Published: January 25, 2009 11:00 pm      

Women will attend rally for children’s home

Tears welled up in Pamela Wallpe’s eyes as she talked about the state’s plan to close the Indiana Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Children’s Home in Knightstown.

The Indiana State Department of Health announced earlier this month it intends to close the facility at the end of the current school year. There are 114 children living at the home.

The home was privately founded in 1865 and was taken over by the state in 1867.

In an effort to keep the facility open, hundreds of alumni who lived at the facility and graduated from Morton Memorial High School plan to rally at 10 a.m. today at the statehouse.

For her formative teenage years, Wallpe resided at the Children’s Home and continues to have a strong attachment to the facility almost four decades later.

In 1960 at the age of 7, Wallpe and her three siblings were made wards of the state, moved from their childhood home in Burket and eventually placed in the children’s home.

Wallpe and her sisters, Melanie Hosler and Linda Phillips, and her brother, Michael Phillips, also spent varying lengths of time at the children’s home.

Hosler and Wallpe said they grew up in a dysfunctional family in 1960. Their father was a long-distance trucker who was often away from home and their mother was working.

“We were at a neighbor’s playing, saw a police car where we lived and then it came to the neighbor’s house,” Wallpe said of that day in 1960. “A women told us to get in. I never went back.”

Hosler said the four children weren’t told anything and were allowed to only take one change of clothing with them.

“It was really hard,” she said. “We didn’t know where we were going.”

After spending a month in a foster home in Pierceton, the four siblings were taken to Knightstown.

“I thought we were going to be in the dark all the time,” Wallpe said. “We were taken in a patrol car, it was really scary.”

She describes herself as a frightened child at the time.

“So much of it is still fresh, some of it has been lost with time,” Wallpe said of the memories.

The four siblings were separated by age and lived in a house with other children and two house parents. Hosler said the structure of the Children’s Home was good for the siblings, who got used to a regular routine to wake up, eat meals, go to school and go to bed all on schedule.

“The more I stayed, the more I grew,” Wallpe said. “It became my home. It was a loving relationship.”

Wallpe lived at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home until 1971 when she graduated from high school.

Hosler, who was 12 at the time, said she was a surrogate mother to her two younger sisters — making dinner, bathing them and looking after them.

“When I got to the home, for the first time in my life, I had a real friend,” she said. “I became a different person.”

Hosler lived at the Children’s Home from 1960 to 1964 and eventually returned to Kokomo to be with her mother.

“I got to do and learn things I never had before,” she said of the four years in Knightstown. “I took dance and music lessons.”

Both sisters were cheerleaders for the Morton Memorial High School athletic teams.

Hosler’s time with her mother was brief and she went to live with a foster family that also became foster parents to her two sisters.

“They would take me to Knightstown to visit,” Hosler said of her foster family. “I used to work half a day and send all the money to them.”

Hosler said no one is allowed to leave until they have learned a trade, plan to attend college or have a job lined up.

Wallpe learned to be a dental assistant and attended Indiana University Kokomo for two years.

“Is was important to learn a trade,” Hosler said, “because you had no family to rely on.”

She said the dean of students, Fred Wright, was the best man at her wedding and was a foster father to thousands of children.

The sisters said there is an annual homecoming weekend and Legion Day when many alumni return for a dinner, dance and ice cream social.

Hosler, who works for Delphi, hosted 20 current residents of the Children’s Home at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“When we look at each other, you know what they are going through,” Wallpe said of the children.

She said the alumni meet monthly and try to interact with the children.

Both sisters learned of the planned closing from classmates.

“We’re family,” Hosler said. “It’s not about the past, it is about the kids today.”

Wallpe said the family problems of the at-risk children at the home can’t be solved in 90 days.

She said the state’s study that led to the decision to close the home has not been released. Wallpe said no study has been done to determine if the students have improved their test scores.

“These are troubled teenagers,” Wallpe said. “They have been through a lot.”

Wallpe said the alumni want the home to remain open to allow the children a chance to be kids.

Hosler, Wallpe and their sister, Linda Phillips, will attend the rally wearing “Together forever” T-shirts.

“We’re going to fight to put it back in the budget,” Hosler said. “We can pay now or pay later. By sending these kids back to public school and their old environment, they will end up in prison.”

Ken de la Bastide can be reached at (765) 454 -8580 or via e-mail at ken.delabastide@kokomotribune.com