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Posts tagged as “Adoption”

Davion Only's Quest for a Family Finally Ends When Connie Bell Going, His Case Worker, Adopts Him

By goodblacknews on April 18, 2015

In October of 2013, 16-year-old Davion Only stood in front of a church in St. Petersburg, Florida with one request— for someone to adopt him.

“My name is Davion and I’ve been in foster care since I was born. I know God hasn’t given up on me. So I’m not giving up either.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnU7b577Faw&w=560&h=315]
His request to find a family was picked up by a local news station and more than 10,000 people from around the country responded.  Unfortunately, after a brief stint at a home in Ohio with a potential adopter, he went back to Florida and was placed in four different homes over the next year.

(Image Credit: Instagram)

But that all changed last July when he called a woman he’d known since he was seven— his case worker, Connie Bell Going.
According to Yahoo! Parenting, Only would ask Going every year to adopt him, but she always believed there was a better family out there for him.
Something in her heart changed, though, when he made the request again last summer. She explained:

“In adoption there is a ‘claiming moment,’ when you know [someone is] your child. When he called me to ask, in that moment, I just knew.”

So after a successful test run with her family — she has two daughters and a son whom she adopted out of foster care — Going started the adoption proceedings for Only.

(Image Credit: Twitter)

On April 22, 2015, the adoption proceedings will be finalized and Only will officially have a forever family.

“Today, I am feeling blessed and honored by being chosen to be the parent to all my children,” she said. “I work every day on being the best parent I can to them, to be patient and creative so that I can meet all their needs.”

Only is over the moon about his new family, and always believed Going to be his mom. He told her:

“I guess I always thought of you as my mom. Only now I get to call you that for real, right?”

(Image Credit: Twitter)

And Going feels exactly the same way.

“When he asked me, my heart felt this ache and I just knew he was my son,” she said. 

After years of moving from place to place — never having anything to call his own — Only is finally home.

article by Amanda Ghessie via ijrreview.com

Sisters, Separated as Infants, Reunite at High School Track Meet

By goodblacknews on May 14, 2013
Jordan Dickerson, left, and Robin Jeter discovered they were sisters after 17 years apart. (Courtesy WUSA 9)
Jordan Dickerson, left, and Robin Jeter discovered they were sisters after 17 years apart. (Courtesy WUSA 9)

Jordan Dickerson and Robin Jeter were separated when they were infants, but reunited by chance at a high school track meet earlier this year.  Dickerson, a junior at Woodrow Wilson High School, and Jeter, a senior at Friendship Collegiate Academy public charter school, attend school about 10 miles apart in Washington D.C. and play the same sports, but had never crossed paths.

On January 9, both sisters attended the same track meet. Dickerson told WUSA 9 that her teammates told her there was another girl who looked just like her.  “I had already known about my adoption, and I knew my last name was Jeter,” Dickerson said.  When she learned Robin’s last name, she said she started crying.
They talked on the phone the night they met, discovering that they were born just nine months apart.  Jeter first lived with her biological mother, then moved to foster care, and then to a legal guardian.  The sisters decided to look for more siblings, finding four so far, according to WUSA 9.  Dickerson and Jeter have become close, spending weekends together and frequently talking on the phone.
Click here to watch the full WUSA 9 report.
article by Carrie Healey via thegrio.com

Happy Sixty-Ninth Birthday, Actor and Adoption Activist Taurean Blacque!

By goodblacknews on May 11, 2010
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Taurean Blacque (born Herbert Middleton Jr. in Newark, New Jersey, May 10, 1941) is an American television and stage actor, best known for his role as Detective Neal Washington on the series Hill Street Blues. He also is a past national spokesman for adoptive services, having been one of the first single black men in the United States to adopt a child.

Before appearing on television, Blacque trained and performed at the New Federal Theater in New York, a theater founded to provide opportunities to minorities and women. Early in his acting career, Blacque began making guest appearances in sitcoms such as What’s Happening!!, Sanford and Son, The Bob Newhart Show,The Tony Randall Show, Good Times, and Taxi, and auditioned for permanent roles on others, including Venus Flytrap on WKRP in Cincinnati, eventually played by Tim Reid.
In 1981 he joined the cast of the fledgling police drama Hill Street Blues, staying with the show throughout its run, which ended in 1987. While appearing on that show, he was nominated in 1982 for the Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series, but lost to fellow HSB actor Michael Conrad, in the only year in which all the nominees in a category came from the same series. His theatrical career continued during his run on the show, winning him an NAACP Image Award of Best Actor (Local) in 1985 for his role in Amen Corner.  In 1986 his stage roles included the male lead in the musical Don’t Get God Started during its initial six-week summer run in Beverly Hills.
After Hill Street ended, Blacque moved to Atlanta, Georgia, to provide a better home for his children; in his new home, he has focused on theatrical work while making occasional guest appearances on television. Notable stage performances include Stepping Into Tomorrow with Yolanda King in 1987, and a 1988 revival ofCeremonies in Dark Old Men.  Television work included a pilot, Off-Duty, for CBS, in which Blacque once again played a police officer; the show was not picked up by the network. Blacque also had a small role in Disney’s animated film Oliver & Company.  In 1989, he portrayed Henry Marshall on NBC’s Generations.

Blacque initially was asked to serve as spokesman for the County of Los Angeles Adoption Services office though he had no adoptive children at the time. Upon looking into adoption, he was told that as a single black male, he was not eligible to adopt; however, he pressed on, eventually adopting ten children in addition to the two sons he already had. The adopted children included twin boys and a group of five children whose mother could not keep them due to her drug addiction. In 1989 he was asked by President George H. W. Bush to serve as a national spokesman for adoption.


article via www.wikipedia.com