Adoption agency to dedicate room to memory of Penny Glatstein

Feature story for The Commercial Appeal

Aug. 14, 2010

Each person’s life touches the lives of others in ways often incalculable — a door held open, the opportunity given to cut in line for the off-ramp, a monetary gift to a fallen policeman’s family, a donated organ to a complete stranger.

Any incident, big or small, can have an effect on someone’s day, a memory, a generation. Penny Glatstein’s life, cut short in August of last year after a long battle with cancer, was measured in the lives of others.

As the head of the Jewish Family Service adoption program, Adoption Connection, Glatstein helped to create more than 500 families over her 35 years of service.

“She was a unique person in that she lived this every day. The great joy in her life was creating new families,” said Chancellor Arnold Goldin, who finalizes many area adoptions and, since taking the bench in 2002, has opened his courtroom every National Adoption Day, the Saturday before Thanksgiving, to do so.

Jewish Family Service is an agency that works with the community regardless of religious affiliation to provide individual and family counseling, senior services, emergency assistance and, of course, adoption services. On Sunday, from 1 to 3 p.m., the agency will dedicate Penny’s Place, a room designed for children, a place where adoptive parents meet their new child for the first time, and where birth mothers can get to know those potential parents … (read more)