Chris Dorst/Gazette photos Bob and Rita Boyles at home with their four adopted children: Kaylee (left), 4, Lisa, 19, Charlie, 6, and Kaitlyn, 4. The Putnam County couple has taken in 75 foster children over the past 19 years,

Putnam parents bonded by love

SCOTT DEPOT, W.Va. - Rita and Bob Boyles are a wealth of love and energy.

Rita, 65, and Bob, 68, have fostered 75 children in 19 years and have adopted four - Lisa, 19, twins Kaylee and Kaityln, 4, and Charlie, 6.

The Putnam County couple is also in the process of adopting a 23-month girl, Jillian. "We get mistaken for grandparents all the time," Rita said.

But it's the children that keep them young, she said.

"I don't feel one bit like 65," she said. "I'm down on the floor and they're riding on my back. I act like a young mother."

Rita Boyles, 65, gives her daughter Kaitlyn a piggyback ride while carrying dress-up costumes for Kaitlyn and her twin sister, Kaylee, to wear.

Rita and Bob took in their first foster child - Lisa when she was just 4 weeks old - in 1989 while living in Memphis, Tenn. They adopted her several years later.

Lisa is now a freshman at Marshall University.

"You get them as babies and you bond with them; you're their mother," Rita said. "You hold them and you love them and you bond."

The couple began fostering Charlie when he was just 12 hours old, the twins when they were 2 days old and now Jillian, also when she was 2 days old. Charlie, the twins and Jillian are from the same family.

"I've always been the mothering sort," Rita said.

Rita is from Beckley and one of 15 children.

Bob is originally from Wahoo, Neb., and a retired Navy officer. He is retiring from Charleston Area Medical Center next month after 15 years as its corporate director of supply chain management. "Alan Jackson has a song out that says the important things are the things we leave behind, not the things we take with us," Bob said.

"Just the knowledge that we've helped these children turn the corner and be successful [makes] it all worthwhile," he said. "We don't have a whole lot of need; why shouldn't we share what we have."

The Boyleses have three children of their own and began fostering after their oldest child left for college.

Their oldest daughter, who lives in Missouri, has taken in 110 foster children and has adopted six children, several who are medically fragile.

Their son and daughter-in-law, who live in Mississippi, adopted two sisters that Rita and Bob were fostering.

"They just fell in love them," Rita said. Their son and daughter-in-law also have three children of their own.

Rita was a stay at home mom and ran a daycare out the couple's home for many years. Opening their home to foster children was not too far of a stretch after their own children left home.

"A lot [of the foster children] are here for a year or less," Rita said. "Anywhere from three weeks to three years or six or seven months."

Some, like their adopted children, stayed with the couple for several years.

Many of the children who have stayed with the Boyleses were removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect, others because their parents just could not afford to take care of them.

The Boyles serve as surrogate grandparents to many of their foster children that have been adopted. They do tend to back out of the lives of the foster children who return to their parents.

"A lot of the children in foster care, they almost blame themselves for being in foster care," Bob said. "The majority of them have extreme loyalty to their parents, and we don't want to distract from that in way, shape or form."

The hardest part about fostering, Rita said, is saying goodbye.

That is also the main reason why many families do not foster, she said. "They're worried they won't be able to say goodbye."

The DHHR and Mission West Virginia offer several support groups to help families with the detachment process or with any other issues or needs they may have.

It's the community compassion and support that really help, Rita said, but the sole goal of being a foster parent is "helping these children and being an advocate for them when they need help."

There are about 4,000 children in the foster care system in West Virginia, said Rachel Probst, a support group specialist with Mission West Virginia.

November is also National Adoption Month.

"The circumstances varies as to why children are removed from homes - some its abuse or neglect; some parents are not able to do it medically or financially," Bob said. "It's the determination of the courts to terminate the parents' rights. That makes them available for adoption."

The family is open with their children about their adoption.

"I told Charlie 'I didn't carry you in my tummy, but I carried you in my heart,'" Rita said, recalling the time Charlie asked whether she gave birth to him.

The Boyleses have had as many as seven foster children at a time.

"There are days you want to pull your hair out and you get frustrated, but that doesn't stop you from loving them," Rita said.

"When they hug you around the legs and around the neck and tell you how much they love you, that makes up for the all the rough days," she said.

For more information about becoming a foster or adoptive parent, contact Mission West Virginia at 866-225-5698 or check out the Department of Health and Human Resources at www.wvdhhr.org.