Foundation For Large Families
Information email: largefamilies2001@yahoo.com
Family that Lost Quadruplets Adopts Family of Five
April Simun
Associated Press
Sat. Nov. 16, 2002
COLUMBIA, S.C. - Scott and Debbie Simmons now have the big family they've always wanted, but they didn't get it the way they thought they would.
God, they said, had different plans.
Seven years ago, Debbie Simmons gave birth prematurely to quadruplet boys Zach, Josh, Nate and Chris only to watch them die moments later.
Last month, the Simmonses finalized their adoptions of three boys and two girls, all siblings, who came to live at the couple's home in Irmo on April 1.
The family didn't plan for the children to move in on that date. But, they said, it was a plan at work nonetheless God's plan to bring the family together on the same date that the quadruplets died.
"It redeemed a day for us that has been very difficult," Debbie Simmons said. "It gave us a reason to smile. We lost four. God gave us five."
The five Michael, 10; Julia, 9; Alex, 8; Stephen, 7; and Shelby, 6 had lived in two separate foster homes in Tennessee for about two years. During that time, the Simmonses started looking for children to adopt.
Debbie Simmons took a job as children's director at East Lake Community Church in 2000, and the couple moved to Irmo from Houston, where the quadruplets were born.
The Simmonses started visiting adoption agencies in South Carolina. They began looking for a large sibling group.
"We just knew that we really wanted kids," Debbie Simmons said. "It didn't matter if they were our blood children."
Eventually, Yolanda "Bert" Fields at Bethany Christian Services in Columbia urged them to check adoption Web sites for siblings. After much searching, they began focusing on Michael, Julia, Alex, Stephen and Shelby.
The children were in a large group. They were old enough to be out of diapers. And there was no indication from social workers that they wouldn't live well together in one home.
Some remarked that the children even looked like Scott and Debbie Simmons.
The Simmonses knew such a large group would mean adjustments in lifestyle and finances. They prepared to convert spare rooms into children's rooms, buy more dishes and trade in the two-door pickup for a minivan.
"I'm sure that I rationalized it by saying that I was mentally prepared (with the quadruplets) for four," said Scott Simmons, who trains astronauts for NASA. Simmons figured that if God had given him four then, he could handle five now.
The Simmonses, both 34, sent the children a scrapbook about what living in South Carolina would be like. And they went to meet them in February.
"I was terrified, but they made it very easy on me," Scott Simmons said. "There wasn't a moment where we're standing off and staring at each other. They came right to us."
The children called the couple Mommy and Daddy from that first meeting. "Because we knew they would be our forever mom and dad," Julia said.
After the meeting, the Simmonses thought it would be only two weeks until the children could move in. But red tape and paperwork extended the process until April 1.
The children lived with the Simmonses for six months before the family finalized the adoption Oct. 25. They rode to court in a limousine and wore matching tie-dyed T-shirts printed with their new family title, "Simmons 7."
They met the judge. Stephen sat in her chair, and Shelby called her Judgegirl, like a super hero.
"I thought she was a good judge because she looked like one," he said.
Afterward, they had pizza and Sprite in the limo.
"From now on, they'll have a second birthday," said proud "Maw Maw" Betty Jones, 59, Debbie Simmons' mother. "We can celebrate their birthday, but we can also celebrate their birthday as five on Oct. 25."
Life with the Simmons 7 is different from the way it was with the Simmons 2, the new parents acknowledge. As with many large families, they say structure is key.
The children attend Ballentine Elementary School. They have afternoon homework time, and each child has one day a week to help cook supper. A treat jar on the counter is reserved for good behavior. Tattling wins everybody else a trip to the jar.
The children are happy, when they're not having the expected sibling squabbles and especially when they're ordering Happy Meals all-around at McDonald's.
"They're just regular, normal kids," said Angie Osborne, who works with Debbie Simmons at East Lake and who baby-sits for the family.
Jeff Kinney, creative arts pastor at the church, said the family's a natural fit.
"It's amazing, absolutely amazing, to see how happy these kids are," Kinney said. "If you could see their pictures when they were in the adoption process, they just had this kind of hollowness. But to see them now, those five kids just seem like they have found life again."
The children say they're happy to be together and to have a permanent family, even if the family is to move to Texas during the holidays.
Fields, of the adoption agency, said seeing the family together is priceless.
"This is a match that to me, was made by God," she said. "I didn't do it. He did it."
Visitors to our site since February 18, 2003.
Back to page of Articles