Happy Birthday, Ray!

This day is almost over, but I still want to write the story of how Ray joined our family.  Today is his 31st birthday.  Here's a recent picture that Thyda sent me - Ray all dressed for a job interview.  Actually, yesterday he had a second interview for a job he really wants.  The interview went well, so we are PRAYING it will result in a job offer.

Ray joined our family just a few days after his 14th birthday in 1996.  That year had been a tough one for us.  In May Dick had been diagnosed with lymphoma after months of extreme pain and lots of testing.  Six months of chemo followed - the kind that made his hair fall out.  But he made it through.  

That fall Frank (a junior) had decided to quit basketball and try wrestling instead.  As Dick and I ate out for my birthday, we discussed the fact that we would have no one playing basketball for the first time in years. (Anthony had played it all through high school and then Frank for a couple of years.)  We realized that we would really miss that.  I joked, "Well, we'll just have to get another basketball player."

The next week we got a call from our foster agency asking if we would consider taking a 13-year-old boy.  And, yes, he did like basketball!  But after discussing it, we decided that maybe we should say "no" this time because of Dick's health and the fact that we already had so many boys keeping us our lives a little too interesting.  

A few more weeks went by.  We got another call from the foster agency asking if we would take a child for an emergency placement, just for the weekend.  I said we could do that, then asked more about the child.  They admitted that it was the same one they had asked us to take a few weeks prior.  Hmmm.  

Dick was planning to go to a Manheim Central play-off football game at Hershey on the Friday evening of that weekend, so we decided that the boy would just go along with him.  The caseworker arrived with him just a few minutes before Dick was planning to leave.  I opened the door when they arrived, saw that boy, and fell in love.  I immediately knew that we would be having him for more than just the weekend, and I felt like the agency knew that would happen if we just met him.  And the rest is history.  In just a few weeks, this boy that had been so quiet in the previous placement that they thought perhaps he should be evaluated for some kind of disability, became a loud and funny guy that caseworkers barely recognized.  He's still our loud and funny guy.  

I dug up this family picture taken the first week after he joined our gang.  Some of us had a bit more hair! 

Back row:  Sam, Dick & I, Frank.  Front row:  Jeremy, Anthony, Lisa, Ray.  Miki was married and living in Sweden by then.  

And that's all for tonight.