Legal Aid’s Achievements

Legal Aid’s director spotlights its most senior attorney

Julie Marks answered her calling, but her heart kept her there

By Jequette Noland, LAS Executive Director

The Legal Aid Society of Birmingham was founded in 1952 to secure justice for and to protect the rights of the needy. As we celebrate our 70th anniversary this year, it is only fitting that we also celebrate the accomplishments of one of our dedicated senior attorneys who has been a part of Legal Aid’s history for 35 of those years.

Julie Marks is a guardian ad litem (GAL) for Legal Aid in the Jefferson County Family Court Birmingham Division. She has served as a staff attorney, managing attorney and so much more including representing thousands of dependent children. Here is my conversation with her about her calling and what motivates her to continue.

Q: When you got the call to join Legal Aid, did you realize that this would be your true calling?

A: When I got the call to come work at Legal Aid, I thought it would be a good place to start and never envisioned myself staying here 35 years. I initially stayed because there was a young vibrant group that I worked with and socialized with. We ended up making lifelong friendships, but they left for other jobs. I stayed because of my kids.

Over the years, I felt more and more that the children who I represented were ‘my kids.’ I try to make sure that I do not only do what is in their best interests in the court system, but also try to make sure that some special and normal life experiences are available to them. Left: Julie Marks, a guardian ad litem (GAL) for Legal Aid in the Jefferson County Family Court Birmingham Division. Right: The Legal Aid Society family court team.

Q: What is your most memorable case?

A: My most memorable case includes the infamous case of the twins left in an abandoned home in Roebuck in 1993. Those children were just shy of 5 and were found locked in a room wearing only diapers. They weighed less than a normal 1 year old. Their parents had moved to a new home with their older children, leaving the twins with no food or water in a bedroom locked from the outside. The door to the home was locked.

Luckily, the landlord came to mow the yard and saw one of the girls looking out the window. He broke into the home and found the malnourished children in the bedroom. The children gorged on food rushed over by well-intentioned neighbors. The children were then taken to Children’s Hospital where they were found to be malnourished and now sick from suddenly being fed the food by the neighbors.

The Department of Human Resources (DHR) became involved in this case, and all four of the children were removed from their parents. While there were relatives of these children, they had shown no interest and had not previously been involved in the children’s lives. When they did see these two children, they overlooked their appearance and did not investigate their welfare.

I was appointed as a GAL to one of the four children. The GALs worked together to build our cases, even though the needs of each of the children differed and we each advocated for our individual child.

I learned so much in preparing and trying that case. I learned the investigative skills necessary to prepare a large case. I learned a lot about DHR’s policies and procedures and hopefully, some of these changed based on our work on that case.

Up to that time, if you called in a complaint or reported to DHR after hours, you would have to leave a message on a recorder. There was not a 24-hour response

Marks with Legal Aid Society Executive Director Jequette Noland.

or on-call team and reporting abuse was not anonymous. That changed after the completion of our case. The twins in that case are now 33 years old, and I am still in touch with their adoptive mother. I was invited to see them prepare and go off to their prom.

This case taught me a lot, including some things about DHR’s process for placing children for adoption. I also attended some of the adoption fairs and attended some of the meetings where children were introduced to their prospective adoptive parents. After seeing some of the children at the adoption fairs and watching as they were introduced to the families looking to adopt, I always thought we could come up with a more child-friendly way to find and recruit adoptive homes.

Q: What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?

A: In 2005, I read an article in Parade Magazine about a Heart Gallery. It talked about the genesis of the program in New Mexico and the opening of a gallery in New Jersey, telling the stories of the families brought together by the Gallery. The premise behind a Heart Gallery is simple: arrange for professional photographers to photograph the children in their best light and share these photos with potential adoptive parents.

Realizing that this was an opportunity to change the way that children are placed

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for adoption when they do not have an identified adoptive resource, I reached out to DHR. I partnered with Michelle Bearman Wolnek, Karen Nomberg, Suzy Harris, Diane Dunning, Connie Rogers, Elizabeth Curtwright and Marie Youngpeter.

Together we founded Heart Gallery Alabama. Within months, we achieved nonprofit status and had our first Gallery in the Birmingham Museum of Art. We desired to go further and added audio interviews and video interviews with the children so that their individuality was able to shine through. I was on the Board of Directors for over five years. Today, Heart Gallery is still my proudest achievement. It has added mentoring programs for the children who are not adopted, as well as birthday clubs to remember the birthdays of the children in foster care who are still waiting to be adopted.

In 2010, I had the opportunity to witness one of many miracles of the Heart Gallery when I met the adoptive mother of two boys who had been my GAL clients. I had visited the children in their previous foster homes, and they had looked like little lost waifs, not the happy healthy boys running around that day. I knew that they had been adopted through Heart Gallery and cried happy tears seeing that my work for Legal Aid and Heart Gallery had been successful in producing two happy young men.

Q: Any recent victories you would like to share?

A: Every case where a child achieves permanency is a victory. Whether it is by returning to a family member now equipped to provide the care that the child needs or if we must terminate parental rights so that a child can be adopted, seeing a child in a healthy, safe and permanent loving home is a victory. I also have children who have been in foster care and not been adopted. Making sure that those children know that someone cares about them and is here for them is important to me. Two of those young men had Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy and required care that their families could not provide. One of the young men was a huge Alabama fan, and his room in his foster home was decorated in crimson and white with pictures of Nick Saban and the team all over the walls. He dreamed of being a sports commentator and taking over for Eli Gold. I made a few calls and was able to secure a trip to an Alabama football practice. His foster mom took him to Tuscaloosa where he and his foster family got a tour of the Alabama studio and they got to stand on the practice field watching the team exercise, warm up and perform scrimmages. Nick Saban and the team members came over, throwing him ‘swag’ and signing autographs. When I spoke to him later, he said he had the time of his life.

Another client lived in a skilled nursing facility, as there was not a foster home able to meet his special needs. He was a huge Auburn fan, so a friend connected me with Bruce Pearl. Within a week, I had secured two tickets to the next home football game as well as field passes for the pre-game warm up. Heart Gallery donated the funds to rent a handicapped van. Another agency provided a volunteer who had been an Auburn ambassador to accompany the young man to the game. Bama Fever-Tiger Pride donated T-shirts, pom-poms and hats so he would be dressed appropriately. He had the time of his life, and the pictures that I have of him at the game with cheerleaders and others reflect his joy.

Sadly, when COVID hit and his condition worsened, he was hospitalized with no hope for recovery. I worked to arrange that he was not alone in the hospital. I contacted his former foster parents and social workers to come to sit with him. His nurses from his skilled facility, his social worker, as well as the volunteer who took him to the Auburn game and I all took shifts, so he was not alone in his final journey. I contacted his high school and was able to get his diploma a month before graduation so that he could know he had achieved this goal. Sadly, he passed away, but he died knowing that he had a family in his social workers, GAL and the other lives that he had touched during his lifetime.

Julie continues to fight the good fight daily, in court and out of court. Many of her former clients keep in touch with her long after court involvement.

Julie’s winning T-shirt design for a contest held by the Alabama Criminal Defense Lawyers Association during its sixth annual Juvenile Justice Conference in 2021.

Heart Gallery arranges for professional photographers to photograph children to share with potential adoptive parents.

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