Aurora couple opens home, hearts to nearly 80 foster children over 35 years

When biology was in charge, it gave Minnie Smith of Aurora an even split between boys and girls — three of each.

But family is more than just biology to Minnie and her husband, David, who will be married 55 years this month. To the longtime Aurora residents, family also includes almost 80 people they cared for during 35 years as foster parents.

Unlike the Smith's biological children, the foster children — now grown since the couple retired from fostering in the early 1990s — aren't an even mix of genders. They're all men.

“I like boys better,” Minnie said. “They're easier.”

The Smiths, both 72, cared for boys who were black, Hispanic, white. Some stayed as little as a week; others several years until their 18th birthday.

In their sprawling, six-bedroom home, the Smiths had room for as many as eight foster kids at once. They also had plenty of time, which they used to take foster children to choir and youth programs at their church and sports or extracurricular activities at Cowherd and Simmons middle schools or East Aurora High School.

“When my kids married and moved on, I still had kids,” Minnie said. “We gave the boys love, time, the joy of our lives.”

Dewon Arrington, 28, of Aurora, is one of the foster kids the Smiths still keep in touch with. He remembers some anxiety upon moving in with the family as it was his first foster home.

But those memories are countered by images of David making sure Arrington woke up early enough for basketball or football practice, and friends marveling “your mom made rolls!” at bread baked by Minnie.

“They're not my biological parents, but I still call them Mom and Dad. They came to my wedding,” said Arrington, now a father of three and an auto technician at CarMax in Naperville. “That says a lot for me to be a kid who made it successfully through the system, and be able to call back and talk to them and let them know they were a great influence in making me the man I am today.”

While they greatly influenced men like Arrington, who also is a deacon at Light Christian Center in Bellwood, the Smiths' stand-in parenting role wasn't all warm and fuzzy. Minnie and David developed an allowance system requiring the boys to complete certain chores in an effort to teach neatness and accountability.

“She wanted to get across the fact that when you have responsibilities, you have to carry them out or there's consequences,” said Faye Ellis, one of the Smiths' biological granddaughters, who served as allowance system secretary during her time living in their home. “If they didn't do a chore, there was a fine they had to pay the other boy for doing the chore for them.”

The allowance score would be settled and debts would be paid at a weekly family meeting that often took the boys on a roller coaster of excitement about their newly acquired cash that could quickly fade into reluctance to hand it over to another boy, said Ellis, 34, of Bolingbrook.

“Everything had to be neat. If your bed wasn't made, that's when you got hit on your allowance,” Arrington said. “Basically, they taught us independence.”

Consistency was key to being good foster parents, said David, a 31-year former employee of the Illinois Department of Corrections who now works at a funeral home.

“The main thing was treating everyone with the same respect,” he said.

Not all the boys the Smiths helped stayed on the right path. Minnie said she'll occasionally get collect calls from former foster children who are in jail. When the calls come, she said she always takes them.

“The good days really outweigh the bad days,” Minnie said.

Foster parents receive some financial assistance from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, with the amount depending on the age of each foster child.

But Arrington and Ellis insist the Smiths never were in it for the money.

“That takes a lot of courage and a lot of heart to basically open your heart and your home to total strangers,” Arrington said.

The couple's generous giving of their time, love and home to so many foster children over the years makes David and Minnie Smith people to be thankful for, those who know them say.

“They give so much and don't ask for anything in return,” Ellis said. “When you find people like that, it's very rare.”