Woven into the heart:
Woman’s love and parish’s help create a home for four children
When Janice Knox adopted her niece’s four sons in 2004, the boys asked to have their picture taken with the commissioner who approved the adoption. From left, Elijah, Tuskany, Janice, Israel and Jonathan share their celebration with Mark Battise, a commissioner for the Marion County Superior Court 8 Probate Division. (Submitted photo)
By John Shaughnessy
(Listen to the author read this story)
As she drove from Indianapolis to Chicago in the ice and the snow, Janice Knox believed in her heart that she had been called by God to save the lives of the four young boys.
Hours earlier, Knox had received a phone call from her niece, begging her to come to Chicago because she needed someone to give a home to her four sons who then ranged in age from 8 years to 18 months. It will just be for a while, the niece insisted, just long enough so she could find a job and another place to live.
Knox had heard the story before and this time she was convinced that her niece wouldn’t change, that she would have to be the one to shape the lives and the futures of the four children.
As she drove to Chicago, Knox thought about how she was single, 50 years old and still suffering from three herniated disks in her neck—from an accident in the U.S. Army that eventually led to her medical discharge. She also thought about how her disability check wasn’t enough to take care of four growing boys, too.
Yet as the doubts crept into her mind, she also remembered the advice she had been given by her favorite aunt, a woman who repeatedly had told her through the years, “When God asks you to do something, just do it and he’ll see you through it.”
So as she neared Chicago, Knox told God, “I don’t have any idea what I’m doing. I need you to open every door possible.”
Six years have passed since Knox made that prayer. Since that trip to Chicago, she and the four boys have been on a journey that she believes shows the power of God’s love.
It’s also a journey that shows the difference that the love of one person and a supporting community can make.
‘Work a miracle like you always do’
Knox likes to talk about the “miracles” that started to happen after she brought Elijah, Jonathan, Tuskany and Israel to Indianapolis in 2001.
At the time, Knox had volunteered at the Cathedral Kitchen, a ministry of SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral in Indianapolis, helping cook and serve food to the poor and the homeless. When she explained to staff members why she couldn’t volunteer any longer, their response overwhelmed her.
“They rounded up a lot of people to help me,” recalls Knox, a member of SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral Parish in Indianapolis. “They brought food, high chairs and toys for the boys. They came out of the woodwork with books and school supplies.”
Then there was the first Christmas for the boys in her home.
“I had nothing left after I paid all the bills,” she says. “I had given my tree away five years earlier to someone. I just asked God, ‘Work a miracle like you always do.’ Two days before Christmas, I had two trees and ornaments. Come Christmas morning, these guys had more clothes, toys, shoes and gifts than you can imagine.”
Yet amid the “miracles” came the struggle.
The boys’ mother still hadn’t turned around her life, Knox says. Even worse, her visits to see the boys and her quick departures took an emotional toll on them. After a while, the mother’s visits became less frequent. As the children’s guardian, Knox initially tried to protect them. Then she sought to adopt them, starting in 2002.
Knox asked Father Rick Ginther to be a character witness for her at the adoption hearings.
“She’s a remarkable woman,” says Father Ginther, who was the pastor of SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral Parish at the time of the adoption hearings. “I met her a year after I arrived at the cathedral in 1993. Single, with a military background, she had an intense faith in the Lord, and she wanted to revive her Catholicism. She had a very strong relationship with God.”
Still, Father Ginther wasn’t sure what would happen when Knox told him she was taking temporary care of the four boys in 2001.
“I didn’t know how it was going to work out. The youngest boy was in diapers,” says Father Ginther, who is now the pastor of St. Patrick and St. Margaret Mary parishes in Terre Haute. “But she brought that intensity and that sense of mission—and she did it.
“It wasn’t her intention to adopt them. She just wanted to take care of them while their mother got her situation together. But the mother didn’t. Those kids just wanted some sense of love and structure in their lives. That’s what she gave them. I said we’d help however we can. The whole parish just adopted the whole situation. I’m very proud of the people of that parish.”
The adoptions became official in the summer of 2004.
“All of them also got their names changed so they all have the last name of Knox,” says Knox, who served in the U.S. Army from 1977 to 1992 and spent five more years in the Army Reserves.
She has given her adopted children more than a name, say those who have watched her make a home for the boys.
Woven into their hearts
“What’s been put on her plate has been tremendous, but she’s doing a wonderful job,” says Dee Morley, a Cathedral Kitchen volunteer who is one of several people who give birthday and Christmas presents to the boys. “With her military background, she really knows how to
handle the boys. The good Lord knew who to put them with so they would be raised correctly.”
Mary Rita Babbitt shakes her head in wonder at the life Knox has given the boys.
“To think she’s a single girl and all she’s done,” says Babbitt, a member of SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral Parish. “She keeps them busy, and she’s a real role model. She got them baptized. She got them confirmed. She does all the right things.”
No one knows that better than the four boys: Elijah, now 14, Jonathan, 11, Tuskany, 8, and Israel, 7.
“She’s a great person,” Elijah says. “She brought us into her home, and she adopted us. She helps us with our homework when we need help. She provides a lot for us, and she protects us. If it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t have a home.”
Knox deeply appreciates such comments, but she prefers to put the focus on people who have made opportunities available for her children, including a friend who provided music lessons for the boys and a couple who gave the boys dance lessons.
She also talks about the people who fixed the roof of her small house and the people who mail her letters with money to help pay some bills.
“It’s all the miracles that have happened for us,” she says. “I know it’s called divine intervention. I thank God every day for it.”
She makes her contributions, too.
“I’ve always heard that God helps those who help themselves,” she says. “About five years ago, I got an
embroidery machine, and I’d put designs and the names of the boys on their shirts. It’s evolved into a little business for me. The name of my company is Four Sons Embroidery.”
Their names are woven into her business. Her love is woven into their lives.
“People think I’m an awfully brave person, but I don’t look at it that way,” Knox says. “I just feel I’m one of God’s servants doing what he asks me to do. And I do it fearlessly.” †