APSU art professors share adoption story in national magazine
January 8, 2001From the day they married in 1996, Associate Professor Billy Renkl and Professor Susan Bryant, both of Austin Peays art department, knew they wanted to have a baby together. When that dream was thwarted by Mother Nature, and their hopes to adopt an American child were dashed by the exorbitant costs, they decided to pursue international adoption, a process that would prove to be long and, according to Renkl, astonishingly complex.
January 8, 2001
From the day they married in 1996, Associate Professor Billy Renkl and Professor Susan Bryant, both of Austin Peay's art department, knew they wanted to have a baby together. When that dream was thwarted by Mother Nature, and their hopes to adopt an American child were dashed by the exorbitant costs, they decided to pursue international adoption, a process that would prove to be long and, according to Renkl, “astonishingly complex.”
Their journey is chronicled in the December issue of “Parents” magazine in an article written by Renkl and illustrated with photos by Bryant. The article consists of journal entries that began with the couple's decision to adopt a Guatemalan child in 1995, follows their four-year slog through the INS and the bureaucratic adoption process and ends with the “unspeakable sweetness” that accompanied the arrival of William “Will” Otoniel in April 2000, some seven months after his birth.
Copies of the magazine are available at area bookstores.