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Reunion: A gift of love

Betty Klassen

My husband Ernest and I learned of the acute need for foster homes for babies in the late 1950s from our neighbours across the street. I had enjoyed teaching a grade 1 class but had resigned in favour of caring for our own little ones. Ernest was very busy not only as a teacher but also as a pastor, having founded Bergthaler Mennonite Church in Winnipeg (now Home Street Mennonite Church). Our neighbours pleaded with me to consider caring for a foster infant. I was quite certain we would not qualify because we had no extra bedroom, but to please our neighbours we gave them permission to submit our name to the Children’s Aid Society. As a result, we and our home were checked and, to our surprise, accepted. We had to promise total care, and total cooperation whenever the Society would ask us to give the children up again.


The first baby entrusted to us was tiny, premature Stefan. Along with the baby came instructions, among them what to do in case the baby should die while in our care. This affected me so seriously that I lay awake throughout the first night, listening to his breathing. He developed very well, though, and in two months’ time he was adopted.

We were offered another baby immediately, but I asked for a three-week intermission in which to do some extra work, such as sewing for our boys. It was very difficult to go from 24-hour responsibility for a child to his complete absence. I had to dismantle the crib after Stefan left; it was too hard to walk past the empty little bed.

Kimberley, our second foster baby, came to us at three months and stayed for a year and nine months. We enjoyed very much having a little girl in the family. The boys liked to play with her, helping to care for her. Kimberley had been abandoned by her mother, but one day when I took her downtown to shop, her mother saw us and contacted Children’s Aid to reclaim her. It was difficult to give her up to this mother who still seemed so irresponsible, but after several court hearings we had to release her.

Angela was our third foster child. She came to us in April 1963 at five months, a very unhappy child who could not settle down. She cried and cried. After several days of carrying her in my arms constantly, I was so exhausted I wondered aloud one evening whether we’d have to admit failure and return her to Children’s Aid. For Ernest, this was out of the question. We would follow through on what we had begun. In response, I said, “Then you have to help me.”

I wondered whether Angela might be protesting the fact that I was not her mother. The social worker shed a bit of light on the matter by telling me that Angela had come from a home where there were seven or eight other young children and that she was sleeping in a big bed with a number of them. Here she had a large crib all to herself.

Very gradually, improvement came, and we were able to enjoy this child as part of our family. In time, her blond hair curled naturally, and the mischief in her eyes added charm to her smile. She endeared herself to our extended family and church community.

Angela was available for adoption. She had been registered Catholic and so no parents of other religious affiliation would be considered. Most adopting parents want infants, so by the time she was 18 months old, Angela’s chances did not seem very promising. But she was tested and rated equivalent to a three-year-old. This, the social worker claimed, was due to the atmosphere in our home. The social worker was confident that any parents who saw this child would want to adopt her without hesitation. She arranged for a meeting to acquaint other social workers with Angela. When we arrived at the designated time and place, Angela, wearing the frilly white blouse and leaf-green jumper I had made for her, willingly took the social worker’s hand and walked bravely into the room filled with strangers. She was so beautiful! When the social worker returned her to my care, she said, “Angela stole the show!” Everyone had been impressed and enthusiastic.

We had been asked to include Angela in our plans for fall when suddenly news came that there was a couple willing to consider adopting her. At their first meeting, they knew they wanted her. After a few more visits, the time came for us to say farewell. Angela was almost 20 months old. She had been in our home for a year and three months.

On the morning of her departure, she was dressed up, her white shoes freshly polished. The boys were walking with her outside, close to the house, while we were waiting. She was unhappy, perhaps intuitively so. I wiped her tears and tried to comfort her. After our last hugs and kisses had been given and she was settled in the social worker’s car with her package of belongings, we waved goodbye as we watched her leaving familiar surroundings to embark on the new chapter in her life.

My son Alvin and I, both fighting back tears, went into the house. He exclaimed, “We should never do this again!” I had not prepared myself adequately for the sadness of this occasion. We had thought it would be best for Angela to have parents. We had prayed for this, and yet the parting was so hard. Friends, too, had prayed about her adoption but sympathized with us now in regard to our sense of loss.

Some people claim they could never care for foster children because they could not bear to give them up. We, on the other hand, had been taught that one does it for the time one spends with them, for the contribution one can make in a child’s life in a very formative stage. And so we dwelt on the good memories we had of each child rather than on the difficulty of the final separation. Jesus said in Matthew 18:5: “Whoever welcomes a little child . . . in My name welcomes Me.”

For years after these events, we were asked whether we had ever heard from Kimberley or Angela again. The answer was always no, we were not permitted to stay in touch.

After an interval of over 26 years, on the morning of February 7,1991, our phone rang. The caller identified himself as Ken Reddig. He had a series of questions: “Is this the home of Reverend Ernest Wiebe? Did you have a foster daughter in the early 1960s? Do you have baby pictures of her? Would you be willing to meet with her?”

“Yes to all questions! Is it Kimberley or Angela?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just been asked to help locate you. May I give your phone number to her so she can call you?”

“Please do!” This was exciting!

Angela called shortly after lunch from her office where she had received the news that we had finally been located. She had been so overwhelmed that she had had to take several hours to compose herself before dialing our number. She related that she had grown up with her adoptive parents just north of Winnipeg; that she had an adopted sister; that she had found her birth parents years ago; that in her background was a large family; that she had half-siblings; that she had married; that she had a daughter; and that, as she had watched her baby grow, she had begun to wonder more strongly what she herself had been like when she was a baby. Where had she been? Were there some pictures? She had a deep longing within her to find the “missing piece of the puzzle”.

She had begun her search for us the previous fall. She contacted an organization called New Faces, which had been started to help people find each other. For several months, the search was futile. Then the director followed through on an idea. Perhaps his friend in the Archives, Ken Reddig, could help. He asked. Ken knew where to begin. He went to the phone books from the early 1960s and checked for a “Wiebe” at the address Angela had been given from her file. When he found the name, with “Rev.” in front of it, he followed up by calling the Conference of Mennonites in Canada office. And so it was, just 20 minutes after he received the request, he reached me by phone.

Angela and I talked for a long time. I sensed that her underlying question was really, “Why didn’t you adopt me?” She said she always knew she had been taken away from a place where she would have preferred to stay; no one ever had to tell her she was adopted. I explained that we had not even had the freedom to consider adoption; that we had been made very aware of the law that at that time prescribed that she could be adopted exclusively by Catholic parents. This seemed to be helpful information.

Angela told me my voice matched my handwriting. This puzzled me. My handwriting? Yes, she said, she had a letter I had written. How could that be? She promised to show it to me. We planned to meet as soon as possible. When I told Ernest about it that evening, he exclaimed, “This is a miracle!”

The next days were filled with happy anticipation. I selected all the photos we had taken of Angela. I checked some boxes and found the baby clothes we had had for her, blouse and jumper included. When Angela arrived at our house a few days later, we were delighted to “recognize” her – she was the grown-up version of the little girl we remembered. I showed her the photos and promised to make reprints. I gave her the baby clothes she had worn and observed how gently she treated them, as items of great value.

She showed us a photo album of her girlhood years. She showed us the letter I had written. It was an introduction to Angela, written to ease the transition to her adoptive parents. In it, I had described her routine, her habits and things she could do, say and understand. I had forgotten I had included this writing with the things she had taken along when she had left us. Angela also brought her adoption paper. In it was the comment that she had been a very “irritable” baby and that this had changed during the time spent in our home. It was a comfort for me, even after all the intervening years, to discover that she was irritable before she came, not because she came.

This “mountaintop” experience of joy preceded our journey through the “valley of the shadow of death”. Two weeks after our initial visit with Angela, Ernest suffered a heart attack at home. After eight days in the hospital and another heart attack, he died. Angela sent flowers to Ernest during his week in the hospital and attended the service at the funeral chapel the evening before the funeral. There she met my family.

Since then, we have visited by phone and also in each other’s homes. In August 1999, Angela, her daughter and I went to visit Ken Reddig. Ken claimed he had seldom had such a happy outcome to his efforts to help people reunite; also, he said, it’s very rare for a foster child to search for foster parents.

Betty Klassen (formerly Wiebe) has remarried and lives in Winnipeg with her husband, J.M. Klassen. This article is reprinted, with permission, from the Spring 2000 issue of Sophia.

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Last modified June 5, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
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