Couple open home to orphans
By
BRYAN GILMER
With children grown up and living elsewhere, a Tarpon Springs couple are starting round two of raising kids, adopting four Russian girls.
Five-year-old Yulia Casson wears overalls embroidered with Tigger, Piglet and Winnie the Pooh. Glittery butterfly clips pinch bunches of her wispy blond hair.
The Sunset Hills Elementary School kindergartener gives her mom a 20-second barrage of kisses on the cheek, then disappears into the back yard to play.
Several minutes later, Yulia tumbles back across the mauve carpet of the living room of her Tarpon Springs home with a grin and pounces onto the sofa. Her parents have several photographs spread over the cushions.
"Don't jump on there like that," her dad admonishes mildly. She sits still and grins.
One photograph, labeled "Child 1112," shows an expressionless girl.
Yulia pokes an index finger at the picture.
"This is me, a Russian girl," she declares.
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It has been nearly a year since Dan and Renae Casson adopted Yulia at an orphanage in Ulyanovsk, Russia.
Now they plan to return to Russia around the end of the month to adopt a set of three Russian sisters from a different region near the Black Sea.
The couple had planned to make the journey in September, but terrorist bombings in Moscow _ one bomb exploded in the mall where Yulia and her new mom took a shopping trip last year _ and warnings by the U.S. State Department prompted them to postpone the trip.
Anna Christa, 8, Totyana Renae, 10, and Natalya Brielle, 11, will become Yulia's new big sisters and the second phase of the Cassons' second round of children.
Dan is 49. Renae is in her 50s but declines to give her age. Each has two grown children from a previous marriage.
The couple had been married 10 years when they found themselves beginning to treat their three dogs like children. They felt they didn't get to see their grandchildren enough.
"Instead of complaining, we decided to do something about it," Dan says.
The couple went to Russia last year to adopt Totyana, but were told she was "not ready." They chose Yulia instead.
They planned to return for Totyana, then learned she has two sisters, so they decided to adopt all three girls.
Renae's son, Steve Kenyon of Dunedin, is 35 and has his own 12-year-old daughter.
"It's something else, what they're doing," he said. "They're starting all over again after having grown-up kids. I think my mom just thrives on being busy. She's got this uncontained energy. A lot of people look at her at that age and say, "You're nuts to do that.' "
Dan, who works for an insurance company, knows he could be planning for retirement instead of raising more children.
"We mortgaged our house to do this," he says with a grin. "When I'm 70 or 80, I want to look back and see what I've done with my life."
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A videotape shows Renae meeting Yulia for the first time at the orphanage in Ulyanovsk.
"You're so pretty," Renae tells the slight, wondering girl looking up at her.
Yulia looks to an orphanage worker, then back at Renae.
"Mama," she says, tentatively.
Renae bends down to embrace the child.
A later scene shows Renae in a rocking chair, holding Yulia tenderly against her breast.
The girl has never had a mama. She presses closer, and after a few seconds, begins to sob.
Renae strokes Yulia's hair and cries with her.
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Dan Casson got out of the Army Reserve three years ago.
"The only time I ever dreamed of being at the Kremlin was with an M-16 (rifle) in my hands," he said. But he gazed at the building in Moscow's Red Square last year before the long train ride to Yulia's orphanage.
When the Cassons first looked into adopting, they discovered domestic adoptions are often difficult and expensive and can take years. There is also the risk that a biological parent will return years later and try to reclaim the child.
Those reasons and a little research led the Cassons to Amrex Inc., an Atlanta-area firm that helps families with international adoption.
Thousands of children in Russia must live in state-run orphanages, many times because their parents are too poor to support them, said Marina Zakharova, executive director of the adoption agency.
"There are just a lot of orphanages," Zakharova said. "Russia is actively working for international adoptions. Russia last year did the largest number of international adoptions. The system is fairly good. The requirements for the process are pretty easy."
Once a judge grants a Russian adoption and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow processes the paperwork, it is absolutely final.
"It looks very attractive for families from all over the world," Zakharova said.
Amrex maintains relationships with local Russian bureaucrats and judges, she said. That makes the locals comfortable with families Amrex introduces.
Families pay fees and gratuities along the way in crisp, American $100 bills, and they are expected to bring gifts and supplies for the orphanages they visit.
Amrex supplies translators who escort adoptive parents around Russia during the 10-day to three-week voyages required to pick up the children.
Dan asked his translator last year what happens to the children who are never adopted. He was told that they are turned out onto the street when they are 16.
What happens then, Dan inquired.
"Not good," the translator said.
Dan pressed.
The boys typically join the Russian military or take menial jobs, he was told, and most of the girls become prostitutes.
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To many adoptive parents, older children are less desirable. But Yulia and the three sisters the Cassons plan to adopt next fit into the couple's life perfectly.
"I don't want the babies," Dan Casson says. "I'm (almost) 50 years old. If I had a baby, I don't know what my health is going to be like at 70."
Yulia arrived in Tarpon Springs knowing no English except for basic words her caretakers had taught her, like "thank you," "mama" and "papa."
She was terrified of the Cassons' three dogs at first, because she had never seen a dog before.
"Yulia had never seen anything but the four walls of the orphanage," Dan Casson says. "She didn't know what Coke was, what an elevator was, what a stereo was."
Renae, a full-time mother, enrolled Yulia in a preschool class last year, and she quickly began picking up English. A little boy in her class called her stupid because she did not speak it well at first.
Her papa told her to ask that boy if he knew how to speak two languages.
She asked the boy. He didn't.
Then Yulia spoke some Russian to him, and it startled him so much he never bothered her again.
Don and Renae hope that Yulia can help teach English to the new girls and that her sisters will help her stay fluent in Russian.
"Every night, she prays, "Dear Jesus, when am I going to get my sisters?' " Dan says.
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A few days after they brought her home last December, the Cassons sang Happy Birthday as Yulia looked around and tried to figure out what was going on. They moved the flaming cake toward her, but she only stared at it.
"I didn't know what blow out was," Yulia explains, remembering. "I know how to do it now."
Yulia says she remembers Russia but likes "Ahh-meh-wi-kuh" better.
"More room to play."
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