June 19, 2009
Fathers Day
Jason Gries learned to respect all life from his parents
Jason Gries shares a happy moment with his daughters, Cecelia and Mary Ellen. (Message photo by Mary Ann Hughes) Click for a larger version.
By MARY ANN HUGHES (Message staff writer)
Proverbs encourage parents to train their children the way they should go, promising them that if they do so, their children will not depart from that training.
Jason Gries says his parents, Dave and Sue, taught him and his two brothers to respect people. All people.
As he reflects on being a father this Father’s Day, Jason believes those family lessons were influential when he and his wife Erin made the decision to adopt two beautiful baby girls.
Jason was born and raised in Evansville, attending St. Theresa Elementary School and Memorial High School. His parents, his first teachers, were involved in the church, he remembers, and they had a faith they depended on. “I knew I needed to follow what they were following.”
As a young child and as a young adult, he followed the Church teaching “because I knew that’s what made my parents happy.” Part of that teaching included respecting all life.
“I followed that because it was Church teaching. But more than that, my parents looked at people like they were important — every family member and every non-family member — they gave everyone the same respect.”
That family lesson was reinforced when he was a student at St. John Vianney College Seminary in St. Paul, Minn. During a class there, he listened to a mother of 13 children, six biological and seven adopted, talk about “being able to treat each child the same, both the adopted and the biological.
“When Erin and I got engaged, I told her that story and I said I would like to adopt children some day.”
Two years after their wedding, the couple learned that they could not have biological children, and they began looking into adoption. The story he heard in Minnesota stayed with him. “I was struck by that, that these children she adopted would have had completely different lives if she hadn’t adopted them and may not have known the love of God that she was able to show.”
In January of 2007, they made plans to drive to Indianapolis to attend a day-long seminar about adoption. The day before they were going to leave, Jason’s uncle who was a board member at Life Choice in Evansville, called — out of the blue — and said, “We have a 19-year-old who is pregnant.” Then he asked, “Are you interested?”
Yes, they were!
That week, Jason and Erin met with the director at Life Choice, and then they met with the birth mother. They were quickly given the news that they could adopt her baby. Five months later, Cecilia Rose was born.
In May of last year, the couple decided to add a second child to their family. They submitted their names to an agency, and assumed the process would take a year. They soon received the call that Mary Ellen had arrived and that she needed a home.
In an earlier Message story, Erin explained that the baby had Down syndrome and she had a hole in her heart. The couple who had planned to adopt her decided against it. The woman was pregnant and “it was too much.”
Erin and Jason met with the birth mother who was 39-years-old and had two older children. “She didn’t want to start over,” Erin said. The birth mother was heart-broken that the other couple had backed out, and insistent that the baby not go to foster care.
Erin and Jason talked about what they should do. It was a tough decision, Erin remembers. “We thought, ‘This is a baby that needs a home. She’s been given to us as a gift. She’s a gift, and we need to accept it.’”
When they told the birth mother that they would adopt her child “she was so thankful to us. Our families came to the hospital that night to meet her, and she came home the next day.” They named her Mary Ellen, Mary after her maternal grandmother, Mary Ann Zenthoefer, and Ellen after her paternal grandmother Sue Ellen Gries.
Today, Cecelia is two, and Mary Ellen is a year old.
Jason smiles as he describes his daughters. “Cecelia is very social, just a good kid. She gets more and more fun because she can talk.
“Mary Ellen is just sweet, a good baby. She’s also social. She wants to look at your face. She communicates by smiling and cooing.”
He says he “likes to think about their development and what they are doing now and where they need to go, to do the things that will help them grow.”
His family was “extremely supportive” of the decision to adopt both girls, and “so happy to have a family that is diverse.
“They were excited to have new members of the family, and it was a celebration to have these kids.”
He says that being a father “gives me a bigger purpose than I had before. People depend on me, and I want to be more serious about life in general. When Cecelia came into our lives everything changed. You are living for a bigger purpose.
“You have more responsibility as the provider, and I became more serious about my faith. I want God to be a part of my life, and I want God to be a part of my kids’ lives. If I want Him to be part of their lives He has to be part of my life, so eventually they can make the free decision to follow what I follow.”
There are worries, but Jason says the joys are bigger. “When Cecelia says ‘Daddy’ it melts my heart. To see them progress really gives me joy.”
He said that because he experienced love from his parents, and because he knows God loves him, “I try to live according to what I know through those experiences.”