The Joyner Family

Stamford’s Fannie Joyner found fulfillment in providing foster care to needy children

Note: Stamford foster parent Fannie Joyner was named Foster Parent of the Year for 2001. Karen Sylvia, director of community based services, praised Joyner’s long-time efforts in the foster parent field. “I only wish I could clone her,” Sylvia mused.

STAMFORD (Fall 2001) – The holiday season is for children. Yet, for Stamford resident Fannie Joyner, 59, the winner of the 2001 Boys Village Foster Parent of the Year award, the holiday season was definitely lacking something, especially after her parents passed away in the early 1990s. “It was a weird thing,” she said. “I have no children of my own. My mother had recently passed away, and the Christmas after my father died, it was just my sisters and I.

“When Christmas came that year, it wasn’t a happy one,” Fannie related. “The house was quiet – too quiet. There was a sense of emptiness and sadness.”

Right about that time, Fannie was reading the newspaper and saw an article detailing the critical shortage of foster parents in Connecticut, especially in lower Fairfield County, a shortage that remains today. “I told my sister I wanted to be a foster mom,” she said. “I told her, ‘Let’s get some kids in the house.’”

At the time, Fannie was facing a critical medical situation herself, but she decided to make a pact with God. “I prayed and said to God that if He helped me with my situation, then I would give something back.” That was more than seven years ago, and now, 11 foster children later, Fannie Joyner and the support staff at Boys Village agreed that it was a bargain well kept. Fannie started with two girls from Stamford, then three more girls from Waterbury. Far from the storybook tale of becoming “a foster parent for a boy and a girl and living happily ever after,” she relates that it was a lot of hard work, with many tears of frustration and joy shed along the way.

However, the joy that comes from the knowledge that she made a difference in a young life has more than outweighed the tears. “One little boy I cared for soon went back to his mom. But he still goes to Sunday School with me every week and his mom and I became close friends. Even today, if she has a problem, she comes to me.”

Another former foster child was adopted by a family in Tennessee. “The last time we talked, he was doing well in school and was off his medication. It really made me feel good that I had something to do with that.”

Then, two troubled brothers came into her life. “I knew from the moment I looked into their eyes that they needed me,” Fannie recalled. The oldest had many problems not addressed. “But whatever they needed, I was there for them. I went to therapy. I went back and forth to psychiatrists with them, plus there were many medical problems,” including 14 teeth pulled for the oldest. Fannie did not have respite or babysitting help, either. “If I visited relatives down south, I took the children with me. It was really like they were my family.”

She remembers when the oldest child was admitted to a hospital in Middletown. “I would regularly drive up there from Stamford to visit him myself,” she said. “One day, I didn’t go, and the doctor called me and said the boy was sitting at his window waiting for me…Of course, I jumped in my car to see him.”

She remembers another incident that at summer camp. “He could be a problem, but believe me, he didn’t have control over it. One day the summer counselor told me he was sitting quietly to himself, praying, ‘Please, God, don’t let me act up today because I want to stay at this camp.’ He really wanted to be good, but his condition made it difficult for him.”

Today, that same boy has been reunited with his birth mother. “They’re coming down this coming Sunday and he’ll spend the night with me…and we’ll all do something together,” Fannie said in an interview in October 2001. “That’s the kind of relationship I try to keep with the parents. It’s not like when the children are gone I’m done. I stay in touch and I help where I can.”

Boys Village counselor Eileen Kelly agreed. “The reason she is so successful is that Fannie provides stability and structure, along with empathy, caring and love. She has great strengths, and she’s an excellent team player.”

What about her award as the Boys Village Foster Parent of the Year? Fannie said, “I don’t do this for awards, I do this from my heart” Of course, some of her friends and associates don’t understand. Fannie currently has two little boys, her 10th and 11th foster care children, and one girlfriend recently asked her, “Why are you doing this, Fannie? You’ve got to be crazy.” But what she tells them is simple. “Before I took in children, I was always running here and there but really not satisfied with my life. But I chose to settle down and take care of children, and I don’t regret it one minute. They all have a special place in my heart.”

And going back to that first Christmas with foster children in her home? “It was like the first Christmas I ever had,” she said. And if her two current foster children remain with her this coming Christmas? “If I have the boys, we’ll have wonderful Christmas this year, too.”