Carolyn Jonson

Carolyn Johnson was born in 1942 in Buffalo, New York where she grew up with her sister Nancy and her brother Cory. Carolyn's best friend from fourth grade remembers her as being very skinny, very tall, and very serious. She also had very curly hair. Another close friend was adopted, and Carolyn remembers that she thought that was pretty neat. She was very interested in and curious about adoption.

When she grew up she became a third grade teacher. Many of the children in her classes were in the foster care system. This made her aware of and concerned about children in foster care. After she was married, when she and her husband decided to adopt, she knew she wanted to adopt children from the U.S. foster care system. The family adopted three children, Loie, Greg, and Dennis. Carolyn believed that there were many families who would adopt children from the foster care system, but who didn't know about these waiting children.

In 1972, she started the organization which later became the National Adoption Center. In the beginning, she used recipe file boxes to match up parents and children, and worked on her kitchen table. Many years later, the National Adoption Center was the first organization to use the Internet to find families for U.S. children in the foster care system. Using the Internet, newspapers, magazines, TV shows, and in other ways, it has now found families for over 20,000 children. The Center also sponsors the Adoption Clubhouse website.

The motto of the National Adoption Center is "There are no unwanted children, just unfound families." Use your favorite search engine or visit your library to learn more about Carolyn Johnson and the organization that she started.