James' Story

Founder and Executive Director James A. Pekrul's desire to start the Foster Youth Independence Center of Milwaukee was borne out of his experiences in the foster care system and the difficulties he faced after being discharged from the system.

Here is an excerpt from James' "My Story":

My name is James Allen Pekrul. I was born and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – the American heartland, home to close-knit, hardworking and loving families. But my upbringing was about as far as one can get from a traditional, loving family. For my whole childhood, as far back as I can remember, I was in foster care, beginning at age four when my younger brother and I were placed with Mr. and Mrs. B.

My biological mother is white and my father is black. He never married my mother and she was left to raise me alone. He has other children and lives in Michigan. I know who he is, but we never had any kind of relationship. My younger brother is white, and I think he was the result of a rape. My mother got married later and had another child but when I was very young she could not care for me or my brother. I see her from time to time now, but she has never been a real mother to me.

My first memory of Mr. and Mrs. B.’s home was of fear. I was always very nervous, and like many young children, I sometimes expressed that nervousness by wetting my bed. When Mrs. B., my foster mother, woke me in the middle of the night, screaming at me and hitting me, I was terrified. Sometimes I didn’t recognize her without her wig and she looked like a monster to me. She beat me severely for wetting the bed, but that wasn’t the only time.

The B’s were middle-class African-American people. They had their own children, some still living at home when I was there. Mrs. B. didn’t work outside the home. Her husband had a job and she earned her income by taking care of foster children. There were always a few of us there – she must have made three or four thousand dollars a month from us. Sometimes she gave dinners for the church which brought in some money, too, so between her husband’s wages, the money she got for us, and the church dinners, she was able to live a pretty comfortable lifestyle.

Mr. B. mostly kept to himself and let his wife run the household. He usually didn’t discipline us physically unless he wanted to get on her good side. He did whatever she asked. She was the matriarch of the family and I think he was afraid of her. I knew he felt sorry for us foster kids but not enough to try to step in and stop the abuse we suffered.