2 families teach us dignity and love

By Kathleen Parker
Commentary

Published in The Orlando Sentinel, August 12, 1998

Every now and then, someone comes along to restore faith in humanity. A round of hosannas, please, for the families of two babies switched at birth.

The families of Callie Marie Johnson and Rebecca Chittum, babies who went home from the University of Virginia Medical Center with the wrong parents three years ago, met last weekend for the first time. They reportedly had colas, shared photos and talked. Not bad for folks who never met before and who recently experienced the unimaginable.

Better yet, they did it without lawyers and judges, which, alas, explains why everything went so swimmingly.

The baby switch was discovered last month when Paula Johnson sought tests for a paternity suit. She learned not only that her old boyfriend wasn't Callie's father, but that she wasn't the mother. She began to look for her biological daughter, apparently the child being raised by Whitney Rogers and Kevin Chittum. As though fate hadn't toyed enough with these families, Rogers and Chittum were killed in a car accident July 4 without ever learning of the swap.

The child's grandparents have been taking care of Rebecca since the accident. At last week's meeting, each family assured the other they weren't interested in taking custody of the ``right'' baby. Both sides want to minimize any trauma to the girls who, despite fate's trickery, seem to have landed in safe, loving homes.

This case, rather than being a tale about dubious hospital practices and baby safety, instead holds promise as a lesson in some of our nobler, less familiar, human values. Namely, the ability to think for ourselves and the courage to act selflessly.

So accustomed are we to reading about people suing over minor infractions or airing their private affairs on talk TV, we've become unaccustomed to people acting with dignity. Johnson and Rebecca's grandparents, who attended the meeting last week, may well become a national treasure as they set an example for the rest of us.

Thus far, they've shunned media attention. One hopes they can resist the lure of Hollywood money as agents line up with offers for their story. They've spoken with lawyers, but left them out of the family meeting. One hopes too that they can continue to resist falling into the adversarial trap. Once lawyers become engaged, as millions have learned through divorce proceedings, the tempo and tenor of negotiations escalate from differences to guerrilla warfare.

Finally, the families have announced their intention to resolve this without the courts, a decision that seriously damages the intelligence curve for the rest of litigious America.

The two families are demonstrating that sane, responsible adults can make decisions in the interests of their children without government intervention. Somehow during the Age of Divorce, we've allowed ourselves to be convinced that government and institutions know best when the opposite is alarmingly true.

What the Chittums and Johnson seem to have intuited is that to invite attorneys and judges into their family rooms is to invite public intrusion into private affairs and, ultimately, to bring confusion to justice. We've seen what happens to children when divorcing couples rely on the judicial system to resolve differences -- tattered emotions, parental disenfranchisement and familial estrangement.

Divorcing parents and family-court judges should watch Johnson and the Chittums -- people who never knew each other much less once loved each other -- as they determine what's best for their children. Sane, responsible adults can do this, and we're all dignified by it.

Kathleen Parker's column is distributed by Tribune Media Services. Her column also appears Sunday in the Sentinel's Insight section. She welcomes your views. Mail: The Orlando Sentinel, MP-6, P.O. Box 2833, Orlando, Fla. 32802-2833. E-mail: [email protected]

[Posted 08/11/98 10:07 PM EST]