Anna Belle Illien's Adoption

By Jacqueline Marino

OCTOBER 6, 1997: When Anna Belle Illien adopted a 2-month-old baby from Calcutta, India, 17 years ago, she became both a trailblazer and an oddity. As a white, single mother, Illien became accustomed to strange looks and prodding questions about her darker-complected Indian baby. The curious stares often gave way to a deluge of questions from other people interested in adopting children from foreign countries.

Before her baby's second birthday, Illien left her sales job at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and started her own adoption agency, Illien Adoptions International, in Atlanta. In 1992 she moved to Memphis, where she started Williams-Illien Adoptions with longtime colleague Christine Williams.

Illien, an earthy, middle-aged woman who often wears a salwar kamiz, a colorful Indian dress with matching pants, during the muggy Memphis summers, figures she's facilitated more than 1,200 adoptions over the last 15 years. For her, coordinating international adoptions is not a business, but a calling.

"I've seen the miracles that happen when that family comes together," says Illien, who now has three adopted children. "The family invariably says at some point and time, `This is my child.' They know they have connected with the child they were meant to parent."

Prospective adoptive families who work with Williams-Illien receive a pink folder with a label that reads "We believe in the power of one. One child at a time ... One family at a time." Inside they will read about all the children they may be able to adopt, including infants from the Ukraine, girls in India, and newborns from Venezuela. They will also peruse the list of "waiting children," such as Madhuri, a 17-month-old Indian girl with hydrocephalus; Vova, a healthy 10-year-old boy from Russia, and Olga, his younger sister; and Oscar, an affectionate, 11-year-old Venezuelan boy who cannot hear or speak and was found wandering the streets alone.

Illien says she tries to match prospective adoptive parents with "the child in their mind." But often the child they envision becomes the child that needs them the most. It did for these three Memphis couples, who crossed cultures and continents to find their children.