Royce U. DeBerry currently lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, since making it his home in 1983. He has been preaching for the Eastside Church of Christ for about twenty years, and is also one of the three elders of the church as well. He is not one to seek publicity, nor to toot his own horn, so it was only at Mike’s request this story is being told.

Indianapolis has a problem that is, unfortunately, common throughout the entire country: a population of children who, for a variety of reasons, need alternative care because they are not able to be with their primary care givers (i.e., foster children). Royce, along with his wife, Cindy, recognized this desperate need of the children in their community, as well as the lack of parents available or interested in fulfilling that need.

In 1986, they completed the legalities to become a licensed foster home, along with ourselves and one other family who got together to deal with some foster children that needed to be taken care of at the Emerson Avenue church here in Indianapolis. At the time Royce had four biological children of his own ranging in age from ten to fifteen years of age. They began almost immediately opening their home to infants and young children in need of care.

It wasn’t long after that Royce recognized a more specific need within the foster care community: a smaller population of children with very specialized medical needs. Royce, along with his wife, began the process of training to handle these fragile children. Cindy went to college to be a nurse, enabling her to take in these special needs children, children that often required hours and hours of training before they could even bring the child into their home—and then hours and hours of intensive care once such a child was placed in their home. These children had conditions such as cancer, trachs, feeding tubes, shaken babies’ syndrome, and children with life-sustaining equipment—children that even experienced foster homes would turn away.

Three of these special needs children were adopted as infants into their home. One is now eighteen—a dwarf who suffered from periods of “stopped breathing” as an infant, and thus never developed properly mentally. She has had several surgeries and still faces several more, but is doing well. Another, now five—who had been shaken as a baby, was told she would never be “anything but a vegetable.” She can now walk, and although she cannot talk she can communicate her desires and comprehend what is spoken to her. And another, an “alcohol syndrome” baby born prematurely that would “never be able to see, talk, or hear.” She is now eighteen and making A’s in college, an excellent chef, and doing fine. They also paid for the funeral expenses of a four-month old baby who died of heart problems, whose own mother was unable to pay for the funeral expenses and what the state allocated ($500) was grossly insufficient.

Royce has worked side-by-side with case managers, legal counsel, medical professionals, and even biological families in an effort to return these children to their families where possible. He worked within the system to teach and encourage other foster family homes. He has recruited dozens of new foster homes in the last two decades of services with his positive dedicated attitude toward foster care.

Although reunification with families is always the fostering goal, that is not always possible. This inevitably leaves young children without a “forever family.”  Royce has helped hundreds of people in the last two decades. He has had some forty plus foster children pass through his home, and adopted six of them, providing them with a permanent, stable family. Royce’s children range in age from thirty-four years down to five years. He has been parenting for over three decades. While most of his peers are planning retirement, Royce is still doing kindergarten orientation! His three oldest daughters have had over fifty foster children in their homes, and his oldest has gone into nurse’s training to handle special needs children as well.  The girls have also adopted ten of these foster children themselves—four of whom are special needs children. Although privacy laws prevent showing pictures of any unadopted children they have cared for, they have pictures of each on their wall, as they recall their individual special problems. They have also erected a “compound”—a large fenced in area by buying houses back to back and combining their entire backyards, so the kids can have a playground safe from outside problems. And they have home schooled some of their children who might have problems in a public school, if they could have even gone to a public school. In addition to all this, they have taken in and provided for an ailing aunt in their home for several years until her death, and have added on to their house for both Royce and Cindy’s moms to be part of the household, and yet have some privacy to themselves.

Royce has taught foster parent scope classes for the state to help other people to learn how to be foster parents, and two of his daughters are now teaching foster parenting classes also. All of this, in addition to his full-time work as a minister of the gospel and elder of the church—without slacking off on his duties there.

His hard work and dedication has affected hundreds of children and families in his community. Royce and his wife were nominated by the Kiwanis Club in 1999 as the “foster parents of the year” for the community and recognized as “foster parents of the year” in 2000 by the local welfare agency. His name was also submitted to the West Aurora (Illinois) High School, where he graduated in 1971, for the new “Wall of Fame” consisting of outstanding former graduate students in 2006.

We need more such outstanding Christians in the world today (Matthew 5:16; 25:31f; Galatians 6:10; James 1:27) and truly they are an answer to those liberals who ask, “What have you anti’s done?” Have they done such?

Donald P. Ames
Article ran in Truth Magazine, September 2006

Royce and Cindy have written a Bible class workbook, Parenting Through the Ages. Their years of parenting skills and knowledge of the Scriptures make this an excellent book for any group study.