I blocked most of my childhood out. Then one day I heard a belt buckle.
I was born in Tacoma, but I grew up everywhere. Germany first, then Arizona, then Missouri. My dad was in the Army, and when I was little, life was good. In Germany, the neighbors would bring you whatever you needed if you put a little sign in the window. In Arizona, we watched a Western from some bleachers, horses and stagecoaches and people shooting at each other. We’d go to the races on Friday nights, and after the kids got to sit on the hoods of the cars and ride around the track. You got a little prize at the end.
Those are my good memories.
We moved to Missouri when I was in second grade. My dad left the military and just became somebody else. I started being afraid to go to bed at night, and I didn’t know why for a long time. I blocked most of it out. What I knew was that I kept hearing a jingling sound outside my room, and I told my brother Bobby there was a ghost so he’d sleep in there with me. It protected me for a while.
I figured it out years later when I heard a sound and it all came flooding back. It was my father’s belt buckle.
He left one night to get a pack of cigarettes when my twin brothers were a month old and didn’t come back. About a year later, while my mama was at work, he went around to all the schools and the babysitters and picked us all up and took us to Oklahoma. All six of us. My mama had a nervous breakdown. Nobody came for us.
He brought me back first because I cried nonstop every day and begged for my mama. My brothers came home about six months after that.
To this day I don’t go to bed before one in the morning. I stay up until I just can’t stay awake anymore.
Through all of it, my grandparents came to visit. Every year, no matter what. Even after my dad left my mama, they still showed up. She was their family. That’s who mattered to them.
My grandma called me her angel. The people at the nursing home thought that was my name because every time I walked in, she’d say, “My angel’s coming.” My grandpa was bow legged and wore a big Stetson cowboy hat and called me half pint.
I was their only granddaughter. My mama had all boys except me.
They were true Texans. They were the kindest people I have ever known. And losing them both within a year of each other, that was the hardest part of my life.
My first husband took my paycheck, read my journal, gave me fifteen dollars a week to eat on. One day he told me he’d decided he wasn’t leaving and I could go. So I walked out the door. I couldn’t be miserable as an adult. I was miserable as a child. I just couldn’t do it again.
I had nowhere to go. My friend’s brother had a spare room and was never home, so I rented a room. We became fast friends, best friends. Five years later I married him.
My house has never been empty since. Nieces, nephews, grandkids, whoever needed somewhere to go. When one of my nephews was little and had nowhere safe to be, he was with us. He gave me his favorite baseball cap on a Mother’s Day when I was having a bad day. I still have it. He’s married now, been to Paris, blossomed into somebody you’d never predict from where he started. That’s what can happen.
A knock at my door is how two little ones came to me. Their aunt showed up and said the state was going to take them and she didn’t know what to do. I took them in. I’ve had them ever since. Randy is 68 and I’m 58 and we have a nine year old and a ten year old.
I found the Fostering Hope Closet because I needed something for the kids one day and somebody told me it was out here. I walked in and Laura was the only one there and she was overwhelmed. I said, “I’m home every day, what do you need me to do?” I came back the next day and I haven’t left.
Randy thought I’d need to find paying work when he retired. He wasn’t sure being a volunteer was sustainable for us. A year in he told me I couldn’t quit. He said, “You belong there, you feel better, it makes you happy.” He’s out there telling anybody who’ll listen about kids in the foster care system now. I told him, “I’ve converted you.”
I’m here because I was one of these kids. I didn’t have anybody.
I’m still broken inside. I want to be honest about that. But when a child walks through that door looking the way I used to look, I can’t let them leave without a smile. If I could have just had something to smile about once, just once, it would have meant everything. So that’s what I’m here for.
We can’t always protect them. But we can help heal them.
Connie Dunham
Foster Parent
Fostering Hope Closet Volunteer
Voices of Hope
Every person in this community carries a story worth telling. Voices of Hope features the real people of the Missouri Ozarks who show up for children and families — foster parents, caseworkers, volunteers, survivors, and neighbors who simply refused to look away.
Read more Voices of Hope stories →
