Roland and Margaret Johnson with their adopted son, Mike.Teresa (Johnson ’78) Terry’s parents were nearly 60 years old when they adopted her youngest brother, Mike. Read her story as we continue our series about Abilene Christian University alumni who have followed their hearts to adopt.
Never Too Old
My parents both attended ACU as did my siblings and I. My dad, Roland Johnson (’40), liked to work out mathematical situations, and he once figured out that he and my mother, Margaret Johnson (’40), had had pre-teens in their home for 45 years! My oldest sister was 19 and a freshman at ACC when I was born, and I also had another sister who was 12 years older than me as well as two brothers who were 17 and 14. Two years later another sister was born.
When I was around 12 and my sister around 10, my parents decided to foster babies from the maternity home in Lubbock. We had fostered one for about a month, but due to my mother’s health problems, they decided not to foster other babies. A feature series from ACU Today
However, a couple of years later, we got a call asking if we could foster another baby. They said he was almost 6 months old and the person who had been caring for him had other commitments and could not continue fostering him. My parents said to bring him on. When we saw him, he gave us the sweetest smile and we all fell for him.
Some time before he turned 2, representatives from the maternity home came out to talk to our parents about him. The visit ended with my parents asking if they were too old to adopt him. They were told that they weren’t, and adoption procedures began. On Dec. 1, 1972, he became my legal brother and the seventh child for my parents. This photo of the Johnsons was taken when Teresa was 2 years old.
Dad and mother were almost 60. They worried that they might not be around to see him grow up but they lived around 40 more years, long enough to see him grown and see his own children.
In the weeks to come, we will introduce you to other alumni who help make a real difference in the world – and enrich their own families – by adopting and fostering children. You can follow new stories in this series on the ACU Facebook page. See previous posts in this series:
