The dates roll off of Dalyn Derzon’s tongue without pause. March 5, 2002, at 10:00 p.m., Bryce, 7, was dropped off at her home by her sister Denell, from Minneapolis. She had removed him from his mother’s home because he was not safe there. Bryce’s mother, Dalyn and Denell’s youngest sister, suffers from mental illness and addictions.
On May 10, 2003, Robyn, 7, and her sister, Tatyanna, 8, moved to the Derzon home from foster care. The following July 12, their older sister, Tiyah, 11, also living in one of a long string of foster homes, joined them.
And it was on July 29, 2005, when the couple brought home Oleeyah, 8, from a psychiatric hospital in Seattle where she had been abandoned. Olga, as she was originally named, had been adopted from Russia two months earlier but rejected by her adoptive parents because of the emotional and psychological effects she had suffered from eight years of abuse and neglect.
These are the dates that Dalyn sprinkled throughout the story that she told The Chronicle during two telephone interviews and a visit to her Glendale home earlier this week.
These are the dates that have changed her and husband Alan’s lives beyond their wildest dreams. And it was obvious from their words that they wouldn’t have had it any other way.
On the day in 2004 that the couple was married, Alan told the presiding judge of Children’s Court, “‘I walked in here just a lonely single guy and I’m walking out with a wife and four kids’…. It was the happiest day of my life.”
‘Glass slipper found’
Before the Derzons were married, Dalyn was living on a farm in Medford, Wis. Her daughters, both in their 20s, were already living on their own.
It was on Friday, May 25, 2001, that she responded to an online dating post titled “Glass Slipper Found.” The person behind the romantic title was Alan Derzon, 53, a lawyer living and practicing civil litigation in Milwaukee. They hit it off and in July, Dalyn moved to Milwaukee. They were married on Feb. 13, 2004.
“I was the first person [that she met online] that she went out with, but she was the last person I went out with,” quipped Alan.
The couple planned to travel the world together, Dalyn said. But when Bryce arrived, everything changed.
Dalyn and Alan both said they had no choice but to take Bryce in. Thinking they would keep him just until they could arrange foster care, they fell in love with him, despite the many challenges of helping him overcome a horrible childhood.
When he first moved in “it was terrible,” Dalyn said. Suffering from an attachment disorder that is a result of never bonding with anyone, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and post-traumatic stress syndrome, Bryce was “more animal than child,” Dalyn said.
“He was violent and I was afraid of him,” she said. But finally, the family turned to Jewish Family Services and then “we were no longer alone.”
JFS provided family and individual counseling for Bryce as well as a support system for the family. “JFS took away the fear. If things got really bad, we knew we could put him in residential care,” Dalyn said.
The following fall, about nine months after his arrival, Bryce exhibited the first sign of real trust in his new parents and it was a tremendous high for them, Dalyn said. She remembers that Bryce fell asleep in Alan’s arms as they watched a football game on television.
Children like Bryce “have absolutely no reason to trust and when you get a moment of trust it means so much,” she said.
Then late in 2002, Dalyn saw a television ad run by Adoption Resources of Wisconsin and requested information. “By that time, it was already decided that we weren’t going to travel the world,” she said.
Counting on her husband’s “natural nosiness,” she left the Adoption Resources of Wisconsin booklet, containing pictures of children looking for adoptive parents, out on a table. Alan picked it up and said he wanted to adopt a daughter. In January 2003 the couple began a series of 11 classes for prospective adoptive parents. Dalyn said that it was the first time Alan did not go to his office on Saturday morning.
Having requested a 7 or 8 year-old girl, they received a call offering them two African-American girls, 7 and 8, who were sisters. Without hesitation the Derzons accepted them and then two months later, they adopted their older sister, Tiyah, who came for a state-arranged sibling visit.
After her second visit, Tiyah left Dalyn and Alan a note: “Dear Mom and Dad, Could you adopt me? Write back.” Alan carries that note in his wallet to this day, Dalyn said.
Like Bryce, Robyn, Tatyanna and Tiyah all had experienced deprivation, especially emotionally. And of Tiyah’s experience, Dalyn said, “think of the worst things you can imagine and they were worse than that.”
Jewish responsibility
Dalyn, who said she was once Catholic and Lutheran, visited Congregation Shalom a year ago, with an African-American Catholic congregation that was invited there to a Shabbat service.
Always seeking a spiritual connection, she had attended three different churches since moving to Milwaukee, she said, but it was at Congregation Shalom that she and her children were “embraced and welcomed.” Everyone came up right away and talked to them; since then “we never feel alone,” she said.
Her children attend religious school there and daughter Tiyah also works as a teacher’s assistant. She and the children are studying for conversion.
“Judaism believes you are responsible for your own actions, and that helps me raise our kids. It may sound kind of funny,” she said, “but when I go to Friday night services, I love my kids more.”
And, Dalyn said, she has noticed the emphasis placed on taking care of orphans in Judaism and hopes that, as Jews, we “really understand that it’s our ethical responsibility.”
Today, the Derzons’ dream is to adopt one more son, they said, maybe one who is older than the others; someone who thinks he has no hope of being adopted.
They also want to inspire others to do what they have done and to adopt children who desperately need families to love and care for them. They especially want to tell people how rewarding it is to adopt older children.
Dalyn pointed out that once children “age out” of the foster care system they are put out on their own. They have no families and no idea of how to proceed. “When they have babies there is no one there to share their joy. People need families at any age,” she said.
But if people don’t feel they are able to adopt, Dalyn said, she wants them to know that they can help children by supporting Adoption Resources of Wisconsin and JFS, which has recently begun an adoption program.
And Alan, who has gone from knowing he would never have children to not being able to remember his life before having them said, “What if everybody took in one child? I wish more people realized how easy it is to love an older child. You bond just the same. And as I always tell people, my kids come toilet-trained.”
Loading ...