CLOSE UP: Margaret Cole

Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH)

Column: CLOSE UP: MARGARET COLE

Author: FRAN HENRY PLAIN DEALER REPORTER

Margaret Cole, 48, has completed 300 adoptions since she founded European Adoption Consultants in 1991. She and her husband, Tim Hughes, live in North Royalton with their children,

, 15, Lucy, 6, Timmy, 4, and Lindsay, 2. She has two children from a previous marriage,

, 23, and

, 18.

Bambi wasn't in the barn, and Margaret Cole didn't want to ask where her 9-year-old cow was. "I didn't want to know," she says.

Maybe that was the end of her idyllic childhood on a dairy farm in Williamsfield, near the Pennsylvania border.

"I used to sneak out into the barn to sleep with Bambi," recalls Cole, the oldest of seven, and a wholesome 4-H'er.

"I was always one of those children that moms like. I was reliable. My parents could leave me in charge for the day, and I'd take care of the kids and get 30 cows milked, too."

Classmates at her last high school reunion weren't surprised that she was raising a brood - four biological and two adopted children - but her role as director of a foreign adoption agency confounded them. It amazes Cole, too.

"I was this girl who couldn't give a book report, I was so nervous, and now I'm giving adoption seminars for 150 people," she says, adding, with a touch of wonder, "with no notes."

She founded her agency because she had to.

After she lost a 6-week-old daughter, Alicia, to crib death, she wanted to adopt a baby. Cole quakes, telling about Alicia's death.

"You don't get over losing a baby. You learn to live with it. I don't think the past tense for the word `grieve' exists.'

She wanted a baby girl so much, but no agency would take her because "I was over 40 and I had my own children. But I wouldn't give up. It was a mission.

"After I hit enough brick walls, I called Mom and said, `I'm going to start an adoption agency.'

A year or so later, in 1991 (the same year she and her husband, Tim, adopted Timmy domestically), her agency was licensed. She immediately went to Russia to learn the lay of the adoption land, so to speak.

"I just got on a plane," says the white-knuckled flier. She stayed three weeks making contacts, while the grandmothers at home helped Tim with the children.

In May 1993, Cole made another trip to Russia to get Lindsay, who was living in an orphanage. Daughter Lucy had picked out Lindsay from a group of photos - "I have to have that baby," she said.

Cole froze at the sight of the blank-faced, unresponsive 5-month-old.

"Lindsay was swaddled up to her neck, with only her hands sticking out," recalls Cole. "She'd been working her hands, and they were raw, and her neck and ears were infected."

She was no Ivory Snow baby, as she lay in her wrappings, staring into space and smelling of infections and severe diaper rash.

Cole's secretary, standing behind her in a group of adoptive parents, jarred her. "She said, `Quit being a goose,' and I picked up Lindsay.'

Only a few seconds had passed while Cole reflected on her fears - what if there was something wrong with the baby? How would it affect her children?

"And I remembered how the Russian nurses want you to scoop up `your baby' and be a warm, hugging, kissing mommy, and I thought of all those people behind me. If the director doesn't pick up her baby ...' Cole trails off with that untenable thought.

Lindsay came home to a loving family, including Lucy, who set out to "teach my baby how to smile."

Her work has linked 300 foreign babies with American parents - and a couple of German couples, too. "The first time I saw a group of my kids together, I got goose bumps. I got dizzy. I couldn't believe all those beautiful children."

Always the realist: "A drop in the bucket of all the kids in orphanages," she says. "The agency is the only good thing that's happened from my daughter's death. It wasn't worth it." She pauses.

"But somehow we were able to turn it around."