TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Couple who met as orphans help foster kids

ADVERTISEMENT

By DONNA KOEHN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 24, 2010

Updated: 12/24/2010 12:25 pm

VALRICO - Their stories could have taken many wrong and twisted turns, so bleak were their beginnings.

Surely some credit must go to their mothers, both of whom died when the heroes of this tale were 6 years old. Without those earliest, nurturing years, the capacity to hope, to love likely would have withered before this man and woman ever met.

Lourdes' father abandoned her ailing mother and four siblings before her mother died of asthma.

Michael was told his mother received the wrong type blood when getting a transfusion, leading to her death. His father later lost his job, and one day left his brother and him behind, promising to be back shortly. Instead, a knock came at the apartment door, where a man stood in a suit and tie and said he was there to collect the boys. It was weeks before Michael heard from his father, with word that Michael was destined for Mount Loretto, an orphanage established in 1871.

That's what they were called in the 1950s and '60s, not child care centers or group homes. Back then a warm bed, three square meals and a whipping with a strop for misbehavior were what orphans – or those abused or abandoned -- were thought to need most.

Sibling groups were split up into different buildings at the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin at Mount Loretto, run by the Catholic church on New York's Staten Island.

Michael and Lourdes, who had not yet met, found themselves in cavernous rooms with 30 beds, 15 lined up along two walls. Each child had a small locker for belongings. Each had morning chores after a 6:30 a.m. wake-up: clean the floors, scrub the bathrooms. Chores first, then breakfast.

When a child transgressed, all the students were told to sit and listen. The child was taken to the bathroom, where he bent over a sink and received the stropping. The others counted the sounds of the smacks, grimacing.

Michael was a model student, never enduring that indignity. He also never lost faith that his father knew what was best for him. Lourdes, meanwhile, resigned herself. She had no one on the outside. She made best friends with the little girls who slept nearby.

The 900 boys and 900 girls on the sprawling campus mostly were kept apart from one another, but Michael remembers the first time his eyes fell upon Lourdes, sitting on a bench with her sister. No matter that he and she were a mere 12 years of age. He knew he had fallen deeply in love.

Lourdes was less enthralled. She was obsessed with her education, her only way to make it in the world. In ninth and 12th grades she was class valedictorian. Books, books, books were all she cared about. Michael? Not so much.

He began what he calls "the pursuit of my life."

First, Michael became an altar boy, simply to scope her out in church, about the only time the boys and girls could see each other. He enlisted friends as spies to help him spot her.

And then one day, 15 and full of yearning, he hopped on a bus to an outing. There she came! She was getting on his bus! His heart thumped; he would have 45 minutes to speak to her! He blurted out a request to take her out.

She liked him, she told him. But as a friend only. Oh, dagger to his heart.

He plodded back to his building later, where friends taunted him by playing the same plaintive song, over and over: "What Good is a Castle," a 1968 ode to unrequited love. Oh, man, it hurt.

Another couple of years passed, but he never gave up hope that she one day would be his. At 17, he moved to a house in the community with other young men from the home.

One day, a miracle, she called him.

Every weekend after that, he traveled seven hours round trip from his home to Staten Island, riding buses, waiting for the ferry, then doing it all in reverse. When he arrived, she often wanted a sandwich from a shop down the road. He fetched it, ending up with only a fraction of the day to spend with her.

Lourdes thought if he did that for her, again and again, maybe he really did love her.

Michael and Lourdes Torres married in 1973, at age 21. Two daughters followed. Michael worked his way through college, taking classes as he worked at a bank. Later the family moved to Florida, where he went to the police academy in his 40s and became the fire marshal and a police officer in Holly Hill.

The couple, who had endured so much so young, vowed to each other that no matter what they had, they would share it. They took in family members who needed a place to stay. Friends could count on them. A homeless man they spotted deserved a blanket and a hot meal.

It is simply, they say, what they do.

One day, Michael saw an elderly man sitting alone on a park bench. He felt compelled to go to him. The man explained he had no one, so Michael invited him home for Thanksgiving dinner. They remained friends until the man died. To this day, Michael can't speak of it without leaving the room to fight his tears.

With their daughters now ages 27 and 35 and on their own, Michael, now a Hillsborough County probation officer, and Lourdes, a homemaker, decided they were ready to refill that nest. They had room. Why not take in little boys and girls whose parents either can't or won't take care of them?

So they have, eight of them so far. Most recently they had four foster sons, ranging in age from 3 to 6. Three of them are brothers. No separate buildings for these boys. They also care for a young girl whose mother is going through a difficult time. It's not an official foster placement, just a loving one.

Two sets of bunk beds line the walls in the boys' bedroom. Four matching shirts hang from the closet. Chores before breakfast: making the bed and brushing their teeth. Each has a box full of belongings.

No strop, of course. Just hugs and laughter, visits with Santa and pizzas for dinner, along with an abiding love that not only survived tough times but shined through them.

ADVERTISEMENT