Edna Gladney

Edna Browning Kahly Gladney (January 22, 1886, Milwaukee, Wisconsin – October 2, 1961, Fort Worth, Texas) was an early campaigner for children's rights and better living conditions for disadvantaged children.

Life

Edna Browning Kahly Gladney was born on January 22, 1886 to Minnie Nell Jones. Her mother was not married and was only seventeen. Edna’s birth father was never revealed, and Minnie later married Maurice Kahly, who she later had a daughter with, named Dorothy. Maurice later died, after which Edna’s mother sent her to live with her Aunt and Uncle in Fort Worth, Texas from Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1904.

Though expecting to only stay in Fort Worth for a few months, she stayed and eventually met Sam Gladney in 1906, who, after a summer of courtship and silly postcards, Edna left her fiancé from back home for. Sam Gladney was ten years older than Edna and worked at Medlin Flour Milling Company. After about eight years, the Gladney’s moved to Sherman, Texas in 1913 so Sam could open his own milling company, Gladney Milling Co. Edna then joined the Sherman Civic League and started inspecting local meat markets and public restrooms for cleanliness.

On one of these inspections, Edna came across the Grayson County Poor Farm, which was little more than the dumping ground for the unwanted-poor, insane, handicapped, and children. She then enlisted the other Civil League ladies to help her and wrote a contemptuous article in the local paper. They then had a meeting with the Grayson County Commissioners Court, the local governing body and owners of the Poor Farm, where they declared it everyone’s responsibility to care for the children at the farm. Impatient to wait for action, the ladies led by Edna went to the farm and personally cleaned and white-washed the farm themselves. She then arranged the transfer of the children to the Texas Children’s Home and Aid Society ran by Reverend I. Z. T. Morris.

By 1910, Edna had joined the society’s board of directors, and after studying settlement work and child welfare, she had established a free day nursery in Sherman to help poor working families by watching their children so they could work freely. Thirty-five women enrolled their children on opening day of what was called the Sherman Nursery and Kindergarten for Working Women. The financing for the free day nursery was financed by Edna and from donations to collection boxes that she had placed in local businesses. Edna began to devote more and more of her time to the Texas Children’s Home and Aid Society and by 1927 she had been named superintendent.

After Sam had passed away on Valentine’s Day in 1935, Edna continued to make the welfare of unwanted children the center of her life by continuing the work of Reverend Morris by placing abandoned children with adoptive families. She also expanded the society’s activities to focus strongly on the care of unmarried mothers and an adoption service for their babies. She then started to lobby the Texas legislature to have the word “illegitimate” kept off birth certificates of adopted and abandoned children. This happened in 1936 and made Texas the first state in the southwest to legally remove the stigma of illegitimacy when her lobbying was successful and a bill was passed.

In 1941, Edna and her work acquired a national reputation after the release of the movie, Blossoms in the Dust, for which Greer Garson, who portrayed Edna, won an Academy Award for. Though it is a rather dramatized and faulty rendition of Edna's story, it was well received and In 1950, the Texas Children’s Home and Aid Society bought the West Texas Maternity Hospital, which was then jointly named the Edna Gladney Home (now the Gladney Center for Adoption). This helped to expand services to birth mothers so that they could have a place to receive doos medical care during their pregnancy. This new agency also operated a Baby Home where infants could receive care until their adoption.

Then in 1951, Edna helped to get a bill passed to give adopted children the same inheritance rights as biological children and recognized that they should be legally adopted rather than placed in “long-term guardianship.” Ill health forced Edna into semiretirement in 1960, but she remained active as an advisor until her death on October 2, 1961 from complications from diabetes. She is buried in Rose Hill Cemetary.

Legacy

Edna Gladney placed over 10,000 babies with adoptive parents during her career and totally revitalized adoption practices. She helped to grant adoptive children the same rights as “natural” children and gave orphaned children and many birth mothers a place to stay and a hospital to get treatments at. She helped develop modern day adoption practices and removed the stigma of “illegitimacy” from birth records and from society. Edna treated all of “her” children as if they were her own and continued correspondence with adopted children long after they had left her care. She became a mother to so many people, and her legacy can continue with the Edna Gladney Center for Adoption and things like “Where is Edna Going?”; a Facebook page that adopted children and adopting families can use to connect with other adoptees and adopters by taking pictures with a cutout of Edna with their new families.

See also

• Legitimacy (law)

External links

www.gladney.org www.tshaonline.org/handbook