WIFE’S DYING WISH FULFILLED
Darnell Steele completed the adoption of his 6- yearold son, Daniel, in Cook County Circuit Court on Friday, six months after the death of his wife, Annette.
It had been Annette Steele’s dying wish that her husband follow through on the process they started together nearly four years earlier when they agreed to take Daniel into their home for foster care.
It wasn’t a deathbed wish, Darnell Steele said.
“She didn’t really make me promise,” he told me.
Rather, it was more a mutual understanding, which the couple arrived at gradually as they faced the cancer that slowly took Annette’s life.
She was already fighting cancer when Daniel came into their lives, but she’d been fighting it for years, and they thought she would beat it again. And for a while she did. Still, Annette had been hesitant when the adoption agency called to ask if they would be willing to take care of the boy, Darnell said. She worried Daniel had already lost his birth mother. She didn’t want him to lose a second mother, too.
Universal Family Connection was familiar with the couple because they had served as foster parents for a family member’s children.
They knew that the Steeles, who also had five children of their own, would give Daniel a good home while the courts decided whether to terminate the parental rights of his birth mother, who had abandoned him at a West Side homeless shelter.
Annette’s concerns quickly subsided when the smiling 2- yearold joined their household. Later, as it became clear they would have an opportunity to adopt Daniel, she decided they should.
“By the time he was 4, she said, ‘ Let’s get Daniel. He needs a home, and he loves us, and he just loves our family, and we love him. So we should just go ahead and get him,’ ” Darnell recalled.
For Darnell, the bond started when he went to meet Daniel and bring him home. The toddler walked across the room and reached for his hand.
The Steeles started adoption proceedings a year ago.
Annette died in May. She was 50.
Before she became too ill, Annette worked as a medical assistant and later for various private colleges as an instructor for students learning to become medical assistants.
Darnell, 49, is a self- employed construction worker doing home improvements. He lives in Bronzeville.
The Steeles were married 25 years.
“She had two kids. I had one. We had two together,” Darnell said.
Despite his wife’s dying wish, Darnell said he had to weigh whether he could handle the responsibility.
“That was what she really wanted to do, and it became a burden on me because I didn’t know if I could do it by myself,” Darnell said. “But I prayed on it, and God said, ‘ That’s your son.’ He gave him to me for a reason.”
It helps that Darnell has the couple’s two youngest children, ages 21 and 22, to help him, although he laughed and said that he feels as though he’s still raising them, too.
Daniel’s adoption was one of nine finalized in court Friday in recognition of National Adoption Day. Reporters and photographers were invited to observe the occasion. Despite the hoopla, it was a bittersweet morning for Darnell being there without Annette.
“I’m sad she’s not here now because this was going to be the highlight of my life today,” he told Judge Carol Kipperman.
His sadness didn’t keep him from bragging about Daniel’s aptitude for math and Legos.
“He’s going to be an engineer or an architect. He’s a builder,” said his proud father.
On any given day, some 1,000 children are available for adoption in Illinois. Here’s hoping all of them find as good a home as Daniel Steele did.