent after the death of her father-in-law seven years ago. After he died, she felt useless and bored.

“I like taking care of people who need me. I get a lot of satisfaction from seeing people get well,” she said.

The joy of helping is also what makes Tim Bird stand by his wife during difficult periods as the family cares for badly abused or handicapped children.

Sharing ‘Helped Our Kids’

“I get enjoyment out of seeing abused children grow positively. It’s good to see them get on the right track,” he said.

The Birds have three children of their own ranging in age from 15 to 20, and two boys, now 7 and 6, whom they adopted several years ago. The demands--and rewards--of foster parenting are shared with the children.

“It’s helped our kids. They’ve grown up sharing things, sharing their bedrooms . . . sharing their parents. They’ve become nicer kids because of it,” Lesly Bird said.

These days, the joy in the lives of the Bird family is Brianna, a pretty 2-year-old girl with soft brown eyes. She was born two months prematurely and developed hyaline membrane disease, a lung condition common in premature babies.

In the 16 months the Birds have cared for her, Brianna has been in the hospital at least 25 times. Still, the Bird family has found time to take in other children, even if for only brief periods. Their adoption of Brianna, who is constantly hooked up to an oxygen machine, should become final this month.

Brianna’s condition and repeated hospital stays have not discouraged the Birds.

‘Every Year Gets Better’

“You just know when it’s your child,” Lesly Bird said. “She’s a normal child mentally. Her main problem is her lung disease. Every year gets better (for her), but a lot of things can still happen.”

Joyce Simmons, an emotional and lively woman, gets especially close to her foster children. And it is the attachment to all the children that she has known over the years that makes it difficult for her to bid them farewell.

“You must grieve like you lost one of your own. But you learn to deal with that. That’s when you pick up the phone and say, ‘I have an empty bed, send me another child,’ ” she said.

The Coakes have forgotten many of the names of the children they’ve known over a period of 35 years. Some they remember only by photographs they have kept: poignant studies of how lost and neglected the children were the day they arrived and how cheerful they looked the day they left the Coake home.

But the memory of a 5-year-old boy they knew long ago will never be erased from their minds. During a very private and personal moment on a backyard swing, the little boy defined forever the despair of an abused and neglected child. The Coakes heard him from inside the house.

The boy looked up at the darkening sky and said, “Jesus, come down here and get me.”

There was no reply.

Again, but louder, the boy said, “Jesus, come down here and get me . . . right now .”

Still no reply.

The boy then deepened his voice and answered his own plea: “OK, I’m coming.”