I am from Katy, Texas, but at the age of sixteen I found myself living far away in a little city called Lake Charles, Louisiana.  This was a difficult time for me because my boyfriend and I just found out I was pregnant.  My boyfriend had a suspicion that something was going on and bought me a pregnancy test.  He was right.  Shortly after taking the test the positive sign popped up and I knew that I was going to have a ba

January 22 is Edna Gladney's Birthday!

The Board of Directors in the agency's early years were all male. "We have an all-male board," Mrs. Gladney said, "because men are much kinder in their attitude toward unmarried mothers than women."

The 5'1" Edna had become extremely overweight due to illness. Though she may have regretted the contrast between her reel (Blossoms In The Dust) and real selves, she did not let that keep her from undertaking any publicity that would help the Texas Children's Home and Aid Society.

Interesting Fact: Edna Gladney was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on January 22, 1886. She was the daughter of an unmarried mother, Minnie Nell Jones, and an unknown British father. Minnie later married jeweler/sales clerk/confectionery baker Maurice Kahly, who gave Edna his name and fathered her sister Dorothy (born 1895).

Interesting Fact: Edna ignored conventions of her day and was a firm believer in the early placement of children. She thought common sense dictated that a child and his/her parents be united as soon as possible. She also welcomed children of color, declaring that the Home was "only interested in one race, the human race."

Though the story of Blossoms in the Dust was fictionalized, much of it was based on fact. Edna's illegitimacy - known only to Ralph Wheelwright - became the foster sister Charlotte. Her tubal pregnancy was depicted as a son who died young. Tony was based on an actual baby at the Home whom Edna called Sam and wanted to adopt. The tense courtroom scene with the blackmailing birth father was based on an actual case with a birth mother.

Mrs. Gladney proved her fundraising acumen when she opened the Sherman Nursery in Sherman, TX. Among other things, she collected change in milk bottles that were placed in stores around Sherman (an idea she learned from I.Z.T. Morris). She later repeated that practice in Fort Worth on behalf of the Texas Children's Home and Aid Society.

The second legislative battle Edna Gladney fought was in 1951. Mrs. Gladney successfully argued that adopted children should have the same inheritance rights as biological children and that they should be legally adopted rather than placed in a long-term guardianship. The first battle she fought was to remove the stigma of illegitimacy from birth records in 1936.

Edna referred orphaned children to the Texas Children's Home and Aid Society for placement with adoptive families, and joined the board of that organization in 1910.