He grows up, so does his heart.
As a 5-year-old, Nick Simon (pictured left) left a Romanian orphanage and came to Orlando with Connie Simon. Now 16, Nick is organizing a drive to fill backpacks with clothing for Romanian youths who eke out life on the streets.

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Saturday, September 22, 2001

The castoff child escaped 11 years ago, rescued from a hell called Orphanage No. 4.

An Orlando woman moved by a television report and a hole in her soul plucked him from a Romanian orphanage brimming with garbage and apathy.

He had a shaven head, piercing brown eyes, and white spots streaking across his thighs where injections of sedatives had scarred him.

Soon he was thousands of miles from the smoldering reality of revolution, living in a safe, sun-drenched city where people only have to step through theme-park gates to experience lands of make-believe.

Day by day, the waif grew into Nick Simon, a suntanned Florida boy eager to catch up on years of missed chocolate bars and loving hugs.

In June, more than a decade after he left the orphanage, Nick stumbled upon a 20/20 TV special that captured his interest. ABC correspondent Tom Jarriel had returned to Romania to see if anything had changed for the orphans since his eye-opening 1990 report. It had: Thousands, now in their late teens and early 20s, were living in the sewers. Waves of haunting memories washed over Nick.

He searched the despairing faces of children -- once warehoused, now turned out on the streets -- staring, knowing. Knowing among the faces might be children with whom he shared a crib and a cry.

Knowing among those faces were children certain to barter their bodies to survive, sniff glue as an escape, die lonely deaths from AIDS. Knowing his face could have been among those flashed in a blur across a 32-inch television screen.

But he knew, most of all, something must be done. And so it was that a grass-roots campaign, "Backpack Carepak," a drive to collect and send winterwear and hygiene products in gently-used or new backpacks to street urchins in Bucharest was born in the heart of a 16-year-old native son.

"What really struck me," he says, "was, like, `Whoa! Hold up a second. They're living in the streets now? I was lucky to get out of there at the time that I did. I could have been one of these kids living in the streets. Not enough people are speaking out for the kids out there that need help."

Nick slides into a cramped booth at Panera Bread near Lake Eola on a recent afternoon and regards his lunch: tuna on honey wheat, Greek salad, a Pepsi.

With his nut-brown mop, bushy eyebrows, and an elongated face that narrows to a rounded "V" at the chin, Nick could pass for the shy, boyish cog in a boy band -- if he were shy. Truth be told, Hollywood is where his head is. Already he has appeared as an extra in films and starred as Jesus in a Godspell production.

He likes his girls cute and speaks the lingo. As Nick puts it, he is, "out there," which is, apparently, something desirable, in the way that bad means good.

By all appearances, Nick is your average red-blooded, American teenager. Nothing like the 51/2-year-old who came to America unacquainted with Santa Claus. He stabs at his feta, looks up glassy-eyed.

"I still have dreams of Romania," he volunteers.

Sometimes when he sleeps, he says, his mind paints Jackson Pollocks, scored by Rambo.
Flashes of white, blue, red.
Dogs barking.
Guns rat-a-tat-tatting.
Sirens screeching across his mind.

It was only later, when the woman he would come to call Mama told him the story behind his coming to Orlando, that Nick would tie his dreams to the revolution in 1989 that swirled around Orphanage No. 4.

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In 1992: They look like a typical family; Mom, Dad, kids and the family dog. But Connie & Paul Simon, with a young Nick and Liana, paint their own special portrait of that theme.


The brush, however, is the same: the need to love and be loved.


A SILENCE THAT SCREAMS

It began in the summer of 1990, when Connie Simon, then a teacher at Howard Middle School in Orlando, traveled to Romania to distribute 14 boxes filled with toys, clothes, and medical supplies gathered by students, staff and others moved by a 20/20 segment on Romanian orphans.

The report pried the lid off a secret shame, born of the tyrannical 25-year reign of Nicolae Ceausescu. In an effort to swell the Romanian population, he banned birth control and abortions and heavily fined couples that produced fewer than four children.

Unable to care for the offspring, many parents handed them over to the state. According to estimates, about 100,000 children languished in Romanian institutions.

When the government fell in December 1989, Ceausescu was overthrown and executed.

The misery didn't die with him.

Even braced for conditions she had heard were common at the orphanages, Simon had to steady herself at the odor blasting into her nostrils. The heat concentrated the stench of diapers, changed -- if at all -- once a day. It happened like this: children with sticky legs sat stacked on trays like loaves of bread, changed in one fell swoop.

More than the smell, what struck her about this particular orphanage was the silence. Wards of tiny creatures stared blankly through bars in cribs, or rocked, rocked, rocked on filthy bare pads. Children with bloated bellies and babies crawling with lice had learned not to cry. Rarely would their screams move a caretaker to dab at their tears.

Simon delivered the care packages to the Spitalul Children's Hospital and several orphanages. At the orphanages, children buzzed about her as if she were the queen bee. One child swooped down on a pink bunny, wetting its fur with kisses.

Simon returned home to Orlando, changed. She knew what she had to do.

HUG MELTS AWAY BLEAKNESS

In late October 1990, Simon again was bound for Romania.

She and her husband, Paul, in their early 40s at the time, had tried and failed to adopt children in the states. Five times, the same thing. It was as if the children were ice -- when the Simons believed they were grasping something solid, the children slipped like water through their fingers.

On her first trip to Romania, Simon became smitten with a 2-year-old named Ana and started the adoption paperwork.

But soon her optimism faded like the black-and-white snapshot of the brown-haired little girl.

Simon found the red tape virtually impenetrable. Each court appearance brought disappointment and more frustration. Each judge she appeared before had his own rules for signing off on the adoption. That she spoke little Romanian didn't help.

Complicating matters, Simon was under a deadline: She had been in Romania for several weeks and with an airlines strike looming, she was booked on the last flight out of Bucharest before Christmas.

At least she had tried, she thought.

As one door seemed to slam shut, another opened. An interpreter, aware of her dead-ends with Ana, told her about a slight boy at Orphanage No. 4.

Simon visited the place. The building was old, frigid. Inside there were no toys. Outside packs of wild dogs roamed. The children slept in military cots. They shared a bathroom with rusty showers and two sinks.

After a while, Simon and the boy she came to meet were brought together, two strangers in the strangest of places. His father was dead and his mother was poor. His aunts, uncles, and cousins lived in a commune outside of Bucharest.

The child, in a sweater, long stockings, and knitted pants, reacted the only way he could: he ran as fast as he could over to Simon, snaked his arms around just under her waist and squeezed.

Within the week, the boy she called Nick was gorging on chocolates on a flight bound for Orlando.

Nick was miles away from speaking English, save for the words, "chocolate" and "Mickey." And this: Her son could say mama.

DISCOVERING TIRE TREADS

After a while, when the newness rubbed away, the Simons confronted some unpleasant realities.

An institutionalized child -- one who had been warehoused virtually all his life without an encouraging word, without love -- was going to bear scars.

The first night he spent in his room, Nick stripped the sheets and ignored the pillow -- luxuries he had never had. He spent nights haunting the hallway, snacking on bowls of sugar.

Precious few things came naturally to him. He knew how to march and salute -- the orphans were groomed to be crack soldiers -- and when placed in a bathtub, Nick would grab a cloth and buff the chrome.

Since he had never seen a toy, he had to learn how to play.

Since he was rarely allowed to venture beyond the crib, he had to learn to explore. Once at school, teachers found Nick under a school bus, weaving his fingers through the tire treads.

Since he spoke scant English, the Simons hired a Romanian interpreter so they might better communicate with their son. This did little good. Few of the words Nick spoke were Romanian, at all. He spoke "orphan language," a tongue indecipherable to all but the discarded children, their private way of connecting.

And connecting, the Simons discovered, would prove the hardest thing of all. All his years without meaningful contact robbed Nick of a precious gift: He did not know how to bond.

Intensive sessions at a special attachment therapy center in Colorado taught him to trust, to give and receive love, to be a son.

Gradually, the son the Simons had imagined he would be emerged.

Nick Simon: the boy who is out there.

BEGGING IS ALL THEY KNOW

Not a speck of feta remains on Nick's plate. As the conversation progressed, Nick ate all his veggies.

Finished reliving the past, he draws the conversation to the present, the future.

Yet, for the kinsman he wishes to help, today and tomorrow are inextricably rooted in their hellish past.

Nick was but one of thousands of Romanian orphans rescued by Americans who had seen Jarriel's first report. Many Americans contributed money and other assistance. But many saw adoption as the most expeditious way to save the children. Simon returned to Romania in early 1992, and after a tortuous four-week ordeal, brought home the brown-haired girl in the fading photograph.

Like Nick and Ana (who is now known as Liana), many children left Romania snacking on chocolates at 30,000 feet.

Below, others remained behind in a tangle of red tape and despair, foraging for food in the garbage.

Nearly 11 years have passed since the broadcast that inspired Nick's adoption. But time, in his homeland, stood still. In the recent 20/20 follow-up, Jarriel reported that despite the American adoptions, tens of thousands of other orphans -- from newborns to teenagers -- remain neglected, sheltered in crumbling state-run housing.

Worse, about 4,000 of the children who lived in orphanages in 1990 now live in the street or huddle like rats in the sewers and steam tunnels of Bucharest.

It's the closest thing to family most have ever had.

They spend their days hustling for food, often engaging in casual sex. When meals are scarce, they turn to plastic bags filled with glue, inhale deeply, and sniff hunger away.

Nick pounds his fist on the table at the thought, searching for the right words. "These are kids my age and younger, living in the street, not knowing how to take care of themselves. All they know how to do is beg . . ." His voice trails off, his face stiff, burdened.

The Romanian government, he says, finishing his thought, "should have done something to help. I want to make a difference, help them be able to live, and show them there are people out there who do care they're living in the sewers."

Nick knows even a planeload of backpacks will do precious little to solve a decades old problem. But he is pragmatic: a sweatshirt and woolen socks can offer a street urchin a bit of comfort during the harsh Romanian winter.

So far, about 25 backpacks have been collected at Community Presbyterian Church in Celebration.

Each backpack, in addition to clothing and supplies, will carry a photograph of the donor, Nick says, so that the child who receives the backpack "can look at the picture and say, `these are the people who care about me.' Thinking about that gives me the goose bumps."

In the works is a benefit concert, featuring up-and-coming groups like Exact and Olive Carpet. The price of admission: a fully loaded backpack. The concert is tentatively scheduled for December, though Bruce Timmons, a co-producer at Nemours Marketing in Orlando, who is organizing the event, says a venue is under negotiation.

The plan: ship the backpacks to Romania after the concert.

Nick hopes the project catches fire and spreads to other poor countries. He hopes to establish a foundation to aid Romania.

But those plans are the future. Right now, his mind is focused elsewhere.

Time has eroded most of his memories of the past, and smoothed the rough edges of the jagged pieces that litter his dreams. What remains is a clear impression of who he is.
"I'm Romanian-American," Nick says.      


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Nick knows he escaped a life in the streets. But a twist of fate and an ocean aren't enough to make him forget the troubles of abandoned Romanian youths.

Update
February 18, 2002

Dear Helpers of the O.W.L.S. (Orphans Without Love or Shelter),

We have been working nonstop for several months to collect, sort, clean, pack, and transport relief supplies to Romania. A lot was involved because of transportation costs, customs regulations/decontamination certification rules, and new security measures since 9/11. The supplies are on their way, at long last.

They will go to Sue and Ron Bates, an American couple living in Bucharest who have worked with orphans in Romania for the last six years. Movie producer, Jeff Deane, and film director, Jonathan Figg, are traveling to Europe to film transportation of relief supplies from Amsterdam to Bucharest. This will ensure safe delivery of the carepaks to the kids who need them most. We deeply appreciate such support from members of our local film industry.

Over the weekend, Nick spoke at a Rotary Club meetings and received a standing ovation for his talk. This was quite an experience for a 16 year old boy. At the meeting, Jeff Deane presented Nick with a check for $4,300 to help Nick's newly founded organization, Orphancare-Everywhere Foundation, a National Heritage Foundation project. This will help pay transportation costs to ship several thousand pounds of warm winter clothing to distribute to 1,000 street children living in the canals and sewers of Bucharest. Nick spoke about his hope to find mentors to teach homeless orphans job skills so they won't have to beg for food or sleep in sewers. The Rotary Club was very responsive and since then, Nick has received several more requests to speak.

Nick wants to help more than the street orphans in Romania. He wants to provide a network of services for unwanted kids worldwide-from Bucharest to Brazil. He believes that it is possible to find safe shelter for every abandoned child on the planet during his lifetime. He not only has the optimism of youth, he has the dedication of capable, compassionate volunteers determined make his dream a reality. Already, a corporate sponsor has offered help and a businessman is pledging 25% of his company's profits to aid the OrphanCare-Everywhere Foundation.

We will have another important announcement soon, so please check often for updates.

Thanks so much for your continued support and encouragement.

Peace and blessings,
Connie Simon

OrphanCare-Everywhere Foundation, a National Heritage Foundation project
3165 Hanging Moss Circle
Kissimmee, FL 34741
Telephone: (407) 518-1801

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ORPHANS OF THE NIGHT

By Connie Simon Orphans are simply children Their families could not feed Some were just unwanted Babies have such needs Into baby warehouses No moms to build their trust Orphanages are not places To teach a child to love Tiny infants cry and cry But who's to dry their tears? Soon enough they will stop And turn inside to fear Teething on rusty cribs Rocking time away Reaching out for passersby Hoping some will stay Day by day they grow Some visitors stop and say This child is way too old We want a tiny babe. Slowly the years will pass Without birthdays, gifts or hugs Surviving day to day Caring less and less for love. Eventually the child's a teen A graduate to lonely streets Into the darkness below A sewer home retreat. It's a scary, dangerous life For orphans of the night Beggars of the streets Trying to survive. Orphans are simply children Their families could not feed. Some were just unwanted. God's children still have needs. Hundreds of thousands of children On every continent and land. Living on the edge Seeking helping hands. In our lifetime we can help One orphan at a time No owl or tree or turtle Is as precious as a child.

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News story © THE ORLANDO SENTINEL and may not be republished without permission.

Darryl E. Owens
Features Writer
The Orlando Sentinel
633 North Orange Avenue
Orlando, FL 32801
(407) 420-5095
Fax: (407) 420-5457