home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
TIME: Almanac 1990
/
1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
/
time
/
100989
/
10098900.065
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1990-09-18
|
2KB
|
40 lines
FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 4
Few stories strike such emotional resonance among their authors
as this week's cover on adoption. The profound complexities of the
subject were especially well understood by at least one
correspondent, researcher and writer: all three have experienced
adoption firsthand. Los Angeles correspondent James Willwerth, who
suggested the project, is the adoptive father of Piya, 5, and Mike,
4. Already parents of a son, David, who arrived the conventional
way, Willwerth and his wife Ardis chose a daughter and a second son
from two different Bangkok orphanages during his assignment in
Thailand. Giving a home to "waiting" children "longing for love and
attention," says Willwerth, "is to witness an extraordinary
miracle. They blossom before your eyes." As he talked with other
parents, children and adoption professionals, he says, "I had
credentials rare to most assignments -- Piya and Mike. When I
mentioned them, interviews came alive."
After his return to the U.S. in 1987, Willwerth talked
frequently with reporter-researcher Lois Gilman, who is the author
of The Adoption Resource Book, an information guide for those
setting out to adopt a child. Gilman devoted weeks of work to the
cover package, but in effect she began her personal research in
1979 when she and her husband Ernest adopted Seth, an infant from
Chile, then Eve from South Korea in 1981. "We wanted this week's
story to convey how much the dynamics of adoption are changing,"
Gilman says. "Our whole notion of who can be a parent and who can
be adopted is dramatically different."
The story also sounded a special chord for associate editor
Richard Lacayo, who wrote the story on the children who wait, too
often in vain, for adoption. His brother Joseph, now 21, was one
who did not. He arrived on a day Lacayo remembers as the happiest
in his family's life. "All the while that I worked on this piece,"
says Lacayo, "I had my brother in mind as the image of why adoption
is worth whatever trouble people go through." Despite uncovering
some painful sides of adoption, our staffers came away heartened
by how many children and potential parents are finding happiness
by finding one another.