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I spent all of my high school years at the Greene County Children's Home, a county operated orphanage that was located at the edge of Xenia, Ohio. I left (1970) shortly before the residents were placed in group foster homes and the orphanage was closed. I had the opportunity to speak to several of those I knew who were placed in the foster homes. All of them told me that they prefered the Children's Home over the group foster home.

The building still stands.

It now houses county offices. It was a beautiful place, both the building and the grounds. We could play softball on the front lawn (there was a game nearly every day in good weather) and never hit the building and rarely lose a ball to old US 35.

During the years I lived there the Home was well run by a politcally connected man and his wife. The man, John Fudge, was a big, outdoor type man who ran the home on two levels, a family level and an institution level. He left it to each adolescent resident on which level the home operated for you. I opted for and always successfully maintained myself at the family level, which meant quite a bit of freedom, so long as you obeyed a few simple but strict rules. Two women worked an lived there who puzzled me to no end. One lady was well into her sixties. She was in charge of the dining room. She came to the Home as a young girl and never married, never left. She never seemed to take a day off. Seven days a week, nearly every meal I lived there, she was there in charge of the dining room. She rarely smiled and had no friends outside of the Home. I was told she maintained a multi-volume diary which she began as a young girl. The other lady was younger. She was attractive and in her early thirties. She never married or left. She was the junior boys matron. There was a lot of local support.

Wright Patterson Air Force Base, the largest Air Force Base in the world, was 35 miles away. An entire Wing always took up a collection each year to give each of us a gift certificate to spend at Sears. We received Christmas gifts from many churches and other civic groups. The Xenia Cinema let us in on Sundays for 25 cents and we received free tickets regularly for Holiday on Ice and the Dayton Gems Hockey games in Dayton, Ohio. We had a Ford 150 Econoline Club Van and access to a next door Retardead School's bus. We were segregated at the edge of town. We had only two neighbors, the Old Folk's Home to our left and Happy Times Retardard School on our right. Accross the street, hidden by woods and a hill, was the county dog pound. Not only were we segregated, we were on the rural school bus route. For some strange reason, we were the first picked up in the morning and the last to be dropped off after school, which meant we had a fifty minute ride to and from school every day. A short distace down old U.S. 35, where the Home was located, was the famous Kill-Kare Dragstrip, an official NHRA dragstrip. Three of us always had a part time job picking up paper at the strip, every Saturday and Sunday morning. We were paid $15 to divide between us and any of us could enter Kill-Kare anytime for free. Volunteers offered us music lessons (we had several excellent pianos that had been donated to us) and our own 4-H chapter, provided by a wealthy man, whom we never learned much about. We knew only that he never raised his voice, bought each of us who joined basic wood working tools and he always asked us what we wanted to be when we graduated from the Home. There was a barber who came out every two weeks and cut our hair in a small one-chair barbershop in the basement and a few churches sent out buses on Sundays. We were required to attend church on Sundays. We could pick our church but we had to attend somewhere. Most of us went to a Xenia baptist church. The leaders of that church did something from time to time that left a life-long impression on me. The minister and sometimes a deacon or such who publically scold all of us and we were periodically threatened with being kicked out. I stress the 'us' part. There were several of us who were always respectful and proper in church but when a few would act up, we were all spoken to in mass and I can not remember any member of the church every privately addressing any of us.I remember some of the Home children became turned off to church and thereby to god, due to this group treatment, which was an issue with many of the residents as it happend too often in various settings. A rule that irritated many was that whenever any group came to perform for us, all of us had to attend. we had to be quiet and we had to congratulate and thank the group. I saw hundreds of poorly done dance recitals and dozens of poorly performed elementary school plays. Being an arts oriented person, these performances and my required attendance and congratulations was at times pure torture!

Some of the older adolescents would remark as their time to leave drew near that in Ohio a criminal, by law, received $25, a new suit and he was required to report to a half-way house. He had to live there long enough to get help with job training and employment. Greene County Children's Home boys and girls, who commited no crime, except being born and being in need of a home received a hand shake and a 'good luck.' Recollection of this thinking came back to me years later, when I learned that the most vicious criminal has a right to good food and the finest medical care, while even hard working poor families often do not have access to enough of either.

And this is more than I have said about the Home in all the years together since I left there!

Tim.