'Mothers come in all shapes and sizes': Barberton woman fosters more than 50 children

Jennifer Wokojance initially hoped to grow her Barberton family through adoption.

Yet when she began reading about all the children in need on Summit County Children Services’ website, her mission grew.

“I just wanted to help as many kids as I could without, you know, overdoing it,” Wokojance said recently.

That was in 2006, when she was a divorced mother with two boys, ages 9 and 6.

Since then, Wokojance has served as foster mom to more than 50 Summit County children – she stopped counting a few years ago when she hit 50 – all while working a full-time job at a bank and raising her two biological sons.

Summit County foster care: How does it work? Here are the details

Some of the foster kids lived with Wokojance for weeks or months, others for years. Many, like Jeanna Birbrayer, remain connected to Wokojance years later, either considering her their mother or second mom.

“Mothers come in all shapes and sizes,” Birbrayer, now 25, said recently.

Wokojance, she said, “was the first person to ever offer me unconditional love.”

Taking in 6 siblings

Cory Copeland was 17 when Akron police showed up at his father’s house in 2009 and found what they described as a meth lab.

Copeland, his two siblings and three other children living there were taken into the custody of Summit County Children’s Services, who turned to Wokojance for help.

“They called and asked if I could take a sibling group of six and I just laughed,” Wokojance recalled. “I was like, ‘Are you crazy?’”

But Wokojance, who had been fostering children at her modest 1920s-era home for three years by then, said she’d give it a try.

Copeland, now 32 with children of his own, said he was “bad” at first.

“I was 17 and I just felt like I didn’t need to be in foster care,” Copeland said.

But from the moment the six kids arrived, he said, Wokojance made them feel safe and welcome.

“Even the first night there, all six of us, we all slept fine,” Copeland said. “She wanted to make sure we were all comfortable in every way.”

As the weeks and months passed, some of the children who arrived with Copeland moved on to live with other family members, but he stayed, and new foster children arrived.

Once, after Copeland drove off in Wokojance’s car without permission, he was sure she would want him to leave, he said. But she stuck by him, helped him get his GED and land a decent-paying job at an oil refinery when he left her home at age 20.

Wokojance keeps a letter Copeland wrote to her after the incident with the car in a box with hundreds of other notes and pictures from her foster children. She said she pulls out the box when she’s having a tough day and reminds herself that rough patches with the children pass.

“I don’t want to let one bad day change a person’s good story,” she once told Grace Church Barberton, which is a big part of her and the kids’ lives.

Fostering children, she said, has taught her the experience is not about her.

“If my heart breaks,” she said, “their heart is already broken, so we’re doing it for them.”

'Living by example is huge'

Wokojance said she was naive when she started fostering.

She grew up in Hinckley, she said, in sort of a “bubble,” unaware of how many kids are impoverished, neglected, abused or in need.

Summit County Children Services provides helpful training to foster parents, she said, but nothing can prepare you for every child because they all bring their own past experiences and their own needs with them.

Some need to go to counseling. Some have special needs.

The first child Wokojance fostered after she was certified by children services was an 11-year-old girl who had been locked outside of her own home.

At the time, Wokojance’s sons – Caleb and Jacob  – were 9 and 6.

“We were new and I didn’t really know anybody who’s done this, and there was just a lot of excitement to get to know each other” after she arrived, Wokojance said. “Nobody wanted to go to sleep that night because we were all talking, and she just fit right into our household.”

The girl stayed six or seven weeks, and there were tears when she left, Wokojance said.

“But I didn't lose any contact with her whatsoever,” Wokojance said. "She got to go back home to her dad, and he had no problem with her staying in touch with me.”

Wokojance said their relationship with the girl continued into adulthood.

“She ended up having three children, actually, and I got to know them and yeah, wow, wow, wow,” Wokojance said, repeatedly saying how proud she has been of the kids who have passed through her care.

As time passed and her biological children have grown – Caleb is now serving with the National Guard in Kuwait and Jacob is a manager at Lowe’s in Wadsworth –  Wokojance said she was drawn to help teens, a group that Summit County social workers say is often overlooked by those looking to foster or adopt.

Teens in foster care often need to learn things they hadn't learned growing up, she said.

Cooking, for example, she said. Or learning the basics of electricity and “that if you don’t pay your monthly bill, you can’t plug your phone into the charger.”

Just last month, she said she learned one of her foster children – a Napalese teenager – didn’t understand U.S. coins, quarters, nickels and dimes.

“She asked what those round things were,” Wokojance said.

Wokojance said she never uses cash or coins to buy things and hadn’t thought to ask the girl if she understood U.S. currency.

“Living by example is huge,” she said. “Just being there for them, caring about them, knowing they have someone they can go to that’s going to have their back — the rest of it just falls in place.”

A foster family reunion

This month, a group of Wokojance’s one-time foster kids gathered near the gazebo by Lake Anna in Barberton.

They ranged in age from 12 to 32. They didn’t all live at her home at the same time, but there has been so much interaction among them over the years that they behave like siblings, celebrating each other’s accomplishments or teasing one another.

Jeanna Birbrayer tears up as she talks about what Wokojance means to her.

Birbrayer, who was born in Ukraine, went into an orphanage there when she was about 5.

A couple adopted her when she was 10. But the couple, who lived in Summit County, later divorced, and after a falling out with her adoptive mother, Birbrayer ended up in foster care at 16.

“Jen is just the mom everyone would want,” she said. “She’s the mom I want.”

Like Birbrayer, Copeland, too, turned to Wokojance when he needed help as an adult.

About a decade after leaving her home, Copeland said he fell into drugs and, when the mother of his son died, he wanted custody of his son.

Wokojance stood by Copeland as he cleaned up, found work and got his son back.

“He turned his life around,” Wokojance said as Copeland played in the grass behind her with his little boy in the Barberton park. “I’m so proud of him.”

After 20 years of fostering kids, Wokojance said she is winding down that part of her life.

About 10 years ago, she met Kiyanni, whom she’s cared for since the girl was 2 months old and adopted when she was about 3 years old. Kiyanni is now 12.

They have no plans to celebrate Mother’s Day.

But the following day, on Monday, there will be a party.

Wokojance is scheduled to finalize the adoption of a second foster child, Miaya, 17, in Summit County Probate Court.

Miaya, who is Nepalese, has been in the U.S. several years, but she spent most of her life in a refugee camp.

Wokojance said she’s not sure if it’s Miaya’s culture or kismet, but Miaya was the first foster child in her care who, from the first day, called her “mom.”

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Barberton woman fosters more than 50 kids through Summit County