Listen to this story:
Text on Video: Harvey on Starting a Family:
Text on video: Harvey Meets Ethel:
I, you know, met Ethel at a discotech. It was, you know, late summer of ‘79. Okay. Ethel came over there with a girlfriend who left her flat because she did not want this girlfriend, did not want her friends to know, that she is hanging out with somebody who has a disability. But after a while, she meant business.
She said that either I buy an engagement ring, even make that decision to get engaged, or otherwise we split up. When we got engaged, I bought her a ring. Then the following year, we got married.
Well, look, my family wasn’t all that supportive. I think their primary issue was about me not earning enough money.
Well, I guess after being married for quite a while, we started to think about having a family of our own. Now, of course, we had choices. We could have tried to have a biological child, or we could have just decided, or we could have decided to continue not having children, or we could pursue adoption. But that’s what we decided upon.
Text on video: Harvey and Ethel try to adopt a child:
Either of our families wanted to support us. They felt that we will not be able to handle the responsibilities that come with having a child, because you know how a lot of people feel when you have a disability. They figured, oh, you’re not going to be able to do this, you’re not going to be capable of handling that.
First, we went to a counseling and a referral service. We worked with them, and then they hooked up to an actual adoption agency. Now, we worked with them, and then they assigned a social worker to work together with us. She had to make visits to our home and do a home study.
She had to ask us questions about our backgrounds. And then the adoption agency had difficulty in reaching a decision about us because of our disabilities.
Then around Thanksgiving time of ‘91, that time, a little baby with down syndrome got placed into our home.
We named her Samantha. She’s now 15 years old. Well, she’s playful. She needs a lot of love and attention from me. Yeah. She loves to listen to music. She likes her radio.
Text on video: Harvey and Ethel were married for 23 yrs., 5
months, and 3 days.
