His wife, Christy, who had driven with Mike’s aunt, Jana Sturm, from Morehead, Ky. — where Mike had been the women’s coach at Morehead State — had a bag filled with baby bottles, diapers and clothes draped over her shoulder. In her hand was a red cell phone that soon delivered the text message that made her beam:
“I am here Mommy!”
The Bradburys had been waiting to hear that for nearly a year.
The couple — whose 4-year-old son Alex was back at their Morehead home with his grandma on Tuesday, April 27 — were adopting an 11-month old daughter from Ethiopia. After months of social worker visits, paper work, court hearings and visa snafus, the day was finally here.
Sena Nicole — escorted from Ethiopia by Sue Hedberg, executive director of the Florida-based Celebrate Children International adoption agency — arrived after a 35-hour, four-flight trip from an orphanage’s transition house in Addis Ababa.
The Bradburys had only seen photos and a few video clips of her, but now there she was in a stroller far down the concourse.
Christy and Jana began to cry.
Mike’s nerves melted into pure love when Sue lifted up his new daughter — dressed in a pink outfit and wearing little white socks adorned with pink ribbon — and helped her wave.
He’d been unsure how Sena would react, but those fears dissolved when the little girl went easily into Christy’s arms.
And when he approached, Sena reached out for him, nuzzled into his embrace, touched his cheeks and smiled until you saw her tiny front teeth.
'What a beautiful little girl'
After they had their son Alex — who, Christy said, “is a caring, tender-hearted little boy,” a trait she thinks will make him a perfect big brother — they thought about adoption.
“After we had our own child, we felt there are so many children in the world who need families, why have more children when you can adopt someone who really needs someone,” Christy said.
They eventually found Celebrate Children International, which, Hedberg said, has done “approximately 2,000 adoptions from nine countries over the past 10 to 12 years.”
Currently, most of those adopted children come from Ethiopia, where, Hedberg said, the entire process might cost $20,000.
“This year Ethiopia will be the No. 1 country in the world” for adoptees coming to the U.S.,” Hedberg said. “The U.S. has cracked down on country after country. It shut down Cambodia, Vietnam, Guatemala. And the wait for a child from China has grown to about seven years.
“But Ethiopia — where they say there are about four million orphans — is one of the countries where adoption is smooth and the children who come are relatively young and healthy.”
Hedberg said Sena comes from the town of Woliso, a town 2 ½ hours from Addis Ababa: “Basically, she was abandoned at the orphanage.”
When the Bradburys saw pictures of her, they were smitten. That Sena is black and they are white didn’t matter. Christy said: “We want that diversity for Alex and Sena, too.”
Initially, the Bradburys were told they could come to Ethiopia for Sena in February, but that was in the heat of Mike’s basketball season.
So they arranged the escort instead.
The process got pushed into April, but it’s still a busy time.
Mike was named the new WSU coach one week ago. But Tuesday, he and Christy had only Sena on their minds.
“New arrival?” a lady waiting for an incoming passenger warmly asked. When Christy nodded, the woman gushed: “Congratulations.”
The woman who ran the Delta baggage claim office walked over, watched Sena explore her new world and nodded: “What a beautiful little girl.”
As he readied for their trip back to Morehead, Mike took a moment to watch his daughter play:
“She’s so precious. As I watch her, I just hope her life is going to be so much better now.”
As the little girl gurgled and giggled with her new mom, you sensed it was.
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