When the Grindheims’ five biological children were grown, the couple decided that they weren’t through parenting yet. Not by a longshot, thanks to seven adopted boys.
“You change the world one child at a time,” says Tamara Gail Grindheim, describing the philosophy that led her and her husband, Kevin, to adopt seven sons, now ages 11 to 16, in the past eight years. Kevin is a manager and senior application developer at Capital One Financial Corporation, one of Conceive’s 50 Best Companies for 2010 (see special section, page 32). It was Capital One’s generous adoption benefits that allowed the couple to bring home so many boys, nearly all of whom had behavior issues as a result of being abandoned and neglected earlier in their lives.
Tammy and Kevin didn’t plan on raising such a large brood of challenging boys. “It just happened. Each child needed us,” explains Kevin, whose coworkers joke that he has created his own version of The Brady Bunch, the 1970s sitcom about a large blended family. The family lives in a sprawling house that the boys helped Kevin renovate, transforming it from a modest three-bedroom home to one with eight bedrooms and more than 5,000 square feet. The 1-acre property is also home to farm animals, cats, and dogs.
This “new” family is phase two for the Grindheims. The couple married in 1996; it was a second marriage for them both. Each brought children to the partnership. Tammy had three sons, and Kevin had a son and daughter. They raised the five children together in their home in Louisa County, Virginia, about 25 miles from Richmond.
Today Tammy and Kevin are in their early 50s, and already grandparents of four. Their biological children range in age from 23 to 31, and with the exception of Kevin’s married daughter who lives in Detroit, all live nearby. But the couple’s active parenting years are far from over.
As their nest started emptying years ago, Tammy began longing to fill it again. A registered nurse, she had been a foster mother to children with multiple disabilities before marrying Kevin, and now she wanted to bring more children home. But at first, Kevin wasn’t sure. “He thought our family of five children was a large family, so I let go of the idea,” says Tammy. “But when our youngest was 17, we both realized that we had a lot more to give.”
