A servant to children in need

They came in droves to her home.

Some for a night, a couple months or the rest of their childhood. Others returned for the holidays for years after they had grown up and moved on. There was never any telling how many would show.

And then they came to say goodbye.

About 100 people piled into Faith Missionary Baptist Church on Wednesday. Kids shared chairs. Family members and caseworkers stood along the walls. Others listened from outside. They were all there to honor and remember Essie Yaden, who died last week at the age of 85.

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For six decades, Essie and Glenn Yaden of Franklin fostered more than 600 kids, many of whom showed up to her funeral. In lieu of black, they wore red, Essie’s favorite color.

One of those foster kids, a 39-year-old woman who had called Essie "grandma" since she was 12, held her in her arms as she died, and did her makeup one last time per Essie’s request. Her son was Essie’s last foster kid.

Another, an attorney now, found out on Tuesday that Essie had died, and drove straight from Michigan to be there with the rest of his family.

And another, a businessman, told everyone how proud Essie was of him for serving in the army to pay for college, and growing up to make something of himself, despite all the odds that were stacked against him. He’s one of the lucky ones, he said, because he never had to leave.

Several spoke, read poems or sang during the service, sharing bittersweet memories and funny tales of the late Essie, relaying scripture and bellowing her favorite tunes. Others — those who couldn’t make it — sent letters to be read aloud.

Essie Yaden accepted everyone as they were. She never turned a child away, no matter the circumstances. But she had a few rules: To live in her home, you had to be home by curfew, you could not talk back, and most importantly, you had to go to Church at least three times a week.

‘If God was a woman’

Angel Price needed to know if Essie believed in God before she would commit to living with her.

She asked her, at age 12, when Essie came to meet her at a group home in Indianapolis. Price bounced between foster homes, but had been in that particular group home longer than any other kid, she recalled. Essie told Price she lived on a farm and could provide her a safe and loving home, if she wanted, but Price wasn’t sold on the idea.

"A farm?" Price recalled saying. "I’m sorry ma’am, but that is not the place for me."

Besides, she had heard it all before. But there was something different about Essie, Price said, so she told her she’d think on it. Back then, kids had more of a choice, she said.

A week later, Essie returned, told the young girl she had moved from the farm to a house near Bargersville and asked her if that changed her mind. Almost, she said. She just had one question for Essie.

"Miss Essie," she said softly. "Do you believe in God?"

"Why yes I do," she recalled Essie saying, and that was that.

Price moved in with Essie and Glenn Yaden in 1992. She was a biracial kid from the city, with brown eyes and curly locks, in the Franklin countryside. She didn’t think she would fit in with all the blonde-haired, blue-eyed kids, but the Yadens made sure she did.

It wasn’t long before they moved into town, to a 2,400 square-foot house on Jefferson Street where Price was more comfortable, and would eventually graduate high school and get married.

She worked hard — as did all the kids — helping Glenn Yaden fix up old rental properties the Yadens owned, and helping Essie in the kitchen.

"She dropped small seeds of change, but the most important thing she taught me was to love others, despite how they treat you. You never know what they’re going through, she’d say. She understood those who were poor and in need. That’s what made her special, I think. Whether you were hurt, poor or abused, she could relate … and even when she didn’t have it, she gave it anyway, because she knew what it was like," Price said.

What she appreciated most was that the Yadens never forced the idea of adoption on her. 

"I knew who my mom was, and she respected that," Price said. "To her, I was her daughter. To me, she was grandma. Always grandma."

Price eventually moved to Virginia and became a cosmetologist, but she talked to Essie on the phone daily and visited every year, she said.

Essie’s foster care license expired in 2005, when she was 69. But a couple years ago, when Price was at risk of losing her son, Aiven Williams, she begged Essie to take him in. Essie didn’t hesitate, Price said. In her 80s, she went through the licensing process all over again and took care of Williams while Price worked to get her life back on track, she said.

"If God was a woman, you’d see Essie," Price said.

Price sang a Vince Gill song during the funeral. Williams spoke from the heart.

"I love Essie Yaden. She’s a hardworking woman, and I respect that," 10-year-old Williams said during the funeral. His voice, rocked by tears, echoed through the church. You couldn’t see him at the podium, but you sure could hear him.

"I would go to church with her and I would do her nails and she would be happy … She was the kindest woman in all the whole world, and I am so thankful for what she’s done for me."

Williams was Essie’s last foster kid. Her first came sometime in the mid-1950s.

How it all began

Babysitting for her husband’s coworker eventually led Essie down the path toward foster parenting, she told the Daily Journal in a story published in 2005.

She would not miss the bureaucracy, she said then, but she would miss the phone calls in the middle of the night asking her to come get a child.

"(Essie) has picked babies up from the hospital, helped teenage girls deliver their own babies and housed as many as seven teenagers at a time," the article read. "Some stayed for a few days. Some showed up in diapers and stayed until they graduated from high school. Some were good help in the kitchen or on the farm.

A few stole money from her and sneaked their boyfriends in through the window at night … Some of her most difficult and hurtful experiences were with the same children who provided her with special moments."

Essie was born in 1936 in Casey County, Kentucky. She married Glenn Yaden in 1954 at the Johnson County Courthouse.

Together for 65 years, they raised three biological children and fostered hundreds more.

She sold Avon and retired from the Indiana Masonic Home, where she worked tirelessly for many years, Price said.

She loved telling scary stories, traveling the world and taking cruises, according to her obituary. She also loved carrot cake, banana cream pie and peanut butter fudge, her family said.

Night or day, she was there

A case worker for 25 years in Johnson County, Joe Erickson never knew a better foster parent.

Essie was his go-to gal because she never said no, Erickson said. He knew Essie for 18 years, and learning that she took in more than 600 kids doesn’t surprise him, he said.

"If there was a child (who) needed a home, I would make the call to Essie first because (her) reply would be, ‘I’ll be right there,’ whether it be day or late at night. Essie was and is, as we can reflect in our hearts, a servant to children in need," Erickson wrote in a letter.

"She is the best foster parent I can think of, to retain that connection with the kids years after they’d gone," he said this week.

Without any questions, she took them in, regardless of age or circumstance. What made Essie unique as a foster parent is that she understood her role. Her goal, same as the caseworkers, was reuniting the kids with their parents, he said.

"She never tried to hinder our re-unification efforts. She knew, most of the time, the best thing was for them to go back to their parent," Erickson said.

Children in foster care often struggle with various behavioral problems and psychological trauma.

"Essie didn’t try to analyze or fix those problems. She left that to the professionals. Her job was to keep them safe, and she did that," he said.

‘The only one in the world’

Her family was close. At times, Essie’s biological grandchildren were jealous of the number of kids who called their grandma, grandma, she told the Daily Journal before she died.

April Phillips, Essie’s biological granddaughter, knew her grandmother’s heart was too big to stop her and there was enough love to go around.

"The attendance speaks loudly of my grandmother," Phillips said during the service Wednesday. "Some of you knew her as mom, mamaw, grandma, or maybe you simply called her Essie."

Phillips asked her cousins to describe their grandma in one word:

Charitable. Quick-witted. Wise. Comforting. Loving. Sacrificial.

"She sacrificed not only for the ones she knew and loved, but for the ones she didn’t even know. She cared for everyone who lived with her, which at times, were very many. I’m not sure how she did that. She worked a full-time job — third shift — all the while picking up my sister and I at 7 o’clock in the morning in her van, and taking us home with her … Before we knew it, she’d be off in the kitchen doing whatever else she needed to get done that day," Phillips said.

"In the countless conversations that I had with grandma, somehow — I’m not sure how as I look out here at everyone — she made me feel like, in that moment, I was the only one in the world."