Successful Foster Parents Talk About DSS

By Susan Greenleaf
April 2001

What's it like to be the parents of thirty-eight children?

Richard and Joan Downing of Sherborn had four children of their own plus thirty-four foster children from DSS and they adopted three of them.

"Take the advice of some old-timers," said Richard Downing. "They will be the joy of your old age!"

When questioned about their experiences with DSS, the Downings commented that most of their social workers were supportive and dedicated but drained by the bureaucracy. "We've met some wonderful hardworking social workers but they're burned out. They have a lot of paperwork that actually keeps them from doing their work. The bureaucracy thing has a life of its own."

Each year before Christmas, the Downings put on four performances of a Christmas Nativity play open to the public. It is held in a large field adjoining their house with a cast of about eighty and a total audience of up to twenty-five hundred.

Life on a 'Farm'

"We had five kids when I bought the farm twenty-four years ago," said Downing. "Joan always wanted to live on a farm, so I went out and bought this at a public auction. When she came down and took one look, she said, 'I'm never going to live in that!' It was just a big old barn with holes in the roof, it was leaking, and there were broken windows. We're still working on it!" Downing said with a laugh. "We had an old round table that I swear to God, the oilcloth was holding up all 14 kids at dinnertime."

Richard Downing is semi-retired now. His wife does flower arranging to raise money for those that would like to visit the Catholic shrine in Medigoria, Yugoslavia, where many healing miracles have taken place. They are both devout Catholics, Mr. Downing being an active member on the pastoral team of Fatima Shrine in Holliston.

When asked if they had planned to have so many foster children, Downing said, "Once you open your heart, you find out that the more you give, the more you have to give. It all kind of happens. Once you get going, the DSS keeps calling you. Could you take this one, could you take that one and we couldn't say no."

They also had their share of problems. "Every one of these kids had a problem; otherwise they wouldn't have come here," said Downing.

He shared a story about teen-age twins, who came straight from reform school into their home. "They were continually getting into trouble at school and driving the principal crazy," Downing said. Years later, Mr. Downing met the principal and related the news that the two boys had just graduated from St. Michael's College in Vermont and were doing very well. The principal was thrilled and said, "I never told you this, Dick, but those were the only two boys I ever gave up on." "He had no hope that they would ever be rehabilitated," said Downing.

Mrs. Downing did admit that a lot of times they were going crazy and would say to each other, "What do we do now? How do we handle this problem?" But it was never, "Oh, this was a mistake, let's send them back. We always felt it was God's will to have them."

The affection the Downings had for even the most troubled youth was obvious when Mr. Downing recounted how one girl, thirteen years old, had a knack for getting into trouble. "The first night she was here she climbed out the window to run away when the door wasn't even locked. Then we took her to Vermont with us for vacation and she stole beer from a little superette in town and got arrested. After about a year she finally had to leave, because she needed a more secure setting." She did come back to visit the couple and the last they heard from her she had graduated from Fitchburg State. "She's somebody I wouldn't mind seeing again, she was feisty and I always admired that in her. She called me Sarge," Downing said with a chuckle.

It was because of a deaf child that the family's Christmas pageant was born.

"We had Wanda, who was deaf and very violent," said Mrs. Downing. "She hadn't been treated for her deafness, so she had a lot of frustration and anger. She knew nothing about the Nativity so I thought about putting a life-sized manger scene out in the field. Then I thought, life-sized, that would be too expensive. I'll use the kids! That was how I first thought about it."

She was laughing as she remembered how simple the first play was. "The kids found a loudspeaker and hooked it up to a record player and had a clip-on light on a ladder and fifteen kids acted it out. So it started out small and we were doing it just for the kids' benefit. We weren't doing it for the public, but people would see it from the street and stop."

After the first year, the production grew because their son, Peter, was studying theater. He used stage equipment and all the stage terms and the kids liked it. "Then it just grew more every year and more kids wanted to partake of it from the town. "Anybody can be in it now," said Mrs. Downing. "We run out of wings and angel costumes and every year we think, 'Are we going to do it again this year?' But now, we can't stop because people plan their Christmas around it!"

The Downings open their home to visitors for coffee and donuts as busloads come from all over the state. "It gets a little crowded in here but we have four shows and we can get maybe three to five hundred in at a time," said Mrs. Downing.

Tough for Children Today

Mr. Downing expressed how difficult it is for kids today because of the absence of values in the public school system. "I think they ought to do something more in the public education system, more than the just the three R's." He feels that a lot of kids inherit bad hang-ups from their families and unless they learn values somewhere, the cycle won't be broken.

"For many of our children, the cycle has been broken and they have gone on to lead productive lives, while their old friends are in jail now." His wife added, "But it's the kids that have left and are still in trouble, those are the ones that we feel for and we can only hope and pray that they will always remember something good from the time they spent with us."

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