Ken Bridges/Contributing writer
Editors note: The following column ran in the July 23 print edition of the Jefferson Jimplecute an incorrect byline. This column was written by Ken Bridges, not Hugh Lewis. We regret the error.
“It is easier to build strong children than it is to repair broken men,” is the famous quote from writer and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Countless men and women have dedicated their lives to helping children. Most successful people in the world will point to those special influences from their childhoods for their inspiration. Texan Edna Gladney devoted her life to improving the lives of children, providing love and finding homes for children. Gladney began a movement that made life better for children across the state.
Gladney was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1886 to a young woman named Minnie Nell. Her mother was seventeen at the time she gave birth and unmarried, considered scandalous at the time. Very little was known about her father. However, her mother later married a hard-working clerk. After her stepfather’s death in 1904, her mother sent her to Fort Worth to live with relatives.
While living on Fort Worth, she met Sam Gladney. The two married in 1906. Already, she had an interest in helping children as she joined the board of directors for the Texas Children’s Home and Aid Society by 1910. In 1913, she and her husband moved to Sherman where her husband opened the successful Gladney Milling Company. Gladney herself joined the Sherman Civic League and became deeply involved in local causes.
A visit to the Grayson County Poor Farm changed her life. Like many other southern counties, Grayson County had established a farm where the poor, mentally ill, homeless, orphans, and elderly could live and work to earn their rent. However, the facility had been neglected for years, and Gladney found children at the facility in appalling conditions. She began sending many of the orphans at the facility to the Texas Children’s Home in Fort Worth. Along with other women in Sherman, she organized a free day care and kindergarten facility to help working women, financed by the Gladneys and local businesses.
In 1927, she was named superintendent of the children’s home and worked tirelessly for the education of the children and attempting to find them good homes.
She believed that children should not carry the stigmas of their parents’ actions. By the 1930s, she expanded the home’s reach by adding programs to help unmarried mothers.
Gladney also began a campaign to change the state law to remove the word “illegitimate” from the birth certificates of children whose parents were unmarried or who were being given up for adoption. Supporters went so far as to say that she knocked on every door in Texas to make the change, though an exaggeration. In 1936, Gov. Jimmy Allred signed legislation ending the practice of marking children as “illegitimate” on their birth certificates.
Her work began to change many attitudes about children, ensuring that in loving homes there would not be a difference in treatment for “illegitimate” or “ adopted” and those born under other circumstances, that they would all just be seen as children and as worthy of love and a chance for a good life as anyone else.
In 1941, a movie was made about Gladney’s life and work, Blossoms in the Dust, though portions of the story were fictionalized. It starred famed actress Greer Garson as Gladney and Walter Pidgeon as her husband. The movie was nominated for four Academy Awards in 1942, including Best Picture and Garson for Best Actress. The film won the award for Best Art Direction.
In 1950, the children’s home bought the adjacent West Texas Maternity Hospital, and the board of directors changed the name of the entire facility to the Edna Gladney Home in honor of her work.
She continued to work with abandoned and orphaned children for the rest of her life. She died in Fort Worth in 1961, having placed thousands of children in safe and loving homes.
The Edna Gladney Home continued the mission she had started after her passing. Within a few years of her death, the facility had expanded to include an on-site middle school and on-site high school, coordinating with Fort Worth school officials. By the 1980s, the organization included services for expectant mothers off-site, counseling services, parenting classes, and services to help adopted children find their biological parents through a voluntary registry system. In the 1990s, the home was renamed the Gladney Center for Adoption. It has now found homes for more than 20,000 children and celebrates a century-long tradition of providing hope and love for children.
Dr. Ken Bridges, a Grand Prairie native, earned his bachelors degree from the University of Texas at Austin and his masters degree and doctorate at the University of North Texas.
He is a professor of history and geography At UT Permian Basin— in addition to writing. He and his wife, Lynn, have six children. His columns appear in multiple newspapers.