Jamaica RPCV David Whitten and wife make a difference in lives of 14 adopted disabled children
Couple makes a difference in lives of 14 adopted disabled children
By RACHEL GRAVES
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
Christobal Perez / Chronicle
Cheryl Whitten plays with daughter Catie, 7, as son, Jimmy, 6, watches them in their hotel room in west Harris County on Friday. Whitten and her husband are looking for a house to rent for the three months it will take to repair their home, damaged by a fire.
Countless times a day, Cheryl and David Whitten count to 14.
Yesenia, Michael, Daniel, Alex, Catherine, Jonathan, Emily, Claire, Nathan, Sam, Catie, Jimmy, Ben, Matthew.
Ranging in age from 2 to 26, 14 of the Whittens' 23 adopted children still live at home. They are a bundle of energy -- a whir of squirming, wrestling and demanding juice. They have broken 23 windows in the Whittens' house in the past two years in games of kickball, basketball, bocci and croquet.
The activity comes despite a myriad of handicaps -- blindness, mental retardation, prosthetic limbs, brain malformation. Many of the children are from foreign countries.
People tell Cheryl and David that they will be blessed for taking in the children.
"They don't understand," Cheryl said. "They (the children) are the blessing."
"There are few things in life that are more satisfying than saying I made a difference in a child's life," David echoed.
The clamorous crew is now confined to two west Harris County hotel rooms, displaced by a fire that destroyed the upstairs of their home on May 30. Most of their belongings were charred or left smelling like beef jerky. The Whittens are looking for a house to rent for the three months it will take to repair their home.
Cheryl spent three days in the hospital because of smoke inhalation. After fleeing their home during the fire, she counted the children and came up one short. She had to go back in for 6-year-old Jimmy, who had sought refuge in a bedroom.
Despite the calamity, it was a cheerful scene in the hotel on a recent morning.
The tiny kitchenette was stuffed with canned soup, macaroni and cheese, apples and cereal. Seventeen pairs of shoes were lined up under a table.
Sam, 10, a Georgian immigrant with two prosthetic legs, tumbled about the floor and beds with Catherine, a 14-year-old Russian girl with learning disabilities. Despite being foreign-born, the children look and sound all-American.
Catherine, who lived in an orphanage and with another family before being taken in by the Whittens, said she likes it better than her previous homes.
"There's more people to play with," she said.
Cheryl and David already had 14 children between them when they met eight years ago on an Internet bulletin board for single parents.
David's previous wife, Sharon Ann, had recently died of breast cancer. Before she became ill, the couple had adopted a baby and liked the experience. When they found it was too hard to adopt another baby, they decided to take in a group of three older siblings. Then they adopted another set and another.
When Sharon Ann died, David, a lawyer, was left a single father of 10 -- one of them pregnant.
Cheryl, an occupational therapist who had lived in the Fort Worth area, adopted four children as a single mother. She was adopted herself and considered it a "normal way to form a family."
Cheryl and David were both raised by missionary parents and had worked overseas -- Cheryl as an occupational therapist and missionary in Thailand, David in the Peace Corps in Jamaica. They had an instant bond.
When they met face to face in Dallas after a month of corresponding, one of David's children asked Cheryl, "Are you going to marry my daddy?" The child then reported, incorrectly, back to David, "Cheryl says she'll marry you if you ask her."
David did not need much prompting.
On his drive back to Houston, he pulled over at a pay phone in Buffalo and called Cheryl.
"I want to spend the next 50 years with you," he said.
Two months later, they melded their families and started expanding. They have adopted nine children together.
"He's never happier than when he has baby drool down the back of his shoulder," Cheryl said of David.
Even as they describe middle-of-the-night emergency room visits, a passel of speech, physical, occupational and respiratory therapists and numerous surgeries for several of the children, the Whittens are the picture of calm.
Cheryl nonchalantly checks the hotel pool every time she walks by to make sure none of the children escaped her watch to go swimming. She knows who threw the remote control across the room without turning her head, and issues a kind but stern reprimand. She drives a van packed with at least one change of clothing per child, pajamas, snacks and diapers.
The Whittens already have eight grandchildren and look forward to many, many more. But they do not rule out more adoptions.
"I'm very satisfied," David said, "but if God chooses to send someone ... I'm not going to say no."
