In the late summer of 1981, we started on our journey to try to find adoptive homes for all the thousands of special needs kids in state care in Massachusetts. No one, not even me, knew how it would turn out.

The first child to be videotaped was a seven-year-old boy named James; tow headed with a big smile. I took him to the Children’s’ Museum in Boston and put him up on a big old fire engine with an official fireman’s helmet on him. He was thrilled. I spoke with the social worker and she shared his background and needs. I wrote and edited the piece and the next Wednesday there it was on our 6:00 news: “Wednesday’s Child.”

As soon as the segment aired, the phones at Massachusetts Adoption Resource lit up. Social workers had a sizeable list of potential parents for James and other children similar to him.

I thought to myself: “Wow, that’s not too hard!” It wasn’t until a few months later that I found out there is much more to this than I knew at the time. My life changed when I met another little boy in November of that first year. Timmy jarred me into realizing how little I knew. After all, I was the youngest child of two wonderful parents and three older sisters; two of whom were old enough to be my mother. In other words, I had a perfect loving family and never realized this was not the case for lots of other children,

Timmy taught me never to judge and how close I came to a catastrophe!

Timmy’s story in our next segment (part 3)

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