Hanging Out with "Gladney Girls" & "Gladney Babies"
At The Gladney Center's 110th Anniversary Weekend, by Alicia Lanier
November - December 1997 Issue, Adoption Triad Forum
Hanging Out with "Gladney Girls" & "Gladney Babies"
At The Gladney Center's 110th Anniversary Weekend, by Alicia Lanier
November - December 1997 Issue, Adoption Triad Forum
Because some of my best friends are either Gladney Girls (Gladney's rather dismissive term for birthmothers) or Gladney Babies (adopted individuals), I decided to tag along when a group of two dozen friends gathered in nearby Fort Worth one October weekend to attend Gladney's 110th anniversary picnic and celebration.
As several of us disembarked from the shuttle bus at the main entrance to The Gladney Center, I felt as if we might be entering Enemy Territory. This, after all, is the adoption agency that founded and largely underwrites the National Council for Adoption (NCFA), the primary organization that lobbies against giving adult adoptees access to their records. This feeling was so intense that when we registered, I chose not to sign the guest registry. I was, after all, neither a Gladney Girl nor a Gladney Baby. Strangely, though, that was the last time I felt like an interloper, even though our band of birthmothers and adult adoptees did stand out because we were the only ones without a kid or two by the hand!
My hostess was TxCARE-Austin coordinator and birthmother Mary Cullinane, who had to call Gladney to request an invitation to the picnic. She and I earlier had talked about wearing our tee shirts with ADOPTEES DESERVE THEIR ORIGINAL BIRTH CERTIFICATES emblazoned in big red letters across the back. And asking all in our group to circulate petitions and get signatures in support of our proposed adoptee rights law. I had this fantasy, you see, of taking a stack of signed petitions with the notation Collected during Gladney's 110th Anniversary Gala down to the Texas Legislature! Mary and I tucked a few petitions in our purses just in case.
But it was quickly apparent that this was not the appropriate atmosphere for collecting petition signatures, so we abandoned our activist plans and decided to simply blend in and join the festivities.
For most of us, seeing the hundreds of kiddos ranging from infancy to teens...darling, darling, darling! wish you'd all seen the toddler twins in the double stroller...and recognizing that most...and probably all...were adopted and in securely closed records adoptions, was sobering and saddening.
As an "alumna" from another, more modest, Texas maternity home, I personally would call the Gladney campus palatial. For example, there was a kidney-shaped swimming pool which my birthmother friends say was there in the early 1970s. And, on the perfectly manicured lawn in the center of the eight-building campus, there was a compelling Perfect Adoptive Family tableau of four life-sized bronze statues: Two Attractive Parents sitting side by side admiring their One Boy and One Girl, each running with a high-flying kite. Several real families were having their photos taken with the fantasy family in the background.
We strolled into a currently used dorm for maternity residents...a big-screen TV on a raised platform and plush contemporary furniture were just inside the door. And I noted the private suites were much nicer than my college dorm suite and there was not even an apples-to-apples comparison with my spartan maternity home bedroom. Each spacious Gladney suite had well-appointed bedrooms, a kitchenette, private bath.
The campus itself had a cafeteria, an auditorium, a greenhouse, and even an aviary where a large covey of placid doves cooed at visitors.
I couldn't help but wonder: Would the lushness and serenity of such surroundings be seductive for an impressionable young girl enduring the crisis of her young life? Might she even sign a relinquishment document rather than upset those who had treated her so caringly?
I'm told by a friend who knows that at Christmas each Gladney maternity resident is encouraged to write a wish list of five holiday gifts=97and the Gladney adoptive parents auxiliary cheerfully buys and wraps each item on each girl's list. Again, might it be exceedingly difficult for a girl to change her mind once she's been treated so well during her Gladney experience? Fueling my concern was the memory of the recent High Profile feature in the Dallas Morning News on the President of The Gladney Center, which had produced much dialogue among Triad members online about adoption fees charged by Gladney ...as much as $20,000 to $30,000 per infant...and many complaints about Gladney's emphasis on the "business" of adoption. See page 3 and 4.
Soon we wandered through the on-campus Duncan Hospital, where all Gladney Babies were delivered from 1949 until the late 1980s. Adoptee Louis Brown somehow learned that the untidy storage room that we were exploring had been The Delivery Room. None of the birthmoms remembered this...all were given scopalmine which induced "twilight sleep" of deep unconsciousness and erased all memory of the delivery.
In Duncan Hospital, I watched with misted eyes as my good friend Mary was overcome with emotion when she discovered the room where she recalled staying after the delivery of her son. I felt her sadness again as she showed me the now cheerfully decorated tiny room where she had been allowed to dress her son and be with him for only an hour. Did she sign the relinquishment papers before or after? I keep forgetting to ask her.
In another building, we discovered the Gladney Records Room - with its door open and the room empty. Several of us stood in that quiet upstairs hall, peering inside and plotting to walk in, check the files for individuals we knew, then sneak the files out. Though we didn't, it was fun to consider.
Hanging along walls both upstairs and downstairs were photo collages of adopted children, sent from Gladney auxiliaries all over the country. After seeing the photo collections from Houston, Dallas, New York, Pennsylvania, New Orleans, and too many more places to name...it dawned on me: This is a closed fraternity like no other, the 21 auxiliaries of Gladney Dads and Moms...a dedicated, moneyed group that can be transformed from an educational to a political machine with only a few phone calls.
Another emotion-tugging experience was going to what is now The Salvation Army First Choice, a treatment center-residential facility for chemically dependent moms with children. This building originally held Gladney maternity apartments for older girls. Paula Nielson, an Austin birthmother, lived there as a Gladney maternity home resident and had organized the tour. And, eventually, we found our way to the actual apartment where she had lived with others, and even went inside. Finally, we took a photo of Paula sitting on the metal staircase leading from the rear of the second floor apartment. Amazingly, we later learned this was the very same apartment where Molly Be of Garland -- also with us on that weekend == had lived two years after Paula.
The Gladney Center is among the few remaining maternity homes in Texas and is perhaps the largest in the nation. Methodist Mission Home, where I lived anonymously in 1966 as Betty Brown, closed its maternity facility recently. This San Antonio facility now houses deaf students and, although MMH still places infants -- but thankfully only in open adoptions -- all the mothers-in-waiting live off campus.
The cloistered experience is a rarity in the Nineties when single pregnant women no longer need to be hidden away from polite society. One wonders why Gladney perpetuates this -- or still emphasizes closed records adoption. As is only appropriate for a Texas institution of 110 years, which has mightily influenced adoption in Texas and has now moved into international adoption, several viewpoints about The Gladney Center are featured the November-December issue of Adoption Triad Forum.
Last updated January 22, 1998