Robert Sensale
Robert Sensale
Foundling Adoptee
“You couldn’t find two luckier people than my sister and I, that we ended up with my mom and dad,” says Robert. “Jimmy Stewart got the movie, A Wonderful Life, but I got to live it.”
Adopted from The Foundling in 1959, he has kept up a lifelong connection with the organization. Along with his sister, many of his other neighbors and friends growing up had been adopted from The Foundling. And 20 years ago, after seeing a Foundling publication featuring Sister Mary DeSales – the woman who had placed him with his family – he reconnected with her. She remembered Robert and his family, and the two ended up having weekly phone calls. Additionally, Robert and his family would visit with her and the other Sisters of Charity at the retirement home where they lived.
“We all went to The New York Foundling’s 140th anniversary, and there were a number of women there that were nurses in that era,” Robert says. “And you could see them all looking at us – ‘I wonder if I took care of this child, did I hold this child, did I change his diaper?’ It was a really wonderful bonding experience. And to see Sister for the last years of her life was an absolute blessing.”
Robert currently lives in New Jersey , and works as an attorney for a Wall Street investment bank. With his late wife, he has one biological son and three adopted daughters. “Life is good,” he says.
