FLORIDA
‘Awesome’ parents are honored by Florida’s Children First
Dee Wilson knows the pain of coming from a broken home. Wilson, 69, was adopted as a young girl. So whenever she's around children in the foster care system, she tries to help. "I want to give back to them," she said. "I understand their grief and hurt."
Over the past 47 years, she and her husband, George, have helped a lot of kids, as about 1,000 foster children passed through their home. They have adopted 11 of them.
Last week, Florida's Children First, a child advocacy organization, honored the Wilsons at its Northeast Florida Awards Reception. They were nominated for that award by their adopted son, Jesse, 22, who is a former president and board member of Florida Youth Shine, the youth division of Florida's Children First. "So often, the foster care system has negative connotations," said Jesse Wilson, a student at Florida State College at Jacksonville. "Here you've got people who are doing the right thing and they deserve to be told they are doing the right thing."
As parents, he said, Dee and George Wilson were "awesome."
The Wilsons took in their first foster children, two brothers, in 1963 while they still lived in Spartanburg, S.C., where they grew up in the same neighborhood. George Wilson came to Jacksonville in 1968 when he was transferred here by a mobile home sales company. Dee stayed behind in South Carolina for a while since one of their children was undergoing a series of surgeries for a cleft palate.
George Wilson, who is also 69, said he has "sold transportation" for 47 years. He spent 28 years working as a salesman at a Westside automobile dealer before being laid off in 2008. Being retired didn't appeal to him so he recently went back to work as a salesman at Jerry Hamm Chevrolet on Philips Highway. While George Wilson keeps busy with sales, Dee Wilson serves as vice president of the Florida State Foster Parent Association and president of the Greater Jacksonville Foster/Adoptive Parent Association.
Their seventh grandchild, Presley Grace, Jesse's daughter, was born earlier this month.
The Wilsons, who have lived on the Westside for the past decade, said they have always encouraged their children to get involved in karate, for the discipline, music and education. And faith plays a big role in the lives of the couple, who attend Evangel Temple.
Dee Wilson said that while she has lost track of some of the children who passed through her home, she keeps in touch with several hundred. "All the children who come through my home, I think of them as my children," she said.
Charlie Patton
28 September 2010
