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July 2008
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There's No Place Like the Lund Home
By Margaret Michniewicz
Voices low, the fate of certain girls in our small southern Vermont town was discussed in coded, abbreviated sentences. "She's been sent up to the Lund Home." Even if someone didn't know exactly what that meant, everyone did know it wasn't good.
For more than a century, countless unmarried and pregnant girls and women from all over Vermont (and far beyond) found shelter and support under the roof of the Elizabeth Lund Home-originally called the "Home for Friendless Women" and now transformed to the "Lund Family Center (LFC)."
If there is one inconvenient truth women have lived with throughout time, it's that we may well become pregnant at a time when raising a child is not a viable option. And until very recently, an unwed mother led families to respond in secrecy, fearful of who would find out and what they'd say. That same fear often led a young woman to hide her condition from everyone, including her own family. Founded in that climate, the Lund Home itself has evolved, maintaining and expanding its role as a safe harbor and invaluable community resource for an ever-increasing number of women-and men-facing new challenges and issues.
Finding a Place to Call Home
In 1890, Vermont's General Assembly approved a charter that was, according to LFC, drawn up by ten "compassionate, resourceful" women from the Women's Christian Temperence Union (WCTU) who sought to help "socially abused and rejected women." This residential agency, to be known as "The Home for Friendless Women," would provide for "poor and friendless women, destitute of the means of support and wherein such women may enjoy the comforts and advantages of a quiet, peaceful Christian home" (this did not mean, however, that its doors were only open to those of that faith). On April 12, 1893, the home opened, located at 346 Shelburne Road in Burlington.
At that time, there were an almost unfathomable number of "reasons" to publicly scorn certain women, and almost a communal requirement to do so lest one become tainted by association. Certainly it was not okay for women to have engaged in premarital sex at any age, never mind in her teenaged years, and she was vilified even if the sex was against her consent. Yet even a church-blessed marriage wasn't enough to protect women deserted by husbands-they became social outcasts, and fell at the mercy of society's compassion in a cycle of scorn, pity, compassion, and patronage.
Indeed, the first resident of the home is recorded in the Lund records as a 38-year-old destitute and homeless woman who, it specifically noted, was "not a fallen woman" and the first baby born under the Home's roof was on September 12, 1893, to a married woman who had just recently been deserted by her husband.
The physician who attended the Home's first birth was Dr. William B. Lund; his wife, Elizabeth, belonged to the WCTU. Together, they were committed to the mission of the home, which struggled financially for years. In 1926 Dr. Lund gave a generous bequest to the organization in memory of his wife, and in 1928, the residence became the Elizabeth Lund Home. Subsequently, the residence was expanded and modernized due to the monetary boost from Dr. Lund's bequest combined with funding assistance from the Legislature (procured through the efforts of Mrs. John E. Weeks, Vermont's First Lady at the time). This allowed for the hiring of staff and on-site hospital facilities, and for the next 40 years, the Lund Home's residential and adoption programs flourished.
Baby Boom
In her 2006 book The Girls Who Went Away-The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade, author Ann Fessler writes: "If you are a woman over fifty who had sex before marriage, you are one of the so-called bad girls. I would put myself squarely in that category," but, she notes, she didn't get "caught"-didn't get pregnant. Fessler explains that even in the 1950s, 39 percent of unmarried girls had had intercourse before the age of 20; by 1973 that figure had risen to 68 percent, according to a report by the Guttmacher Institute. Without easy access to contraception, the number of premarital pregnancies also rose, Fessler notes, from 40 percent of first births to girls aged 15-19 in the mid-1950s to 60 percent by 1974.
Fessler reaches back into the 1920s for the beginning of a revolution in dating behavior through the decades. "This younger generation became a cultural force to be reckoned with and much of the new energy seemed to be sexual," she writes of the 1950s era.
And while boys could get randy with abandon with far less consequence, heaven help the unlucky girls they impregnated.
For Julia Gleason Compagna, 42, now living in Morrisville, Fessler's descriptions ring true. "As the youngest of five children growing up in southern Vermont, the social status of pregnant teens changed drastically from the time my oldest brother graduated high school in 1971 and my own graduation in 1982," she recalls. "Although the liberating sixties were barely behind them, my brother and sisters' (Class of 1973 and 1974) high school years were still a setting where teen pregnancy and un-wed mothers were taboo. As the sibling tag-along, I remember hearing the whispered conversations of my sisters and their friends in abbreviated sentences about the classmate who had been sent away to 'the Lund Home for unwed mothers.' Parents who sent their daughters away still feared stigmatism from the community."
Comparing memories with her siblings recently, Compagna found a perception that the majority of babies born to such hometown girls were placed for adoption, and the mothers did not seem to have contact with their peers back home. If they returned to school, they rarely shared their experiences. So, even in the post-Vietnam era, the general attitude about premarital sex was that it was taboo-at least if you got caught.
But by the time Compagna graduated, full-term pregnant teens continued to attend school, rather than "going out of state to care for an aunt" (as was often floated as a reason for absence). "The ratios seemed to me about 50/50 whether the baby was kept or put up for adoption. Several teen mothers I knew went on to complete their college education," she said. Today, pregnant teens in public schools are commonplace enough to warrant on-site daycare, particularly in urban areas. "I often wonder how the teenage mothers of the early Lund Home days, who often had no choice whether to keep their baby or not, feel when they see how society views teen pregnancy today, and how their lives might have been impacted if the circumstances had been different," Compagna said. Stories such as these are shared poignantly by many women who surrendered babies in The Girls Who Went Away.
Growing Pains
By the mid-1960s it was apparent that the original Shelburne Road house was no longer meeting the Lund Home's needs, and a statewide drive was launched in 1966 to raise funds for the construction of a new building, headed by Norwich University President Major General Ernest Harmon. Governor Phil Hoff wielded the shovel at the groundbreaking, and the new building on Glen Road was completed in 1969. The Lund Home had widespread community support from politicians, clergy, and prominent businessmen. And if these well-intentioned civic leaders ever overlooked the reason for the home's continued existence, there was a dynamic member of the board of directors ready and able to steer them back on track.
Shelburne's Elizabeth Webb Smith, perched on a bar stool at Mirabelle's, recalls her tenure on the board of the Lund Home in the 1960s until 1972. "I got away with murder," she smiles serenely, implying that through naivete she successfully recruited businessmen and others she dealt with on Lund's behalf, without them seemingly aware of what hit them.
Invited to the board by Mrs. Levi Smith, the wife of the Burlington Savings Bank president, Webb Smith says she was initially terrified at the prospect, having just recently married and moved to the area. "I had never dealt with going to businesses. I was so innocent about dealing with businessmen, it just wasn't in my realm of thinking." She did, however, have experience successfully raising a significant amount of money for the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, going door to door with one baby in her arms and a toddler in tow, in towns from Richmond to Vergennes.
"I came into this very innocently, I love babies and I wanted the best for the girls," Webb Smith recalled. "I learned more than anybody. There are so many things that add into the decisions. I never realized how a [pregnant] woman out of wedlock is affected by how they grew up. In my family, everybody adored babies-it just wasn't in my thinking that you wouldn't embrace a child."
Webb Smith recalls board members being allowed from time to time to go see the babies-who, at that time, were born at the home itself, not in the hospital-but that there was less interaction in the early days with the mothers. "Some might [have chosen] not to be seen," she suggests. One summer, a young woman, Maryann, didn't want to stay in the home so Webb Smith hired her as a live-in helper to Webb Smith and her family of six children.
"I was highly criticized by my mother-in-law-she feared it would be a bad influence on my children," says Webb Smith, who often brought her children to the Lund home for shared activities such as making gingerbread houses at Christmastime or, when an international student spent the year with her family, bringing him with her children to Lund for a night of song. While she believes the residents enjoyed the Austrian student's guitar playing, she is sure the visits were beneficial for her own kids. "It was probably very good because they realized how lonely it was to have a baby [on your own] without family."
Once Maryann's baby was born, she desperately wanted to be able to see the prospective adoptive parents of her child, but it wasn't the protocol in those days. Webb Smith recalls advocating, ultimately successfully, for Maryann to get permission. As soon as the prospective parents walked in, Webb Smith recalls, Maryann felt okay-before that, she was really apprehensive about surrendering her baby. Webb Smith and Maryann stayed in touch for some time afterwards; Maryann married a young man who became a lawyer and they adopted two children.
The board during Webb Smith's tenure advocated for counseling mothers at Lund in the choice to parent or surrender their child for adoption, and offering education on birth control, although Webb Smith noted that they had to "tread lightly" with some of the older members, including Roman Catholic Bishop Joyce. "We definitely went slowly, and didn't wave flags like the suffragettes," Webb Smith smiles, adding wryly "I couldn't have been a suffragette because I never wore hats."
Webb Smith laughs and points to a photo in the scrapbook given to her upon her departure from the Lund board in 1972. In it, she and several young pregnant women are on the floor of a narrow corridor at the residence, in the midst of doing stretches. "I was a big believer in exercises before you had your baby!"
When the Doctor is In
With the majority of babies born at the Lund Home itself rather than the hospital, the senior pediatric resident at the then-Mary Fletcher/Bishop DeGoesbriand Hospital was assigned to their care. When Dr. Carol "Lee" Phillips finished her Lund residency, the Home asked her to serve as their permanent pediatrician instead of rotating through residents and she did so from 1967-1983. "At that time, the Lund Home was on Shelburne Road behind all the big bushes to hide the place, as was needed at that time, I guess," Phillips says. "And [most of] the babies were born out there, unless they were expecting some sort of complication. They were kept there after they were born until they were adopted-and most of them were adopted, because you know what society was like at that time. There weren't very many mothers-unwed mothers-keeping their babies."
Of the changes she witnessed over time, Phillips responds, "Oh-it's a whole new ballgame! At that time, all they did was take care of unwed mothers during their pregnancy until they were back on their feet again, and [facilitate] the adoption, nothing more. If you know anything about Lund now, they are into everything-everything that has to do with parenting. Their program for new fathers, helping families in crisis, you name it they're in it. And doing it very well.
"Taking care of women during their pregnancy has changed dramatically; there's much more in the way of drugs, alcohol problems, much more in terms of real chaos in some of these women's lives," Phillips continues, noting that unlike the earlier days, many mothers choose to parent and that Lund has responded by [helping] develop good parenting skills, and preparing them to better cope in society, particularly through its transitional housing program.
She is particularly impressed with Lund's Teen Pregnancy Prevention Outreach Program. "There's nobody who can talk to high school students like somebody who's been there, very recently," Phillips says, having observed a presentation given to LFC board members. "Not all [teen] pregnancies, as you know, are unintended. Many of them are because they want somebody to love them and of course, newborn babies don't love anybody! They really are a lot of work! They are worth it-I have four children-but the idea that 'I'll have this baby and it will love me' is a common one for them and they need to be realistic about it and understand what's going to happen."
In her time as pediatrician, Dr. Phillips witnessed a range of adoption cases impacted by health issues. She recalls a family who brought back the baby they adopted saying that the child was deaf and they therefore didn't want to keep him (today, tests for deafness can be done on newborns, but were not available then).
In another case, a pregnant resident at Lund had a family history of muscular dystrophy, a disease which can be passed from mother to son even if she is asymptomatic. "So the decision was made by Lund that if the baby was a girl, they would place her for adoption, but that if it was a boy, they would not because there was a fifty-fifty chance that the baby would have a serious problem," Phillips explains. She was, however, able to conduct a newly available test and determined that the infant boy did have muscular dystrophy. "But, they found a family who was willing to adopt a boy with [that serious a problem], and they knew what they were getting into. Most parents, I would not hesitate to say, would not have."
From the Mouths of Babes
Dawn LeBaron lived at the Elizabeth Lund Home for the first six months of her life, from May to December 1954. "I've known about my status [as an adopted child] since I can remember," she tells me at her office at Fletcher Allen Health Care, where she is vice president of hospital services. LeBaron speaks frequently of her mother-by whom she means the woman from South Pomfret, Doris LeBaron and her husband Bill, who brought Dawn as an infant into their family. "My mother definitely dreamed of having a big family," LeBaron says, but initially it seemed that she and her husband could not have children-and Dawn was adopted through Lund. "My mother then had four daughters after that! I was, she says, her good luck charm," LeBaron smiles. During one of Doris' later pregnancies, Dawn pointed to her abdomen and asked if she came from there. "No," her mother replied, "you came from another woman's tummy."
Though she laughingly admits to some attempts in her teenage years to make some drama about being adopted, it never amounted to much. "I tried to make it an issue for like a day. I think my sister and I were fighting and she said 'oh stop it you steppie-sister!', and I collapsed on the floor [feigning tears]. My mother was like 'Oh, get up!' and that was the end of that.
"My mother tells the story of having stomach pains more intense than the labor pains she later went through, she was so nervous and excited to go pick me up. The processing fee was $9.80-we [joke] that's how much I 'cost'!
"When I was really little, when I asked why my [birth] mother didn't keep me, why would you not keep a child? [Doris] replied that she was poor and couldn't feed me. That I could relate to!" LeBaron laughs self-deprecatingly. "That made sense; thank God I'm with people who can feed me!
"Later, when I was 12 or 13 I learned what really happened-that she wasn't married; and my mother told me that my parents really loved each other but they were too young to be married. [There was] a little spin on it. I think she was concerned I wouldn't feel wanted, but I never had that feeling at all," LeBaron explains. "She gave me information that was age appropriate through the years."
Nonetheless, when she was a teenager, LeBaron came across her birth certificate, which listed the name her birth mother gave her, Jacqueline Anne. "To me, that was a shock. It was the first real evidence that there was a different identity at some point," LeBaron recalls. But not for long; soon she was using the name "Jackie" as an alter ego. "With my sisters it was kind of fun-I'd say 'Look out, Jackie's here!'"
After going to college and working in Massachusetts, LeBaron returned several years ago to Vermont and to Lund, where she serves on the LFC board of directors. One day, LFC executive director Barbara Rachelson suggested to LeBaron that she do a non-identifying search, whereby the records Lund possessed (that do not reveal the identity of the birth parents) are made available to adopted children. From these records, LeBaron learned that her mother had a boyfriend who broke up with her to get engaged to someone else-but not before having gotten her pregnant first. "She discussed it with her mother and they decided this was best-and as far as I know, he never knew she was pregnant," LeBaron says. In addition, the records reveal she has Irish, French, and Welsh ancestry but, the Irish part is who she passionately identifies with she laughs. In addition to records on her birth parents, the files revealed "crib notes" documented by the staff who cared for her as an infant. "The quality of the data that was
produced-notes by the folks who were taking care of me-was very good. I took them back to my family-everybody was there," she says, laughing that the references to her early eating and talking habits "explain a lot."
LeBaron is not interested in trying to obtain more information about her birth parents, saying that her siblings seem more curious than she is. She says that while she wouldn't object to her mother trying to seek her out, she has refrained from doing so herself out of respect. "I feel it's a choice she made and that I need to honor that," hastening to add that she does not criticize those who do seek their birth parents. Still, there is the matter of health records, and the possible importance of having access to knowledge about hereditary conditions a child may have inherited. Organizations such as the American Adoption Congress and the adoptees' rights group Bastard Nation cite this as one of their constituents' concerns. It was LeBaron's physician who first broached the possibility of searching, noting that the availability of information would be much more desirable to have than not; but for now, LeBaron and her doctor have decided to work with what information they have.
Vermont without the Lund Center is unimaginable to LeBaron, explaining that she feels she has had control over her own life and appreciates the options that were made available to her mother by way of Lund which, LeBaron notes, offers hope, and opportunity.
Hope & Opportunity
Heidi Kelley shares her "Lund story" in a self-assured, matter-of-fact manner as we talk in a sunny meeting room at Burlington's Community Health Center, where she is now an executive assistant.
"I was virtually staying on the streets with no place to go, with my two-and-a-half year old daughter Sonja. I was addicted to cocaine, and had just finished de-toxing when [my physician] discovered that I was 16-weeks pregnant. She immediately made some calls and I was at the Lund Home the next day." This was about a decade ago and Kelley and Sonja spent the next year at Glen Road through Kelley's pregnancy. They were fortunate to have gotten in as quickly as they did, for Lund's residential program is consistently filled to capacity.
"We frequently, including now, have a waiting list," confirms Barbara Rachelson, who is nearing her tenth year as LFC executive director. "When we [do] have openings, we do an assessment to see if the young woman meets [our] criteria; a mental health and/or substance abuse diagnosis is required and [she must] be pregnant or parenting. For our transitional housing program, [an individual] must be under 21, homeless, and pregnant or parenting."
Kelley grew up in Colchester, but only knew a little bit about Lund. "When I was in high school, a friend of mine was pregnant and [though] she didn't actually live at Lund, she went through its GED program. Other than that I knew nothing about them-but I learned while I was there! It was kind of a reality check. For me, it was amazing. I was in my early 20s and one of the oldest of the girls there, which I think helped. It was very hard. I remember one of the first people I met was 13 and she had an 18-month old. That was a very difficult reality for me… it was hard to understand that girls were having sex that young. And, there was a girl there who had been raped and that was heart-wrenching because I can't even fathom."
As for the support that Kelley and her daughter Sonja received from Lund, she can't say enough. "It was a wonderful environment and they were extremely supportive. They helped me struggle through the decision to give the baby I was about to have up for adoption." Kelley notes that she was unusual among her peers, most of whom chose to parent. It's her belief that perhaps there's too much emphasis on young women choosing to parent and suggests that the adoption option should be encouraged more. "While I was at Lund, [it seemed to me that] adoption was considered a secondary option. I feel when you are dealing with extremely low-income [individuals] and minors, the interest of the baby should be as important as the interest of the birthparent. It is much easier to parent when sheltered by the Lund environment. Girls have a maximum of 12 months there... once they leave they are ultimately on their own. This places a big burden on them, the child and the economy. There is not any shortage of couples
looking to adopt, there is a shortage of the parental knowledge a 15-year-old has."
Of her own experience, during the last two months of her pregnancy Kelley reports spending much of her time deciding which of three prospective adopting parents she should choose-a long way from Maryann's struggle in the 1960s to see the pre-selected parents. "It was nice to be able to see [the future parents] actually bond with the child, to know what their parenting skills were going to be," Kelley reports.
Meanwhile, other LFC staff were helping Kelley remain drug-free (which she has been for eleven years), helping her assess her parenting skills and offering continual positive reinforcement. Kelley met often with two different counselors-an art therapist and a psychologist. "Whenever drugging would come into my mind I had somebody to talk to, right there. I don't think I would have made it, especially in the situation I had been in-it would have been just too much," Kelley trails off, and pauses. "It's an amazing place, it really is. It saved my life-saved my daughter Sonja's life-and gave my baby a life."
Just What the Doctor Ordered
Both Elizabeth Webb Smith and Dr. Phillips were involved with Lund in 1969 when the new residence was built on Glen Road, and they've witnessed the ever-widening umbrella of services and programs offered within the building's ever-tightening walls. After three decades, the LFC is finally undergoing an expansion. "They would either need to expand or cut down drastically on what they're doing-and they can't do that: there's just too much need," Phillips states. "They're involved in so many things, [but] it's so crowded. They'd be talking to parents about adoption while somebody else was trying to talk to someone about their alcohol or drug addiction. Their school was so cramped it was in the basement. There's been no real place for the girls to gather together in the evening as sort of a family, no privacy for the women.
"There are so many holes that get plugged by Lund," Phillips adds, then points out that in addition to being the largest private, non-profit adoption agency in Vermont "they're the only adoption agency in the state that will try to find-and are very good at finding-adopting homes for children in the welfare system. Children who are just sort of simmering, so to speak, in the foster system."
"Every person who is going to get anywhere in life needs to have a good base," says Heidi Kelley. "Most of the girls who get into a situation where you're young and pregnant-your base isn't very good. What Lund provides is a base, a chance to start all over."
Margaret Michniewicz is editor of Vermont Woman.
* For more about Lund, visit www.lundfamilycenter.org.
* For more about the Women's Christian Temperence Union, which has a fascinating history of its own, see www.wctu.org
* The Girls Who Went Away-The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade by Ann Fessler (Penguin Press, 2006, 354 pp.)
* Adoptees, mothers, and many adoptive parents have been campaigning to change the laws state by state. American Adoption Congress (AAC), formed in 1978, is "committed to achieving changes in attitudes, policies, and legislation that will guarantee access to identifying information for all adoptees and their birth and adoptive families." Bastard Nation, an adoptees' rights organization, "advocates for the civil and human rights of adult citizens who were adopted as children." The Web site www.bastards.org has a full list of state disclosure laws and provides updates on pending legislation.
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Vermont Woman is a forum for news, issues, features, arts and entertainment from the perspective, experience, and voices of Vermont women. Vermont Woman is a monthly newspaper published in South Burlington, Vermont and is excerpted here on this site. All content ©Copyright 2006, Vermont Woman Publishing |
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