Continued from the previous post.

Pioneers they were, the Dosses, but still victims of their times. This bit of conversation between two of the Doss kids is typical of 50's thinking.

“I’m going to be a minister and have babies,” Laurie chanted, as she pushed by with her doll buggy.

“Girls aren’t ministers,” Donny decreed. “Would you like to marry a minister and have little minister babies?”

“Okay,” Laurie agreed amiably.

And with the publication of the book coinciding with Brown v. Board of Education being heard in the US Supreme court, it's not surprising that in all their adoptions, not one was of a Black child.

Their only effort to adopt a half-black German war orphan, four-year-old Gretchen, met such resistance among friends and family members (Carl’s own mother swore that “no n..... will call me Grandma”) that they finally gave up and helped to locate a “Negro” couple interested in adopting the child. Helen Doss was happy when Gretchen found parents exactly “the same warm toast shade that she was.”

These days the Dosses would most likely be strung up in some quarters for proclaiming themselves to be colorblind, therefore negating their children's differences and stripping them of their culture ... or something to that tune ... but it's hard to argue with this:

Our children never thought of themselves as looking particularly different from each other. One day, when Donny was eight and Alex a year old, Donny crouched on the floor to encourage his little brother to walk. Alex reached out both hands, took a hesitating step, and tumbled into Donny’s arms. The high-pitched giggle interlaced with the hearty boy-sized chuckle, then Donny looked up at me, blue eyes wide and sincere under his thatch of blond hair.

“Mama,” he said, glancing fondly at the Oriental ivory face beside him, at the black appleseed eyes that crinkle into slits when Alex laughs, “if he was seven years older, and if I had black hair, everybody would think that him and me was twins!”

They felt that much alike, our children, and often they took it for granted that this alikeness would show. Naturally they could see that there were minor and inconsequential variations, that Rita had “the blackest, shiniest hair,” that Teddy could toast browner in the sun than the rest, but persons bearing such unearned distinctions were polite enough not to gloat. There are only two times I can remember when differences within our family seemed to be of any concern, and then, each time, it was only because a small child developed a sudden fear that a minor dissimilarity might be a physical handicap to the bearer. Once Teddy looked into the mirror at his own brown eyes and then studied Donny, solicitude puckering his face like a walnut.

“Donny?” he asked, “how can you see out of blue eyes?”

Also there was the early-winter day when Timmy watched Carl trim brown spots from apples with the point of a knife.

“Why do you do that, Daddy?” he asked.
“Bad spots,” Carl said.

Later I noticed Timmy staring at me, his usually frolicking brown eyes now worried.

“Daddy gonna cut pieces out of you?”

“Heavens, no,” I laughed. “What made you say that?”

His fingers slid gently over the freckles on my arm. “Bad spots,” he said.

And should anyone wonder about the long term effects of such blatant ignorance of 21st century adoption political correctness, the reprint of the book has updates on the kids ... all now grown.

The book was televised twice, once in 1956 on Playhouse 90 (Lew Ayres played Carl, Nanette Fabray was Helen ... and Cherylene Lee was billed as "Asian girl".), and again in 1975 as a MOW (Movie of the Week). (This time with Shirley Jones as the mom and the kids actually having names in the credits.)

Next international adoption history lesson: The Holts.