Five Lucas County children went home with permanent families on Monday, November 2, when Lucas County Children Services and the Lucas County Probate Court held a public adoption ceremony at the agency’s offices on Adams Street in Toledo, according to Lucas County Children Services’ November 2026 newsletter. The ceremony celebrated National Adoption Day early — the national observance itself falls on Saturday, November 21 — and united five children into four families.
One of those families spanned three generations. The Toledo Blade reported that a foster parent adopted her 4-year-old grandson at the ceremony, nearly two decades after she had adopted his mother and her two siblings — meaning the boy joined a family his mother had herself joined through adoption years earlier. WTOL 11 also reported on the day, confirming five children were adopted in four ceremonies on Monday.
The ceremony carried a second significance beyond the families it created. It was the last public adoption ceremony for Lucas County Probate Judge Jack Puffenberger, who is retiring after more than three decades on the bench and after presiding over some 8,400 adoptions, Lucas County Children Services reported in its newsletter.
Puffenberger’s path to that farewell ran most of the length of a career. He was first appointed a Municipal Court judge in 1987, then elected to the Probate Court, where he served 36 years, according to the children services newsletter. His final day on the bench will be February 8, 2027. Over those years he handled adoptions of every kind — foster care, kinship, private and foreign — and, by the agency’s count, the number reached 8,400.
Each of those adoptions carried a small ritual. In every case, Lucas County Children Services reported, Puffenberger presented the adopted child with a miniature gavel as a remembrance — a longstanding Probate Court tradition that gave every child who passed through his courtroom a keepsake of the day their family became permanent. The five children adopted on November 2 were the last to receive one at a public ceremony from his hand.
The judge behind the gavel was a northwest Ohio native. Puffenberger was born and raised on Catawba Island in Ottawa County, earned his bachelor’s degree from Kent State University and a master’s from Youngstown State University, and took his law degree from the University of Toledo College of Law, according to the newsletter. He served the people of Lucas County for 40 years in all, is the only judge in the county’s Common Pleas Division to serve six complete terms, and at 75 exceeds Ohio’s mandatory judicial retirement age of 70. In retirement, the agency reported, he plans to continue community work and spend more time with his ten grandchildren — and his favorite part of the job, it added, was the people who came before him and the variety of adoption cases he handled.
The November timing is deliberate. November is National Adoption Month, and National Adoption Day — observed on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, November 21 this year — exists to finalize adoptions and raise awareness of the children in foster care still waiting for permanent families. Lucas County’s early celebration put the spotlight on five children whose wait is over, in the hope that other families will step forward for those whose wait continues.
For Lucas County families considering that step, the path usually runs through foster care. Lucas County Children Services explains on its foster-to-adopt page that many of its foster parents adopt children placed with them, that prospective parents complete 36 hours of agency-provided training, and that families should expect the process to take six months or longer from the first application. The agency states that about 3,000 children in Ohio are waiting for permanent homes, and it takes foster-to-adopt inquiries at 419-213-3336.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What we know: five children were adopted into four families on November 2 in Toledo, in Judge Puffenberger’s final public adoption ceremony. What we are still waiting on: the names and ages of the other children and families were not published — a normal protection in children-services cases — Lucas County Children Services has not published a current count of Lucas County children still waiting for adoption in the sources for this story, and who will succeed Puffenberger on the Probate Court bench after February 8, 2027 has not been announced.
What happens next is a full calendar for anyone moved by Monday’s ceremony. The agency’s Holiday Gift Drive officially started November 5 with the WTOL-TV “Gift of Joy” campaign, collecting gifts for children involved with Lucas County Children Services. A virtual foster-parent informational meeting runs Monday, November 16 from 12:00 to 12:30 p.m., with an in-person session the same day from 5 to 6 p.m. at the Oregon Branch Library, and a December pre-service training series runs December 7 through 10, the agency’s newsletter reported. National Adoption Day itself follows on November 21 — and for the four families formed on Adams Street, it will be the first one they mark together.