Rider Roundup
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photo by shane darby
Temple Memorial’s first Family of the Year Award honors the Rider family of seven
By Baylor McLelland
Typically, Temple Memorial Pediatric Center awards one child annually with the Kid of the Year Award. However, this year, the Rider children—Blake (10), Ellie (9), Tatum (7), Anna Marie (6), and MacKenzie (5)—were honored as their first Family of the Year. All of the kids have received extensive care from staff at the center, alongside help from across their community and from their parents, Cyndy and Tommy Rider, who built their family through adoption.
In May 2007, Cyndy Williams met Tommy Rider through friends. They immediately hit it off and married that same October. Tommy had always envisioned having five kids, inspired by the big families on classic sitcoms. Cyndy, meanwhile, “was laughing because I was an only child, so five kids sounded so wild to me,” she said. The couple passively tried to get pregnant for over a decade.
“From the beginning, we knew that, even if we did have [biological] kids, we wanted to adopt,” Cyndy said. “That’s just where our hearts were, and we knew that any kids we’d adopt would be our own.”
When one of Cyndy’s friends adopted a sibling group, the Riders felt encouraged to begin building their family through non-biological means. They began completing the process of becoming foster parents.
Then, in October 2019, Tommy received a call from a family member, who let him know that an infant relative had entered the foster care system. The Riders quickly finished their paperwork. In less than a week, they were approved in the system, were contacted as a kinship placement, converted their spare room into a nursery, and received five-month-old Tatum.
On August 17th, 2022, Cyndy and Tommy Rider adopted their five children, surrounded by loved ones and community partners, including representatives from The Call and For the Sake of One. submitted photos
The initial plan was to reunite Tatum with her birth parents after a couple of months, but that never happened.
In June 2020, Tatum’s three siblings—Blake, Ellie, and Anna Marie—were reunited with Tatum at the Riders’ home. One year later, the fifth child, MacKenzie, was born. At 3 days old, she joined her siblings in their foster placement.
On August 17th, 2022, Cyndy and Tommy adopted the five children who already occupied their home and hearts, of whom they’d dreamt since the very beginning of their marriage.
At the time, the Riders lived in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house, with a laundry room converted into another bedroom. The foster and adoption process had drained their finances, but their community always stepped up.
“We have had such a huge support network,” Tommy said. ‘If it weren’t for that, this would be way too much. But we have three bags of clothes back here that someone just donated yesterday. There’s always someone ready to help.”
“This life is truly a blessing for us,” Cyndy added. “Both Tommy and I were made for these kids and our situation.”
In December 2022, Tatum (then just 3 years old) began hallucinating.
“It was really bad,” Cyndy recalled. “We thought at first that they were nightmares or night terrors, but it never stopped.”
At Wadley, a CT revealed an abnormality in her brain, assumed to be a tumor. At Arkansas Children’s, they discovered that it was actually craniosynostosis, a birth defect that causes an infant’s skull bones to close too early. “There was no room for brain growth,” Cyndy explained. Tatum needed cranium vault reconstructive surgery.
On a hunch, Anna Marie was tested for the condition—she too needed the operation. The other kids underwent genetic testing, and MacKenzie tested positive for the mutated gene associated with the condition.
Of the five Rider kids, three needed major head surgeries.
When 3-year-old Tatum began experiencing hallucinations in December 2022, her family learned that she had craniosynostosis, a birth defect requiring skull surgery. Two of her siblings, Anna Marie and MacKenzie, also had the inherited condition and required cranium vault reconstructive surgery. submitted photos
“We were in a panic,” Cyndy recalled. Primarily, they were terrified for their children, who were about to undergo operations that are statistically safe but never without risk. Their other major concern was financial. Either Cyndy or Tommy would need to be at home with their recovering children for three months. “We’re thinking, ‘What are we going to do without an income for three months?’” she said.
Because the Rider children spent the 2022 holiday season in the hospital, their Sunday school class at First Baptist Church threw them “a Christmas spectacular” to celebrate the holiday. Additionally, First United Methodist Church fundraised over $35,000 for the Riders, to sustain them during the kids’ three-month recovery period. submitted photos
In response, First United Methodist Church—the church where Cyndy grew up—fundraised over $35,000 for the Rider family. That money sustained them through the recovery period and eventually allowed them to purchase a larger home—“an absolute godsend blessing,” Cyndy said.
The kids’ Sunday school class at First Baptist Church provided “a Christmas spectacular” for the children, who missed out on the normal holiday celebrations that year. “They did a Christmas meal and, in the foyer, had gifts for all the kids,” Cyndy remembered. “It was a really special night.”
The Rider children stay busy with extracurricular activities, including scouting, cheer, and receiving therapies at Temple Memorial Pediatric Center. submitted photos
Today, all five Rider children are healthy and happy. Their weeks include Bible drill, cheerleading practice for the girls, scouting for Blake, and therapies at Temple Memorial. They travel in a large van, picking up all five children from school during what they call “Rider Roundup.” They spend ample time with their grandmother, Lynda Williams, who Cyndy described as a “lifesaver.”
Though the waters are calm now—or as calm as they can be with five children splashing around—all five kids will meet with a craniomaxillofacial team in Little Rock this month, in response to some atypical test results.
“We’ve had more unexpected expenses pop up out of nowhere that we never could have conceived this year,” Tommy said. “But you just keep trudging forward, and in the end, one of the things that we found to be true is that support is all around. They say the days are long and the years are short, and that is so true.”
“This life is truly a blessing for us,” Cyndy added. “Both Tommy and I were made for these kids and our situation. We don’t have everything figured out, but we have the best support system, the best ‘village,’ and the love of everyone around us. We couldn’t imagine our life any different.”