A Portrait of Love

Posted August 6, 2010

IN A VIDEO on a Web site, a happy seven-year-old girl says she likes to draw pictures. Asked what kind of pictures, she replies, suddenly wistful, “My mom and dad.”

This sweet little child doesn’t have a permanent mom and dad.

That’s why she’s on this Web site. It belongs to Heart Gallery Alabama, which promotes adoption of foster children by using one simple technique: it recruits professional photographers to take the children’s portraits.

A professional’s skill makes a big difference. On the computer screen and in the photographic exhibits that Heart Gallery organizes throughout the state (complete with audio and video interviews), the children’s faces glow with personality. Some look guarded, some impish. Most sport a typical kid’s “Hey, take my picture!” grin.

“A lot of times these kids have never been photographed before we came along” because of state confidentiality rules, says Michelle Bearman-Wolnek. She’s Heart Gallery of Alabama’s cofounder and executive director.

Heart Gallery started in New Mexico in 2001 and now has affiliates in most states and the District of Columbia. The Alabama chapter with headquarters in Birmingham began in January 2005, when Michelle got a call from her friend Karen Nomberg, a teacher and photographer. Karen had read about Heart Gallery in PARADE magazine and told Michelle, “We’ve got to do this.” Ten months later, their first photo exhibit was up—in the Birmingham Museum of Art.

Michelle had adopted two children herself (as infants), but she had never even known about the possibility of adopting an older child from the foster-care system.

“There is never a shortage of prospective families for healthy infants,” she says. “But there are plenty of people out there who either got married later in life, or for whatever other reason are not interested in adopting an infant, they may not realize these children are here.”

Heart Gallery believes at any one time about 300 Alabama foster children are available for adoption. So far, 165 children that have been photographed have found permanent homes.

“I got put in foster care when I was 3 years old,” says Krystal Fite, now 21. “I went from foster home to foster home.” She was in high school, living in a group home in Scottsboro, Alabama, when she was interviewed by Heart Gallery and a professional photographer photographed her.

John and Stacie Gates visited a Heart Gallery exhibition. “They saw my picture and listened to my little interview,” Krystal says, “and they just kind of started crying.” Twice more, at other exhibitions, they saw her portrait. They met her. They included her on a weeklong family trip. They asked her to become part of their family.

Krystal said no.

She wrestled with the decision. But she was just one semester shy of high-school graduation, and some credits would not have transferred to her new school.

Maybe something else was going on too. “Most of these children have had experiences of being abandoned in some way,” says Michelle, “so they are going to be extra cautious before they attach to a prospective family. Especially the older kids.”

In 2009, after three years out of touch, Stacie reconnected with Krystal—first on Facebook, then over the phone. “It was actually kind of like nothing had ever happened, like we had still been in contact with each other all this time,” Krystal said.

Again, Stacie and John invited Krystal into their family. This time, she said yes. Stacie drove down from Indiana, where the family now lives, to pick her up. “August 15,” Krystal says.

She calls Stacie and John “Mom” and “Dad.” She gets along with her two brothers and two sisters, “for the most part. I mean, we fight and argue like normal siblings do, but, yeah.”

The photographer who took Krystal’s portrait was Karen Nomberg, Heart Gallery Alabama’s cofounder and Michelle’s friend. Karen died of breast cancer in May 2007.

“It’s bittersweet,” Michelle says. “But it’s nice that her talent she shared with us was able to help Krystal find her family.”

For more information on Heart Gallery Alabama and the children it tries to help, please visit www.heartgalleryalabama.com.

MICHELLE BEARMAN-WOLNEK and Heart Gallery Alabama are Regions customers. Regions - Morgan Keegan has supported Heart Gallery through the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham.

Everyone has a story.