By By LYDIA GRIMES – Features writer
Children have always been an important part of Lorena Frederick's life, both her own and those who belong to someone else.
She and her first husband could be called pioneers in the field of international adoption. After tending to her niece, Jan, quite a bit, Frederick gave birth to two children and in the late 1960s was ready to take the step to increase her family once more. This time the decision was made to go out of the country looking for someone who really needed a home.
International adoption was relatively new to this part of the country, making it very difficult to get the right answers sometimes. After two years of searching, a contact was made with Holt International Children's Services in Eugene, Ore.
Frederick's daughter, Anne, said she had been worried about someone else coming in and calling her mother &#8220Mom” but when she saw the little girl who was her new sister, all her fears melted away. Jenny spoke no English but it didn't take her long to master the language with the help of a tutor.
A couple of years later, the process began all over, and in 1977, a little boy named Jerome came from the Philippines to join the family. Things were a lot easier this time and the family went to Chicago to pick him up.
These days the children have grown up and left the nest. But that doesn't stop Lorena Frederick. She and her second husband, Royce, have found other people who need their help. For the past several weeks they have been working in Mississippi making sure that the relief workers are fed and housed.
They volunteered to help Gulf Coast Bible Camp near Lucedale, Miss. It was opened to house the relief workers who were in the area helping get the coast up and running after Hurricane Katrina. Groups go out from the camp to work all across the coast of Mississippi and as far away as Slidell, La. They come back to the camp at night to sleep and eat and the Fredericks' job is to make sure that the workers are taken care of.
Frederick grew up on Swift/Hunter farm near Atmore. She attended the schools there and graduated from Escambia County High School in 1956.
After graduation, she got a job with Container Corporation in Brewton in 1957 working in the office when the mill was new to the area.
While she was in Brewton she met her first husband, Len Brickman, at Container and they were married in 1962. This time when she moved back to Brewton, she stayed. Frederick's sister died while she was still a young woman and her daughter, Jan, came under the care of her aunt.
In 1964, Anne Brickman was born and in 1965, Joey Brickman joined the family. With the two adopted children joining the family in 1973 and 1977, Frederick's family was complete.
Jerome lives in West Point, Ga., and he and his wife, Christy, have a son and a daughter.
Frederick has been active in the Girl Scouts and the American Red Cross. She was teaching first aid classes and had connections to the ambulance service. When someone called and asked her to come to work on the ambulance, she had no idea that she would work there for 13 years.
When she was working for the Red Cross she got involved with some work being done in Honduras with the Por Los Ninos home in Catacamas. She and her husband go down there several times a year and work around the home to make things better for the children.