Her sister, Andi Andree, was also raised in a foster home. Now she stands with Price in the midsummer moonlight. Each a married mother of three, they live far apart—Price near Denver, Andree outside Chicago—yet they're closely bound by a tie they forged as adults, never having known a shared girlhood. "We want to give you kids the opportunity we missed," Andree, 45, tells her audience.
The young crowd is rapt now, for the story is achingly familiar to all of them. They have come to the Rockies from around the country for a week at Camp to Belong, Price and Andree's nonprofit retreat designed to reunite siblings who, like them, were placed in foster care separately. Price estimates that as many as 75 percent of America's half-million foster children live apart from their sisters and brothers, often because foster families don't have space for all the siblings. In the process, though, the kids lose a precious bond. "After you've finished with social services, who do you have? Your brothers and sisters," says Dr. Jeff Dolgan, chief of psychiatric services for The Children's Hospital in Denver. "It makes sense to have these kids get together." Camp to Belong has helped fill the sibling gap since 1995, offering 302 kids who have applied through social services and their foster families a range of activities, such as boating, hiking—and sewing. "Each kid creates a pillow their sibling can hug at night," says Andree, who is a special education teacher.
"I am so glad I got to spend time with my little brother Isaac and make him a pillow," says Veronica, 12, of Denver. "When we were both with my parents, I could argue with him and play with him. Now I can't do that anymore." For Joe, 10, playing with his six brothers and sisters was "a dream come true—just to be kids together," says his foster mother Joy Maynor, of High Point, N.C. There are occasional tantrums, of course, as well as wariness when siblings who scarcely know each other try to bond. "It's a very guarded atmosphere sometimes," explains Price.
She and Andree know the feeling. They were placed in foster care when their mother, Bernyce, was briefly confined to a psychiatric hospital after her husband, siding contractor Harry Paul, left her. Andree was then 2, while Price was 8 months. Eight years later they finally met. "At first, all she kept saying was 'You're not my sister,' " Andree recalls. "She was raised to be ashamed of being a foster child." Andree, whose foster parents had two biological children, also knew second-class status. "My maternal foster grandmother treated us to money for getting good grades," she says. "I got less than the other children."
Price and Andree rarely saw each other until the '70s, when Andi went to Northern Illinois University and Lynn to the University of Illinois. Staying together on visits made them feel like sisters at last. "I'd go to Lynn's sorority, and she'd be in designer clothes and makeup, and I'd be in overalls and a T-shirt," says Andree. "We're different on the outside, but amazingly similar on the inside." Says Price: "Andi's the only person I can be myself with. The sister part is gravy." Andi married computer specialist Bob Andree in 1977, and Lynn wed Chuck Price, a cable-TV executive, in 1983. "We go on family vacations together," says Andree. "[Our kids] love each other."
Both sisters had strained relations with Bernyce, whom they called "Colorado," where she lived after remarrying. "We'd say, 'I talked to Colorado'—we couldn't say 'mother,' " says Andree. Early on, Bernyce tried and failed to regain custody of the girls. Notes Price: "She was bitter." Yet the relationship thawed a bit by 1994. "That was the first time I could hug her without thinking, 'Okay, hug her now,' " says Price. Two weeks later, Bernyce died of a stroke. After her death, the sisters felt free to search for the man they thought was their father. Hiring an investigator, they tracked Harry Paul to a Kansas City, Kans., hospital where he was being treated for cancer. "He starts screaming, 'How did you find me?' " says Andree. "Then he says, 'I'm not your father.' " In fact, Bernyce had conceived both girls by artificial insemination. Paul directed them to her Chicago doctor, who had kept no records. "They told us we were from good stock," says Andree. "Probably an intern."
About that time, in March 1995, Price, then living in Las Vegas and a volunteer at a children's shelter, got the idea for Camp to Belong. "I realized I could say, 'I understand, I've been there,' " she says. In three months she and Andree held their first camp in Vegas. They now have more than 150 volunteer counselors, and this year ran two camps, one in Colorado, the other in Illinois.
On the final day of this year's Colorado camp, everyone joined hands to sing. One by one, they said their goodbyes, many through tears. Even 17-year-old counselor Eddie Andree, Andi's son, erupted in sobs, hugging his mother. "Hold on to your dreams," Price told the campers as she quivered with emotion, clutching her own daughter Jamie, 8. "We will always be there for you."
Richard Jerome
Vickie Bane in Black Hawk
- Contributors:
- Vickie Bane.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
