The Little Family that Grew and Grew (...cont.)

When Bonnie McClung, a young student nurse from the farmland of Illinois, Married Fred Cappuccino, son of a Welsh Protestant mother and an Italian-American atheist father who was an ornamental plasterer, neither of them wanted to bring a lot of children into the world, which was overpopulated already. Fred, a newly ordained Methodist minister, had just returned from Japan, where he had worked in orphanages for three years.

Before leaving Japan, he had learned about an orphanage for mixed-race children (fathered by black American soldiers), who he felt would never be fully accepted in Japan. He and Bonnie decided they would have two children and adopt two. Their first son, Robin Hood, was born in 1954. Then, when adoption agencies turned them down because they could have children of their own, Fred wrote to Japan and asked for a mixed-race orphan,

Soon, a bright 5-year-old girl, Machiko, joined the family. Fred's middleclass Methodist congregation held together when Machiko arrived, but when it learned that Fred and Bonnie intended to adopt another dark-skinned child, William Tell, sparks flew. The congregation was divided: some praised the minister and his wife for being true Christians, others objected that black kids would lower the tone of the neighborhood, and wanted the Cappuccinos out. Church attendance fell off, and Fred was dismissed. He was given another church, in a poor area of Chicago, but here too his liberal sermons fell on deaf ears. He resigned from the Methodist ministry and became a Unitarian minister.

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