Couple to adopt five siblings to add to their four

TIM BOTOS

The Repository

LAWRENCE TWP. — Dave Stull lays a sheet of paper on his kitchen table. In the upper left corner is a photo of five children. They all have smiles on their faces. They’re sitting next to each other in a line, with their hands folded in their laps.

“Hey, Chris, come in here,” he says.

A few seconds later, Chris Stull walks into the kitchen. At 5 years old, he’s the youngest member of the Stull family. His father points to the photo.

“Who’s that, Chris?” he says.

Chris wrinkles his forehead, then smiles.

“The Texas kids,” he says.

He’s right — the five children in the photo are from Texas. And if all goes well, Dave Stull and his wife, Jeanne, will adopt them in the next few months.

“We always said if we had a big house and enough money, then we’d adopt,” Jeanne said.

The Stulls aren’t typical when it comes to adoptions. For starters, they already have four children — three of whom still live at home. They want to adopt five children, ideally brothers and sisters, preferably biracial, like the Texas kids they discovered on a nationwide Internet adoption roster.

“Those are the kids that need a family,” Jeanne said.

They’re also the kinds of children many couples don’t want. Most like to adopt babies. They aren’t trying to adopt older children, especially groups of brothers and sisters.

“Two children is probably the norm that people are looking for,” said Crissy Bessemer, executive director of A Child’s Waiting, a private and public adoption agency in Summit County. “Or maybe they already have three girls and want a boy.”

She said there are more than 115,000 children in the country waiting to be adopted. Many, like the three brothers and two sisters from Texas, have learning disorders.

“Some have been abused, neglected,” Bessemer said.

The Texas children all have attention deficit disorder and are being counseled for their “losses”; three go to speech therapy, according to the Adopt USA Web site.

The Stulls don’t mind.

And they don’t want to separate siblings.

“It’s not like going to pick out a puppy,” Jeanne said. “You don’t go in and look at the litter and say, ‘That one’s cute and that one’s cute; give me those two and keep the rest.’”

The Stulls figure their home and yard are large enough to handle five extra children in the family. Their house is 2,350 square feet and they have five acres.

Dave is a full-time Jackson Township firefighter. He’s also chief of the Lawrence Township Fire Department. Jeanne has her own business. She designs and makes replacement stuffed animals and baby dolls for children who have lost a favorite teddy bear or doll they sleep with every night.

The Stulls have been known to spend more than $400 in a trip to the grocery store, though they admit they like to stock up. They know it’s going to be expensive with five more mouths to feed. Still, Ohio couples get at least $250 a month per child in public grants to help support them.

“The money won’t be a problem,” Jeanne said.

The Stulls want to adopt children from another state.

“We don’t want to run the risk of bumping into the birth parents at a Wal-Mart,” Dave said. “It just wouldn’t be a good idea. You don’t know what kind of situation these kids come from.”

The Stulls already have taken classes on adoption, and are waiting for a home study by the agency. They’re anxious. They’ve bought three bunk beds. The beds already are set up in upstairs bedrooms.

They’re hoping to have children by February.

Bessemer said it’s possible they’ll meet that goal. It’s rare, she said, though not unheard of for couples to adopt five children at a time.

“We love working with people like that,” she said.

The children from Texas are between 7 and 11 years old. The Stulls said they’d fit in well with their three children who live at home — Chris, Danielle, 17, and Jessica, 10.

Jeanne said she wants people to know there are plenty of children who need to be adopted. She said many people aren’t aware subsidies are available to help raise them.

“The reasons why people don’t adopt just aren’t good enough,” Jeanne said, looking at the photo of the five children from Texas. “Just look at those faces.”

Dave agreed.

“Our kids are our life right now,” he said. “We do everything together ... vacations every year ... so we’ll just have to get another hotel room, that’s all.”