playing with the toddlers. On Sundays, they’d all pile into the van and go to church. Wherever the Holts went, the kids came with them. Now, Debbie and John are well past retirement age — Debbie is 74 and John is 80 — but they’re still fostering newborns. Now, however, they only take one baby at a time. People in their church often joke that they’re Abraham and Sarah. For the Holts, fostering has been a way of life. They see it as a chance to give back to their community. “I hope all our children have the oppor- tunities we’ve had in this great nation,” John says. Debbie and John have been told that they are the longest-serving foster parents in Oklahoma. “There’s something about the babies themselves that keeps you going,” says Debbie. “As long as I can rock in the rocking chair, I want to do it.” Debbie jokes that she’s never been an empty nester, but she knows that a day may come when she has to say goodbye for the final time. “It’s been a love, she’ll miss it when she can’t do it anymore,” says John, adding, “I love it too, I really do. It’s been a real joy.” Brittany Baldwin Brittany Baldwin serves as a senior advisor to AMAC. She previously served in the White House as a senior speechwriter to President Trump, and prior to that, she worked for Sen. Ted Cruz. She holds a BA in American Stud- ies from Hillsdale College.
a prayer for the child when the time comes to say goodbye. “Part of it is crying a little bit,” John, who is a Vietnam veteran and a retired preacher, admits. “I cried a lot over that first one,” adds Debbie, who has a degree in family relations and child development. As foster parents through the state’s foster care program, they quickly became accustomed to the difficult realities that many children face, but they never lose hope. “We can cope with it better than the baby can. They need a place to be, if we can get them strong and healthy, at least they might survive.” Even more than survival, they’ve seen many redemptive endings to the foster children’s difficult start in life. Many have been adopted by loving families. Some of them send photos each year. Others have returned home to their biological parents, who have turned around their lives to care for their children. Each foster baby has received tender care from the Holts for as long as
they were asked to foster each child, sometimes as short as a few days and other times well over a year. The youngest baby they welcomed was just 23 hours old, and the smallest one was only four pounds. “You think of a baby, you think of a lot of crying,” says John, “but that’s never been true for us. Some people say that’s something about us, we take it quietly and calmly.” The one thing John doesn’t do is diapers. He tried once early on and got sick, so Debbie handles the changing. Over the course of 50 years, the Holts have fostered more than 400 babies. For about 20 years, they fostered four children at a time while also raising their two boys. When asked what the experience was like for their sons, John says, “It’s made good men of them. They’re hard workers and take good care of their families.” Debbie remembers the boys coming home from school and immediately coming to the living room floor and
42 • AMAC Magazine
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