Fair family a little bit fuller

PORTALES — After 40 years of marriage — and at the ages of 70 and 85, respectively — Grace and John Fair of Portales became new parents on July 15.

Yes, you read that right. New parents.

How that happened is nothing short of a love story, according to Grace Fair, one that involves an entire community … or maybe two.

On the morning of July 15, I was honored to join the Fairs at the Clovis office of attorney Michael Garrett for a video hearing with Ninth Judicial District Judge Donna Mowrer.

In a nearby room, their three great-grandsons — 8-year-old Jayven, 6-year-old Jeremiah, and 4 1/2-year-old Josiah — were boisterously wrestling, out of sight but not completely out of earshot.

After taking care of some necessary legal steps, Garrett turned to Grace Fair and said, “Mrs. Fair, are you ready to adopt these children as your children?”

Moments later, Mowrer uttered five magical words: “The court will grant adoption.”

Grace Fair’s eyes filled with tears.

It was the culmination of a years-long struggle for this family and one the Fairs say they could never have managed alone.

“I don’t consider them my kids,” Grace said. “I consider them the community’s children. John and I couldn’t do it without the community.”

Jayven, Jeremiah, and Josiah wore matching gray button-down shirts with dapper black bowties to celebrate their adoption day.

“I’ve waited for this adoption for so long,” Grace said. “I did not know how important it was until I was able to tell my great-grandson Jayven that he was going to become my son and I would be his mother. The look on his face was worth it all.”

The Fairs are familiar faces to many in eastern New Mexico. John was a farrier for 45 years (the “best horseshoer in Colorado, Texas, Missouri and New Mexico,” Grace says).

Grace was a cashier at the old Safeway in Portales long enough to be known as “Mrs. Safeway” to many of her customers, and then Furr’s Supermarket after that until she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in 1991.

When Grace and John married 40 years ago, she had two children and he had four. Over the years, as various needs arose in their blended family, they were the safety net.

“We’ve always had kids in our home,” Grace said.

While Grace was sidelined for a few years with the fibromyalgia, she turned to her deep faith in God to summon the reserves she needed to return to action.

She was a caretaker for both of her parents, John’s mother, and nine other elderly friends in the years since. Currently, she cares for a “dear sweet friend,” and cleans two houses, and still has the stamina to keep up with her active trio.

“I am really energetic,” she said, only thinking of one activity from which she’s “retired.”

After shingling her home in 2018 with help from friends and family, “when we got off the roof, I promised God I would never shingle again,” Grace said. “At the age of 68, it was time to stop getting on the roof.”

Jayven, Jeremiah, and Josiah each came to live with the Fairs at birth, born to a young mom who suffered from ongoing postpartum depression, Grace said.

“Postpartum is very, very hard on young mothers and especially young babies,” Grace said. “They just became my babies when she placed them in my hands.”

Complications arose as the boys got old enough to enroll in the Head Start early childhood program, Grace said.

“Once the paperwork started coming in, we knew we needed correct legal documents to get them where they needed to be in school,” she said.

Finances also became an issue.

“We could not get any help from the state,” Grace said. “We’re both on Social Security. When you’re living on a fixed income sometimes it gets a little short.”

That was when Grace Fair said she reached out, “and my friends and family stepped up to the plate” with fundraisers, gifts of food and clothing, cash donations, and prayers.

But the Fairs also struggled with the legal system, frustrated by a complicated process and literacy limitations.

In the spring of 2018, help arrived in the form of the Scribing Pilot Program at the Ninth Judicial District Court and court clerk Vickie Wilkerson.

“I walked in one day and Vickie told me she was glad to see me and that now she could help me fill out the paperwork because of this pilot program,” Grace said.

Wilkerson said the Scribing Pilot Program was established that year to offer free help to anyone needing a hand navigating the legal system because of “language barriers, mental challenges, or literacy challenges.”

“I can sit with them and I can write for them,” she explained. “In the past that was a big no-no.”

Wilkerson estimates that 95 percent of domestic cases (those involving divorce, child custody, etc.) are currently filed “pro se” (without the assistance of an attorney) and the Scribing Pilot Program is there to fill that void.

Grace Fair said she was the first person in Roosevelt County to get to take advantage of the new service, which helped her become kinship guardian to the two older boys, but initially left her without legal documents on the youngest.

“Putting him in school was very difficult,” she said. “I decided at that moment I had to get them adopted.”

This final step — a giant one — has taken the past seven months.

The boys since day one have been surrounded by two loving communities, Grace said: Portales, where the Fairs have a loving support system of friends and extended family, and Hallsville, Missouri, where the brothers spend two months each summer with other family members “doing all the things that boys do at this age … fishing, camping, swimming.”

Grace said her faith in God has fueled her from the beginning.

“God is at the very top in our family,” she said. “He knows what we need before we ask.”

She also had a message for the judge who made a dream come true last week.

“Judge Donna Mowrer,” Grace Fair said, “thank you for making this family complete. We promise to do the very best we can by these boys.”

Betty Williamson thinks raising children is the most important group project of all. Reach her at:

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