They Call Her Super Mom--With 200 Foster Children, and Counting

After two decades and more than 200 foster children, Winnie Kelly has learned a trick or two about making kids feel at home.

“The best thing to do is ask them what they like to eat,” says Kelly, the unofficial Super Mom of the state Division of Family Services.

She has cooked many a meal for an abused or abandoned child who needed a place to stay. Since 1968, she has been taking them in, cooking their favorite foods and giving them a clean bed to sleep in.

Whether they stay a night, a week or 18 years, Kelly calls them her own as soon as they step through the door of her small pink house in this old Missouri River town.

“When a kid comes here, she welcomes them with open arms and gives them the love they need,” social worker Tamee Bruenderman said during a recent visit with Kelly. “The first thing she does is hug them.”

Kelly, a grandmother in her own right, is reported to be in her 70s, but she refuses to confirm that. Even so, lots of people who have long since reared a family of their own would be ready for a rest.

Not Kelly, who is licensed to house six children at one time--more in emergencies.

“What would I do if I didn’t have children and something to do?” says Kelly, a widow for some 20 years. “I’d be an invalid. I like cooking and cleaning and taking care of them.”

It all started with a desire to do something good in return for the care her husband, Clyde, received from the brothers at St. Joseph’s Hill Infirmary after he suffered a stroke. They came to her house to help her care for him and later they cared for him at St. Joseph’s.

Kelly was touched because the brothers didn’t care that she and her husband were black and never asked how the Kellys would pay for the help. So she began to think of ways she could repay them.

Taking care of unwanted and unfortunate children was just up her alley. It seemed she had always had children around. She reared her own son and two daughters and helped rear a bunch of nieces and nephews and grandchildren. She also worked as a governess, helping to rear the four children of her longtime friend, Geneva Pauline Mays of Washington.

Even now, 23 years later, Kelly said she never thinks about slowing down. As long as her health holds, she will keep on doing what she loves.

The records aren’t complete so there is no way to know for sure, but state workers believe Kelly has set a record for foster parenting. Family Services area director Mona Prater estimates that Kelly has cared for more than 200 kids, including foster children placed there by the agency and others dropped off during emergencies by churches, the police and other foster parents.

Kelly isn’t considered an employee of Family Services but is licensed by the state agency. Technically, she is a “vendor.” She is paid for each child she takes in: $209 a month for each child up to 5 years old, $255 a month for children between 5 and 12, $281 for those 13 and over. Also, she receives $100 a month because she is a designated emergency foster home, meaning that the agency can call her at any time, day or night. Once a year, she receives $100 to pay for clothing and other items.

Bruenderman wonders what her office would do without Kelly.

“Mrs. Kelly is the only one in the county we can call any day, any night,” she says. “She doesn’t say no.”

Age and race don’t matter to Kelly. Neither do physical or emotional problems.

“It’s nothing for the police to bring somebody in at 2 in the morning,” says Father Bernardo Trosa, whose Franciscan monastery has taken Kelly under its wing. “She never knows what will come in her front door, and she doesn’t care. She just gives them a lot of love.”

Through the years, she has cared for retarded children, physically disabled children, abused and neglected children. Sometimes they have arrived at her door hostile and withdrawn. She has loved them all.

“I’ve only known of one or two that she just felt like she wasn’t able to help,” Mays says. “The rapport that she has with those children is just amazing. And when they do get adopted or go on to somebody else, they don’t want to leave their ‘mama.’ ”

Gifts and artwork from her foster children hang on the walls of Kelly’s home, where several beds are crammed into four tiny bedrooms. Some children have gone on to college, become nurses, soldiers, writers or medical assistants. Others have had less successful lives. But they are all equal in Kelly’s eyes.

Even she can’t remember how many there have been, although she can recall many of their names. A scrapbook crammed with snapshots is a prized possession.

On Thanksgiving, dozens of former foster children come back to Kelly’s house, sometimes bringing their spouses and their own children. At times, there have been as many as 100 people crowded into her home.

“They’ve never forgotten Winnie, and she never forgets them,” Bernard says.