Darlena Moore and Samuel Moore

00:04 I'm Sam Moore, I made 62. It's Friday, September 24th 2021. I'm in Wilmington, North Carolina with my wife. Darlena Moore.

00:19 I'm Darlene, amor. I am age 60. Today is Friday. September 24th, 2021. I am in Wilmington, North Carolina and the name of my interview partner. Today is Sam Moore and he is my husband.

00:39 Hey, Sam, hey, Dora.

00:42 Do you remember the first time we met? I asked you to play tennis.

00:46 Not exactly. You asked me if I knew someone who like to play tennis, I tuck my tail between my legs and I walked away, and that's when my foster dad. Did Gilbert whispered in my ear. I think it was a lame attempt to ask you out.

01:06 Yeah, that's true. I can remember noticing you from afar in high school, but I thought you were a rich girl. So I figured I wouldn't have a chance with you. I can remember the first time we cross paths. So you still owe me a dress. I was working as a roadie for a band and some Jokers threw me across a table that you were sitting out with your friends and not drink, sitting on everybody's laps the guys you were with her much bigger than me and they were going to kill me, but my rowdy friends were bigger than them. So I survived that day. Yes. That was not the day. I said, that's the man. I'm going to marry at the time I ask you about tennis. We were in the same Resort working. I worked as a lifeguard and you worked in the restaurant after that, tennis Fiasco. I kept asking you out and eventually you agreed and we had our first date. Yeah, you showed up on that baby blue. Pajama shirt and those earth shoes.

02:01 I didn't know that it was a pajama shirt. I had bought it at a thrift Thrift Shop. I was trying to impress, you three buttons on it and they were an inch and a half in diameter is Goofy, still. It was a pretty successful day at. Don't you think you take me to Steven's restaurant? I ate escargot for the first time that night it was fancy. It was Francine. It cost me. Two weeks pay, and I found out you weren't a rich girl at all. The big house you were living in was a foster home and we learned that both of our mom's died. When we were eleven and how big of an impact that had on our lives. We were babies, only 19 and 20

02:46 After my mom died, I was separated from All My Siblings. I ended up in a relative's in a two-bedroom house with 10 people. There was some pretty rough stuff happening there. One day. I finally escaped out the bathroom window with nothing, but the clothes on my back.

03:02 You told me you wanted to the bathroom, lock the door, turn the tub faucet off or on. So they think you were taking a bath and then you climbed out the window live, hit me in the floorboard of her car and took me to the police station.

03:18 I told them they could put me in jail, but I've never go back. What happened next? They put me in jail. Well, in the juvenile home. Anyway, back, then running away was a crime stuff. What happened after that? After several unsuccessful placements. I ended up at that big house with some people call Dick and Mari Gilbert.

03:40 It was an emergency shelter for hard-to-place kids from foster care. It was in Asheville, North Carolina.

03:47 What was life like living with the Gilberts?

03:50 So much better than anywhere. I've been the house was full of kids with all different kinds of backgrounds kids, who'd been into prostitution, drugs been abused burned runaways. You name it? And that was better.

04:05 Jake and Mary were cool. They took us all in as we were, there were educated and opened up a whole new world for me.

04:14 And you never got adopted or left their house became my legal Guardians. They saw something in me that I wasn't sure. I saw one myself only 3% of Youth from Foster Care ever graduate from college. They helped me through the college process. And now I'm one of the 3%.

04:37 That summer, we went on our first date. You were going to Meredith College an all-girls Baptist College in Raleigh. These girls did not know about narrow escapes out, bathroom Windows into the unknown.

04:50 But you didn't graduate from there. No, I fell in love over the summer with a boy in a pajama shirt and transfer colleges, eventually. We were I think we were both in a process of finding ourselves. I was coming out of a couple of lost years. I was going from one, laborer job to another and finally figure it out. I didn't want to dig ditches. I went to the local college and ask for the Asheville and beg them to let me in.

05:20 We both ended up at UNC Asheville. We moved in together for 4 years, and we finally got married or happy. I am to after 37 years of marriage. What do you think about? It's a lot of work, right? Haha.

05:41 Remember people kept asking us? Our secret to marriage, a happy marriage. I thought. And thought for the longest time about how to answer that question and then decided my answer was going to be. It's never been work to love him.

05:56 Then one night, we were mingling at a party and I heard you answering that question to someone. You said, it's a lot of work.

06:07 Yeah, the minute I heard you say that I realized. Oh, yes, it is. A lot of work.

06:16 Let's just say, marriage is a lot of work, but it's not a lot of work to love you.

06:24 So after college, I got a job as a writer and you got a job and it and then we started a family because we had lost the nucleus of our ours. And we did a pretty good job. We have two beautiful daughters and three beautiful grandchildren so far. I bet they said we'd never make it but we've been together 41 years. We know how to work.

06:54 Through those years of raising our kids, you always found time to volunteer.

07:00 And then, eventually you started the Gilbert scholarship.

07:04 I always volunteered my time for kids in foster care yet, but I felt a calling to do more and honor the Gilbert somehow they spent their lives. Helping hundreds of Youth, from the foster care system.

07:18 So you started cooking granola? Yes, I could tell my granola and I sold it to friends and family and scrounged up enough money for my first scholarship in their name. I called it the Gilbert scholarship. I gave it to an amazing kid from Foster Care in Raleigh who now works in banking.

07:37 I felt like we are living in a commercial kitchen. We had.

07:42 Pans and pots and bowls, stack up all over the place. I remember the time you got the order for 400 lb.

07:51 Yeah, it definitely became too much to run a food business and a nonprofit. So now I'm just running my nonprofit Mountain girl initiative and trying to make people understand that there are four hundred and thirty-eight thousand kids in foster care, and they should all have the opportunity to go to college.

08:09 By the end of this year, you'll have given 25 scholarships. So how's that feel?

08:15 It feels good, but there have been a lot of sad stories.

08:20 Do you do you remember any of those kids?

08:23 One in particular, a twenty-year-old told me in her essay that life has brought her to her knees and she didn't know if she wanted to keep living.

08:32 20th. So young to feel like life has brought you to your knees, but that's what broken homes do.

08:39 I think you made an impact and you honored the Gilbert's.

08:44 Have made a small dent, but there are so many more kids in the system that deserve the opportunity to go to college.

08:50 Yeah, but you you made an impact on the kids you were able to help. You must get something out of that.

08:57 The best healing comes from, figuring out, what caused you pain in life, and trying to alleviate that pain for someone else. So yes, I get something out of it. I'm proud of you and I'm proud of you. Who would have thought a ditch digger in a pajama shirt would become a successful. CIO. I'm glad you're on this journey with me.

09:17 Do you think our moms would be proud? I think our moms would be very proud.