Family - Methodist Orphanage

Entrance to the Orphanage - c1953

Van Bldg - School & Admin -c1953

Cottages - "Homes" - c1953

Classmates - c1955

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So, I said I had three extended families and I have to admit they are much different than most. My Mother and Father divorced when I was about seven years old. Unfortunately, my Father’s family also “divorced” us so without a job and limited resources, my Mother couldn’t raise seven kids; the youngest was only two and the eldest about twelve. Hence, the four middle kids ended up in Methodist Orphanage in Raleigh, NC.

This posting is going to be more about my “Orphanage Family” than about the Home itself (the Methodist Orphanage name changed around 1954 to Methodist Home for Children). Although, there are a lot of good things I can say about the Home (maybe will later), I want to concentrate on the Family.

The Family, as I use it today, refers mostly to the kids that I grew up with, but it also refers to many of the wonderful dedicated staff who took kids without a place to live and molded them, in most cases, to very happy, productive and successful citizens.

In the last posting, I talked about my Mother and Grandmother being two of the most important influences on my life. Well, having spent ten years at the Orphanage, many of the staff must get credit for the man that I am today: Muh Brown, Coach Smith, Coach Brown, Rev. Barrett and Rev. Hedden just to mention a few. There are many more so I have included a picture above of the 1955 Staff.

Now the most important part of this Family: the kids in the Home. We were like most families, except maybe there were a lot more of us: somewhere around two hundred, which included kids from about four to seventeen years old. One of the fondest memories of my stay at the Home was the “Annual Easter Home Coming”, which brought back the “big boys” whom we all looked up to when they were at the Home. This was such an important part of our life that today we still have an Annual Reunion every Easter that draws over two hundred.