On and off the court, West Point basketball team captain Max Lenox (center) is a Lutheran Services Carolinas adoption success story. Through the agency, Max found the stable, nurturing home he needed.
Almost 20 years later, in November
2014, Deutsch saw the family again—on the pages of Sports Illustrated. Deutsch was part of the story, written by S.L. Price, that chronicled Max’s unlikely path to West Point, where he had been voted basketball team captain two years in a row. When Deutsch heard through Price what
Max had achieved, she was incredulous. “I practically burst into tears,” she said. Not long aſter the story was published,
Deutsch got to see Max play basketball when Army traveled to North Carolina to compete against Duke University, Dur- ham. At the game she reconnected with Max’s parents, who now live in Seattle where Lenox directs the state’s Special Olympics program. She hadn’t seen them in years. Hearing the couple’s story confirmed
UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY
‘The story of the Lenox family shows what a pro- found difference a good home can make in a child’s life. It also shows that good homes don’t always look the same.’
but Brittain valued a child’s well-being above traditional notions of what an ideal family looked like. Brittain believed kids
deserved homes, Deutsch said, and made sure the people who worked for the agency believed that too. Te organization talked
them through the adoption process, Lenox said. Initially he and Merrells had planned to adopt a 5- to 7-year-old, but Deutsch prompted them
to reconsider. “She knew we were in it for the full expe- rience,” Lenox said. Te couple was concerned when they realized their
son had been exposed to drugs in utero. While Max exhibited a few troubling symptoms at birth, he weighed more than 7 pounds and didn’t show the severe distress signs one might expect. A few years later, when they adopted a daughter, Erin, through the agency, Deutsch again did the home study.
that her instincts about them had been spot-on. “Tey did an amazing job, an
extraordinary job” raising Max and Erin, said Deutsch, who served as director of adoptions for the agency from 1995 to 2002. “Tey just wanted to be a family. Tey wanted to go to PTA meetings. ... And they made an enormous difference.” Lutheran Services Carolinas found permanent
homes for 26 children in 2014, said Kimberla Burrows, who heads up the program. Most of LSC’s adoptions are done out of the foster care system through the state of North Carolina. Same-sex couples have the same chance to adopt through Lutheran Services Carolinas as any other couple, Burrows said, and must meet the same criteria. “We are proud that our organization’s history of
adoption has been one of inclusion,” said Lutheran Services Carolinas President Ted W. Goins Jr. “Te story of the Lenox family shows what a pro- found difference a good home can make in a child’s life. It also shows that good homes don’t always look the same.”
Author bio: Scarvey is
communications specialist for Lutheran Services Carolinas.
March 2015 27
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