Kansas
‘That embryo was created by God’
When 7-year-old Rosie Buchholtz asks where she came from, her…
‘The home gave me my faith’
She was one of the original seven children housed by a Kansas children’s home. Eight decades later, she returned.
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WICHITA, KAN. — At just 5 years old, Shirley Baldridge Porch understood hardship.
She spent the first years of her life playing on a dirt floor.
One of nine children, she shared a single-room house with her family, barely scraping by during the Great Depression and World War II.
Her family rarely had money. Most of their meals depended on food stamps. Eventually, even those were affected by war-time rationing.
Then her mother died due to an infection.
“It was in the early 1940s,” recalled Porch, now 89. “And that’s when everything fell apart.”
Tiffany Jones, right, helps Shirley Porch with her oxygen mask tubing as she arrives at a hotel in Wichita, Kan.
A chance for more
Eight decades later, the faithful Christian lives in Arkansas and attends services led by the West Side Church of Christ at her assisted living facility in Searcy.
But a recent summer evening found her back in Kansas, nearly 500 miles from the retirement center, enjoying dinner with the Jones family.
She wondered aloud during the meal how her life might have unfolded if her mother had lived.
Maybe she would have remained impoverished. Perhaps she would have never found God.
The sun sets as Shirley Porch reminisces about her childhood on a drive back to her hotel after dinner with the Jones family.
But those potential outcomes all changed when “one woman made a huge difference,” said Tiffany Jones, director of development for Carpenter Place, a children’s home associated with Churches of Christ.
Gladys Childs, distantly related to the little girl by marriage and a member of the Riverside Church of Christ in Wichita, heard of the family’s misfortune.
The youngest of Porch’s siblings, a newborn boy, had already been adopted. Porch’s father, struggling to hold the household together, agreed to legally terminate his parental rights.
Childs approached the Riverside congregation with a plea: Take care of the children.
Ruth Garthwaite, a member of the neighboring West Douglas Church of Christ, offered to house them if the Riverside church covered the expenses.
Then church members heard about more children in need.
In 1946, the now-defunct Riverside church opened the Midwest Children’s Home, known today as Carpenter Place in honor of Maude Carpenter, an early benefactor.
“When Ruth took those kids in, I doubt they ever dreamed it would still be going over 80 years from then,” Jones said. “I don’t think she would ever have imagined that that would have happened.”
The Brazeals, the first houseparents hired by the Midwest Children’s Home, adopted Porch when she was 10.
“The life that they offered us gave us a chance for more,” Porch recalled.
“The life that they offered us gave us a chance for more.”
New structure, same mission
The children’s home has evolved in many ways since its founding.
Carpenter Place transitioned to being a girls-only home in the early 2000s. Girls ages 12 to 17 from all over the country stay for 18 to 24 months depending on their needs.
Three sets of houseparents oversee their care. Therapists visit the campus weekly. Teachers give lessons in person and remotely.
Tiffany Jones gives a tour of the Shellee Morrison Christian Learning Center at Carpenter Place in Wichita, Kan.
“Unlike with Shirley back then, these girls are not orphans,” Jones said. “They have families, so a lot of the things that will bring them to us are just behavioral issues of different and varying kinds.”
Yet the organization’s mission remains the same.
“The people in the church took us because they saw a need, and they introduced us to Christ, because that was their mission,” Porch said. “That’s still their mission. Now these girls — God only knows what’s in their future — there is no guarantee they’re going to be really good, upstanding, worthwhile citizens once they leave the influence of the home. And it was the same with us. But the church is giving them a foundation, and they gave us a foundation.”
“The people in the church took us because they saw a need, and they introduced us to Christ, because that was their mission. That’s still their mission.
Porch is the organization’s “shining example,” Jones said.
The last surviving member of the founding children, she was baptized at 9 years old after being introduced to church through the home.
“I didn’t know there was such a thing as a church,” before living with Garthwaite, Porch said. A mother of three, Porch raised all her sons in the church as a result.
“The home gave me my faith,” Porch stressed. “If it had not been for the church taking us into that home, I don’t think we would have ever known a faith. Right now, my family is a Christian family because of what happened when I was young.”
One of her grandsons serves as an international missionary with his family.
Gary Ross, her middle son, taught at Harding University in Searcy for 20 years. He also served for several years as an elder of the Downtown Church of Christ and now serves as an elder for the Living Way Church of Christ.
“She taught my Bible classes and taught us to have respect for others and for God and to do the right thing,” Ross, 70, recalled of his upbringing. “She was very wonderful for us, but for her to come from the background she came from, I often wonder, ‘Man, how did she do that for us?’”
But her influence is not limited to childhood. Ross said she inspires his faith, even now.
“I’ll go to see her, and she’ll say, ‘Look what I found in the Bible. I didn’t know that was in there. Where have I been all my life?’” Ross said. “She’s always reading and showing me stuff, knowing that she needs to learn, even at 89 years old. To me, that’s really inspirational.”
“She’s always reading and showing me stuff, knowing that she needs to learn, even at 89 years old. To me, that’s really inspirational.”
A butterfly effect on future generations
Jones and her husband, Michael, first met Porch on a trip to Harding after hearing about the children’s home connection.
That visit led them to arranging Porch’s recent trip to Carpenter Place, where she shared her testimony with the board of directors and the seven girls currently staying at the home.
“All of her siblings have passed,” Jones said. “The founding people, they’re all gone. So having that connection, that link, to what Carpenter Place was then and what it is now — I just felt like that was so important.
“She’s so full of wisdom,” she added. “She knows what it’s like to be in a group home and to share her experiences with those girls was just priceless.”
Porch brought her personal collection of butterfly pins to share with the girls, which she began accumulating after learning her biological grandmother had an affinity for the colorful insects.
The gesture represented more than jewelry or kindness to Michael Jones, preaching minister for the East Point Church of Christ in Wichita and a member of Carpenter Place’s board of directors.
Shirley Porch poses for a portrait in one of her butterfly shirts.
“Her life reminds me of the butterfly effect,” Michael Jones said, referring to the theory that describes how one small change can lead to large, non-linear effects elsewhere.
“The effect that she has had because she’s been at Carpenter Place and the effect that Carpenter Place has had on her life have affected her children and her children’s children’s lives,” Tiffany Jones added. “And we see that like every day at Carpenter Place.
“We see things that are going to affect the girls and their families, their lives and — hopefully — generations to come.”
Shirley Porch hugs Sophie Jones during her recent trip to visit Carpenter Place in Wichita, Kan.
AUDREY JACKSON is Managing Editor of The Christian Chronicle. Contact [email protected].
