The Squire clan tumbled out of the family minivan and through the doors of the Golden Corral restaurant in Cary on a recent rainy night. Before the family began to eat, they all bowed their heads as Leon Squire said a prayer of thanks.

The Squires have a lot to be thankful for. But perhaps their biggest blessing came in 1997.

That was the year Leon and Audrey adopted Shalonda and Tyrone, thanks to the efforts of an adoption agency that specializes in finding permanent homes for African-American children.

Another Choice For Black Children, a Charlotte-based non-profit that recently opened an office in Raleigh, was a godsend for Shalonda and Tyrone and hundreds of other North Carolina children who might otherwise not have found permanent homes.

"It was kind of like love at first sight," said Leon Squire, a 42-year-old math teacher at Lee County High School in Sanford. "It was not unlike what a biological parent feels when they first see their newborn."

Ruth Amerson founded Another Choice, the state's first African-American adoption agency, in Sanford in 1995. From the outset, the agency focused on recruiting adoptive homes for African-American youngsters and other children with special needs.

"Black children are disproportionately and overly represented in foster care," Amerson said. "In some counties black children make up 65 percent of the kids in foster care."

Amerson graduated with a degree in social work and went to work with the Lee County Department of Social Services in 1980. She was appalled by what she saw happening with black children -- often the victims of abuse and neglect -- who wound up in foster care and never get adopted into a permanent home.

"They would age out at 18," Amerson said. "Homeless, with no connections and no roots."

Another Choice helped ensure that wouldn't happen to Shalonda and Tyrone Squire.

Shalonda, 13 and Tyrone, 11, are beautiful, slender kids with butterscotch complexions. Shalonda plays the clarinet. Her eyes sparkle and she has an impish, easygoing grin.

"Reading," she answered when asked what was her favorite subject at school.

"Recess," answered Tyrone, who played little league football this year. He is more reserved than his sister. But not when it came to feasting on steak, green beans and cabbage at the Golden Corral.

Tyrone cleaned his plate, and his stoic demeanor broke open with laughter and giggles while chatting with his sister about silly stuff.

"I wanted him to have a son," Audrey Squire, a 39-year-old engineer with Lucent Technologies in Cary, said of her husband. "He thought that I should have a daughter with the idea being the two of them would already have a bond. Leon and I have a bond, so you're merging two families together."

The couple brought Shalonda and Tyrone home in the summer of 1997. They moved into a bigger apartment and traded the pickup truck for a minivan. Fruit Loops became a mainstay on the shopping list.

The couple's biggest challenge was helping the children overcome separation anxiety from their previous family whom they had grown fond of.

"We showed the kids that they had a stable place to live and they were going to be here no matter what," Leon Squire said.

Prospective parents are referred to Another Choice by the courts, social service agencies and word of mouth. The agency is funded by the N.C. Division of Social Services and currently serves 27 North Carolina counties. It offers a 10-week training course for potential parents and has placed over 700 children in adoptive homes.

Despite the nonprofit's success, Another Choice and other adoption agencies across the state can't keep up with demand.

"There are far more children than there are families," Amerson said. "Some never get adopted."

Another Choice moved to Charlotte from Sanford in 1997. It opened offices just off U.S. 401 in Raleigh last summer.

"We had been wanting to open a Raleigh office for some time," said Maria Weeks, director of Another Choice's adoption connection team. "It's more centrally located, and, of course, with the state [social services] office being here we wanted to be more known on this side of the state."

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