Adoption of Johnson, In re

• Decision Date: 03 June 1960
• Citation: 161 A.2d 358,399 Pa. 624
• Parties: In re ADOPTION of Mark Randolph JOHNSON. Appeal of Stanley R. JOHNSON.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 358

161 A.2d 358

399 Pa. 624

In re ADOPTION of Mark Randolph JOHNSON Appeal of Stanley R. JOHNSON.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

June 3, 1960.

William A. Wyatt, Deutsch & Wyatt, John Deutsch, Lehighton, for appellant.

Roger N. Nanovic, Jim Thorpe, for appellee.

Before CHARLES ALVIN JONES, C. J., and BELL, MUSMANNO, BENJAMIN R. JONES, COHEN and EAGEN, JJ.

MUSMANNO, Justice.

From the time that Mark Randolph Johnson was three years of age he has been neglected by his father Stanley R. Johnson, and now that Mark is nine years of age, his father objects to his adoption by respectable, conscientious, and children-loving persons who will give Mark the home, care, maintenance, devotion and education which his own parents have so far denied him.

Mark Randolph Johnson was born January 11, 1950 of Stanley Johnson and Glendora Johnson. On November 9, 1953, Glendora Johnson charged her husband with neglect and refusal to support their children, including Mark, and the Court of Quarter Sessions of Carbon County ordered Stanley Johnson to pay a certain amount weekly for their support. On January 4, 1955, a citizen of Carbon County, Edward Beers, informed the Juvenile Court of that county that Stanley Johnson had abandoned his wife and children. L. R. Campbell, probation officer of Carbon County, made an investigation into conditions at the Johnson home. He testified:

'I made a visit out there and found that there was real neglect of the children there. It was only Mrs. Johnson and her children living there. It was hardly a fit place for anyone to live in. There was hardly any food in the house; there was no furniture in the house; the windows were out of place; and it was bitter cold, because it was in the Wintertime.'

The Juvenile Court entered an order placing the children (there were nine of them) in the custody of their grandmother, Mrs. Adam Johnson, with whom Stanley Johnson was now making his home. The job of taking care of nine children of tender age, feeding, clothing and instructing them, keeping them out of mischief and out of each other's hair is one that would appall a woman of superior robustiousness and of a younger age than Mrs. Johnson, who was then seventy. Stanley Johnson became aware of the yoke of care fastened around the neck of his aged mother and decided to alleviate her burden by departing. His magnanimity in this respect was established by his own testimony:

'Q. Now, will you state, under what circumstances you left your mother's home? A. She began to complain, and she said: 'She had too much work'.

'Q. What did you do when she began to complain? A. There wasn't anything too much I could do.

'Q. You just packed up and left your mother's home? A. That's right.

'Q. And you left the children with your mother? A. Yes.

'Q. You just left your mother's home? A. I moved out because there was too much work for my mother to do with everybody being there. I thought 'it was better for me to get out of the house and let the kids stay with my mother.'

'Q. You thought that if you left that that would relieve your mother of work? A. Yes, to a certain amount.'

It never occurred to Stanley Johnson that he could have considerably reduced the burdens and worries of his mother by remaining with her, helping her to wash, feed, and clothe his multitudinous brood.

By June, 1956, Grandmother Johnson realized that the task of managing, guiding, and maintaining nine children was too much for her advanced age and she made arrangements to place her son's numerous offspring in the homes of various families. It was the lot of Mark Johnson to come to rest in the home of Purie F. Green, Jr., and his wife Arlene A. Green, both of whom instantly demonstrated a solicitude and care for the child and lavished upon him the attention which is the divine right of every child.

On April 3, 1957, the Court of Quarter Sessions of Carbon County, after due investigation, officially placed Mark, as a ward of the Court, in the Green home for care and maintenance.

On January 30, 1958, Mr. and Mrs. Green petitioned the Orphans' Court of Carbon County for the adoption of Mark Johnson. Stanley Johnson opposed the petition and the matter came on for hearing. The Court found that Mark Johnson had been abandoned by both his parents in 1956, and that the abandonment continued to the date of the hearing. On July 10, 1959, the Court decreed the adoption of Mark by the petitioners and ordered that from that date the child should be known by the name of Mark Randolph Green, in accordance with our Act of Adoption.

Stanley Johnson has appealed, contending that he had never abandoned Mark and that the Court, in any event, had no jurisdiction over the case. It would probably not be impossible, but it would require a rather fertile imagination to conjure up a case where the facts of abandonment are more clearly and decisively established than they are in this case. While Stanley Johnson's opposition to the adoption of his child and his efforts in an appellate court to reverse the decreed adoption to credit to his parental instinct, they inevitably arouse wonderment as to the reason for his delay in displaying attachment for his son.

From the year of 1953 until the day of the hearing on the adoption, every page of the record reveals Stanley Johnson's attitude of unconcern as to the comfort, care and destiny of his boy Mark. So lacking was Stanley Johnson in appreciation of his parental responsibilities that even his mother, out of a painful devotion to truth, felt compelled to bare her son's inexcusable neglect. She testified:

'Q. Did Stanley Johnson ever care for Mark Johnson in your home? A. No * * *

'Q. You were caring for Mark in the home where you live, you and your husband? A. That's right.

'Q. What did Stanley do for Mark, so far as his welfare was concerned? A. Well, I sent the boy to school. The first year he was at my place, he went to kindergarten. I got no money from the boy's father.

'Q. Did you feed the boy? A. Yes.

'Q. Was he clothed by you? A. Yes.

'Q. You provided everything for his general physical upkeep? A. Yes.

'Q. Was anything done by your son, Stanley Johnson, for the boy? A. No.' (Emphasis supplied.)

Stanley Johnson was not partial to his boy Mark, insofar as neglect was concerned. He was equally unconcerned about the welfare of his other eight children. Up to the date of the hearing in Orphans' Court he was $6,464 in arrearages on the order to support his manifold progeny.

In the face of this irrefutable evidence of neglect, Johnson still asserts that he did not refuse to support Mark. It was testified that on one occasion he did offer a check to the Greens in behalf of Mark, but the Greens refused to accept the check because it was signed by Helen Meckes, described in the record as Johnson's 'girl friend.'

Johnson not only did not support Mark but he brought him no clothing and brought him no gifts, with two exceptions. On one of Mark's nine birthdays, Johnson gave him 'a toy truck and gun' and on one Christmas he sent him a sled with a card which read: 'From Stanley Johnson and Helen Meckes.' But a truck and a sled were hardly the vehicles on which Johnson could ride into a position of parental authority after he had blasted away all bonds of authority with the gun of many years' neglect.

On two or three occasions Johnson stopped by the Green home to talk to Mark. With these exceptions Johnson displayed in no way the parental devotion which is synonomous with fatherly authority.

To say that Johnson does not love his child would be to say too much because no father can extirpate from his heart every root of tenderness for his own flesh and blood, but abstract love is not enough to discharge the legal responsibilities which a father owes to his child.

The appellant argues, and properly so, that:

"Abandonment' within adoption statutes, is matter of intention, to be ascertained by what parent does * * * in light of the particular circumstances of the case.' Adoption of Peter, 177 Pa.Super. 365, 110 A.2d 825.

It is precisely on that basis that the lower court correctly decided that Johnson had abandoned his son.

We will now consider the contention advanced by the appellant that the Orphans' Court of Carbon County had no jurisdiction over the subject matter of this lawsuit because at the time of the adoption proceedings, Mark was living with his foster parents in Monroe County, and not Carbon County; also that Johnson himself lived in Monroe County. Geographically it is true that Mark was not in Carbon County when the adoption proceedings began, but he was physically in Monroe County only because of the order of the Court of Quarter Sessions of ...