Aggie Bennett & Louise Casey

Aggie Bennett and Louise Casey, now 80, worked together for well over a decade as Foster Grandparents on the Pediatrics Ward of Maine Medical Center in Portland. For that entire period, virtually every day, they worked with children in dire need.

Photo: Alex Harris

Louise: I've been here going on 10 years. I'll be 77 in a couple of weeks.

Aggie: Ever since Louise came in I've had nobody but Louise as my partner. In fact, the kids refer to us as cousins. We see each other every day – unless one of us is sick or taking a vacation.

Louise: Not only that, I think we serve a purpose because these children come from all over Maine and the northern border, sometimes four hours to get here, and these children have cancer – there's a lot of cancer – these children have to stay several weeks for chemo and radiation. Their parents have to go home. They have siblings to take care of. And the children get to know us. We're the red coats (the Foster Grandparent uniform in the hospital). The white coats, the staff, have the needles, you know. The kids kind of shy away from them. But they know that we comfort them, and the parents appreciate it so much. Send us notes.

Aggie: That little girl that just came up – just had an I.V. put in – I've had her since she was six days old, first time we saw her. She's 15 (years old) now. I was saying today she sometimes seems to be mine. Sometimes we have to remember – don't we, Louise – that the children go home sooner or later. But they do come back to see us.

Louise: And some of the children cry when they have to go home. One little girl who broke her leg said last week, "You know, I've gotta come back to get my cast off, and I'm awful glad because I'd never see you otherwise." So you get real close to the children. And there's a lot of abused children today. I can't get over some abused children coming along, just wanting to be loved.

Aggie: I only come because of one individual, Jeannie (the former supervisor). She called me up and said, "I heard you might be a candidate for a Foster Grandmother." I said I can't be a Foster Grandmother, I don't have any grandchildren. They said we can find you some! So she came up to see me and I said to myself, now how'm I gonna get rid of this woman, you know, but you don't get rid of her very easy. My daughter had called her. My husband had died, been gone a year, and my daughter didn't like the way I was living. After my husband died I didn't want to go out, to see people. Anyway, I said to Jeannie I'll go up and spend one week, but I won't promise you any more than that. That one week was 16 years.

It wasn't a hard decision – you just see the need. You can't be here an hour that you don't see those children need you, and you know you need something besides just sitting home. I don't like to rust away, I want to wear away!

Louise: I had retired, about three years, and I was doing crocheting, things like that, makin' satin coat hangers. And I got so stiff I didn't even want to get out of the car to walk to the grocery store. I saw in the paper that there was Foster Grammies, and it said, "See Jeannie," so I thought I'll take a ride up to Parnell (where the program office was located) to see Jeannie. She said, "We have an opening in Yarmouth with handicapped children this summer. Would you like to work with handicapped?" I said I'd love it, and later I moved here to the hospital.

It's like family, the Foster Grandparents. We meet once a month and we kind of have a fellowship together, and speakers and trips, all kinds of things going. It's really like a family when we get together.

Everybody will say, how can you take it when you lose a child, and I think Aggie and I feel the same way – heartbroken. But if we can do something when they're here to make that little child happy, to smile, it's worth it all. We lose them, and it is heartbreaking.

Aggie: I don't think I'd been here a year – when Sue Forth was head of the unit – and she asked me, "How strong a person are you?" I said "Well, I've always prided myself that I was strong." She says, "We've got a baby that is dying, and we promised that mother that her baby would not die in a crib. Do you think you could hold her?" Well, they put me in a room here, they keep checking on me, and that baby didn't die in no crib...that baby died in my arms. And I was always so grateful for that. I didn't feel any fear...I just felt good. You know how it is, Louise, when you just sit with them, and your heart's aching, but you don't let them know it, that's all.

Louise: They let me go in and sit with Tanya after she died. They said would you feel better, because I loved her so. And they said would you feel better just going in and sitting for a while. And I said yes, I would. And Cheryl, I was there when Cheryl died, almost in my arms. This is a family. When anything happens, and we can get there to the funeral, we're there.

Aggie: You know something, though, it does make you a stronger person. It does. It's hard, but I don't think I could be anywhere else. This is home.

Aggie Bennett and Louise Casey, now in their 80s, worked together for well over a decade in the Foster Grandparent Program on the Pediatrics Ward of Maine Medical Center in Portland. For that entire period they showed up, virtually every day, week in and week out, to work one-on-one with children in dire shape. For both Aggie and Louise their service as Foster Grandparents has been, essentially, a second career. Aggie was a waitress for many years, and part of the time a single mother raising two children alone. Louise began by working in a saw mill with her husband, a minister simultaneously starting a church in a small Maine town. When he died, the congregation asked Louise, by then in her 50s, to take his place. She studied to become a licensed minister and served the church for a decade before retiring, to re-emerge at the Foster Grandparent Program. Born and bred in Maine, Aggie and Louise continue to live near Portland, each in senior citizen housing on the outskirts of the city.