In the 1980s, my husband and I and our children, Heather and Zack, fostered several children. One was a little 3-year-old named Crystal. We had her for several months, then she went back to her mom. We had asked if she ever came back into foster care we wanted to have her back.
Time went on and I learned, sadly, she was in and out of foster care, then finally adopted when she was 15.
In 1998, I received a wedding announcement with a picture of her. I couldn’t imagine how she had been able to contact me as she was so little when we had her. I called over to Youthville and talked to the worker who had placed her with us so many years before. She also had received an invitation.
I asked how Chrystal had been able to identify and find me. The worker said she had received a phone call from the adoptive mother, who had made many calls to locate her. The mom said Crystal had said she wanted her foster mother to come to the wedding. Since she was only 3 and 4 when we had her and she had had several foster moms, the mother told the worker all Crystal remembered was there was a mom and a dad and a boy and a girl, black dogs and kittens.
She said the foster mom would rock her and read and sing to her. The worker remembered we had Heather and Zack and black Labs and kittens and replied to the adoptive mom that the foster mother had to be Shirley Fisher.
The worker and I drove from Newton to Phillipsburg to the wedding.
When I walked in, Crystal looked at me, smiled and came running and threw her arms around me. She said with all the foster homes she had been in, she never forgot me rocking her and reading and singing to her.
What a joy, after all those years, to know I had made a memorable difference in the life of such a little girl.
— Shirley Fisher-Langloys,
formerly of Newton
