FOSTER CHILD WINS WRITING CONTEST

NEW HAVEN -- A longtime judge for the annual Connecticut Elks essay
contest says she never read an entry quite like the one from William
McCleese, a seventh-grader at Celentano Museum Academy.

The contest required students to explain why "Drug Abuse Is Not
Cool." In less than 200 words, William, 14, described how drug
addiction had forced his parents to give him away.

"In all my years, I've never read an essay like it," said Debbie
Angell, a contest judge and chairwoman of the Drug Awareness
Committee of the Connecticut Elks Association. The Elks received
5,000 contest entries in Connecticut this year, she said. "From this
point on, this essay will go national," Angell told the New Haven
Board of Education in May as it recognized William.

William speaks for many children.

The state has 6,300 children living in its custody; drug abuse is a
factor in two-thirds of these cases, said Gary Kleeblatt, spokesman
for the state Department of Children and Family Services. Half of
these children return to their biological parents, but for many
others, the parents lose parental rights for the children's safety.

Deeply troubled parents sometimes surrender their parental rights to
the state. Their children have no home to which they can return. Such
children are often bounced from one foster home to another as state
workers struggle to find a permanent placement.

"I don't remember my parents. I don't know their names. I still love
them," William told a reporter.

"William is a survivor of the best kind, the kind that survive
without being angry," his foster mother, Mae Gibson-Brown said in an
interview at her home.

In her living room hangs a painting of herself done by a now-deceased
friend. In it she has curly hair, warm brown eyes and a megawatt
smile. William also has curly hair, the same smile, the same gentle
brown eyes.

Gibson-Brown, 69, believes that knowing where you are from is
critical to having a sense of self-worth and dignity. "It's who you
are and whose you are," she said, with a strong emphasis on "whose."

Gibson-Brown keeps active as a gospel singer and storyteller who
shares stories of growing up in the poor South. In her living room
sits a cake box of cotton she plucked from bushes on an Alabama
roadside. Gibson-Brown also keeps a plastic bucket of coal from West
Virginia, where her father worked as a coal miner, and a plastic
juice bottle filled with red mud from Macon, Ga., home of her mother.

Their legacy is what moved her into becoming a foster parent,
although she had already raised six biological children.

For Gibson-Brown, a retired New Haven schoolteacher who sings in a
gospel group, finding William was serendipitous. More than five years
ago, an acquaintance who worked with Jewish Family Services saw
Gibson-Brown in concert and asked her if she knew of any potential
foster parents. The acquaintance sent a packet with photographs of
foster children. Gibson-Brown said a granddaughter looking through
the photos called her attention to one in particular.

"She said, 'Look at this little boy. He looks like he could be part
of our family.' We put his picture up on the fridge."

Just over a year and three months later, Gibson-Brown drove to
Washington to meet a young boy who needed a permanent home. It was
the boy on her refrigerator. "I think that bond was created for me by
God," she said.

She is passionate about getting him involved with extra-curricular
activities. William loves soccer. He sings in the church choir at the
Agape Christian Center and volunteers as an usher. His favorite
hangout is the library, where he devours magazines about motorcycles
and dirt bikes. Gibson-Brown stunned William at Christmas with a Sony
PlayStation Portable for the latest video games and a bass guitar.

"I was about to scream when I saw the guitar, and I almost ran out of
the house when I saw the PSP," he said.

Gibson-Brown is particular about the video games. "No guns or blood,"
William said. "We just don't allow it." Gibson-Brown said.

William's favorite activity is what he mischievously calls "fun
times." He likes to sneak attack her with hugs and kisses, usually
when she is distracted doing something else. He gave a
demonstration.

"I must be getting covered in boy cooties!" Gibson-Brown
hollered.

William laughed and hugged her close.