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Greenville family opens hearts, home to Russian orphanPosted Sunday, September 12, 2004 - 2:08 amBy Eric Connor STAFF WRITER econnor@greenvillenews.com
The Russian government had given the 15-year-old $500 upon his discharge from the orphanage for disabled children, where he had lived since age 11 after losing both legs in a train accident. The money is all that an orphan has when he's told, typically at age 16, he has to leave the orphanage and venture out into a society that gives disabled people little opportunity to succeed. He took the money ... and spent it on CDs. Benham has left the orphanage, arriving not in a harsh world that often finds legless amputees living on the streets, but in America, in Greenville, where teenagers spend their extra money on music. His has been an uncertain journey, one that brought the bright and cheerful boy to Greenville and the home of Dave and Kim Benham last summer; back to the cold poverty of Penza, Russia, and now back to the warm home he swore he would return to. Kotsya first came to Greenville as part the Hope Program, a Christian mission initiative led by local prosthetic specialist Dean Hesselgrave. During the process to adopt two children of his own, Hesselgrave and his wife Cindy saw the conditions Kotsya and others lived in at the Nizny Lomov Orphanage outside of Penza. Penza, a city of about 780,000, is an area still struggling to fill the void of the Soviet Union's collapse, a place where horses draw carriages made of truck beds and tires. The orphanage has only three sets of crutches and no wheelchairs, and children are fed almost exclusively a daily diet of beet soup. Conditions were such that prosthetic work the children required could only be done in America. Last summer, the Hesselgraves raised money and found host families to bring four of the orphans to Greenville to be fitted for prosthetic arms and legs. Kotsya received two legs. Three others got legs and arms. One boy, Roman Trofimov, is being adopted by his host family and will return to America soon. Another boy, 8-year-old Valeria Tutov, is still seeking a home. He has no hands. The fourth of the group has left the orphanage and did not want to be adopted. In the coming months, the Hope Program plans to bring seven more children to Greenville. Unlike the last group, these children are in need of surgery before they can be fitted with prosthetic limbs. Local health professionals have volunteered services and more are needed, but perhaps the biggest challenge is finding families willing to open their homes. "We are hoping to bring these children to Greenville soon," Hesselgrave says. "We will be needing host families for these children, some of whom will be here for four weeks, others may be here up to three months."
'I'll be back' Kotsya was 9 years old when he lost his legs. His mother, who Kim Benham says is remembered by Kotsya as extremely loving, had recently died, and he was left to live with his alcoholic father in Siberia. Kotsya and friends regularly hopped trains to pass the time. One day, as he tried to climb aboard a moving train, his hands slipped and his legs were run over. His father abandoned him, and he spent two years in a Siberian hospital, partly because his health care providers didn't know what else to do with him. Kotsya eventually was put aboard a train west to Penza and the orphanage. There, he relied on a rudimentary cart to wheel himself around. When he came to the Benhams' home, Kim says, the family was struck immediately with his beaming smile, his utter exuberance for life. Between 10 and 15 years ago, the Benhams had already adopted four children, all infants. Kim, a stay-at-home mom who also provides home studies for adoptions, was sure her family would grow no more. That was before she saw Kotsya's smile. "We immediately fell in love with him," she says. "It really wasn't about helping him. It was about wanting him." On the Benhams' porch are five bricks, each engraved with a child's name. As Kotsya was leaving for Russia last summer, he pointed at the bricks for what are now his four siblings, repeating the names. Then, he pointed at himself. "Kotsya Benham." Kotsya is fond of quoting Arnold Schwarzenegger's lines from the "Terminator" movies (close to the only English he can speak). His favorite line was and is, "I'll be back."
A long process For a time, Kim says she wasn't sure if she would ever see Kotsya again. No orphan had ever been adopted from Nizny Lomov, and the judge in charge of the process would go months without updating the family. From time to time, she just hoped she would learn something either way, if only so the family could move on. "I didn't really lose hope," Kim says, "but I was about to." The family had just shipped a disabled teenager they considered a son back to a country where hope is in short supply and time was running out before Kotsya was ineligible for adoption and had to leave the orphanage to find a job. Expectations and opportunities for legless teenagers aren't the same in Russia as in America, Dave Benham says. "It's almost like a circus the way people would stare at him over there," he says. "And there's not enough jobs even for the healthy people." Kotsya, in just two short weeks, is acclimating to life as an American. He's attending public school, learning English as a second language, and last weekend he learned to ski on a kneeboard.
Donations help Soon, he will be refitted with prosthetic legs, necessary because he grew out of the ones provided for him last year. Without the help of donations both monetary and in-kind, such as plane travel, Kim says the family wouldn't have been able to do what they've done. The Hope Program depends on the charity of others willing to pitch in. Dave says taking in the disabled Russian children is not as difficult as he feared at first, because despite their disabilities, the survival skills they've learned from such a harsh environment have made them very self-sufficient. It was difficult to leave the orphanage when they went to pick up Kotsya, Kim says, because so many children who need families were left behind. As they were leaving, Kim says one child said he, too, wanted a mom. "He told me, 'I'll be waiting right here.'" There is only so much room under one roof, but at least under this roof, a teenager is listening to music.
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