A new foundation being formed to promote adoption will be named to honor a long-time volunteer and board member of the National Council for Adoption, Richard C. Stillman, M.D. An anonymous donor has committed the funds to create the Richard C. Stillman Foundation For Adoption to honor his life and work by recognizing his dedication to adoption.

The initial donor is pledging a minimum of $380,000 to create the Richard C. Stillman Foundation For Adoption. William, Pierce, President of the National Council for Adoption and a personal friend of Dr. Stillman, has been named to chair the Board of the new Foundation and to serve as its initial Executive Director. Pierce will serve in these capacities without salary.

Dr. Stillman will be remembered by many for his long service to NCFA. Among the Committees he served on with distinction was the Nominations Committee. His first activity on behalf of NCFA was as a volunteer researcher and writer, using his medical expertise to prepare a monograph on the impact of controlled substances such as cocaine on newborn infants. Dr. Stillman's paper presented some of the earliest and most encouraging finding about the prospects for children born with positive toxicology.

In recent years, Dr. Stillman was one of the NCFA Board members who worked actively on the Uniform Adoption Act, presenting his views to Commissioners, assisting members of the NCFA team who attended the San Francisco meeting of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and offering his research skills to support NCFA's publications.

Although the Richard C. Stillman Foundation For Adoption is quite new, it has already attracted a gift of $5,000 from a second anonymous donor who, like Dr. Stillman, is a former NCFA Board member.

As the Foundation becomes operational, it may not only have a modest grants program but may undertake foundation-initiated research. An interest of Dr. Stillman which the Foundation may pursue is the role of philanthropies in advancing the adoption cause.

Among others who have agreed to serve on the initial Board of the Foundation are Ruby Lee Piester, who served for several years with Dr. Stillman on NCFA's Board. Mrs. Piester is the former Executive Director of The Gladney Home of Ft. Worth, Texas. In recent years, Mrs. Piester has played a leadership role in creating an agency in Texas, called AASK/Texas, that has as its primary focus finding families for U.S. children with special needs, especially children of minority racial and ethnic backgrounds. Another Board member is Mary Beth Style, who knew and worked with Dr. Stillman when she served as Vice President of NCFA.

The late Dr. Stillman, a board-certified psychiatrist, was educated at Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Stanford Universities. Most of his work and publications were in the field of mental health, with a particular emphasis on the impact of controlled substances on human functioning.

For more information about the Richard C. Stillman Foundation For Adoption, write P.O. Box 143, Cabin John, MD 20818-0143.

© National Council for Adoption