Volume 9, Number 1, 1999


Burlington couple opens home and heart

Four years ago, Roxane and Jonathan Leopold were talked into a life-changing decision by their 17-year-old daughter, Sarah. After watching an Oprah Winfrey show about bad foster parents, Sarah came to the dinner table and suggested they open their home to foster children. “She always wanted us to have more children and was able to convince us that this was something we should do,” says Jonathan.

Along with son, Jesse, EG 2002, now a sophomore at the University, the family decided to become a part of Vermont’s foster parenting program. In the four years since then, they have welcomed eight foster children. The experience has been “challenging in many ways, but wonderfully rewarding,” Jonathan explains. “For people who have room in their lives and their hearts, it is a tremendous opportunity to make a difference.”

The first children cared for by the Leopolds were siblings, a 6-year-old girl and 4-year-old boy. With their family in crisis, the two were sent to the Leopolds for one night, but ended up staying six months. Other children were placed with the family for lengths of time as short as one night and as long as three months. “Three have been infants,” says Roxane. “They came to us because, by Vermont statute, there is a 21-day waiting period for a birth mother to change her mind before an adoption can be processed.”

Sharing their lives with these children—many of whom have been abused or neglected in some way—seems to be an even greater commitment when you consider the busy careers that the Leopolds juggle as well.

Since 1975, Roxane has served as executive director of the King Street Youth Center, which provides a range of services to children from Burlington’s poorest neighborhoods. Most of the children she works with come from single-parent families dealing with drug or alcohol abuse, unemployment, physical abuse and neglect and other social problems.

Jonathan is chief financial officer of Global Health Care Communications, a London-based publisher of health-care magazines that is preparing to launch a major, closed-circuit satellite broadcasting system. He also runs his own Leopold Financial Group, which will soon break ground on an international health-care training facility, conference center and wildlife sanctuary in the Bahamas.

If that isn’t enough, the two volunteer for numerous civic, political, social service and cultural organizations in their community as well. In their spare time, they also study T’ai Chi, the Chinese martial art of moving meditation. “It gives us 30 to 50 minutes of quiet time together,” Roxane notes.

How, then, do they find time for foster children? Roxane explains that they usually take children only during the summer months, when Sarah and Jesse are home to be a part of their “parenting team.” It also helps that Jonathan works out of a home office. The Leopolds are careful to take children only when they are certain that they can offer the time and love that is needed. “They can call us any time, and we can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ any time. We’re not inclined to do it unless it’s going to be a good experience for the child,” says Roxane.

“Every child has an unlimited capacity to absorb love,” Jonathan adds, “and foster children have an even more overwhelming need. It can be complicated sometimes, so you really have to be ready and able to open your home.”

The Leopolds have encouraged others to become foster parents as well, including neighbors and friends. In the civic-minded community of Burlington, it hasn’t been difficult to find people who are willing to give back, says Jonathan.

“Vermont is such a wonderful place because there is such a tradition of being involved in the community,” he notes. “If you have an experience like foster children, you just make it part of your life. There’s not a question of how to find time.”