We Were Not Orphans: Stories from the Waco State Home (review)

We Were Not Orphans: Stories from the Waco State Home collects and provides an umbrella-like, general account of a little-known Texas state agency that existed between 1923 and 1979. Although this recent publication of the University of Texas Press might not meet the research and scholarly standards of historians and other humanities scholars, it is likely to stand alone as a general source about its main subject for many years. The author, Sherry Mathews, is associated with an advocacy marketing firm and is not a former resident of the home, but she has close family ties with some of the Waco home residents. Her interest in collecting stories from former residents from across the decades stems from her own discovery of the drama of the Waco State Home revealed at emotional, cathartic annual reunions.

Freelance author Robert Draper, who wrote of the book's foreword, reminds us of the innocence of most of the state home's children, whose only crime was to have been born poor. This book is a collection of personal recollections of several generations of Waco State Home residents and the adults who supervised them, brutally and with little remorse about the rough policies and vague procedures applied to the children by many of the staff members in charge of the home, from top to bottom.

Readers will find here the names and descriptions of those whose actions against the safety and well-being of the residents were most egregious, perhaps even criminal, and some readers may wonder if such candor may lead to litigation over competence, accuracy, and intent in the next years. Abuse of the children was common at this state agency, no doubt, and citizens will cringe at the stories shared and preserved by the former residents. Still, the revelations of these residents will inform researchers and others alike of the low standards and unspeakable treatment of those in the care of the state of Texas.

Books such as this deserve more professional handling than is evident in the steps taken by the University of Texas Press to bring this story to light. Most serious of the work's shortcomings are the absence of a simple subject index and the absence of a list or discussion of the research methodology and sources used in the narrative. The book ends abruptly, leaving the reader to wonder if the work has been truncated, chopped, or censored by editors. The stories of the residents, as important as they are as published primary sources and as nice as it is to have candid photos of most of the essays' authors, do not stand alone, but there is scant comment provided about the provenance of each picture used in this publication. This book is a prime example of a publication that merited far more thought and careful processing during the final editorial stages. The resilient children and youth who speak to us through the pages of We Were Not Orphans received poor service from a failed state agency in Waco that took too long to recognize its own fate.

Central Texans will long remember the labors of the late Harold "Swede" Larson, whose privately funded research projects resulted in extensive archival collections that included personal accounts of former residents, oral histories, major photography collections, and countless ephemera related to homes for children in Texas, most especially the Waco area. The Texas Collection, a special collection library-research center at Baylor University, has arranged and preserved Larson's research findings and future researchers will want to consult the extensive archival holdings of "Swede" Larson before plunging into the complex, sometimes conflicting stories of the Waco State Home former residents, which are the main focus of We Were Not Orphans.