Hope comes full circle

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And just like that, Hope’s first child became Hope’s first adult.

“Here we are, 50-some years later, and it literally has come full circle,” Jordan continues, his voice becoming thick with emotion.

“We were able to move Judy back into the home where she spent the last 18 years. And I mean, you could see the relief on my sister’s face and in her motions. She knew exactly where she was again, she could maneuver through the whole household and she just sat down in her chair and started rocking and started humming, which is her natural behavior, and I looked at her and we all kind of looked at one another and said: ‘You know, my God, this child’ – to me she’s a child, just like she was when I was six, seven years old, – we looked at her and said, ‘You know, this woman, this woman-child, has no concept, has no idea of what she has started, of all the children that she has affected.’ And since the day Hope was started, how many thousands and thousands of kids and families have benefited from this woman, who’s just sitting there and she’s got a big smile on her face, and she’s rockin’ and she’s hummin’ and you know, she wants spaghetti for dinner. It was quite a moment, really.”

Scott Faingold is a novelist, a journalist and a musician. He is currently working on his master’s degree at UIS.