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Robert
arrived at Tara Hall while a student in the 8th grade. He was
removed from his parents' home by a Family Court Judge because
his father physically abused him on numerous occasions. As is
often the case with abused and neglected children, Robert could
not adjust to a Foster Family so he was placed at Tara Hall by
the Department of Social Services. Robert finished the 8th grade
at Tara Hall and graduated from Pleasant Hill High School while
continuing to live with us at Tara Hall. He was an outstanding
student throughout high school and attended Johnson C Smith University
in Charlotte, NC on full grants and scholarships.
Robert
continued using his God given talents and upon his graduation
from Johnson C Smith he worked for IBM in Boston while taking
some graduate level courses at Harvard University. He is now fulfilling
a long held dream of teaching high school students in the State
of Pennsylvania and is happily married.
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Michael
arrived at Tara Hall at the age of eight. His parents literally
abandoned him at the age of two, leaving him in the care of an
elderly, ill grandfather, who did the best that he could but was
not able to province what a young boy needs. When Michael got
in trouble for doing serious damage to a yacht in Charleston,
the Department of Social Services advised Granddad to place Michael
at Tara Hall.
When
he was age 12, we worked diligently with California authorities
to place him with his mother who had expressed the desire to parent
Michael. This was Michael's desire and the California authorities
assured us after an investigation that it was a good situation
and that they would monitor it for a period of time. Within a
year Michael was back at Tara Hall because neither he nor his
mother could make the adjustment. To make a long story short,
Michael resided at Tara Hall through the completion of his high
school education and continued to live at Tara Hall while commuting
to college and getting his college degree from Coastal Carolina
University. Michael is now a distinguished Police Officer in the
City of Savannah, GA and is married to his college sweetheart.
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Tony
arrived at Tara Hall late one night with a DSS caseworker from
Columbia, SC. He was seven years old, skinny, scrawny, hungry,
and filthy dirty. The police in Columbia had found him in a car
by the side of the road with his two drunken parents. They had
been drunk most of Tony's life. In fact, his mother stayed drunk
while pregnant with Tony and as a result, he was born with Fetal
Alcohol Syndrome.
Over
the next eight years, through the efforts of DSS, Children Unlimited
and Tara Hall, Tony was adopted on three different occasions.
Each adoption was disrupted however, because of Tony's inability
to adapt to family life and the families' inability to adapt to
Tony and his many needs. On the first two occasions Tony returned
to live at Tara Hall. On the third occasion, unknown to us, Tony
ended up on the streets. Later that summer, I looked out of my
office window and saw a bedraggled figure walking up our dirt
road. Sure enough, it was Tony who had walked most of the sixty
miles from Myrtle Beach to once again find some refuge at Tara
Hall.
How
could we turn him away? We put him up for several months and gave
him plenty of work to keep him busy. We then enrolled him in a
Job Corps program in Virginia in an attempt for him to get his
GED and develop a trade. That program failed and once again he
returned to Tara Hall. We helped him get enrolled in another Job
Corps program in Kentucky, which was more successful with Tony.
Tony
still has not settled down but he still stays in touch with collect
phone calls and the occasional letter. Below is an excerpt from
a letter we received for Christmas, 2000.
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