Meet My Sister

Meet My Sister

"Why can't my friends come?" This simple question asked by my newly adopted sister from Korea touched my Mom to the core. My sister was fourteen years old at the time. My Mom immediately took action and one by one she found families to adopt my sister's orphan friends (five in total); some of the families lived in our hometown. In the end, there was one child left, she was over fourteen, and it was illegal to bring a child into the States for adoption at her age. My parents, not willing to leave one child behind and being fighters, had a bill introduced in Congress by Senator Frank Moss. The bill passed and was then signed by President Gerald Ford for the relief of my sister into the United States. In 1977 when my sister finally arrived, she was sixteen years old. She had lived in an orphanage until then.

She is now a successful woman with a wonderful husband and two beautiful children; she has a great life. If my parents had not taken on a fight to get her here, she would have been abandoned and left to a frightening fate. This week I feel inspired to write about my sister because she was one orphan, one human and her life was changed by a fight, a legal battle, a triumph. I salute each and every one of the people fighting to help orphans, refugees, and those fleeing frightening fates. There are many heroes like my parents; legal heroes, journalistic heroes, organizational heroes and the ones we don't hear about who open their homes, make the calls, go to the protests and keep fighting.

My Mom, now seventy-six looks back sometimes and says, "Wow, we did this!" I hope that we all keep fighting for kindness, for humanity and to help others. I hope that one day we can look back and say, "Wow, we did this, we did the right thing, we made a difference."

—Allison Ochs Social Worker M.S.W. , Coach, Expat, Mother of three, Wife