Edna Gladney

Edna Browning Kahly Gladney (1886, Milwaukee, Wisconsin – 1961, Texas) was an early campaigner for children's rights and better living conditions for disadvantaged children.

When Edna Kahly's father, Maurice Kahly, died in 1903, her mother sent young Edna to live with her aunt and uncle in Fort Worth, Texas. Edna and Sam Gladney married in 1906 and moved to Wolfe City, Texas where she began a crusade to clean up a Grayson County poor farm.

After seeing the horrible treatment of the children there, she arranged for them to be transferred to Morris’ Children’s Hospital and Aid Society in Fort Worth. She joined the board of directors for the Society and started a free day care facility in Sherman, Texas that was self-financed.

In 1924, Gladney and her husband moved back to Fort Worth, where Edna became superintendent of the Society in 1927. Gladney successfully lobbied the Texas legislature to take the word "illegitimate" off birth certificates and to ensure adopted children the same inheritance rights of other children.

After the Society acquired the West Texas Maternity Hospital in 1950, the Society's members renamed it the "Edna Gladney Home" (now known as the Gladney Center for Adoption). [http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/GG/yng1.html]

Texas Christian University gave Gladney an honorary doctor of laws degree in 1957. Though she fell ill in 1960, Gladney continued to help with plans for the Home until her death in 1961.

Legacy

A film based on her life and charitable efforts, "Blossoms in the Dust", was released in 1941, and starred Oscar-winning actress Greer Garson as Gladney.