Adopted Orphan Leads Dresses for Haiti Project

VINTON - Colorful "pillowcase" dresses, from tiny floral-patterned ones to adult-size striped ones overflow clothes racks and walls of the St. Mary's Catholic Church Parish Hall in Vinton.

From purple to red, yellow to orange, blue to green, these 548 individually handmade dresses are destined for destitute girls and women in earthquake ravaged Haiti.

These gifts will certainly widen the eyes of each recipient, just as they've illuminated the eyes of those in Iowa and beyond who donated materials and made them.

At the center stands one, Megan Ternus, 18, senior-to-be at Vinton-Shellsburg High School. In a bright turquoise dress on this Sunday afternoon, she glows with appreciation as she addresses about 100 people.

Megan explains how her idea of making these dresses, mostly from pillowcases, grew from attendance at the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis last November. But you need to know why that idea touched her so then; why the community spirit overwhelms her now.

Born three-months premature in the Ukraine, tiny Megan was turned over to an orphanage by her parents. She grew up battling for survival while, she recently found out, her twin grew up with her parents.

"We had to fight for clothes every morning," she recalls. "I never wore a shirt. I never had shoes until I was 6. No coat."

She holds back tears in the telling.

"We would have one apple to split between 27 kids and it would have bugs. We starved."

When she was seven, though, a miracle happened. A couple from Vinton, Connie and Marty Ternus, with two children, Matt and Molly, who wanted younger siblings, would adopt her. They would take a younger boy from the orphanage, too, and call him Mitch. It was just as Megan had drawn it with crayons, a dream family of six in their own house.

"When I found out he was to be my brother," she says, "I would give him my food. He was so tiny."

Nervous, and feeling somewhat guilty that she had been chosen over the others to come to America, Megan embraced her new country and quickly learned to speak English. And then, on her eighth birthday, her first in the United States, Sept. 11, 2001, the World Trade Center towers crumbled - "The fireworks were going off," she says - and her world seemed still in turmoil.

Yet, life in Vinton for the next decade would be nice. The long ago memories would inspire Megan to think of others. Her dress project - the 548 made more than doubles the original goal - justifies her positive attitude.

"Iowa is beautiful," says Father Marc Magloire through his interpreter, Jeff Veillard, a native of Haiti who now lives in North Carolina, as he accepted the dresses. "Peaceful. Joyful. Beautiful people," he adds, looking at Megan.

She's extraordinary," says the Father, 47, who serves the earthquake ravaged Notre Dame de Lourdes Parish in Belle Fontaine, walking back and forth among 25 area chapels.

"I don't think people realize what goes on in other countries," Megan says. "That's what's stuck with me. Before they had nothing. Now they really have nothing."

The dress project now expands into uniforms for school children. And, someday, Megan hopes to start a similar clothing program for orphans in the Ukraine.

"Everybody has been so good," Megan says. "There are angles floating around everywhere in this church."