One of the couples was Tim Franklin and his wife, Annette, of Bridport, VT, who adopted an HIV-positive Haitian girl in 2007. After the girl died the following year, the Franklins apparently decided to try their luck again. While on a brief visit to Haiti in mid-2009 they met a second HIV-positive girl and decided to adopt her.
Another couple profiled was Brian and Emily Fletcher (pictured left) of Penfield, NY, who adopted a toddler with cerebral palsy. Like the Franklins, the Fletchers are devout Christians who live in an overwhelmingly white community. Both couples already had more than one biological child of their own when they decided to take on a special needs Haitian orphan.
I recognized the Fletcher family from the picture accompanying the article, having seen them at an outdoor festival in suburban Rochester this past June. A few weeks before then, over Memorial Day weekend, several hundred youths from the city of Rochester had started a melee at another outdoor festival in the suburb of Greece, so on this occasion I paid even more attention than I usual do to the racial makeup of the crowd.
To my surprise, the crowd must have been at least 90% white, and nearly all the non-whites in attendance were Asian. The only black person I saw all evening was a very young boy who was strapped into a baby carrier that a young white woman was wearing. Standing next to the woman were a young white man and two white children, presumably her husband and biological children. The very dark-skinned child stuck out like a sore thumb and was obviously adopted. The mother was showing off her new African fashion accessory to the world, just as Sandra Bullock had done just a couple of months earlier.
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