Back in 1964 I was put into an orphanage called Bonny Oaks and I lived there till 1968. I always tell people that I was institutionalized when I was young just to see the look on their face. Because automatically they think I was in a nut house. Of course Bonny Oaks was crazy at times, but it wasn’t an asylum, oh wait maybe it was.
Seriously it was my home for 4 years and I met a lot of great people there and got to do a lot of cool things in this orphanage. I learned a lot and we were taught values. It saddens me that the orphanage was closed down because it did so much for so many young kids. We had lots of brother and sisters, of course with that many children there was always a lot of different fusses and fights going on.
The Bonny Oaks School was located in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I forgot to mention that. I was just thinking that if one of the kids saw the headline they would of course know what I was talking about. There are a lot of generous people in the world and I would like to send out a heartfelt Thank-you to all people that sponsor a child. I’m sure you’ve seen the commercial on TV about sponsoring a child for so much a month.
Well, I was one of those children and each month we had to send our sponsor a letter and pictures when we had them and tell them about our life and how things were going with us. Many of the sponsors got very involved with their kid and some even adopted their child, which was great for everyone concerned. We also had a regular sponsor and they would take us to their home and help provide a type of family feeling.
My friend Connie and I were sponsored by a Church Of Christ and there were several families that shared us. They bought us presents, took us to church and paid our tution for a church school called Boyd-Buchanan. I have lots of good memories to look back on. I was fortunate and had another sponsor whom I loved. She treated me just like a little sister and we had so much fun together and I loved her family.
When she got a divorce Mr. Adamson didn’t think she was a good role model for me and tried to stop it, that’s another story. That brings me to the point of this post, Mr. Adamson recently passed away, but he had been active with the Bonny Oaks children up until his demise. Some years ago one of the girls, Christine Haven started a website for the Bonny Oaks School and if you are one of the kids you will be able to find old pictures of yourself there.
With the Internet being such a great tool for finding lost friends I don’t know why I didn’t think to do this sooner. You never know where one of the Bonny Oaks kids might pop up and if you are one of them you will be delighted with the site that Christine put together. When Bonny Oaks closed all those scrapbooks went to the public library and apparently it cost quite a bit of money to have the photos put on cd’s. I was really tickled to find the old ones of myself.
You can also register and share old memories if you want to. I missed the last big reunion that they planned, but I had fun looking at the people I remembered all grown up. This was so cool and a very thoughtful thing for Christine to do for the kids. You can see photos of some of the mini reunions also. I tried to stay in touch with a few of the kids, but everyone has their own life and even though we all share that bond those old friendships kind of get pushed to the back burner.
