The American Mothers, Inc. (AMI) Hawaii chapter recently named Donnette Tew, the wife of BYU-Hawaii accounting professor Glade Tew and mother of four adopted children, as its Young Mother Representative 2004.
She joins a growing list of other women in the Koolauloa area with ties to BYU-Hawaii who have shared the same honor, including Lisa Wagner, Leilani Auna, Susan Kunz, and Lanett Ho Ching. Also, BYU-Hawaii alumna Beth Uale was named the 2004 AMI mother of the year.
Tew, who was raised in Parowan, Utah, and earned an elementary education degree from Southern Utah University, said former AMI Hawaii state and national "mother of the year" Carolyn Shumway, wife of University president Eric Shumway, made the announcement at the BYU-Hawaii Women's Organization luncheon on Feb. 20.
The honor becomes official at the AMI Hawaii banquet on March 20 at 6:30 p.m. in the Dole Cannery Ballrooms. For more information on that, call Amanda DuPont at 734-4920. Tew will also attend the AMI's national convention in Puerto Rico in April.
After graduating from college and serving a mission in Cleveland, Ohio, Tew was teaching elementary school in Salt Lake City when she met her husband, who lived in the same apartment complex and had been assigned as her home teacher.
"As the oldest of nine children, I always wanted 12 of my own," she said; but after being married for two-and-a-half years, the couple started filling out adoption papers. They had been married for five years before they were able to adopt daughter Jessica, who's now 11. Next came Rebecca, 6, then Dallin, 4, and one-year-old Spencer, who is part-Tongan.
"We're currently filling out paper work to adopt a fifth. There's nothing I would rather do. I loved teaching children when I did it, but now that I have my own, I have no desire to do anything else," said Tew, who has been a fulltime homemaker for the past 11 years. "There were a lot of years when we didn't have our children and we were waiting for the adoptions. Now I feel honored to be a mom."
Tew said she also felt very humbled to receive the award.
"I feel a big responsibility as a mother, because my children are adopted. I feel the obligation to be the kind of mother the birth mothers want me to be," she added, explaining birth mothers usually have a say in selecting the adoptive parents.
Tew said she's excited about the recognition, because the American Mothers, Inc. organization focuses on "spending time with your family. We love to spend time together. We do a lot of family activities. Every Saturday, after our chores are done, we go to the beach, or hiking, or to the zoo. The kids get to help choose, and we never miss Family Home Evening every Monday. We spend the whole evening doing things together."
"We love to play games together," she said. "We also sing a lot. Jessica and Rebecca both play the piano. The other thing we love to do is read with our children. We've chosen not to have TV in our home. For example, we just finished the Little House on the Prairie series, and we're going to go there this summer."
"Until we had children, we didn't even have a TV," Tew continued, pointing out they have since acquired a small set so they could watch "responsible" videos.
"Otherwise, we've been without one for 15 years, and I don't miss it at all. We will also watch selected movies, but the TV is not in the main room of our house. We've tried to make it not an important part of our home."
Pointing out a plaque hanging in their kitchen that reads, "Families & Friends Forever," Tew said she and her husband "want our children to be best friends forever, so we always have a lot of other children in our home. We try to do fun things with the neighborhood kids. We do parties. We also have a service club and a babysitting club where we put together babysitting kits, and we make cookies every Friday."
Tew said she believes this type of interaction is good modeling. "I feel it's really important that my daughters learn how to become mothers. It used to be that one of the purposes of a mother was to teach her daughter how to be a good mother. My children, for example, are all learning to cook."
As part of her AMI responsibilities, Tew said she would like to focus on literacy -- "encouraging reading together as families. There are several things I would like to do in this area."
ew added she's also thinking of doing "books for newborns, and family storytelling time."
In her spare time, Tew has served as the BYU-Hawaii 2nd Stake Relief Society education counselor for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since her husband was released as campus bishop about six months ago. She also recently baby-sat the daughter of one of her husband's students for a month when the woman had to return to Korea.