By Loretta Y. Gillespie The Cullman Times

CULLMAN — For many years she hated her mother.  “Then I came to realize that what she did was the best thing that ever happened to me,” said Elizabeth Brown.

Liz and her brothers were residents of Childhaven from 1978 until they finished school.  In her case, that was in 1985, when she graduated from Cullman High School.

“It took me a long time to forgive her.  In fact, I hated her for leaving us there until I mentioned that to my uncle one day.  Later, he brought me some letters that she had written him that changed forever the way I looked at the situation.  I cried when I read them.”

 Those letters from her mother let Liz see and feel through her mother’s eyes and heart for the first time.  Liz was 32 years old when she first saw them. 

“I was unaware of why she had left us in the care of Childhaven, until I read her own words. Before that I’d held animosity against her, but my uncle told me she thought long and hard before she made the decision.  After reading her letters, I was able to let go of all that.”

Written by a woman whose life was broken and ravaged by alcohol, and all the heartache that addition brings, these letters became a lifeline for Liz, allowing her a glimpse into what gut-wrenching decisions her mother had to make, and why.

 “A lot of it dealt with the heartaches and disappointment of her own childhood. She was on the streets at the age of 14.   She and my father were alcoholics, but she loved us the best she could.  She developed cancer at the age of 40, and there she was with four children.  She and my father had separated, and she was estranged from her family, so she did what she thought was the best thing for us under those circumstances.  She did it to protect us from what might befall us if she hadn’t.”

Liz’s mother brought the children to Childhaven in Cullman from their home in Georgia.  Liz was just 10 years old at the time, while her brothers ranged in age from 5 to 15.

“She introduced us to the house parents, but I don’t even remember her saying goodbye when she left us that last day. The last time she called me, I hung up on her out of anger.  She died within a few weeks.  That is a huge load to carry. I wish I could tell her how sorry I was for hanging up,” she said.

Elizabeth and two of the boys did go to Georgia for the funeral.  Within two months, Elizabeth’s father died.

“At first, I hated it there, I called it Child Prison, but that didn’t last long.  As time went by, I realized that I was so very blessed, and that my Childhaven family was the best thing that ever happened to me.   They were strict.  My house parent was an older lady, Miss Ora Medow.  She was such a good Christian woman, she even taught me to sew.  There were 14 girls in the cottage where I lived.  But now they have smaller numbers to each cottage.  We couldn’t just go to the refrigerator and get what we wanted to eat, and we couldn’t talk on the phone, but that actually protected us, in a way.  Back then, we couldn’t mingle with our siblings, we couldn’t just go across the lawn and play with them, but later that changed, for the better,” she said.

For Liz, foster care was not the answer in every case. She had been in foster care before coming to Childhaven.

“Group homes, like Childhaven, help to prevent child abuse.  Good foster homes are hard to come by.  There is a need for more group homes like Childhaven, which are carefully monitored.”

While in Georgia, she and her younger brother had lived in foster care.

“I would protect him by getting up in the night and changing his soiled clothes and bed linens, so that our foster parents would not find out and punish him,” she said.

Later on, Liz and one of her brothers did go into a successful foster care situation.  Her foster father, Dale Casteel of Athens, still looks on Liz as the daughter he never had.

“From the very beginning the kids fit in with our family and at school.  She was always so bright and had this bubbling personality. She once entered the Miss Teen Alabama competition and was voted Miss Congeniality.  I talk to her every day or so, and she still thinks of me as her Papa.  The only reason they left our home was because my wife got sick, and the placement worker chose to take them back to Childhaven.”

For the Brown children, and for countless others, Childhaven has been just that — a haven — a safe port in the storms of life that leave many children with no place to go.                         

“I learned from the people at Childhaven that no matter what happened in my life, I was the master of my own ship.  My great-aunt, Myrtha Florence Mulvehill, always referred to me as, ‘The little engine that could’ as a way to encourage me to persevere in the difficult times.  Childhaven saw to it that we all finished high school and that we went to church.  In fact, that was one of the reasons my mother placed us there, so we would grow up in church.  Church kept me sane,” she said with a smile.

After graduating in 1985, Liz was awarded a scholarship to the University of Alabama in Huntsville, where she enrolled in the nursing program.  Childhaven helped with her expenses that first year, and she worked to cover her living expenses.  She changed courses in life after her marriage and subsequent divorce, and later graduated from Athens State University, with a degree in human resources and a minor in accounting.  After seven years of college, she graduated in 1999.

“I first met Liz in 1984,” said Childhaven Director of Social Services Vicki Rhodes. “It’s hard any time a parent has to give up their children, for whatever reason, but we give them nurturing attention, shelter, and an education, and bring them up in church.   We help them with college, and we do become attached to them.  I wouldn’t want to not become attached, but you just have to let them go and pray and hope that someday they’ll look back and see that we were here for them.   I was a social worker when the Brown children came to Childhaven, and I saw them every day.  There are not a lot of immediate rewards in this job.  There’s a lot of praying and a lot of faith, though,” she said.

It is obvious that Elizabeth Brown is one of the many rewarding success stories that Rhodes and the staff at Childhaven can look at and see the outcome of all their efforts.

“You just know that there are hurting children out there, some who may have been abused, and that when they come to us, they grow up with values and morals that may not have been present in their former situations.  We teach them these things and they become a whole ‘new normal’ for them.”

“Kids are more exposed and much more scarred now,” added Rhodes. “You think you’ll never hear things that shock you anymore, but you do.”

Childhaven now has a cottage for single mothers, and each cottage has houseparent couples whose job is to be role models for the youngsters in their care.

“I feel like I’ve been a mother all my life,” said Liz. “Having tried to replace my own mother for my brothers, that’s all I’ve ever known. Now that I have children of my own, even though I’m divorced, I will never let them be without family. 

“My mother’s life hasn’t always been a walk in the park, so to speak,” said her daughter, Lindsey Hopper.  She had to grow up way before her time, but now she is independent, strong, smart, beautiful, and hard-working. She wasn’t dealt the best hand, but her story goes to show that life really is what you make of it.  Hers is a true success story.  I’ve learned that material things are not so important, that one of the essential things that people need is a listening ear, and good Christian friends, which are sometimes hard to find.  Money can’t buy a family, or the love of a family.  Although money is certainly important to purchase items for children, the gift of time is the most precious, for it is truly a gift of the heart. ”

“ My mom didn’t have a family when she was young,” said Anna Haygood, Liz’s other daughter, “but she showed us the kind of love she always needed and never received as a child.”

Elizabeth and her youngest daughter traveled to Birmingham once to the Jimmie Hale Mission. They served food and donated warm blankets to the homeless shelter. Her heart is overwhelmingly tender toward people in situations like this, who have found themselves in such distressing conditions.  Elizabeth and her brothers were more fortunate than some.  They didn’t grow up in poverty, or do without the essentials of life, and although they did not grow up in the heart of their family, they did come to a place where they were well cared for.

As her birthday approaches next week, the people in her life will celebrate the woman she has become — strong, confident, and bravely looking toward her future with excitement.  She attributes much of her self-assurance being raised in a church environment, and to the people, like Vicki Rhodes, who surrounded her at Childhaven.

“Actually, God always took care of us, I never needed anything that He and Childhaven didn’t provide me with. When my mother arranged for us to live there, she knew that all the children were treated the same, with dignity and respect.”

Elizabeth Brown is now employed with the Alabama Career Center System in Hanceville, located at Wallace State Community College.

“I’ve seen what happens to families when people lose their jobs.  I hope that I help to encourage people in those situations not to be too hard on themselves, and maybe somewhere along the way, this article will help people who may doubt themselves, to know that there is hope.”

Childhaven was the place where she learned the importance of hope, of being a Christian, of having a family, and instilling those values in her own children.  She has built such a life for herself and her daughters, who are now grown, realizing that she was blessed because people in the community gave so unselfishly of their time and money to assure that she and her brothers felt loved and accepted.

“For that reason I have tried my best to,” Pay it forward,” whenever I possibly could.”

Her personal motto is, “A living is what you get, a life is what you give.”

* To find out what you can do for children in need, contact Vicki R. Rhodes, LCSW, Director of Social Services, Childhaven, Inc. P.O. Box, 2070, Cullman, Alabama, 35056, 256-734-6720