Ellen Harlie

Ellen Harlie grew up on a farm outside of Great Bend, with one brother, her mother Rosine and her father Harlie. Social life in the rural area revolved around a large, but close extended family, in Barton and Stafford counties and church activities at Peace Church near Hudson. She attended a one-room school through eighth grade a mile and a half from their farmhouse. She spent hours playing with dolls, hoping she would one day have lots of children. Ellen Harlie is a 1961 graduate of Great Bend...See more

Ellen Harlie grew up on a farm outside of Great Bend, with one brother, her mother Rosine and her father Harlie. Social life in the rural area revolved around a large, but close extended family, in Barton and Stafford counties and church activities at Peace Church near Hudson. She attended a one-room school through eighth grade a mile and a half from their farmhouse. She spent hours playing with dolls, hoping she would one day have lots of children. Ellen Harlie is a 1961 graduate of Great Bend High School. She attended Hays State for a year and then married and moved out of state with her first husband, father of her two oldest sons. After 10 years of marriage they divorced and went their separate ways. In 1973 she remarried and had a daughter and third son by that union. Her second husband was in the trucking business quite successfully for many years but then the trucking business failed and in order to save their financial lives Ellen and her husband took up therapeutic foster parenting. They fostered 55 placements over 18 years, adopting three of those placements. Her second husband passed away in 2005 and Ellen continued fostering through 2009. Ellen married her third husband in July of 2009 and continued fostering until retiring from fostering on December 30th, 2009. With her 3rd husband's help and encouragement, she wrote her memoirs as a therapeutic foster parent and her first book, "Through Hell and Out the Other Side - Stories of a Therapeutic Foster Mom" was published in May 2014. See less