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Community Corner

South Orange/Maplewood Melting Pot

The two towns are a magnet for adoptive families

It wasn’t South Orange's tree-lined streets, charming houses or short commute to Manhattan that uprooted me, my husband and our 1-year-old daughter, adopted from China, from Jackson Heights, Queens, six years ago.

On our first visit, making a stop at Memorial Park in Maplewood, there was the random sighting of five Asian adoptees on swings being pushed by Caucasian parents. Later, walking down South Orange Avenue, we passed two Orthodox Jewish men pushing a stroller with an African-American baby as a passenger. The deal was sealed when on my next visit, with my young daughter in tow, I met with the only person I knew in South Orange, a writer who had happily raised a son in the ‘burbs while maintaining a professional life in the city. When I asked her, over coffee at Cait and Abby’s, if she thought an adoptive family would feel at home here, she laughed and said that actually most people seeing us together would assume we were my daughter’s parents. Non-traditional families were no big deal in this community.

I recently interviewed several local adoptive families to find out if they, too, had felt the magnetic pull of the two towns.

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SO/M was on Liane Thatcher and Kerry Keane’s radar even before they started to look for a house. When they were researching domestic adoption, Thatcher met with a Maplewood family that gave her a sense of how friendly the community was toward adoptive families. Five years ago, they moved to SO/M from Park Slope, Brooklyn.

“We moved here for the diversity and families formed through non-traditional means,” said Thatcher, whose family, which includes Phelan, 7, and Tallulah, 1, was formed by fully open adoptions with regular visits from the birth families.

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“We wanted a place where we would all feel comfortable,” she said.

Joyce Hart and her husband, David, felt the pull all the way from Austin, Texas. They moved to SO/M with their two daughters, Hannah, 14, and Maggie, 12, adopted from China, three and a half years ago.

“We wanted more of a cross-section of what the world was like,” Hart said.

Through the Families with Children From China Web site, a national network of adoptive families, she sent e-mails to members throughout northern New Jersey with the query, "If you like your community, please write back to me." She got the most replies from families in Maplewood.

After bidding on 11 houses, the house they finally moved into was next door to an adoptive family with children of the same age who have become part of the Harts' extended family.

“It was an affirmation of how perfect the community is for us,” Hart said.

After careful research, Annetta Hanna moved to SO/M five years ago, also from Park Slope. Her daughters Ella, 9, and Tessa, 6, adopted from China, attend Seth Boyden School, a magnet public elementary school that utilizes the "multiple intelligences" learning philosophy. The school epitomizes what she was looking for in a community.

“I want my kids to grow up taking it for granted that people are different," she said. "I want them to live in a community that genuinely values diversity.”

It’s no wonder that South Orange and Maplewood have become a mecca for adoptive families, a place where they feel comfortable being themselves. 

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