Meet the Heenans.
Ilene and John Heenan of Hollister are raising four gregarious
kids
– a mischievous 9-year-old boy named Tyler, and three adopted
sisters. Brittany is 11, involved in gymnastics and loves country
singer Kenny Chesney. Edith, 13, is a Rancho San Justo eighth
grader who vehemently wishes Hollister had a mall. And 14-year-old
Kirsten is a freshman at San Benito High
School who enjoys karate.
By Martin Cheek
Hollister – Meet the Heenans.
Ilene and John Heenan of Hollister are raising four gregarious kids – a mischievous 9-year-old boy named Tyler, and three adopted sisters. Brittany is 11, involved in gymnastics and loves country singer Kenny Chesney. Edith, 13, is a Rancho San Justo eighth grader who vehemently wishes Hollister had a mall. And 14-year-old Kirsten is a freshman at San Benito High School who enjoys karate.
It’s one big happy family, that didn’t necessarily start out that way when the Heenans decided they wanted to adopt a child as a companion for their young son four years ago.
“It was an absolute shock for us to double our family size over night,” said John as the family relaxed on the front porch of their stately Victorian home overlooking Dunne Park. “We really had to improve and work on some of our parenting skills.”
Through a friend, they discovered the Kinship Center – a regional adoption and foster child agency based in Salinas.
“Somebody recommended them,” Ilene said. “They said they went through a really good agency. They had a really good experience.”
In their search for a child, Ilene and John traveled four years ago to an adoption fair in Sacramento. There, they sat down at a picnic table next to a trio of beautiful sisters painted up with cat faces and instantly fell in love.
“It opened our minds,” Ilene said of meeting the three girls. “We thought we wanted a kid of a certain type, a certain age….”
Kirsten recalled the magic moment. Ilene and John were very nice, she said. John told some corny jokes to break the ice.
Kirsten had a gut feeling there was something special about the couple.
“I said in my mind, these would be the parents I would stay with,” she said.
That night at their foster home, the sisters snuggled in their beds and hoped Ilene and John might one day become their new parents, Brittany recalled.
“We pretended to sleep,” she said, her brown eyes sparkling. “But we talked about these people maybe going to adopt us. We made a pact – ‘We got to be good.'”
Back in their home in Hollister that night, Ilene and John also discussed adopting the children. Although the couple originally had thought they wanted only one child, they quickly made up their minds they could manage raising all three girls.
They contacted the Kinship Center and began the arduous adoption process.
“The adoption center called our foster mom, and the foster mom told us,” Brittany said, recounting the moment they found out. “I was really happy.”
The Heenans discovered adopting three girls involved the bureaucratic hassles of the court system maze. But Kinship Center representatives guided them step-by-step through the rough spots.
“There was a lot of paper work, but that was the nice thing about the Kinship Center,” John said. “They walked us through it.”
The couple also took classes in child psychology and emotional development. In February 2001, the big day came. The girls journeyed from Chico to their new home in Hollister.
“I was in the front-yard when they came out of the car,” Tyler remembered. “I didn’t say anything.”
At first, Tyler was uncertain about what he thought of instantly having three older sisters. He would have preferred to have a brother. One of his first questions was, “Can you send them back?”
Now, he admits he’s glad the girls are part of the family.
“They have their sibling rivalry just like all families,” Ilene said. “But they really care about each other.”
For the Heenans, adoption meant dealing with a lot of dramatic and emotionally-charged changes to their life style. It’s natural progression that both children and parents must go through during an adoption, the family learned.
“I had to adjust to a new family, but it was easy because they were very loving,” Edith said. “I felt comfortable here.”
A counselor named Lynne White-Dixon came to the house once a month to help everyone through the initial adjustment period, Ilene said.
“There’s different stages all kids go through growing up, and some of the situations they missed,” she said.
White-Dixon gave the couple good advice on how to deal with adjustment difficulties, she said. “I recommend any family that is adopting get a counselor.”
“It was a bit of a financial shock, too,” Jon said as he leaned forward in his porch chair.
He described the extra expenses for clothes, shoes, food and family vacations. “We got some adoption assistance.”
Ilene works as a dental technician. John is the senior park ranger at Mt. Madonna County Park on Hecker Pass west of Gilroy. He suggested couples considering adopting a child seriously look at their incomes. They must be financially realistic about whether or not they are able to take on the added expenses.
Ilene and John remembered how extremely well behaved the children acted when they first moved to Hollister. But then, after a few weeks, the “issues” started popping up. Various emotional turmoils started to reveal themselves in the newly-expanded family.
That’s an important – but difficult – phase in the adoption adjustment period, John said.
“When the honeymoon is over, that’s a sign the kids are starting to feel more comfortable around you,” he said. “The first year after the honeymoon was probably the most difficult year.”
With a firm nod, Tyler agreed. He found it hard getting used to having the three girls compete with him for his parent’s attention. He often acted mischievously around them.
The girls also had to find ways to deal with their new “bratty” brother, Brittany said.
“We love him, but sometimes he can be a pain in the butt,” she said.
“We love him,” Edith added. “We’d die for him.”
“Now they’re very close,” John said.
The adoption became final in April 2002. For the last two and a half years, the three girls officially have been members of the Heenan family.
Edith is now used to her brother Tyler’s boyish behavior, but still is adjusting to life in Hollister.
“It’s too small,” she asserted with firm opinion in her tone. “It doesn’t have a mall that people can walk to.”
Sometimes she misses her former hometown of Chico where there was a shopping mall she liked to hang out at with her friends.
But adopting sometimes requires making sacrifices, she realizes. As for advice she’d give to other kids who are going through the adoption process, she’d tell them: “Be positive… It’s not hard at all.”
Kinship helps with happiness
Hollister – The Kinship Center has aided many families in San Benito County with getting through the emotional process of adopting a child. The Kinship Center was called the Children’s Home Society when San Benito County Sheriff Curtis Hill and his wife Ellen adopted their boy Kevin, now 14 years old.
“We adopted our son in May 1990,” Curtis said. “We got him when he was not quite five weeks old… He was the last Children’s Home Society baby that came to this county.”
The Kinship Center was created in 1984 and is based in Salinas with offices in Hollister, Redland and Pasadena. It offers both foster care and adoption services. It also provides services for children with special circumstances such as medical, physical and emotional needs, or abuse and neglect.
The Hills recommend the Kinship Center for people interested in adoption because the agency smoothed the paperwork process for them. The bureaucratic procedures only took a total of nine months before Kevin’s adoption was finalized.
“We had been pretty much advised it would take two to three years,” Curtis said.
During the process, the Hills often met at Kinship Center training sessions where they were able to talk to other adopting parents as well as people who had grown up adopted. This helped them prepare emotionally for Kevin’s needs.
Ellen and Curtis also put together a scrap book describing their life, family background and interests. It went to Kevin’s birth mom. She used it to make a decision on which couple to choose as adoptive parents for her newborn baby, Curtis said.
Kevin does not seem interested in the details of his birth mom, he said.
“That’s really common among boys,” he said. “He knows what her name is, but he’s never met her.”
In 1993, Hollister residents Kathy and Bob Tiffany adopted their son Zach through the Kinship Center.
“We took him home from the hospital,” Kathy said, remembering the happy day. The Kinship Center helped them through the entire process which took six months.
