As he surveys the gaggle of kids cavorting on the rug-some big, some little, some black, some white, one with long, dark dreadlocks and one with short red curls-John Steele looks slightly confused.
“Wait. Are they all here?” he asked as he begins a head count. Then, after a few moments he breathes a sigh of relief and reports that all the children are present and accounted for.
“I wasn’t sure,” Steele explained with a chuckle. “I have to use every memory hook available to remember their names.”
When there’s 11 children under your roof, getting names straight is the least of your worries. And that’s especially true for Steele, who Tuesday was named the Foster Father of the Year by the Foster Hope Network of Lake County, a local agency that develops and improves foster homes.
All Steele’s foster children are wards of the state of Illinois. Depending on the progress their natural parents are making through the legal system, the children could leave at any time. Through the last 10 years, Steele and his wife, Peggy, have taken in 150 different children.
“It’s kind of funny,” said Steele, 43, vice president of American Enterprise Bank in Buffalo Grove. “My wife, Peggy, and I are ex-hippies, and we met in college. If someone would have told me then that I was going to end up with nearly a dozen children, I’d say they were crazy.”
Besides four biological children, three foster children and four adopted children, the Steeles have had children in their Beach Park home for as little as three days and others for up to a year.
“Peggy always wanted a reasonably large family,” said Steele, flashing a grin toward his wife. “But after No. 4, I told her if she wanted any more children, she’d have to go and rent them. And, basically, that’s what she did.”
Peggy Steele, 42, explained that she thought it was “terribly unfair that some children were having unhappy childhoods. I just wanted to even things out.”
So after about three months of prodding a decade ago, Peggy Steele convinced her husband that foster parenting “was a necessary and worthwhile thing to do,” and began taking in children. Three adopted children-Kimberly, 9, Maya, 7, and Tony, 4-started out as foster children to the Steeles until they became available for adoption from the state.
“Some came from out of absolutely horrific situations,” Steele said. “Mostly drug abuse and neglect. When we got them, we just wanted to be a good influence on them. And we were able to have an impact on some of the children, hopefully breaking the cycle of abuse they’d become accustomed to. In fact, one child didn’t think we cared about him because we didn’t beat him. It took some time before he got used to our way of living.”
Apparently, it worked. On this afternoon, the Steeles’ oldest biological daughter, Alisha, 21, holds down the fort, playing with the younger kids on the rug. She had just completed final exams at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
“We wanted foster kids younger than ours, so they could help them adjust,” Peggy Steele said, pointing to her biological son Nathan, 15, playing with a little girl.
“My son Nathan is so good with our adopted daughter, Christina-she’s handicapped.”
Besides being profoundly deaf, Christina, 3, has a double cleft palate, a breathing condition requiring nightly oxygen and humidifier treatments. She is also fed daily through a tube.
Leaving Nathan’s side, Christina carefully carries to Steele one of the balloons someone brought to the house to celebrate his honorary status. She gives him a big smile and begins speaking to him in sign language.
“She’s just blossoming,” Steele said proudly after returning a sign to her.
But as with most foster parents, there comes a time when the children leave.
“You can’t minimize that,” Steele said of the times when the kids leave. “Especially if they’re becoming part of the family and we’re spending time with them, when they do leave, it’s very emotional.”
Yet the Steeles both say they try to help each other as much as possible.
“He’s a very patient, warm and loving father-and he’s very supportive of me,” said Peggy, who handles the brood while Steele is at work. “If I’m having a bad day, he’ll say, `Don’t worry. I’ll take it from here.’ “
And what’s Steele doing for Father’s Day?
“I’m gonna take it easy and not do a lick of work,” he said emphatically.
Then the professional father in him thought a moment and added:
“Except take care of the kids.”
