The Holts adopt orphans, 1955
Harry S. Holt, farmer and sawmill operator, has his hands full trying to line up 12 Korean orphans for a Stars and Stripes portrait in Seoul. The father of six children, Holt will adopt eight himself and take the four others to the States for adoption by other families. At left is Kathleen Cowan, a nurse who is accompanying him on the trip. A special act of Congress was passed to permit entry of the orphans who all have American fathers. In 1955, a special act of Congress allowed Harry Holt and his wife Betha, an evangelical couple from rural Oregon, to adopt eight Korean War orphans. They were so moved by their experience that they became pioneers of international adoptions and arranged hundreds for other American couples through their adoption agency Holt International Children’s Services which they founded in 1956. They relied on proxy adoptions and overlooked the minimum standards and investigatory practices endorsed by social workers, and were happy to accept couples who had been rejected, for a variety of reasons, by conventional adoption agencies. While their practice was controversial with social workers and adoption agencies, many Americans cheered the Holts. By the time of Harry Holt’s death in 1964 - while on a trip to Korea to pick up more adoptees - he had placed some 3,000 Korean children in American homes. Bertha Holt took over the running the Holt adoption agency after Harry’s death and continued advocating for international adoptions. The adoption practices of the Holts - and other individuals and organizations like them - remain controversial as stories of abuse and neglect have surfaced over the decades as well as discoveries that thousands of Korean adoptees’ American citizenship were never processed.
