In the company of angels

Laverne and Ken Larsen of Putnam County open their home and hearts to many of the broken children that others have left behind.

By Lane DeGregory, Times staff writer
Published December 23, 2007

The Larsen's golden retriever, Belle, eyes a plate of cookies as the Larsen family relaxes in the living room of their Interlochen home. Photo gallery: A loving family
	[Stephen J. Coddington | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Stephen J. Coddington | Times] Ken Larsen holds his daughter Addie Joy, 3, as she sleeps in her father's lap at the end of the day. [Stephen J. Coddington | Times] A big family needs a big kitchen. Here Laverne cooks a lasagna that doesn't quite fit into her old oven as husband Ken works to install a recently purchased one.

INTERLACHEN - Curled in her crib, asleep on a pink pillow, the little girl looks perfect.

"Good morning! How's my baby?" her mother says quietly, coming into the room. She bends over the crib, strokes the 3-year-old's dark curls from her forehead. "Hey Addie, Addie Joy ... You going to wake up for me? We got to get you ready."

Laverne Larsen, 64, crosses to the closet and pulls out a small black velvet dress with a skirt of lilac taffeta. As she turns back to the crib, another daughter bounds in, followed by a son. This daughter is 7 and barefoot. "Anna Rose, you need to get your hair ribbon," Laverne says. The boy is 11. "Noah, you really should have something nicer than those big sneakers for church."

As the children scamper off, Laverne bends to lift Addie Joy. "Come on, little one," she says. "We got to get you baptized."

She cradles the girl in her arms, untangles her feeding tube from the sheets. Then she pulls off Addie Joy's pajamas and checks the bag attached to the girl's tummy.

Addie Joy is blind and severely brain damaged. She can't sit up, roll over or swallow. Laverne and her husband, Ken, adopted Addie Joy in August, taking her from the Tampa nursing home where she had lived in foster care for most of her life.

She is the 20th child the Larsens have adopted since 1970. Ten children, ages 3 to 32, still live at home. Seven have catheters, six are in wheelchairs, four have feeding tubes; they have cerebral palsy, spina bifida, autism. The couple also foster three severely disabled teenage boys.

"Anna Rose, did you find your ribbon?" Laverne calls. "Noah, do you have your black shoes? C'mon, Dad's outside waiting with the bus."

She pulls the dress over the toddler's limp body, buckles her into her wheelchair, crowns her ponytails with purple bows. Then she pushes Addie Joy out of the nursery, past the wall of angels.

The story of the Larsen family is told in the framed photos that hang near the front door.

On one side of the hall is a vast gallery of children, some shown in snapshots three decades old. You see the Larsens' four biological sons, little towheads dressed in shirts Laverne stitched by hand. Then there's Meribeth, the first child they adopted. She is 32 now, even though doctors said she wouldn't survive past age 4. There's Clarice, Amanda and Nate - poor, dear Nate, who had been shuffled among nine foster homes by the time he was 4. David and Abby are there, too, and Gabe.

The pictures on the other side of the hall, Laverne says, are her angels.

"Those are the most precious pictures I can think of," says the Rev. Gene Maddox, pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church. He has known the Larsens since 1989 and will baptize Addie Joy.

The wall of angels is a memorial to the children the Larsens have lost. Laverne penned their birth and death dates beneath their portraits. Ken helped carve Bambi and Pooh into their tombstones.

They have buried eight babies, two and three to a grave.

"If you ask me," the minister says, "that little corner of the town cemetery is the most hallowed ground in Putnam County."

- - -

The Larsens live in a historical hamlet of a couple thousand called Interlachen, northeast of Gainesville, in a sprawling two-story farmhouse built in 1882. They paid $65,000 for the place in 1979. Ken, who used to be a builder and now owns a sign shop, restored the 13 bedrooms, 9 baths and 9,000 square feet. He hung lifts over the beds and bathtubs and had an elevator installed, so the kids in wheelchairs could get upstairs.

Laverne and Ken have been married 45 years, and they still hold hands. They met when they were teenagers in New Jersey. In the first five years of their marriage, Laverne had four sons. "By the time our youngest was 2, she needed something else to mother," Ken said.

She figured they had been blessed, so they should help another child. They started calling adoption agencies. "Everyone said we were crazy," Laverne said. "We already had four kids of our own."

They asked about becoming a foster family. They would take any age, any race. They had just one stipulation: "We can't handle a child with special needs."

- - -

Pam was the first. In some ways, she was the reason for all the others.

She was 6 months old, blind, severely brain damaged. She had lived in the hospital her whole life, and soon would be transferred to an institution for the rest of it.

It was 1970. The family lived in New Jersey then. Laverne's boys were all under 8. A social worker called, saying a child needed someplace to go, just until a crib opened up at the institution.

"I called Ken at work," Laverne said. "I asked what he thought. He said, 'You prayed for a baby.'"

Pam came home with them. For eight months, they rocked her and sang her lullabies. They learned how to feed her without her throwing up. She learned the sound of their voices and tried to smile.

"We wanted to adopt her," Laverne said. "They told us, 'Don't be ridiculous. This child will be in diapers the rest of her life. She's not available.'

"I wanted to fight them," Laverne said, "but I was scared out of my socks. I spent a lot of time, those months, on my knees."

When a crib opened up at the institution, foster workers said Pam had to go. Laverne dressed the little girl in a lacy pink dress, pink socks, pink hair ribbons. The boys gave her a stuffed lamb. They all went together, to the ward of ill and abandoned infants. The walls were bare; 100 cribs were lined in tight rows.

"When I laid her down, I was sobbing," Laverne said.

For months, she took her sons to see Pam. One day, when Laverne called to arrange a visit, a nurse said Pam had died.

Maybe God was testing them, Laverne thought. They had thought they couldn't handle a medically fragile child, but then God placed Pam into their arms. Maybe they should have held on more tightly. Maybe he would call on them again.

- - -

A year later, a foster worker showed them a photo of a baby girl with ice blue eyes who was paralyzed as a result of spina bifida. The child had survived 10 surgeries and, at 6 months old, was finally ready to go home.

But she had no home to go to.

Laverne had never heard of spina bifida, so she checked out every book the library had about the condition. She learned how to care for a head shunt. Ken and the boys built a wooden cart with handles so their new sister could ride with them around the yard. They brought Meribeth home on Laverne's 30th birthday.

Laverne wrote letters to the children's ward where Meribeth had been, thanking the nurses in Meribeth's voice, telling them about her brothers, her dogs, her new life. "Maybe some day we'll get me a little sister, someone like me," Laverne wrote for her daughter.

Two years later, a social worker called. "I think we found you another baby."

Clarice was 5 months old, also had spina bifida, and - like her adopted sister - had never left the hospital. Laverne flew to Massachusetts to get her. Ken and the boys built a bigger cart. "Now," Laverne told her husband, "we have the perfect family."

Eighteen children later, she still feels the same way.

- - -

An hour before the baptism is scheduled to begin, Ken climbs into the family's custom bus and starts the engine. The Larsens paid $55,000 for the vehicle with the commercial lift. They had outgrown their school bus, and the older kids were getting too big for Ken to carry on board.

Other than the house, the bus is the most expensive thing the Larsens have bought. They live simply, on money Ken earned as a builder, on income from his sign shop, on stipends the state sends for the foster children. They seldom leave the house - except to go to church.

Ken pushes a button to lower the metal wheelchair lift, then hops out to help strap in the kids. Some of the teenagers are staying home with a nurse, so today's entourage comprises five children, three of whom are in wheelchairs, plus Laverne's 89-year-old mother, who also lives with the Larsens.

Noah is the first to jump on board, dutifully wearing his black shoes. He has cerebral palsy, once suffered terribly from seizures, and now goes to school. Like his other siblings who can walk, he helps guide the ones in wheelchairs on and off the ramp.

Abby, who's 24, can maneuver her wheelchair herself. She takes a spot near the front of the bus. Tae, 9, comes next. He has cerebral palsy and can't feed himself, but Laverne and Ken have taught him to drive his electric wheelchair. He parks near the back of the bus. Anna Rose climbs on board, hair flying.

"Where's your ribbon?" Laverne calls, rolling Addie Joy onto the platform. "Ken, you got her? I got to run get Anna Rose's hair ribbon."

Ken slides Addie Joy to her place behind the driver's seat, locks the straps beneath her small chair. The toddler's head tilts sideways, a dark ponytail spills across her face. The hair tickles her cheek, and she laughs and laughs.

- - -

Those who know the Larsens say it is easier to admire what they do than it is to explain it.

Luanne Panacek of the Hillsborough County Children's Board, which promoted Addie Joy's adoption: "I know many people who foster medical needs children. But to adopt 20 like the Larsens have? That's a whole other level of commitment."

Terry Sexton, a former pediatric nurse at Shands hospital in Gainesville who has known Ken and Laverne for 21 years: "All their children had to have so many, many surgeries. One of them would always stay with the child the whole time in the hospital. Laverne is always calm. She gets tearful sometimes, but she just sits there with her Bible, praying her way through it."

Maddox, the pastor: "I have no right to pastor this family. They get calls about kids who have lived their lives in hospitals, who aren't going to make it, who have no one. And they just open their hearts and take them all in."

- - -

The Larsens are Methodists. Their Christian faith is the starting point - and the ending point, for that matter - for everything they do. They say they feel fortunate to be able to help God by taking care of kids.

"We have so much to be thankful for," Laverne said.

She is thankful to be able to hum lullabies to a baby during its brief time on Earth, thankful for daughters-in-law who live close enough to help her cook, thankful for the commotion at the dinner table and the giggling in the cribs.

She's even thankful for the laundry. Laverne can go weeks without ever leaving the family's 4 acres. But with a dozen people's clothes to clean, and the four washing machines in a separate building out back, she always has a reason to go outside.

"I guess that sounds silly," she said. "But it gets me out into the sunshine."

She and Ken take turns sleeping, in two- or four-hour shifts. All night, there are diapers to be changed, feeding bags to be refilled, machines to monitor. In the morning, while Ken gets ready for work, Laverne tries to sneak in an hour for herself. She tiptoes upstairs to the wine-colored prayer room Ken built for her and watches the sun rise above the swing set.

- - -

She is grateful for the ones who have died. They are angels, she says, and they watch over her family.

Ben taught her to be brave. His hydrocephalus was so bad, he never learned to lift his head. He hurt every moment of the six months he was with her, but seldom cried.

Charlie came to them when he was 4 months old, frightened, in a full body cast. They loved him for three years. Just before he died, he managed to smile.

Doctors said Michael, who was 2, had only a few days to live when the Larsens adopted him. In Laverne's arms, he held on for more than a month. "He needed a home," Laverne said. "He needed to be held."

Savannah was in a California hospital, waiting for a new heart, but couldn't get one as a foster child. So the Larsens flew out to adopt her. A few days later, Savannah died in Laverne's lap. She was 20 months old.

Joey died three months later, after eight years with the Larsens. Then they lost Maggie, who was almost 2. In five months in 1995, they buried three children.

"They were never ours to keep," Laverne said. "If we hadn't been here, these children would have been all by themselves when they died. Now, the ones who were in pain are running around up there in heaven, barefoot and whole."

Natalie came to them when she was 1, suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome, breathing problems and, they would learn later, severe autism. By age 6, she started sneaking away. One afternoon in 1998, Laverne left Natalie with Ken and three other adults. Natalie went into her room to take a nap. When Ken checked on her a few minutes later, she was gone.

They found her in a neighbor's yard, face down in the pool.

Later, they realized, Natalie had crawled out the dog door.

"Where was God?" Laverne asked in her journal, just after the funeral. Weeks later, she answered herself. "God was there when she was born 16 weeks early, and fit into the palm of a hand. God was there on her first Christmas when she was on the respirator, hovering between life and death. ... God was there when she was splashing in puddles, holding my hand and laughing in the rain."

- - -

All four of the Larsens' biological sons have kids; three have adopted or fostered children too. If something happens to Ken and Laverne, their boys have promised to take in their special needs siblings.

Last spring, the Larsens' son Russell and his wife started talking about adopting another child, so of course Laverne had to be involved.

She was scanning a Web site for the Heart Gallery of Tampa Bay, looking at children available for adoption, when she saw a raven-haired toddler. The child's name was Shadow. As a baby, someone had shaken her so severely that she will never be able to see, walk or eat.

"Ken," Laverne called. "Come see this child. Don't you wish we were 10 years younger so we could bring her home?"

Laverne had decided at 60 that she was too old to adopt more children. So she called her son, who flew from Ohio to Florida to see Shadow. The moment he met her, he knew the little girl was meant for his mom.

"They'll never let us," Laverne told him. "We're too old. They're never going to give us that beautiful baby."

A social worker called the next day. How soon could they take her? Without meeting the child, Laverne said, "Tomorrow." That night, she came up with her baby's new name: Addie Joy.

"There was just an expression she had, a connection," Laverne said. "I could see the need in her eyes."

- - -

At church, Ken parks in the grass. He lowers the lift and the children roll out.

"Good morning! Welcome!" Maddox, the minister, calls out. "Let us all give thanks."

Tae, who has been silent all morning, starts moaning and flailing his arms. Anna Rose, hair ribbon askew, climbs over the pew. Addie Joy gurgles and kicks.

"What privileges God has given us!" Maddox says. "What a privilege it is to have Addie Joy here with us today to be baptized."

Laverne walks to the front of the church and lowers the toddler into the minister's arms.

"Lord, what a gift. We thank you for this wonderful little girl," he says. "Please bless her, and this special family."

Addie Joy's head lolls from side to side; she seems to be searching for something. When Laverne carries her back to their pew, the girl's small hand reaches up and feels her mother's cheek. Her body relaxes, and the people sing Amazing Grace.

Lane DeGregory can be reached at degregory@sptimes.com or 727 893-8825.

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How to help

Hundreds of children like Addie Joy are waiting to be adopted or taken into foster homes. Shaken babies, and children with special needs, often have a hard time finding families. If you would like to help children in foster care in Pinellas, Pasco or Hillsborough, please contact the Heart Gallery.

Pinellas and Pasco:www.heartgallerykids.org or call (727) 456-0637.

Hillsborough: www.heartgallerytampabay.org or call (813) 204-1792.

To contact the Larsen family, write to them at P.O. Box 747, Interlachen, FL 32148.

[Last modified February 28, 2008, 15:38:21]