Fifteen years after her death, Mary Diana Samuel's dream is coming true.
Her dream, says her father, was to take care of a large number of children.
Earlier this summer, the Mary Diana Samuel Orphanage and Home was completed near Tiruvallur, India, and today is home to 45 to 50 children.
"They won't be my children," Dr. Aaron Samuel, of Cleveland, Tenn., remembered his daughter saying before her death in a car accident in 1995. "They will be children of other people who don't have a home to live in. I want to take care of those children."
GET INVOLVEDContributions to the Mary Diana Samuel Foundation may be sent to 3178 Chestnut Circle N.W., Cleveland, TN 37312. For information, call 584-6521 or visit www.marydianasamuelfoundation.org.
But Dr. Samuel, a retired cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon, said he had no intention of founding or funding an orphanage in his native land until the situation practically dropped into his lap.
He said his sister spent a year in India in the late 1990s and began providing food for an established children's home. After she left, Dr. Samuel took up the support.
He didn't visit the orphanage until after he retired in 2005. He saw that the home was too small for the number of children it sheltered, so he bought a larger building for the home. But after finding that money he had given had been misappropriated, he dropped his support of the orphanage.
By 2007, he had funds from a nonprofit association he had set up earlier in his daughter's name and the building he owned near Tiruvallur.
At that point, Dr. Samuel said, the dream began to take shape. He used $50,000 of his own money, borrowed $125,000 and was given $50,000 from his church, First United Methodist of Cleveland. Despite rife corruption and slow progress, the agency named for his late daughter was finished in July.
Now he has to develop continued support for the home, which can sleep 125 children.
"This is not something he wanted to take over," said the Rev. Andrew Henry, senior pastor of First United Methodist. "He wanted to be supportive of the children who were by and large homeless or exploited children. He asked our congregation if we would like to help and support and develop that organization."
He said the congregation donates to the orphanage through its annual budget and that the Mary Diana Samuel Foundation has been vetted by the Holston Conference of the United Methodist denomination so it can receive funds from other congregations.
The Rev. Robert Haskins, senior pastor of Tyner United Methodist Church, said his congregation is considering building a chapel for the orphanage next spring. A potential India mission team, he said, might be split into working with children and working on a chapel.
"We certainly have the opportunity to do it," he said. "We're hoping to do it."
Dr. Samuel said the building needs a generator to cope with the area's frequent power outages, but most donations go to educate the orphans. Because the local public schools are not good, he said, the children are enrolled in a Christian school in first grade.
Of every $50 the foundation receives, he said, $15 is set aside for education. The remaining $35 takes care of staff salaries, food, supplies and upkeep of the home.
Dr. Samuel said most of the orphans are 4 to 8 and almost all are girls.