Christmas 1969 – 1972 — Dallas, Texas & Mexico
Between Christmas 1969 and April 1972, the LaNoue family — Dr. John LaNoue Sr., his wife Kaywin Joan Baldwin LaNoue (1934–2021, called “Dr. L.” in Voice 2), and their young son John LaNoue Jr. — prayed for, applied for, and received the adoptive placement of Lydia, born May 15, 1970. The adoption was finalized through a Dallas-area Texas Department of Public Welfare office in approximately April–May 1972. Lydia grew up in the LaNoue household, “celebrated her second birthday in our home and never left until she married,” later marrying Todd Slinkard and settling in Atlanta, Georgia, where she is the mother of Rebecca and Laura Slinkard.
The prayer for a daughter began after seven-year-old John Jr. asked his parents, “Have you thought about adoption?” and continued through the family's disaster-relief work responding to the May 11, 1970 Lubbock F5 tornado and the August 3, 1970 Hurricane Celia strike on Corpus Christi. In March 1972 the family applied to the welfare agency; an atheist case worker who questioned their faith — “Do you hear voices?” — told them it would take “an absolute miracle” to place a preschool girl with them. The same religious dossier the case worker viewed as a liability became decisive once a birth mother specified that her daughter's adoptive family must be dedicated, active Christians — a requirement rooted in the birth mother's own single day at a migrant-labor-camp vacation Bible school as a child. The case worker later joined the Lutheran Church.
Chapter 4 documents the moment the LaNoue family expanded from three to four members through adoption, and its evidentiary center is the case worker's institutional reversal — from viewing the family's Christian commitment as a disqualifying factor to a supervisor requesting their file by name once a birth mother's placement condition made that same commitment decisive. It is also the only account in the Walking with God in Broken Places record that places the family's personal prayer for a daughter directly alongside their institutional disaster-relief role on the newly formed Texas state Baptist disaster committee, responding to two of the most significant 1970 U.S. natural disasters — the Lubbock F5 tornado and Hurricane Celia — in the same season.
Voice 2 presents Lydia's adoption and the LaNoue family's charge to build the Southern Baptist Convention's first mobile disaster unit (cross-referenced at HEC-008) as contemporaneous, inseparable moments in the family's institutional timeline. The chapter also preserves, at the family's own initiative, the anonymity of Lydia's birth mother — a discipline this dossier follows.
Dr. John LaNoue Sr. — Husband and adoptive father; maintained a discipline of complete honesty through the welfare-agency interviews.
Kaywin Joan Baldwin LaNoue (“Dr. L.,” 1934–2021) — Wife; held a master's in religious education and a Ph.D. in education from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; worked as a Christian school administrator and children's minister and volunteered with Texas Baptist Men disaster relief.
John LaNoue Jr., MD — The couple's son; at age seven, his question “Have you thought about adoption?” redirected the family's prayer; later a pediatric surgeon in Irving, Texas.
Lydia LaNoue Slinkard — The adopted daughter, born May 15, 1970 and placed with the LaNoues at nearly two years old; later married Todd Slinkard and settled in Atlanta, Georgia, where she is the mother of Rebecca and Laura Slinkard.
Unnamed case worker (Dallas-area Texas Department of Public Welfare, 1972) — Interviewed John and Kaywin, questioned their faith at length, and initially told them a preschool-girl placement would require “an absolute miracle”; later held up their file when a supervisor asked for “a dossier on an extremely religious couple,” and eventually joined the Lutheran Church.
Unnamed birth mother of Lydia — Placed her daughter for adoption on the condition that the adoptive family be dedicated, active Christians, a requirement rooted in her own childhood experience of a single day at a migrant-labor-camp vacation Bible school. Her identity is preserved as anonymous per Voice 2's own editorial discipline, which this dossier follows.