“Mrs. E,” as she prefers to be called, wanted a dozen children, but the Lord only blessed her with one—a daughter, she said.

But she has spent her entire life taking care of other people’s children, even adopting two as her own.

“I was part of a family of six children,” she said. “I was told as a teenager that I’d never birth a child. But I loved children. I babysat for people while I was growing up.”

When she was 15, she started taking care of five children for a woman who worked.

“She had a baby 3 months old when I went there,” she said. “They would bring the baby to me to get her to sleep at night.”

When she was 19, she and a cousin went to New York to get jobs.

“Here, you couldn’t find jobs,” she recalled, sitting in her rocker in her modest living room. “I went to work taking care of people’s children, of course. That’s all I ever wanted to do.”

She met her husband and married him and 10 years later, she had his child.

“She was my miracle baby,” she said. “I brought her here in July to see my mother and when I went back, my mother passed. She lived long enough to see my daughter.”

After she married, she had gone into foster parenting and she ran a daycare in New York for awhile.

Some time later, she adopted two boys.

“One of them was leaving one Monday morning going to school and up in the day, the school called and said he wasn’t there,” she said. “He made excuses. I said to my husband, ‘It’s time to move back to South Carolina.’”

Back in Edgefield County, she said, the bus picked them up and dropped them off at the front door. In New York, there was just so much more for them to get into.

Both boys are grown and married now, as is her daughter. Her husband was sick for a long time and died in 2006.

“People thought I was crazy when I said I wanted to foster care again,” she said. “They tried to talk me out of it. I said, ‘Don’t tell me what I want to do.’ I didn’t want to stay by myself, so I thought it would be a good idea and it was.”

Mrs. E. asked for girls, but the first two were a sister and a brother, 8 and 11. They stayed about four months. Then, she got a little girl who stayed about six months.

Now, she has two girls. They came in June 2008, left for awhile, and came back this past May. They are 9 and 7.

In her 70s, Mrs. E. said it’s not particularly difficult to take care of children.

“It keeps me going,” she said. “I send them to school. I take them to Sunday School. We shop and I buy muffin mix and if they want to cook, I let them. We put puzzles together and I help with their homework. I can’t speak for others, but I get a joy out of it. I don’t know but what one of these will be the last to hand me a glass of water.”

With money tight, she said she shops at yard sales a lot, something she didn’t know anything about in New York. The first two children she took arrived with their clothes in a big garbage bag.

“They were filthy,” she said. “I threw them away and bought some more.”

One of her little boys couldn’t get enough to eat at first.

“They thought chicken only had wings,” she said. “One day, he just kept eating and eating. Finally, he said, ‘Mama, my stomach is full.”

Mrs. E., also known as “Mama” and “Auntie,” said she hears from some of her foster children quite

often. One of them works with handicapped children in New York.

“He asks me, ‘What would I have done without you? What would have happened to me?’”

She said she doesn’t feel she does anything so special. She just does what comes naturally. And while she concedes it’s not for everyone, she wishes more people would give it a try.

“I tell my friends, if there’s a choice between a pet and a child, get a child. You’ll do the child a great favor by being there for them.”