Angela Showalter, the wife of Orioles manager Buck Showalter, has a talent for making a point with vignettes.
In explaining how she came to support KidsPeace, an organization devoted to assisting foster children facing psychological and behavioral difficulties, she described a time from her own childhood in Nashville, Tenn.
"I was 10, 11, 12 years old, and my parents would bring home a child who was living in a group home for foster children," Showalter said. "And I remember that there was this little boy who would come with his belongings in a pillowcase. He had a transistor radio and a change of clothes, maybe. And then I recall the Sunday nights when we had to take him back to the group home, and I thought how sad that was that he had to live there."
And so the circumstances of that little boy with his worldly positions stuffed into a pillowcase took on renewed meaning for Showalter when it was suggested to her after arriving in Baltimore in 2010 that KidsPeace, with a mission to assist older foster kids -- 14 to 20 years old -- might be the place where she could invest her efforts as she searched for a way to serve the community.
