Some 90 people stood in diluvian rain outside of Palm Coast’s Fire Station 25 this afternoon for the blessing of the city’s first Safe Haven Baby Box, a $41,000 gift to the city from the local Knights of Columbus, the Palm Coast Kiwanis Club and others who worked nearly two years toward the installation of the box.
The device, installed in place of a window by the side of the front entrance to the fire station, was built to the firehouse’s specifications: it does not compromise the station’s construction as a backup emergency operations center that can withstand hurricane winds. The blessing and a few speeches were to take place outside by the box. Threatening rain pushed everyone inside. The briefing room proved too small, so everyone trooped back out during a lull of mere sprinkles.
“It’s more than just the pieces of this,” Fire Chief Kyle Berryhill told the crowd. “It is something that represents hope and it represents mercy and it represents a second chance. It’s a tangible reminder that in moments of crisis, that there is hope and there is an opportunity and that there’s some value there. When people are faced with a horrible decision, we’ve got a much better option for them.”
A parent who could not take care of a newborn can always hand off the child at any existing fire station, at a hospital, at a police station. But the parent must do so in person. The baby box allows for anonymity. In the history of Palm Coast, a baby has yet to be surrendered at a fire station.
The box panel on the outside of the fire station remains unlocked until used. If a child is placed in the basinet–padded with a miniature comforter spotted with little orange and brown and grey figures of fawns and cats and dogs–the door locks, and an alarm sounds, alerting the closest responders or fire station, in case the responders at Station 25 are on a call.
As raindrops began to soak his lectern Berryhill recognized the Knights of Columbus, who led the effort and raised the money for the box. “We’ve had several obstacles,” he said (later explaining that some of them were legal, as the city was trying to ensure that its firefighters could take in an infant anonymously, and the construction challenges were not small), “but their persistence has gotten this along the way, and their generosity, their tremendous work here in Palm Coast and in Flagler County continues to strengthen our city and our community, and this baby box is just another example of what they’re willing to give,” he said.
Last December Palm Coast’s Knights of Columbus Notre Dame Council at Santa Maria del Mar church in Flagler Beach donated the money to the city to build the box. The Palm Coast Kiwanis Club, including Palm Coast Kiwanis Kids, also donated, with Culver Construction Company installing the device. The City Council had to formally approve the donation last December in one of the early actions of a newly seated City Council.
Council member Charles Gambaro thanked his colleagues today as he told the story of a child left in a similar box at an Ocala fire station and son adopted by the firefighter who responded. The child, Zoe, just marked her first birthday in her new family. “What began as a desperate act by a parent in crisis became the beginning of a beautiful story of love, safety and second chances,” Gambaro said. “That’s the kind of hope these boxes carry with them. While we all hope that no parent will ever find themselves in a situation where they feel they must use this box, it is crucial that this option exists.”
Bryant Perszyk, grand knight of the Knights of Columbus, had heard the story of the surrendered baby in Ocala when he decided to propose the same for a fire station in Palm Coast. Different stations were considered. Station 25 was chosen for its central location. It is also the department’s headquarters, where staffers are most likely to be on duty at most times even when firefighters are on calls.
As he spoke the rain got harder, reducing Perszyk’s written notes to rivulets of ink on a decomposing paper until Council member Theresa Pontiery lifted an umbrella over him. By the time a star of the occasion spoke–Monica Kelsey, Founder of Woodburn, Indiana-based Safe Haven Baby Boxes–the skies were as if in revolt.
“This is crazy you guys,” Kelsey shouted over the din of the rain, “but the devil is not winning today. He is not winning today.” Nor, she might concede, had the devil won when she was herself abandoned. Conceived when her 17-year-old biological mother was raped and left for dead by roadside, according to the account Kelsey gave at today’s blessing (and related at her organization’s website), Kelsey was two hours old when she was left at a hospital in Ohio. She grew up, joined the military, became a first responder, and on a trip to South Africa saw the baby box that inspired her to found a non-profit in 2016.
“I stand on the front lines of this ministry as one of these kids that wasn’t lovingly and safely and legally and anonymously placed in a Safe Haven Baby Box,” Kelsey said. “But this is my legacy, guys, and I will always be their voice for that, for these moms who are doing the right thing, who love their child so much that they want something more for them, and it has to be pretty selfless for a mother to say, I want what’s best for my child, and it is not me.”
Tipping her hat to those moms, she added the sort of sum-up that has graced many of her dedications: “Isn’t it amazing that we are standing outside of a fire station today, blessing a box going in the wall so that tomorrow we don’t have to stand in a cemetery and bless a box going into the ground.”
Safe Haven also operates a hotline and refers women to crisis pregnancy centers. In that decade, the organization has facilitated some 150 Safe Haven surrenders. The box at Fire Station 25 is the 383rd in the nation, “and we’re just getting started here in Florida,” Kelsey said.
Santa Maria del Mar Pastor Mannie Lopez, who is also the chaplain for the Knights of Columbus, gave the blessing (“Let us thank God that He may touch the hearts of those, especially those girls and women who feel hopeless, that there is hope, hope for babies to be raised”), then the crowd, like the rain, thinned.
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