Foundation For Large Families
Information email: largefamilies2001@yahoo.com
Thanks to strangers' generosity, they have a home for the holidays
By JOHN IWASAKI
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The Montana family, which includes six adopted children, some with special needs, planned to spend the holidays and beyond in a homeless shelter in downtown Seattle while a son recovered from a kidney transplant.
Nine-year-old David, right, grabs Ezra McGuffey, 10, while spending time with their father, Clint, before he returns to work in Montana. Lawana and 2-year-old Jesse are behind them. The McGuffeys have spent their lives caring for adopted children, some with disabilities, and two biological children.
Instead, they are living in a rent-free house near some of the Eastside's priciest real estate, thanks to the generosity of strangers.
They don't just have a house. In the days before Christmas, nearly 20 families contributed "furniture, rugs, lamps, dishes, towels, groceries, toiletries, sheets (and) a Christmas tree with lights and decorations, surrounded by wrapped gifts," marveled Levian Brink, a Bellevue resident who is coordinating donations.
The outpouring seemed fitting for a family that lives simply, undeterred by tough circumstances. "This family's joy does not seem to depend on external things," Brink said.
Clint and Lawana McGuffey, both in their 40s, began adopting children nine years ago when they lived in Anniston, Ala. Clint's job as a law enforcement officer for the U.S. Forest Service later took them to Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, and to their current home in Superior, Mont.
Their eight children, two of them biological, range in age from 2 to 13. Their six adopted children all have circumstances that made them difficult for agencies to place. Three have health problems. The other three are siblings.
After the McGuffeys adopted a child who had the same name as their biological son, the 13-year-old boys became known as Isaiah 1 and Isaiah 2.
Ezra McGuffey, 10, rides a scooter Dec. 26, just 13 days after undergoing a kidney transplant.
The child who brought them to Seattle is Ezra, 10, who was born in Bulgaria with spina bifida and has kidney problems that have been treated at Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center. The McGuffeys adopted him after asking an international agency for "someone in desperate need."
"There were children in the U.S. and overseas without a line forming to adopt them," Lawana explained.
Even at their rented ranch in western Montana, the McGuffeys care for animals with special needs: a blind Appaloosa stallion, a mule with "trust issues," an injured mustang foal.
The McGuffeys drained their savings in 2002 staying in a budget motel in Mountlake Terrace for five months while Ezra underwent several surgeries and tests at Children's Hospital. The family is too large to stay at the Ronald McDonald House for families of patients.
Lawana and her children need to stay in the Seattle area for two or three months while Ezra recovers from his surgery and Clint returns to work. Unable to afford another long motel stay, Lawana said her family was truly "content and excited" at the prospects of staying in a shelter, as long as they could all be together.
That they are instead living in a furnished home is the culmination of a hectic month and distant acquaintances.
At about 4 p.m. on Dec. 12, Lawana received a phone call from Dr. Ruth McDonald, a pediatric kidney specialist at Children's Hospital.
A donor was found for Ezra, McDonald said. Catch the 6 p.m. flight out of Missoula.
That gave Lawana less than an hour to pack, make arrangements for her seven other children -- Clint was in Ketchikan, Alaska, for a timber theft trial -- and begin the 60-mile drive to Missoula.
Ezra received his new kidney the next morning and spent the next 10 days recovering at Children's Hospital with his mom. His dad and siblings drove 450 miles to Seattle on Dec. 22 so the family could spend Christmas together, presumably at a shelter.
In the meantime, Lawana contacted family friends to update them on Ezra's successful surgery. On her list were Cal and Sandra Martin of Birmingham, Ala., who had been foster parents to David, the first child the McGuffeys adopted.
"We know one person in Seattle," Cal Martin told her. "We'll give her a call."
That person was Brink, who attended church with the Martins in the late 1980s in Birmingham and hadn't heard from them in years.
After learning of the McGuffeys' homeless situation, Brink and her husband, Dennis, began contacting their network of friends from church, home-schooling and business, sending e-mails to 95 people.
"Phone calls just started coming in," Levian Brink said. "Things started happening."
A real estate agent friend knew of a 1,600-square-foot, two-bedroom rental house in Clyde Hill that had sat empty for months.
Dennis Brink's childhood friend from Lynden, now a wealthy businessman in Southern California, agreed to pay three months' rent on the 1950s-era house.
The Brinks and other friends and businesses donated or rented furniture, and gave cash, clothing, food and supplies.
"People are thrilled to have a real, hands-on opportunity," Levian Brink said. "They want to put their money where it really matters."
The McGuffeys are not strangers to the generosity of others. Living in small towns in remote areas over the years, they find that friends and neighbors often offer their bounty to a growing family: bushels of apples, gallons of shrimp, pounds of fresh game.
What they can't use themselves, they pass to others in need.
Isaiah 1 attributes his family's provision to "the biblical principle that you reap what you sow. My dad, after he got a used car, never sold (the vehicle it replaced). He always tried to find a family who needed it, and gave it away. In turn, the Lord's blessed us when we needed it."
For the past five Decembers, the McGuffeys have allotted $50 to each of their children, giving them the option of spending it on themselves or others at Christmas. The children have yet to buy anything for themselves. Several times they have spent all the money on gifts for needy children, Isaiah 1 said.
The children decided that this year's money will go toward a long-term project to buy a gentle horse and build a pen so they could give free rides to people with special needs to help with their therapy.
The McGuffeys say they thank God and are humbled by the deluge of support.
The day before Ezra was discharged from the hospital, "I thought I was going to have a good cry," Lawana said. "But then I started laughing because it was so amazing."
HOW TO HELP
For information on helping the McGuffey family, contact Dennis and Levian Brink at McGuffeyHelp@aol.com.
P-I reporter John Iwasaki can be reached at 206-448-8096 or johniwasaki@seattlepi.com
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