Fostering Foster Care in Orange County

Every year the Christmas tree stood just inside the lobby of the Fullerton News Tribune. And starting Dec. 1 and every day through Dec. 23, it was one of my assignments to write a short, tear-stained article about the children in Orange County foster homes who wouldn’t make Santa’s list unless the paper’s readers brought in a present for the Trib tree. I defy you to have read that stuff and not to have been clutched by great, racking sobs. I was shameless and used every hokey gambit in the world. It brought in hundreds of presents and the Fullerton Police Force delivered them on Dec. 24.

The sad thing is, I needn’t have embellished any of those Dickensian yarns. In every metropolitan area, in the suburbs and in pastoral country towns, there are kids with no presents all year round and often a very iffy hold on life itself through no fault of their own.

I have a longtime friend named Bob Fox, a great block of a man with a jaw like the prow of a ship and a heart like a marshmallow. He is nationally known as a tough and able labor negotiator. He is on the board of a volunteer organization called SAFE, an acronym for Southern Area Fostercare Effort.

SAFE is headed by Barbara J. Labitzke. She is a 12-year Orange County employee and foster home coordinator. Bob took me to a children’s home in Orange County named Orangewood in Santa Ana. William Lyon, an Orange County builder and retired U.S. Air Force general, is chairman of the board of the beautiful place, which is home to 700 abused, abandoned, victimized children.

The kids, aged from infancy up, live in cottages in a homelike atmosphere, and the grounds are landscaped. The day Bob Fox took me out there, I saw a counselor leading a train of little boys. They were coming back from swimming. Gen. Lyon has made princely donations to Orangewood and encouraged other Orange County citizens to join him.

Barbara is an energetic apple dumpling of a woman who says, “For every negative, there is a positive or I couldn’t do it.”

What she and the other members of SAFE do is tell people about being foster parents. Their ideal is a home for every child.

It takes unselfish people who love children to take a child into their home. What these children have been through is unbelievable. According to Barbara, Melissa was addicted to heroin and cocaine when she was born, and her addicted mother walked away and left her as soon as she could get out of bed.

Two-year-old Kevin was beaten so severely by his father that 14 bones were broken. A 9-year-old was molested by her father.

My son, Timothy, teaches reading to adolescents and adults. One time, he had a 14-year-old who had been in some trouble with the authorities. One of his hands was webbed, like a duck’s foot. His mother had held it in the gas flame to teach him a lesson. She did. She almost destroyed him. After that, Tim stopped looking at the boys’ histories. He said it affected the way he worked with the kids.

There is no point in listing the horrors that these children have suffered. We know it happens every day.

On May 9, the Board of Supervisors of Orange County, SAFE and the National Charity League will honor seven foster families. According to one foster parent, the gratification comes when a child who has sat passive as a flounder for days one day gets up off the couch and starts to dance a little bit to a radio. And then the glee the parent feels when the child throws a self-indulgent, naughty temper tantrum.

One foster family takes drug-addicted babies. The babies scream for hours at a time and are ultrasensitive to light. They keep the nursery in their house darkened and play soft, soothing music. The babies do noticeably better.

Somehow a bunch of former USC football players has become interested in SAFE. A number of them were friends of Bob Fox, which is how he joined the board.

Joe Obbema is a former pro-football player who wanted to help and decided it would be nice to give some of the foster families a treat. He helped SAFE get free tickets for foster families to attend USC football and basketball games. Scoreboard messages saluted the families at the games and recruited more families, which was the added plus. Even the blimp, familiar in the sky over athletic events, flashed the message: “Join the SAFE Foster Home Team.”

Nick Pappas, a former star Trojan and now associate director of athletics at USC, is on the board of SAFE.

The afternoon at Orangewood makes you realize the terrible need and the boundless generosity of the people who have already helped so much.

SAFE is proud of having its own 800 telephone number. They are trying to interest families in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. If you know anyone who is willing to accept the challenge, the number is (800) 426-2233.

People often think that foster families are poor people who do it for the money. There isn’t that much money and families come in all income brackets. All they need is courage, bravery and love.