700 kids

If you spend much time in journalism, it's easy to get cynical and discouraged. News is, by definition, what is different, so we in the business are drawn to the aberrant, darker side of human nature: killings, brutality, corruption, senseless tragedy, needless suffering. Pundits like me spend much of our time writing about what's wrong with the world.

Every so often, though, you meet people like Bonnie and Gordon Lange. After 30 years of being foster parents, caring for upwards of 700 children, the Anchorage couple was honored this summer as the National Parents of the Year. I was honored to interview them last year.

The Langes specialize in caring for medically fragile foster children. Dealing with just one of those children at a time would exhaust a normal human being, and the Langes often had several at once. Their very first placement was a boy who was mentally retarded and schizophrenic. At age 8, he couldn't eat with utensils or use the bathroom.

The Langes routinely take in cocaine babies. Bonnie will stay up for two or three days straight, comforting them as they go through the agony of withdrawal. They took a 1-year-old who came to them in a coma and never woke up. He died after a year in their care. A 16-month-old boy had heart surgery and didn't survive post-operative complications. He died in Bonnie's arms.

Their three biological children are long grown and gone, but Bonnie and Gordon have a second family of adopted foster children. Fetina, now age 4, has Down's syndrome and cleft palate. Daniel, now 12, was born with hardly any intestines. Thirteen-year-old Larry, for whom they are legal guardians, is multihandicapped and won't live to see adulthood.

National Parents of the Year? The National Parents' Day Council might as well retire the award and name it after the Langes. It would take somebody with the dedication and selflessness of Mother Teresa to top them -- and Mother Teresa didn't have any children.