Miss-Delectable
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2004
- Messages
- 17,160
- Reaction score
- 7
Mom won’t turn her back - BostonHerald.com
Judy Cockerton remembers the moment she came to a fork in the road, which happened to be in the kitchen of her home in a leafy Boston suburb.
After a decade of teaching, including a stint at the Learning Center for Deaf Children in Framingham, she had launched her own business, a pair of specialty toy stores in Brookline and Mattapoisett. Life was good.
“We had just finished dinner,” she recalled, “when my husband slid a newspaper across the table, saying, ‘I thought you might be interested in this article.’ ”
It told of a 5-month-old baby boy’s disappearance.
“The kids were putting their dishes in the sink,” she said. “Something about that story made me think, ‘Call them back to the table.’ And we began a family discussion about how it’s not OK for babies to just disappear, and how we all need to feel some responsibility; you can’t just turn the page.”
Of course, she certainly could have turned the page; no law says we have to care.
“I thought of how my kids were receiving every opportunity to succeed,” Judy went on. “They lived in a world so full of color and joy, and here were these other kids living in a dismal world of dead ends. How could you not want to level the playing field? It just felt like a moral imperative.”
That was 12 years ago.
She would sell her stores, become a foster parent, then an adoptive parent, and establish three non-profit ventures that now thrive in Massachusetts, meeting the needs of thousands of kids born into lives of dysfunction and despair.
Sen. John Kerry’s office notified her last week that she’ll be receiving an “Angel in Adoption” award at an October gala in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption.
And it all began with a realization that she simply couldn’t turn the page and move on.
Her passion happens to be foster care, but kids are the pawns of many political battles.
They’re called “illegitimate,” even “bastards,” if the issue is welfare.
“I don’t want to encourage anyone to stay on welfare,” Billy Bulger, then president of the Massachusetts Senate, said during a debate on the subject in 1995.
“I don’t want to encourage anyone to have children out of wedlock. But it happens, and they’re here, and they have no one else to look to but ourselves. No one.”
Today it’s “anchor babies” who inflame the dialogue on immigration.
But whatever the pejorative, babies are still babies.
“When I worked with hearing-impaired kids,” Judy, 59, recalls, “it would hurt to hear terms like ‘deaf mutes.’ It’s no different when I hear ‘foster kids.’ These are labels and stigmas that make us lose sight of the fact these are children.
“So the question can’t be, ‘What’s that got to do with me?’ The question more of us need to be asking is, ‘Is there a way I can help?’ ”
Judy Cockerton remembers the moment she came to a fork in the road, which happened to be in the kitchen of her home in a leafy Boston suburb.
After a decade of teaching, including a stint at the Learning Center for Deaf Children in Framingham, she had launched her own business, a pair of specialty toy stores in Brookline and Mattapoisett. Life was good.
“We had just finished dinner,” she recalled, “when my husband slid a newspaper across the table, saying, ‘I thought you might be interested in this article.’ ”
It told of a 5-month-old baby boy’s disappearance.
“The kids were putting their dishes in the sink,” she said. “Something about that story made me think, ‘Call them back to the table.’ And we began a family discussion about how it’s not OK for babies to just disappear, and how we all need to feel some responsibility; you can’t just turn the page.”
Of course, she certainly could have turned the page; no law says we have to care.
“I thought of how my kids were receiving every opportunity to succeed,” Judy went on. “They lived in a world so full of color and joy, and here were these other kids living in a dismal world of dead ends. How could you not want to level the playing field? It just felt like a moral imperative.”
That was 12 years ago.
She would sell her stores, become a foster parent, then an adoptive parent, and establish three non-profit ventures that now thrive in Massachusetts, meeting the needs of thousands of kids born into lives of dysfunction and despair.
Sen. John Kerry’s office notified her last week that she’ll be receiving an “Angel in Adoption” award at an October gala in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption.
And it all began with a realization that she simply couldn’t turn the page and move on.
Her passion happens to be foster care, but kids are the pawns of many political battles.
They’re called “illegitimate,” even “bastards,” if the issue is welfare.
“I don’t want to encourage anyone to stay on welfare,” Billy Bulger, then president of the Massachusetts Senate, said during a debate on the subject in 1995.
“I don’t want to encourage anyone to have children out of wedlock. But it happens, and they’re here, and they have no one else to look to but ourselves. No one.”
Today it’s “anchor babies” who inflame the dialogue on immigration.
But whatever the pejorative, babies are still babies.
“When I worked with hearing-impaired kids,” Judy, 59, recalls, “it would hurt to hear terms like ‘deaf mutes.’ It’s no different when I hear ‘foster kids.’ These are labels and stigmas that make us lose sight of the fact these are children.
“So the question can’t be, ‘What’s that got to do with me?’ The question more of us need to be asking is, ‘Is there a way I can help?’ ”