Pulled from neglect and abuse as a child, York entrepreneur credits her adopted mother

Kim Strong
York Daily Record

Julie Swope is waiting.

It may be the only time in her life that she has stood still for so long, but the choice isn't hers. Not this time.

Much like the way her life began, Swope needs to be rescued, even though all the years between then and now, she's been the one to carve her destiny.

An independent, strong-minded woman, Swope was adopted as a toddler by a wealthy couple, then created her own family, built a business in York, traveled the world and wrote a memoir about all of it - the best of her life and the worst. 

Now, she has reached another challenge, tethered to an oxygen tank in her city home, waiting for a new lung.

It's not the first time she has needed to be saved.

From neglect to abuse

Julie Swope's book, "Of Roots and Wings," from 2012 tells the story of her life up to 2009, before she faced a life-altering diagnosis. The photo on the book's cover is taken on the steps of a Pennsylvania orphanage with Swope (bottom right) standing with her brothers and sisters. She was Beverly Stauffer at that time, the day she was adopted by new parents. They changed her name to Julia DiMedio.

When Swope was growing up, she made up stories about her biological parents, telling friends that they had died in a car accident.

Her imagination tried to answer why her parents had left their children in an orphanage. It couldn't have been their fault, she thought.

It was a story so ugly that her adopted mother wouldn't explain it. 

"You won't like what you find out," she told Swope. "They were white trash."

The truth, which would take her years to learn, involved an alcoholic father and a teen mother, who had Julie and 10 other children in 11 years (two died at birth). Neglected, the children were taken away from their parents by the court and placed at St. Francis Orphanage in Schuylkill County, and one was adopted out at birth.

It was there, in a religious children's home that Swope endured sexual, emotional and physical abuse, experiences she chronicled in her 2012 memoir, "Of Roots and Wings."

The self-published book is dedicated to the woman who saved her and a sister from the home, her adopted mother, Kathleen O'Melia DiMedio. The DiMedios, a couple living in Chelsea, Pennsylvania, adopted the two girls and, later, their older sister. 

Swope wrote in the book's dedication: "She didn't give me roots but gave me wings."

Motherhood

Julie Swope (left) with her son, Dae Jin, and grandsons Evan and Liam.

Swope's biological family reunited around the time of her first wedding. Separated through adoptions, the girls had all found homes, but the boys hadn't. They eventually all joined the Navy when they were old enough.

It was an emotional time for Swope. Her adopted mother was dying of cancer, and her birth family had re-entered her life, including her biological mother, the woman who was so young and uneducated that she hadn't been able to manage her children.

"I got to know her and her story," Swope said. "I felt sorry for her."

Motherhood is so common that it feels as if it should be easy. Love, and you will be loved. Teach life's lessons, and they will be learned. But it isn't so simple. It has so many layers: acceptance, forgiveness, empathy, sacrifice, and unconditional love. 

The delicate dance between mother and child doesn't always keep the same rhythm over time, and sometimes the music stops unexpectedly. That's what Swope found for herself.

In healthier days, Julie Swope is on the Seine River with the Eiffel Tower in the background. France is one of many journeys she's had in her 72 years.

Through a couple of marriages and divorces, Swope gave birth to one biological son then adopted four other children, three from Korea and one from Canada. 

"Adopting felt very natural to me because I had been adopted," she said. "Adopted kids are loved as much as any naturally born children."

Despite that, two of her adopted children left her as adults, choosing to sever the ties between them. One of her sons was in his 40s when he had the adoption terminated.

"He wanted to be his own person, and I understand that," Swope said. Then a daughter did the same at 23 years old. "Oh wow, that hurt. It hurt a lot."

It's hard for her to fathom letting go of that tie: "The thing for me was, when I found my biological family, it made me appreciate so much what I was given out of adoption."

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Accessing the pain

Julie Swope finds solace sitting in her backyard garden as she waits for a lung to become available.

York became Swope's home decades ago as a teacher for gifted students. But with education jobs sparse at that time, she decided to study psychology, a decision that would alter her life again.

She had never explored the abuse and neglect before she met the DiMedios, and the study of psychology helped her walk through it. She opened her own business, Yorktowne Psychological and Addiction Services, at the age of 36. 

Married and divorced twice, she raised her children in York city, appreciative of the diverse community surrounding them.

"I think it prepared them for real life," she said. 

She served on the city school board and wove herself into the community. She traveled the globe, sometimes alone. The harp became her hobby as an adult, ultimately playing at garden parties and the Renaissance Faire, she said.

In Julie Swope's last journey of many, she traveled to Ireland in 2018. Here, she stands on the Cliffs of Moher. Her adopted mother was Irish, so she has a special affinity for the country. Despite having a lung disease, she was given the OK to travel two years ago. Her health began to fail at the end of the trip, and she needed oxygen on the plane trip home. She was put in a Canadian hospital and flown back to the United States. She's been on an oxygen tank since then.

She drove the streets of the city through last summer, unable to walk but still able to travel to the bank, the post office, lunch with friends. She is an avid Steelers' fan, and much like everything else in her life, she plays it to the hilt, dressing head to toe in Pittsburgh gear for every game.

In 2009, Swope finished compiling the stories of her life, deciding to publish them in 2012 when she was ready for full exposure.

It was the full circle of facing her past - finally revealing it.

"She had to be a fighter to survive, and that fight became a part of who she is," said her friend of two decades, Mina Edmonson, director of Martin Library.

Swope had built a life that was nearly unimaginable for an orphan in the 1950s, but one day, it all came to a stop. 

Awaiting a donor

Five years ago, Swope's family was told by doctors to put her in hospice.

She'd gone into the hospital for pneumonia, an infection that eventually reached both lungs. It led to a medically induced coma and a ventilator for four months.  

"Up until the very day I went in, I was working, I was healthy. All of a sudden, I was going up the stairs and couldn’t get my breath back," she said. 

After months in the hospital, doctors didn't have much hope for Swope, but her family did. They moved her to Penn State Hershey Medical Center, and she learned to breathe and walk again.  

Her diagnosis was pulmonary fibrosis, a debilitating lung disease caused by scarred or damaged lung tissue. Never a smoker, doctors couldn't pinpoint a cause for the disease in her. The typical prognosis for it is three to five years.

She has reached the five-year mark, and now she waits.

At a family reunion, Julie Swope (yellow shirt and pants) is flanked by her biological brother Ivan and sister Connie. They are three of only four surviving siblings from the original Stauffer family that was sent to an orphanage.

At 72, she's beyond the age when most transplant hospitals would accept her, but Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia did. Beyond her disease, she's healthy.

One lung is all that she requires, but she's complicated. At only 4 feet, 8 inches, she needs a lung that fits, maybe a pediatric lung that hasn't fully developed, but those will go to young patients before her. 

The coronavirus has slowed transplants considerably this year, in part because of fewer car accidents and other trauma-related injuries, as quarantining has fewer drivers on the road. Organs sometimes become available from car accident victims.

Swope spends her days checking Facebook, watching movies and reading. When the weather is nice, she goes to her version of a church: her garden.

Among the hyacinths, daffodils, bleeding hearts and allium, she finds a sense of peace.

"I have enjoyed many things that many people wouldn’t have a chance to do," she said. "I think it’s important to live a full life, and I really have. If I die, I have lived so much better, so much fuller than 95 percent of the people that I know."

Edmondson, her friend, said, "She’s not afraid to die. She knows she’s lived a very full life, but she’s not ready. She still feels there are still things she can do and she wants to do."

Kim Strong can be reached at kstrong@ydr.com.