May 7, 2008...10:09 am
Former Foster Child, now a movie star, Recalls Her Past
FAIRFIELD, ME – Agatha Wooten Armstead didn’t drive a car, but she drove a farm tractor.
Agatha, as she was called by her foster daughter Vicky, was a woman who at age 56, bent from surgeries and hard work, took in the young girl and raised her as her own on a farm in rural Maine.
There was organic gardening, music and poetry. There also was a mother’s love, and the little girl never forgot her.
Victoria Rowell, film star, dancer, NAACP Image Award winner and perhaps best known for her role as Drucilla Winters on TV’s daytime “The Young and the Restless,” was that little girl.
Rowell spoke Tuesday to a full house in Prescott Hall at Good Will-Hinckley on the virtues of the women who raised her and on the responsibility of foster youth to be patient — because one day they, too, will look back at the people who raised them and remember.
“We don’t always say ‘Thank you’ because sometimes we need to be taught to say things,” she said. “We don’t always say ‘We love you’ because it’s easier to stay angry, because we’ve been through a lot.
“But deep, deep down, we really appreciate those people, but we may not be able to put it into words today.”
Rowell, 48, was back in Maine promoting and signing copies of her memoir “The Women Who Raised Me,” a tribute not just to the women with whom Rowell grew up, but to the foster care system that brought them to her.
Her visit was done in collaboration with the Maine Children’s Trust, a statewide non-profit organization whose mission is to prevent child abuse and neglect.
The trust raises money for community-based groups and advocates for increased services for Maine families.
Good Will-Hinckley is a residential school serving young people with academic or behavioral challenges.
Rowell was a foster child in the Portland area for the first 18 years of her life.
An advocate for foster children like herself, she founded the Rowell Foster Children’s Positive Plan in 1990. The foundation enriches the lives of foster children through artistic and athletic expression.
Also among the women who raised her, Rowell remembered Tuesday, was Bertha Taylor, who took her in as a very young child and who later had to give her up because of government regulations.
Taylor’s daughter Colleen Taylor, now of Fairfield, was in the audience Tuesday.
She said later that as a teenager herself at the time, losing Vicky as a little sister was traumatic.
“Vicky came to my parents when she was two weeks old and we had her for 2 1/2 years,” Taylor, 63, said. “I wanted her to be my little girl. When she left, I wanted to die. It has horrible.”
The two women met again several years ago for the first time since Vicky was little. Seeing her again Tuesday was very emotional, she said.
“I absolutely adored her — I loved her,” Taylor said. “It just warms my heart.”
Rowell said the emotions of separation from one’s biological roots are not easy to overcome.
“People underestimate children — we feel that pull, we feel that void — I knew someone loved me and they took a risk. That’s how deep love goes — government or law or people cannot change hearts.
“It’s also our job as beneficiaries of such extraordinary love to reach back to thank those people. Try to remember the people who made a difference in your life.”
That sentiment was shared Tuesday by Waterville Mayor Paul LePage, who was a foster child himself after leaving his abusive home in Lewiston at age 11, he said.
“I thought she was wonderful, absolutely wonderful,” LePage said of Rowell. “Having been somewhat in her shoes, much of what she said about anxiety and stepping up and finding yourself is absolutely true.
“There is always a void, and the whole issue of giving back is one of the voids I’ve been trying to fill for my whole life.”
1 Comment
May 7, 2008 at 8:58 pm
that entire post was bittersweet, no? Very beautiful
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