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'That Missing Part': Father carries on raising 9 kids after wife's sudden death
David Saunders holds daughter Evangeline for a moment before she runs off to play with her siblings.
Journal Photo by Walt Unks
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Published: December 25, 2009
The nine Saunders children around the table work over their gingerbread houses with the industry of elves.
Tiny fingers spread pink icing across roofs and attach candies to the siding.
Dollops of icing land on noses.
Jokes about roofs collapsing from too much candy piled on top fly back and forth freely.
"That looks like bombs have attacked the house," David Saunders tells his son, Junior, who has attached large candies up and down the front of his house.
Christmas music plays in the background, and it is only in the sudden silences and periodic intense stares of the children off into the distance that the loss is felt.
A vase of pink roses, an out-of-season touch amid the bright Christmas decor, sits on a table nearby. The children picked them out the night before in memory of their mother, Dorothy Saunders, who died unexpectedly last month.
"The worst thing I could imagine has happened," Saunders said.
His wife, who was 33, died on Nov. 3 from a urinary tract infection and kidney failure a few weeks after having hernia surgery.
Since then, Saunders has struggled to keep life on an even keel for him and his children, who range in age from 1 to 11, and include three sets of twins.
"They're doing good," he said. "They're doing a lot better than I am."
Saunders, 34, is supported by his family, his faith and a few close friends, many of whom came into his life in the years preceding his wife's death.
The logistics of the family's daily life are staggering. In one month, they go through 100 loads of laundry, 35 to 50 rolls of toilet paper and 12 bars of soap.
But life goes on.
Saunders' day begins at 5:30 a.m. when he wakes up Junior, 11. By 5:45, he is downstairs making a breakfast of oatmeal, pancakes, eggs and juice. He packs snacks for the five children in day care, which is subsidized, and drops them off on his way to Stanley Steemer Carpet Cleaner, where he cleans carpets. One of the day cares opens 30 minutes early so that Saunders can be at work at 7.
His work hours are unpredictable. Sometimes Saunders might not get home until 7 or 8 at night.
His brother, Robert, picks the children up from day care, starts dinner and helps with homework on the nights that Saunders works late.
After dinner, the older children help clean up the kitchen and then the family might read the Bible or watch a movie. Junior often practices his trumpet. Bedtime begins for the youngest children around 7:30 p.m. and lights are out for everyone except Saunders by 9, he said.
Saunders, a soft-spoken man, said he is plagued by insomnia these days.
The family often struggles with the question of why Dorothy died, her husband said. He has not received an autopsy report yet, but Saunders said he wants a more complete explanation of what went wrong.
He had told his children that people who lead good lives will live to be at least 60 or 70 years old. Yet Dorothy, who was a devoted wife, mother and Christian, died.
"I really can't give them a good answer," he said. "I ask God. When he tells me, I'll tell them. I might be 80 when he gets to it."
Her legacy
Saunders said that in some ways, he feels that God has spent the last year or so preparing him for this time of sadness. His wife was often in pain from a hernia, he said, which forced him to take on more cooking and household chores.
He has often had that feeling of God's hand in his life, and that is a comfort, he said. But he feels inadequate in his role as a single father.
"I know I can't replace their mother," he said. "Men and women don't think the same way."
Friends introduced him to his wife when he was a sophomore at Appalachian State University in Boone and she was a freshman. Saunders said that they hung out together, but then he left school to go to New York.
Saunders was hanging out with a rough crowd, he said, and he ended up in jail after a friend's dog was stolen and he tried to get it back. He served a few months for robbery, he said.
While he was in jail, he was saved. One day, he said, he was sitting in jail and God told him to go and speak to a man who was talking with a group of inmates. The man was a minister, and Saunders began talking to him and reading his Bible.
"It slowed me down to see that if I didn't change, I might get locked up forever," he said.
He returned to North Carolina, visited ASU and saw Dorothy again. This time, he heard God say to him: "There's your wife."
Saunders wasn't impressed with the message.
"I don't even like her. She's goofy," he said, describing his reaction.
Nevertheless, he found himself drawn to her. They began to spend time together, and in 1996, they were married.
They stayed in the Boone area, and Saunders worked in construction jobs. Junior was born in 1998. Even as a young man, Saunders knew that he wanted to have 10 to 12 children, but he expected that some of them would be adopted, he said.
"I don't want to be portrayed as an incompetent dad with nine children," he said. "I know where babies come from. These children were planned."
His wife was not initially enthusiastic about having that many children, but she changed her mind. And their family grew to include Junior, 11; Trinity and Raine, 8; Eleanor and Mahogony, 7; Tsion, 4; Hezekiah and Evangeline, 3; and Israel, 1.
From 2003 to 2007, Saunders owned Saunders Construction, his own business. He liked the mountains, but his wife preferred Winston-Salem. They moved to Rural Hall in 2006, and Saunders went to work for a vinyl-siding business. He was working more than 60 hours a week and making a decent living, he said. He and his wife bought a house in Winston-Salem in at the end of 2007. Their mortgage of $1,046 on the four-bedroom house was within the recommended 25 percent of his income. Then the recession hit.
Saunders was laid off from the vinyl-siding company and went to work as a carpet cleaner. He is grateful for the work, he said, but he doesn't make as much as he did in construction, and the erratic hours add stress to his family life. He is working with an agency to avoid foreclosure on his house.
He knows that his children are healthy, smart and basically good natured, Saunders said.
As tough as the coming years will be, he hopes that the children emerge wiser from the sadness they are experiencing, he said.
"I want them to be stronger from it and to understand there are reasons why they have bad days," he said. "I want them to have compassion and to understand that when people are mean or sad, there's a reason why they're like that."
Friends all around
Deborah Jackson, who met and became friends with Dorothy Saunders in 2006, when the family was living in Rural Hall, said she can see Saunders' influence in her children.
Saunders was a calm person, who was curious about the world and valued education. They visited the library and park several times a week, Jackson said. Saunders was always looking for ways to expose her children to the world. She had returned to school at Salem College, and was working to finish her degree in education when she became pregnant with Israel, the youngest child.
The children are bright, Jackson said, and curious like their mother was. They are also fairly calm, like their mother.
"Overall, I think they're still really grieving," she said. "Sometimes they act like they really just want you to hold them and love them."
Jackson said she believes that the family's strong faith and love for each other will pull them through, but there will no doubt be hard times ahead, she said.
She worries about David Saunders, she said, and the pressures he will face in seeing so many children through so many childhood rites of passage on his own.
"Sometimes I think he needs a mental break," she said. "He really hasn't had a chance just to go somewhere and be without the kids."
April Connett, who acts as the children's unofficial nanny, met Dorothy Saunders when they were teaching fellows and roommates at ASU. She had reconnected with her former roommate last spring.
Connett said that it's funny how life works out. When they were in college, she was the one who wanted a houseful of children while Dorothy wasn't certain she wanted children.
Now Connett, who is married, but has no children, said that she views the Saunders' children as her own.
She is one of a group of women who fill the gaps when David Saunders and his brother aren't able to be there for the children.
Connett lost her father when she was 4, and her beloved grandmother when she was 12. She knows well the path the children will travel.
"The little ones won't remember her. They kind of do now," she said. "They'll always have that missing part. Nobody else can be Mom.
"Holidays and birthdays are going to be the worst. They have lots of people, but it's not the same."
mgiunca@wsjournal.com
727-4089
A fund has been established to help the family. To contribute, contact any Wachovia branch about the David M. Saunders Assistance Fund.
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