THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 10, 1996 TAG: 9604090144
SECTION: ISLE OF WIGHT CITIZEN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JODY R. SNIDER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ISLE OF WIGHT LENGTH: Long : 198 lines
SHE WAS JUST 3 days old.
Red hair.
Freckles.
A tiny angel with just a couple of flaws: a crooked foot and no home.
But Nelson and Aileen Edwards saw through one flaw and made it better. For 11 months, they took care of the other as well.
They gave Cindy a home.
Today, 34 years later, Cindy still is remembered as their first foster child.
``It was hard to give her up,'' said Aileen, 56. ``We only had our own two boys then, and this was a girl! I've always wondered how she's doing because I remember her at the age she left. I remember how she looked then.''
But if Cindy had stayed, things may have been different. The Edwardses believe they may not have gone on to bring other foster children into their home.
``If we had adopted her, our family would have been complete,'' Aileen said.
That never happened. In the 34 years the couple has been keeping foster children, their family never has been complete.
Their present and former foster children now total 64. They also have two natural children and four adopted children. They currently are caring for six foster children and are in the process of adopting four of them.
The call to take a new child from Isle of Wight, Suffolk or Newport News social services comes about twice a year.
In the 1980s, the Edwardses kept as many as 10 foster children at one time. Since becoming foster parents, the least they've kept has been two at a time.
The little boys and girls who come to live in the Edwards household are abandoned or neglected, battered, abused, malnourished, almost always unwanted.
Several have come needing hip operations. One boy came with a withered hand and leg. Nobody knew what caused the birth defect.
Some stay for a week; others stay for three or four years.
Social services strives to reunite the children with their natural parents, with a court-approved plan for fixing the problems that led to the children's removal from their homes. If that's not possible, the youngsters sometimes are adopted.
Meanwhile, the Edwardses take in as many children as they can.
``There was never any need to have more kids of our own,'' Aileen said. ``With as many kids who need one, we'd rather take someone else's kids and give them a home.''
A big, two-story farmhouse on 100 acres in the Moonelight area of Isle of Wight is home for the Edwards clan. The farm is complete with cats, chickens, ducks, geese and more than 20 dogs - everything children need to discover and be themselves.
Plans to build a horse barn and start a goat herd are also in the works.
In the meantime, Nelson has quit his job as a superintendent at Smithfield Ham and Products Co. Inc. to renovate the old farmhouse. A large garden also will be planted this year.
During the day, Aileen runs a 50-mile mail route for the Smithfield Post Office, where she has been employed for more than 30 years.
Mornings are hectic. Kids bound around the house readying themselves for school until the first of three buses arrives at 7 a.m. By 8 a.m. the last bus has left, and Nelson is left to care for one 4-year-old boy and the grandson of one of his adopted children.
The Edwardses say school is hard for foster children because they aren't easily accepted there or in the community.
``These are labeled children,'' Aileen said. ``They're already labeled when they go into the school system, and it's hard to fight the system to get them accepted for what they really are - just average kids with potential.''
This couple sees potential in every child who comes through their door.
``It seems natural for us to do this,'' Aileen said. ``The rewards are that we enjoy it, and we enjoy it because it's good to see how far we can bring the kids in what they're capable of doing.''
House rules are simple: No drinking. No Smoking.
There's also one other rule: ``As long as you're in my house, you'll do what I say,'' Nelson said.
Gloria Wilson, a social worker supervisor for the Isle of Wight County Department of Social Services, said the Edwardses are a ``dying breed.''
While most foster families take children on a short-term basis or take two children and raise them, the Edwardses take families of three and four, hoping to keep the family unit together.
``They have made it their mission in life to care for these children,'' Wilson said. ``They're totally committed to them. I've never worked with another family like this, and I've been here since 1983.''
``They've never really gotten out of caring for young children. Over the years, there's never been a period when there wasn't a young child around.''
Last June, when some of the Edwards' foster children reached an age where they could leave, the Edwardses decided to either stop taking foster children or to take a family of siblings.
Two months later, while Aileen was at a foster parent meeting, she learned of four siblings who needed a home. The Edwardses took them; soon, the children will share their foster parents' last name.
``They were looking for a farm, and we were looking for some kids,'' Aileen said as she cradled one of the four in her arms.
The experience of foster parenting hasn't been without laughter or heartache.
One 3-year-old came to the Edwardses from another foster home of a Pentecostal family that went to church almost every night.
``The first night with us, he jumped on the sofa and started preaching,'' recalled Nelson, 59. ``He said, `Amen and hallelujah! Praise the Lord and hot damn!' ''
Nelson said the boy was removed from the Pentecostal family because the expectations there were set too high.
Most of the children the Edwardses take have been in other foster homes. Most come with only the clothes on their back. Others come with clothes that don't fit.
But when they come to the Edwardses, there are no ``poor little orphans,'' Nelson said. ``If the other kids are playing ball, you can play ball, too. If the others are working, you find something to do, too.
``We don't sit around and say that poor little thing, you've had a bad life. We say, `I know you've had a hard life, but that's in the past. What you make of yourself is what you become.' And usually, they fall right in line. It doesn't take many days.''
One 9-year-old girl came with a list of things she would eat: Pepsi, shrimp and ice cream, Nelson recalled.
``The next day when we sat down to eat, she wouldn't eat. I said, `OK, but you sit down when I sit down, and you get up when I get up. And don't go to the refrigerator between meals.'
``The second day, she was eating corn bread and cabbage with us,'' Nelson said.
Some of the children the couple have kept over the years have died after they left the Edwardses.
David, who came to them when he was 14 and stayed three years, died of a brain tumor in his 20s.
Richard, who came when he was 8 and stayed four years, died when he fell off a tractor while cutting grass at age 23.
Louise Jean, who came when she was 3 and stayed three years, died during her first year of college. The Edwardses never have learned the cause of her death.
When the couple first started keeping children, the needs were simple: food, clothes and toys. But as time passed, children began coming with emotional problems caused from abuse and neglect, Aileen said.
The Edwardses' most difficult case has been two occult children who had been used in rituals by Satan worshipers. They came with physical and emotional scars. One of them had been institutionalized.
``We were told that child would never be able to function in public,'' Aileen said. ``But that child has graduated high school now. Emotionally, both have pulled out of it.''
The key to their healing was to treat them as normal and let them be kids, Aileen said.
``They knew that we would not hurt them in the way they had been hurt before,'' she said. ``We gave them a normal life, something they had never had before.''
Part of the normal life includes giving each kid individual time, Nelson said.
``And it doesn't take that much time to satisfy them,'' Nelson said. ``It may mean going to look at the dogs or going for a ride in the truck.''
As a result, Nelson is never alone.
``There's always at least one of them with me,'' Nelson said. ``I don't know when I've been alone for one hour at a time.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Cover, Color photo]
THE INFINITE FAMILY
Staff photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
The Edwards family gathers in the back yard for a sing-a-long.
Nelson Edwards plays the guitar while his adopted son Albert plays
the banjo.
\ Staff photos by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
As Nelson and Aileen Edwards look on, two of their foster children
feed a goat.
Aileen Edwards cuddles the family dog.
Nelson Edwards shows two of his foster children some ducks on the
farm.
ABOUT FOSTER CARE
The Isle of Wight Department of Social Services oversees foster
care for about eight children each year through its Agency for
Foster Care.
Children referred for foster care get placement through the
agency. Youngsters in foster care have been taken by the courts from
homes where there has been some type of abuse or neglect.
Twenty-four families make up the county's complement of foster
caregivers.
If a child is going to be returned to his or her home, agency
placements usually result in the return of the child within six to
nine months. However, many children are not returned to their homes.
In placing the child, an effort is made to match the child and
foster family toward the department's goal of doing what is best for
the child in the long term.
Funding comes from the county, the state and the federal
government. Maintenance payment varies depending on the child's
age.
A foster care family caring for an infant to age 4 is paid $262
per month; ages 5 to 12, $307 per month, and age 13 or older, $388.
All foster care children qualify for Medicaid.
SOURCE: Isle of Wight Department of Social Services
by CNB