FORT WORTH -- Riley's new mom and dad came with a bonus -- a $30,000 scholarship.
Moments after they were united with their month-old adopted daughter Tuesday, Brian and Lindsey Evans received a certificate from the Gladney Center for Adoption recognizing the center's 30,000th adoption with the scholarship."It means knowing where she came from and knowing that Gladney will always be a part of her life," Lindsey Evans said. "It's insurance that she'll be able to become whatever she wants to be."It also marks a milestone for an organization that only eight months ago celebrated another -- its 125th birthday."It's a pretty remarkable legacy that something that started 125 years ago has continued and families have been built not only in Texas but all over the United States," said Frank Garrott, the center's president. "Children all over the world have been served through the miracle of adoption."The miracle, said Garrott, himself a Gladney adoptive dad twice over, is that God has a hand in how families are formed."Occasionally you'll hear some people refer to adoption as Plan B," he said. "But you won't hear our parents refer to it as anything but Plan A, because the children they adopt were always intended to be in the family."Families are, indeed, made possible through adoptions, Brian Evans said."We wouldn't have a family without adoptions," Brian Evans said. "The support and prayers and help we've gotten have been over the top."The center's gift to Riley is an educational bond, Lindsey Evans said."It says due and payable Nov. 15, 2030, in the amount of $30,000," she said.That's when Riley will be 18, and Brian Evans said his daughter will go to college "wherever she wants to."The couple's other daughter, Emily, couldn't be with her sister, both of whom have the same birth mother. The family lives in Atlanta, Ga., but 15-month-old Emily couldn't make the plane trip because of a middle-ear issue.Brian, a civil engineer, and Lindsey, a Southwest Airlines flight attendant, were excited to discover that the mother had become pregnant with Riley.The one who called them, caseworker Jennifer Hart, said she was just as thrilled."To be able to surprise them like that was a lot of fun," Hart said. "It's especially exciting that this is the 30,000th adoption."Gladney employees also marked the occasion by scattering 30,000 bluebonnet seeds on a hill near the campus at 6300 John Ryan Road.Gladney has changed a lot since 1887, when Methodist minister Isaac Zachary Taylor Morris and his wife, Belle, opened it as Texas Children's Home and Aid Society. For one thing, it no longer handles just orphans.The center's original mission was to put children arriving in Fort Worth -- the end of the line for orphan trains from Philadelphia and New York -- into good homes rather than let them be displayed or "put up on boxes" for people to "adopt" into servitude, Gladney spokeswoman Jennifer Lanter said."Children who got off in Texas were the ones who didn't get picked earlier," she said."The children who reached Fort Worth were sick, malnourished, young, small, not good for heavy labor."The center's namesake, Edna Gladney, was an advocate for disadvantaged children. She ran the center after the Morrises and expanded its operation, taking in unwed mothers long after the orphan train movement was over, Lanter said."She noticed that unwed mothers were ostracized by the community," she said. "They couldn't complete their education and had no place to go. She said, 'All are welcome,' and turned the adoption agency into a maternity home. For many years, it was referred to as the Haven on the Hill, because it was very private and was on Hemphill Street."This report includes material fromthe Star-Telegram archives.Terry Evans, 817-390-7620Twitter: @fwstevansHave more to add? News tip? Tell us
