At home, in Pittsburgh
Five years after an earthquake devastated their country; three Haitian orphans are settled in their lives in Western Pa.
Can it really have been five years? Five years since the earth cracked and crumbled and, in less than a minute, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives on Haiti? On Jan 12, 2010, that cataclysm launched three children on a frantic, highly publicized odyssey. For Stanley and Kensly Owens, now 16 and 12, journey’s end is a warm McCandless kitchen, where, on a recent January evening, the talk and teasing was about soccer (good), homework (not so good), girls (no comment) and food (yes, please). The boys attend North Allegheny schools. “Put that back, you,” said Carmen Owens playfully to her son
Stanley, who had reached into a plastic bag for a roll to nibble on — just before a dinner of meatball subs. “Aw, my favorite snack,” he said, grinning. It’s much the same for Fekens Dusch, now 15, who arrived with no formal schooling and no English but is now managing ninthgrade-level math classes and living with his family in a cozy house in the city’s Bon Air neighborhood. The three were among 54 children living in an orphanage near Port-AuPrince when they were swept up in a dramatic airlift led by then-Gov. Ed Rendell, arriving in Pittsburgh Jan. 18, 2010. While most of the children were quickly placed with their adoptive parents, these three boys were among 12 children without adoption proceedings in progress when the earthquake struck, but their caretakers at Bresma orphanage, Ben Avon sisters Jamie and Ali McMutrie, refused to leave without them. At first the boys lived at Holy Family Institute in Emsworth and then, after red tape was untangled, they were adopted by two families. Michael Owens, a physician who lives in McCandless, and his wife, Carmen, a homemaker and volunteer at Holy Family, added Stanley and Kensly to their brood of six: Keenan, Quintin, Makena, Melina, Ayden and Gavin, then ranging in ages from 15 to 6. Michael Dusch, a video specialist at Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority and his wife, Eileen, a program supervisor at Holy Family, brought Fekens into their home, joining their children Michael, then 23, and Danielle, then 19. When adoption proceedings for the three children were formalized in March 2012, Fekens was in the Allegheny County courtroom sporting a purple satin shirt and a poker face. Afterward, as the other children gathered around in front of the elevator, he broke out into a Michael Jackson moonwalk. Since then, he has performed on a dance team at Pittsburgh Heat Hip Hop Dance Company, is beginning guitar lessons and loves music — Drake and Black Eyed Peas. And Andrew McCutcheon. And math. And eating calzone from Fiori’s in Brookline. “When I grow up, I’d like to draw,” he added, as he sat at a dining room table with his parents and his sister on a recent evening. “Or be a cop. Or a plumber.” His interest in law enforcement isn’t coincidental — Mr. Dusch, his father, is a state constable, and his grandfather, Eileen Dusch’s father, was a Pittsburgh police sergeant. One day a week, as a ninth-grader at Holy Family Academy, Fekens is part of a work-study program at a United Way office Downtown where he stuffs school supplies in backpacks for kids and other tasks. “I like to help out,” he says. So what kind of person is he? Is he outgoing or shy? “I am not the shy part,” Fekens said, with more than a trace of a Creole accent. Did he have a hard time getting adjusted to Pittsburgh? “Nope,” he said. Was it hard making friends? “Nope,” he said. “Oh, my gosh,” his mother, Eileen Dusch, said, laughing, “his social life is not the problem. Or maybe it IS the problem.” He had no formal education when he arrived. “He essentially started school at the age of 10,” Mrs. Dusch said. “He spoke zero English, couldn’t read or write and had never been in a structured classroom. “ Rules haven’t always been easy to follow, but his high school’s newest one is a no-brainer — laptops must be fully charged by the beginning of the school day. That isn’t a problem with Fekens. Does he use it a lot? A big grin. “Yes, except when I’m grounded,” he says. On a recent evening, the Owens boys sat at their kitchen table with five of their other siblings scarfing down meatball sandwiches while their mother stood at a counter casually scooping homemade french fries out of hot oil. Mrs. Owens has household help, but she’s up every morning at the crack of dawn making sure everyone has breakfast, packs their school lunches, chauffeurs them to the dentist, to get haircuts, to sports practice. The daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants who grew up near Altoona — her father was a doctor and a lawyer — she was a special education teacher when she met her husband, then an emergency room doctor, on a blind date. Dr. Owens, now a medical director at Highmark Insurance, took a leadership role on behalf of the 12 children at Holy Family, visiting Haiti in 2011 as their legal representative and ensuring all the adoption petitions were signed. Stanley and Kensly are all about soccer, 24/7. A pair of new cleats were under the Christmas tree for Stanley. Kensly, a quiet, friendly child, showed off his new mini-robot to a visitor. What does he remember about the earthquake? His little shoulders shrug. “I was watching TV and everything started to shake,” he said. Flash forward to today, and school. Stanley grimaces. “Math is boring,” he says. What about English, his mother prompts him. “Shakespeare,” he mutters. “Romeo and Juliet. I somehow passed it, so all is well,” he adds in a quasi-theatrical accent, prompting guffaws from his younger brother, Ayden. Is he interested in girls yet? “I don’t want a girlfriend,” Stanley says firmly.
And yet, when asked a few minutes later what he’s looking forward to about a summer vacation later this year to Puerto Rico, the beach, the weather and girls are on the list. “He doesn’t want a girlfriend, he wants GIRLS!!” shrieks his sister Makena, 16. The words “Mom” and “Dad” come easily to all of three of these boys, and the feelings are mutual. “I always wanted a younger brother,” said Danielle Dusch, who noted that her older brother Michael wants to take Fekens to Haiti someday. Haiti is always in the air. For while these boys hold these new families close, in some ways they seem to hold the memories of their Haitian families closer, perhaps the better not to lose them. Everyone — parents and children — are waiting for their American citizenship to come through. It’s not just about getting a driver’s license, it’s about returning to the island to visit. If they went now, they wouldn’t be allowed to return to the U.S. And what would they find in Haiti? Unlike many of the 1,100 or so Haitian children who came to the U.S. after the earthquake, Stanley and Kensly are in constant touch with their mother, Magdela. It was fairly common for financially struggling parents to put their children in orphanages so they could be cared for, but Stanley and Kensly’s mother found it extremely difficult to give up her two boys and would walk long distances to the orphanage to bring her children food. “She wanted three things for them,” said Mrs. Owens. “A Christian home, education after high school and continued contact with them.” Stanley talks to his mother in Haiti every Wednesday or Thursday, depending on the telephone connection. They speak in Creole. His younger brother Kensly lost his accent within months and has forgotten most of his native Creole language, but the Owenses are trying to encourage friendships with other Haitians so the boys can keep it up. Every week, “Stanley goes into the next room to talk to his mother on his own, and then brings Kensly in so he can translate for his mom and brothers,” said Mrs. Owens Asked about his remaining family in Haiti, Fekens shakes his head. Some subjects are just too private to share with reporters. He has an older sister in Haiti; three younger brothers and a sister were placed with families in France, but he isn’t sure where they live. It is abundantly clear, though, that this is a young man who, along with Stanley and Kensly, embraces and is embraced by his American family, openly, sometimes boisterously, always tenderly. “This has been lifechanging for us,” said Mrs. Dusch. “I think things happen for a reason.” The role she and her family have played in this story is enormous — just as it is with the Owens — but she shrugs it off. Instead, she and her husband marvel about Fekens: how he still loves hot weather — “he won’t step in a pool unless it’s 90 degrees out,” she said. How he likes watching The History Channel, “because he loves to find out how things work,” added Mr. Dusch. How he managed to overcome a difficult, impoverished childhood and a massive natural disaster to become something very close to a typical 15-year-old boy, if there is such a thing. Quantifying happiness isn’t easy, and Stanley and Kensly squirmed a bit when asked point blank about their feelings, although the relaxed, affectionate horseplay with their sisters and brothers in that warm kitchen spoke volumes. But Fekens is mathematically inclined, so when asked to rank his happiness on a scale of one to 10, he didn’t miss a beat. “One hundred,” he said quietly. “My family, they watch out for me.”