![]()
The last memory Clement Van Worth has of his mother is of her standing by the bus. He remembers the day his aunt came for him. He was maybe 4 or 5. She said that he was coming to live with her in the city. his mother would remain in the village, a two-day drive away.
“we just left her,” Clement says. “that was pretty much it.”
He waved goodbye. He does not remember much else. Clement never saw her again.
Richmond Forbis never knew his biological father. his childhood was messy. Richmond explains that his parents had a “misunderstanding,” got a divorce and somehow, someway he ended up living with an aunt of his former stepfather. her name was Aba, and he called her the Old Lady but mostly just Grandma. She had other little children under her care, and often Richmond had to fend for himself.
“sometimes it (was) hard to find food to eat,” Richmond says, “a place to sleep.”
He misses the Old Lady. That’s about the only thing he still longs for from Ghana.
Clement and Richmond tell these stories of their past lives in Ghana while sitting on school steps. Their red Fort Osage soccer jerseys are wet with perspiration. a silver family sedan purrs nearby as the stadium lights quietly shut off. Margaret Forbis waits for her boys to climb inside.
Margaret Forbis, the soccer mom. who would have called it? Long ago, she liked to party and loved her summer weekends with husband David out at the Lake of the Ozarks. Together, they lived on 10 acres of farm land in Buckner. She decorated their kitchen in pig porcelain figurines and canned her own green beans and apple butter from her orchard. He wore blue-jean overalls and worked as a union laborer. Their four-door cars were for their five dogs. Not kids. So Margaret still has a hard time explaining how she became the adoptive mother to two young boys from an entirely different world than hers.
“I felt like this was a God thing,” Margaret says. “Absolutely a God thing. It was a surprise to me. I didn’t have any plans to have children.”
In their new lives, Clement — who is either 17 or 18 depending on which birth certificate you believe — and Richmond, 16, have become the best soccer players on the Fort Osage varsity, leading the team to a program-record 17 wins. Richmond ranks among the best scorers in the city, and Clement is not too far behind. the 49-year-old woman they have for years called “Mom” attends every game.
In their new lives, Margaret and David and their teenage boys are the most unexpected family, but it works.
“I don’t know any other way to put it,” Margaret says. “It was put on my heart to help these boys.”
Margaret could not understand why a 15-year-old boy was requesting to be her friend. in 2008, she was getting accustomed to their recently purchased home in Buckner. Margaret freely admits her “wild” days, but once a beloved cousin checked into rehab, she sobered up, too. She hasn’t had a drink in 13 years.
Life was keeping her occupied, but a friend suggested she join a social-networking site. Soon, a profile of a boy from Ghana named Isaac appeared in her inbox.
the profile said he was 18, but after the initial “hellos,” Isaac confessed he used the fake age to join the site. He wanted to meet people from other countries and introduced Margaret to two of his friends.
Richmond and Clement were always polite, and after only a couple of conversations they began calling Margaret “Mom” as a sign of respect. They asked about Margaret’s day and how she was feeling. many times, they’d question “what did you prepare today?” and when Margaret said something like a cheeseburger, the boys would type the word into their Internet browser to see what that meal looks like.
They seemed to be more curious about her world than anything else. Richmond and Clement had so many questions to ask her about the United States. Richmond wondered whether American students really broke out in song and danced choreographed routines with basketballs as they did in his favorite “High School Musical” movies. Clement wondered whether what they told him was true — that everyone in America has something he’s never had: an opportunity.
“all of our lives we prayed to be here, to be in the United States to start a better life,” says Richmond, who at 10 years old made up his mind to someday live in another country.
After a while, Margaret began sending money to the boys. in Ghana, although the learning institutions are considered “public schools,” children still must pay to attend. by the summer of 2009, Margaret had decided to put into motion the plan for an international adoption.
David had gone along with sending $100 every once in a while but could not understand his wife. He thought she was being taken by scam artists, and he wasn’t the only one who thought so.
“I’m not going to speak for anybody else other than myself,” says Bradley Recknor, Margaret’s younger brother. “I was really, really, I mean it, I was the longest holdout.”
It didn’t help that the adoption seemed to hit stall at every turn.
Clement had found a foster-care family in California, but Richmond and the older Isaac were left behind. So Margaret used the same private agent referred to by Clement’s new family. in June 2010, she hopped on a plane for the first time in 40 years and took the 17-hour flight to Ghana. She appeared in court, and a judge gave the good news that she could adopt both boys. by the time she returned home to Buckner, the court lost the paper work and the judge refused to allow the adoption of Isaac. although Richmond was approved, he still had to wait nearly a year to leave the country.
Finally, in April, Richmond landed at Kansas City International Airport. the whole Forbis clan welcomed him with signs. David, in overalls, wore a name tag that read “Dad” and an expression that was captured in family photographs from that day that can only be described as uninterested.
“I doubted it until basically Richmond got here,” David says. “I thought it was a scam, the whole thing, pretty much.”
But Margaret always believed, and now she had her son. in only two months, she would become a mother of two teenage boys.
Clement had moved to Santa Maria, Calif., and loved the beach and coastal life. He excelled on his soccer team.
“It’s so beautiful out there,” Clement says.
this was all he had envisioned, but underneath the surface, the dream was unraveling. According to Margaret, Clement’s foster-care mother treated him as a younger child. Eventually, the family presented Clement an eviction notice. He had to be out by noon on the day of his 18th birthday.
Clement called Margaret, and on June 11 he arrived in Kansas City.
Back at Raytown High, Richmond and Clement have scored a goal apiece in a game. in the stands, the family watches every move. Bradley Recknor never watched soccer until this fall but has become the unofficial team scorekeeper.
“It really helps that they score every time,” Recknor gushes. “They’re so amazing!”
Fort Osage coach Andrew Fletcher felt the same after watching the boys participate in a preseason team camp. in 1990, Fort Osage had won 15 games but has not approached that mark since. that was until Richmond and Clement showed up this year.
“They’re both really, really good soccer players,” Fletcher says. “we lucked out a little bit because they filled a need for us.”
They have also filled a spot in the Forbis family.
“I went along with it, and it changed my life,” David now says. “Mainly. … I’m proud of them.”
Life is slow inside the green farmhouse in Buckner. Clement, the social one, will spend nights after soccer games texting his friends. Richmond will retreat to his bedroom and for hours, draw scenes from the Bible. He hangs posters of Kobe and Messi on the wall and keeps the one picture he brought with him from Ghana. in it, the Old Lady sits in a chair, and Richmond stands next to her.
The boy in that photo had dreams of seeing a new world, the same as Clement. Today, their lives are not like the images they saw in Hollywood movies or read in fiction books. to them, it’s even better.
“Here, they always tell you the sky’s the limit,” Clement says. “If you try hard, yeah, you’ll always catch up with your dreams. It’s just like this place is kind of cool, yeah.”