For Harry and Bertha - With Love and Kimchi

The Johnsons with Molly Holt, daughter of Harry and Bertha Holt, at KAMP in Cedar Falls, IA

A few years ago, as Jared and I were returning from a homestudy visit with our social worker in Le Grand, Iowa, we stopped at a thrift store in a small town whose name I have forgotten. In a room crowded with haphazardly stacked books I spied a special edition of Life magazine dated December 20, 1955, whose topic was Christianity. Of course we had to buy it and as I flipped through its pages on our way home, I encountered a one-page story with a headline, 'The Lord Is Their Sponsor' and stared at pictures of Harry and Bertha Holt, the founders of our adoption agency, Holt International, surrounded by their eight children aged three and under who had been adopted from South Korea.

Harry and Bertha Holt were your average folks. Harry owned a lumber mill in Eugene, Oregon, and was a farmer. His wife Bertha (who I must add was a native Iowan) was employed like many women of her time as a nurse. In December 1954, Harry and Bertha attended a meeting in which Bob Pierce, the head of the evangelical organization, World Vision, showed a documentary film about the plight of Korean children fathered and abandoned by American G.I.'s. In her work, The Seed from the East, Bertha Holt recounts this watershed moment in their lives:

I looked at Harry. He was motionless and tense. I knew every scene had cut him like a knife. I was hurt, too. There is so much we have never known. We had never thought of such suffering and heartbreak. We had never heard of such poverty and despair. We had never seen such emaciated arms and legs, such bloated starvation-stomachs and such wistful little faces searching for someone to care…

Initially the Holts determined to sponsor ten Korean orphans by sending money in order to help meet some of these children's physical needs. But unbeknownst to the other, Harry and Bertha each began to experience a gnawing feeling that merely giving money was not enough and that they needed to consider moving beyond this comfortable place. "More and more I found myself wishing we could bring some of the Korean orphans into our own home where we could love and care for them. I would walk from room to room thinking of how we could put a cot here…and another bed there. It even occurred to me that some of the rooms could be partitioned and made into two rooms without depriving anyone. In fact, some of the rooms even appeared empty as I looked at them," Bertha wrote in her account.

On April 15, 1955, Harry finally voiced his conviction that he and his wife should adopt some of the orphans in Korea. And while both Harry and Bertha were fifty years old at the time and already had six children, aged 9 through 21, they decided to add eight more children to their family. In October 1955, after receiving a special act from Congress allowing them to exceed the two child limit of the time, Harry Holt accompanied his children Betty, Christine, Helen, Joseph, Mary, Nathaniel, Paul, and Robert to their new home in Oregon.

Two weeks ago, our family traveled to Cedar Falls, Iowa, to attend the retreat portion of K.A.M.P. (Korean Adoption Means Pride). As we pulled into the Riverview Conference grounds where we would be staying with the majority of other families attending K.A.M.P., we had to doge children of all ages walking together and riding bikes. What was different about most of these children was that the majority shared the same ethnicity as my own children. Their family stories were similar to our family's story. Besides, there were no questions about whether my children were adopted, whether Jared and I could or could not conceive, whether my children were brothers, or whether they were Chinese. It was deeply refreshing to be surrounded by men and women who have made such similar journeys. Everyone welcomed our family into this community and we were able to share in their wisdom concerning common adoption issues - issues like how to draw a family tree, what age their sons or daughters began to read their confidential files, or how to talk about biological siblings. Through food (there was kimchi available at breakfast), dance, traditional costumes, and tae kwon do demonstrations, we celebrated the culture of the land of the morning calm from which our children came, ever-grateful to the two individuals whose act of obedience changed the course of adoption history. "Are we in Korea?" Thomas questioned after our first evening at K.A.M.P. "No, it's just Iowa," I replied. "But it's wonderful."