Edna Gladney

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Edna Gladney (1886–1961) was born Edna Browning Kahly in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When her father Maurice died in 1903, her mother Minnie Nell (née Jones) sent her to live with her aunt and uncle in Fort Worth, Texas. Edna married Sam Gladney in 1906 and moved to Wolfe City, Texas where she began a crusade to clean up a Grayson County poor farm. After seeing the horrible treatment of the children there, she arranged for them to be transferred to Morris’ Children’s Hospital and Aid Society in Fort Worth. She joined the board of directors for the Society and started a free day care facility in Sherman, Texas that was self-financed.

In 1924, Gladney and her husband moved back to Fort Worth, where Edna became superintendent of the Society in 1927. Gladney successfully lobbied the Texas legislature to take the word "illegitimate" off birth certificates and to ensure adopted children the same inheritance rights of other children. Gladney’s work was made into a 1941 movie titled Blossoms in the Dust, which propelled her into the spotlight. After the Society acquired the West Texas Maternity Hospital in 1950, the Society's members renamed it the Edna Gladney Home (now known as Gladney Center for Adoption). Texas Christian University gave Gladney an honorary doctor of laws degree in 1957. Though she fell ill in 1960, Gladney continued to help with plans for the Home until her death in 1961.