SEOUL — Molly Holt said that she is just trying to help children with disabilities to accomplish everything within their abilities.
"I just try to help them do as much as they can do, and help them to help themselves," she said humbly.
Miss Holt, 65, is the chairperson of Holt Children’s Services (HCS), which is well-known for its efforts to arrange inter-country adoptions of orphaned Korean children and rehabilitate the disabled.
She was decorated with the Gold Order of Humanity Merit by the Korean National Red Cross Oct. 27 for her life-long devotion to protecting children in need at Hanvit Bank headquarters in downtown Seoul. She was one of a total of 4,127 persons cited in the annual ceremony.
The Gold Order is the top Red Cross citation.
"It’s a quite marvelous honor and I’m very surprised," she said.
She has been often called the "Mother of the Disabled" because of her unwavering efforts to assist disabled children with loving care. But she dismissed the title as an exaggeration.
"Being called the Mother of the Disabled is a sheer exaggeration. I do not deserve it," she said.
"I just do what the Lord tells me to do," she said.
She has put into action her love for children needing desperate help since 1956, following her parents, Harry and Bertha Holt, who dedicated their lives to helping Korean homeless children through overseas adoption since right after the 1950-53 Korean War.
"Government support for the disabled has greatly improved and facilities for the disabled have become much better," she said.
But she believes that the government has more to do to keep on improving its aid to needy children and improve accommodating facilities.
She added that the disabled have come to raise their voices for more rights.
After graduating from a nursing school in Oregon, Miss Holt came to Korea in 1956 to serve as a nurse for the HCS set up by her parents the year before. Her parents adopted eight Korean orphans.
She then went back to Oregon in 1960 to complete the course for nursing at a local university.
During the 1965-74 period, she provided nursing services to remote rural villages and islands throughout Korea.
Miss Holt worked for four years from 1967-71 as chief of the HCS’s Ilsan Welfare Town, just northwest of Seoul. She became a director of the HCS in 1998.