Feature/General
Someone They Can Call “Mom”
By Chuck Thomson
April/May 2005

Eleanor Mitchell has been a mother to more than 40 children, even though she has never given birth. Some of her children stay with her for only a few months, and some stay for years. Five are hers for the rest of their lives.

Eleanor, whose husband Leroy died in the Vietnam War 34 years ago, became a mother for the first time in 1982, when her sister allowed her to adopt her then 2-week-old son Chabwera. Chabwera grew up an only child for seven years, but Eleanor wanted something more for her son.

“I didn’t want him to grow up by himself,” she says. “I wanted him to have somebody to play with.”

So she became a foster mother. Her first foster children arrived in 1989, when the Division of Family and Children Services sent her two brothers, Andre and Tremayne. The boys stayed with Eleanor for almost four years before their mother’s parental rights were taken away, and Eleanor was able to legally adopt them. Adopting Chabwera, Andre and Tremayne made Eleanor see a need in her community. She knew that, if three boys in the community needed a mother, there had to be more in the community who needed a mother.

"If I can make a difference in just one child's life, I've accomplished something."

So Eleanor became that mother.
Eleanor has been a foster and adoptive mother for more than 20 years. When her five adopted children were still living with her, she had as many as 10 children living under her roof at one time. DFCS rules allow no more than two foster children under 16 to live in the same house, but exceptions are made for siblings who want to stay together. Consequently, for a few months, Eleanor had five foster children in addition to her own adopted children. Three children arrived while two were waiting to be returned to relatives.

Mary Hull is a close friend of Eleanor’s mother, Cora Jordan, and has been like a mother to Eleanor since she was 4 or 5 years old. (Neither can remember exactly when they met.)

"She doesn’t have sense enough to say no,” says Hull, who has 12 children of her own. “She just keeps opening her door. She hates to see them out there with no place to go.”

Now that her adopted children are grown and living away from home, Eleanor usually keeps no more than three foster children at a time.

"I’m at my max right now,” she says as she smiles. Eleanor’s three current foster children are all boys, ages 11, 12 and 16. A 9-year-old girl named “Cheyanne” used to foster with Eleanor full-time and now is back with her temporarily.

Hull says she can see how good Eleanor is with her foster children by how much they like her and how close they are to her.

"If Eleanor sits down somewhere, you might as well as move over and make room for “Cheyanne,” because she’s coming,” Hull says.

Eleanor Mitchell talks with case worker Audrey Brannen

As a foster mother, Eleanor does everything the best biological mother could do for her children. She takes them to and from school, to the doctor and the dentist, to football and track practice. She goes to the grocery store, to football games and to PTA meetings. She makes them breakfast, cooks them dinner and bakes them cookies. Her foster children go with her to church, to holiday celebrations and to family reunions. Many of Eleanor’s foster children have never gone on family vacations, or even to day camp. So she makes sure to take her whole family on vacation every summer.

"She really goes beyond the call of duty with those kids,” Hull says. “I couldn’t do the things she does.”

But Eleanor says she really enjoys showing her children what it means to have real “family time.”

" They’re treated just like family,” she says. “Whether they stay in my house for 12 months or one month.”

Though reuniting children with their biological parents is the ultimate aim of foster care, Eleanor says the hardest part of being a foster mother is when she builds a bond with a child over a period of six to 12 months, then loses contact with that child when he goes back to his biological parents. That usually happens when the parents are still angry at the system for taking their children away, and they see Eleanor as a part of that system. She says that has happened to her twice, about five or six years ago.

" That can cut like a knife,” she says. “You have to prepare for it.”

But sometimes it’s impossible to prepare for it. Sometimes DFCS simply calls and says, “One of your children is going home today. We’re on our way to pick her up.”

In general, Eleanor tries to keep in touch with her children even after they move out of her house, but she has lost contact with about 75 percent of them; she remains close to about 10 children who used to live with her.

Besides being a full-time mother, Eleanor also works part-time at Bank of America where she’s been employed for almost 30 years.

" I’ve been retiring for the last couple of years,” Eleanor says with a laugh. “But I have to go to work to get a break.”

Since last fall, Eleanor also serves as the president of the Foster and Adoptive Parent Association, which is a support group for parents, and for six years, she has been a co-leader for the IMPACT class, which teaches prospective foster parents about the realities involved in the process.

" She’s one of the most devoted foster parents in Athens,” Hull says.

Eleanor encourages families to become foster families because, there is a great need out there, and it also gives her a sense of being needed and a sense of doing something for the greater good.

" If I can make a difference in just one child’s life, I’ve accomplished something,” she says. She says her favorite part of being of being a foster mother is to “see the smiles. To see underneath the pain you know is there.”

Hull says the bottom line is that Eleanor is very good with her children. She does everything in her power to raise them right.

"If everybody was like Eleanor, we would have a better Athens.”

Chuck Thomson is a UGA Senior majoring in Magazines and English