# Episode 58 - The Silent Generation - Sharon

- Podcast: GenX Adulting Podcast
- Published: 2026-02-07T22:00:00.000Z
- Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2398379/episodes/18640652-episode-58-the-silent-generation-sharon.mp3
- Page: https://genxadultingpodcast.com/transcripts/podcasts/genx-adulting-podcast/episodes/episode-58
- Source: https://genxadultingpodcast.com/episodes/genxadultingpodcastepisode58.html
- People: Sharon (guest), Brian Barker (host), Nicole Barker (host)
- Topics: The Silent Generation

## Summary

In Episode 58 of GenX Adulting, Sharon, a member of the Silent Generation, shares her life experiences growing up during and after World War II. The episode delves into her family's history, the impact of societal norms on her upbringing, and the challenges she faced, including trauma and the dynamics of her family relationships.

## Key takeaways

- Sharon was born in 1944, during World War II, and is considered a 'war baby.'
- The Silent Generation, to which Sharon belongs, is characterized by a lack of open discussion about personal issues and societal norms.
- Sharon's family history includes her great-grandfather, who was a sheriff in Oklahoma and had connections to notorious outlaws.
- Growing up, Sharon experienced significant trauma, including sexual abuse by her stepfather, which she kept secret for many years.
- The episode highlights the lack of support systems and awareness of mental health issues during Sharon's childhood.
- Sharon's experiences reflect the broader societal challenges faced by women of her generation, including navigating relationships and family dynamics.
- The conversation emphasizes the importance of sharing stories to preserve history and foster understanding across generations.

## FAQ

### What is the Silent Generation?

The Silent Generation refers to people born between 1928 and 1945, known for their traditional values and often characterized by a reluctance to speak out about personal issues.

### What challenges did Sharon face growing up?

Sharon faced numerous challenges, including trauma from sexual abuse, navigating family dynamics, and the societal expectations of her time.

### How did Sharon's family history influence her life?

Sharon's family history, including her great-grandfather's role as a sheriff and the experiences of her parents, shaped her understanding of relationships and societal norms.

### What was life like for women in Sharon's generation?

Women in Sharon's generation often faced societal pressures to conform to traditional roles, with limited discussions about mental health and personal struggles.

### Why is it important to share stories like Sharon's?

Sharing stories like Sharon's helps preserve history, fosters understanding of past societal norms, and highlights the importance of addressing personal and collective trauma.


## Referenced links

- [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAquIfJmdgg)
- [Listen on Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-58-the-silent-generation-sharon/id1764838823?i=1000748704032)
- [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4uonSN0vGNOzao6srEPYjE)
- [Listen on Buzzsprout](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2398379/episodes/18640652-episode-58-the-silent-generation-sharon)

## Transcript

[Music]
Welcome to GenX Adulting and
today we have Sharon with us.
Welcome Sharon. Thank you so much. And just for
full disclosure, Sharon is my aunt.
So we're so excited to have her here because
you are our first silent generation.
A milestone. It's huge. It's huge. I'm so
excited for our younger
listeners to Get this
opportunity to hear your story. So I just, it's
awesome. The first
question we always ask is what
year were you born? 1944. 1944. Yeah. Okay. So
you were born during World War II, correct?
Yes. I was born in 44 and the war ended in 45.
Okay. So you're
considered a war baby, right? Yes.
So for our younger listeners, can you explain
what that means? It just
means it's referred to as a
silent generation, but also any person born
during the war was just
referred to as the war babies.
Okay. And was there a lot of war babies? There
were, you know, sometimes
in war times people left
and there was that sense for some that they
didn't know if they'd be
back or not. And so that urgency
to get married or have a relationship that
maybe they would have
waited before, but now it's sort
of, if you don't know, if you're going to be
alive long, your
perspective on things changes. No,
that makes sense. And so I think that, I think
that was, that was it is
why. Yeah. So you grew up
thinking war is possible and people die in war.
So you got to live and kind of cram things in.
The parents of that. The parents of that
generation as, and you know,
remember up through Vietnam,
there was a draft. So it wasn't like people
were going and volunteering
to go in the service. They
were being drafted. And so, you know, young
boys, you know, my
biological father was drafted when
he was 17. And, you know, it was just a lot
more. So here are these
young boys going off to war.
And if you're, you know, their boyfriends,
girlfriends, whatever it's like,
this may be our last chance to have any
relationship. And there
wasn't birth control accessible.
It was quite a few years before that. Right. So
that makes sense. And I'm
pretty sure there was no
awareness of cause and effect. Right. And so
everything, because nothing anybody did
was on social media. Not that, you know, there
was so many things that
didn't exist. So it didn't
mean that a lot of those behaviors didn't
happen, but nothing was out
there. Well, probably wasn't
even discussed in the family openly. Oh, no.
Oh, no. Or even between mothers and daughters,
fathers and sons was the was the probably the
main concept was you
wait until you get married.
Absolutely. And then you have sex. Yeah,
basically. Absolutely. And
so you wouldn't even have said
those words then. It was just what evolved.
It's just so it was just
kind of like no one talked
about anything. And but then there was that
push of, oh, my gosh, you're going away to war.
So there's those probably romantic moments. And
right, maybe a lot of
those couples didn't realize
a baby could a war baby. No, because when you
think about there was no nothing of media,
right? There was radio. Right. That was it.
There was radio. And nobody
was discussing sex on radio.
Families weren't discussing it. And so couples
went, they were aware what they were doing,
but they were blind to the ramifications, I
believe. Yeah. You know, no, that makes sense.
Okay. So where were you born? I was born in
Portland, Oregon. And how many generations
go back for your family in settling in that
area? My great
grandparents came in the early 1900s.
Okay, where did they come from? They came from
Enid, Oklahoma. And prior to that,
they came from Kansas. And so they came as part
of the Oklahoma Land
Rush. We came into Oklahoma
and whatever land you settled on you, that was
yours. Wow. And so it was very, very different.
And so when he was in Oklahoma, it always I was
10 when he died. And I
had no awareness of asking
the questions I wish I could ask now. But when
they were in Oklahoma, he was a sheriff. And
he knew the Jesse, Jesse James and the gang
knew the Dalton boys, he'd
had to bring them in at times
for all the shenanigans they did. And I can
remember my grandma saying, once in a while,
she got to ride with him and they would go
check on the Indians,
Native Americans, as we now say,
but check on the Indians on the reservation,
because people would
come and give them alcohol,
and things would be wild. So my great
grandfather would do these
routine trips out there just had
very good relationships, according to my
grandma. And but she would
always say it was so scary,
because they would go out on horseback and
check on the reservations.
But he knew the James gang,
he knew the Dalton boys, all that, that his
assignment to sheriff, the document was signed
by Abraham Lincoln. No way. Yeah. And for a
long time, well, for some
time, my grandma had that
document. And then somehow it got to an uncle
that we weren't real close
to. And then that got to his
side of the family. So we have I saw it, what
my grandma had it. And but
really, we hadn't seen it
since. But those kinds of things, I mean, as
you could imagine, as an
adult, I would have had a
million questions of him. Absolutely. So I'm
picturing it's kind of
like the movie Tombstone.
Like that's like John Wayne stuff. Yeah, it is.
It is because where my
grandma was, she was born in
1896. And so she was a young girl going with
him. And, and so it was
very, you know, very remote,
very Cowboys and Indians, honestly, right,
honestly, the real fact of
it. And I just remember those
blips of stories. And then, as an adult, and I
was in my program in college as an adult,
I did an interview with my grandma and recorded
it because I just I want her and she was in her
early 90s when I did. But I wanted to hear
again, to make sure I
remembered what she had previously
said. And those were exactly the stories that
she told. I have a
question. Is your great grandmother,
her grandmother, she's talking about your Nana.
No, it's, it's our
Nana's mother and father. It's
my Nana's. So it's your great, great
grandfather. But the writing
along with her dad, that would be
Nana. Yes, yes, Nana was the child. And what
she's talking about. Because
I when I think it was on her
hundred birthday or something, I was talking
with her and she told me
about how her dad arrested the
James brothers. And so that's the same person.
It's the same person. The same situation. Yeah.
She was such a neat lady. Oh, she was she was
my role model, my anchor.
Yeah. Through all of my life.
And from everything, you know, how to talk to
people, how to be, you know, not that my mom
wasn't, but my grandma was just my hero. She
had a lot of grace about
her total grace. And she was,
you know, in the middle of a lot of chaos
growing up, she was the
stable, there's normal people out
there, you know, and I mean, silly little
things of like, how you
always set a napkin at the place
when you have a meal. I mean, those kind of
things that are just things
that were way more than that.
But I mean, she was just a very impactful
person to me. She had a
very calming, nurturing energy.
And she was kind to everyone. Yeah, she was
kind to everyone. One of
the bonuses of Brian and I
getting married so young, as we've talked about
in other episodes, but
one of the bonuses is you
did get to meet Nana. Yeah. And I so wish I
would have just gone in on
it more. I wish we were doing
this then. And she was here to tell her story.
Absolutely. Now, that's
the toughest part is when
you're young, you don't get it. Oh, when I
mean, you know, at 10, all
I remember is I loved going
over to their house. And oh, did they have
candy? You know, those
kind of immature things, but
childish things. And then going to his funeral,
he was the first person I'd ever seen that was
deceased. And we went to the funeral. And, and
I saw him and I was just
like, wow. But none of that
as a child, you formulate into what you're
really hearing and
witnessing. Yeah, it was only much
later. And so I thought, well, I really want
to, I love hearing Nana
talk about it. And she would
just talk about it really slowly. And, and
she'd kind of divert a
little bit. And then when we lived
in this house, we had this mulberry bush. And
then she'd go into more of
the other things that were
just incredible and such history and things go
now at such warp speed. I really believe that
people don't treasure history like that. And
we're so far, you know, for
people to be, I feel really
blessed to be connected to that such that I can
remember some of that,
because things are at warp
speed now. Nobody's going to remember a
grandparent that rode
horses with his year. Yeah.
No, it's, it's, that's such a good point. It's
again, one of the reasons I feel so fortunate
that you even agreed to share your story,
because again, there's so
much that you've experienced or
that you even heard firsthand, that so many
generations, like you just said, we'll never
get that opportunity. So it's very special. So
they were in Oklahoma,
and he's running the town
like tombstone. Like, did they know him his
name, the James brothers and would Oh, yeah,
like they had kind of like this.
Oh, yeah, love, hate relations.
It was Frank Oswald, and they definitely knew
him. Yes. And but he was,
as my grandma tells it now,
what, what, what their perception is, who
knows, but what my grandma tells it is that,
and I can believe it, because they were very
kind people, but that
everybody loved him. And even if
she says, even if he had to arrest them, he was
kind when he did it. And
so they, they all liked
him in spite of it. Now, how that really played
out, I really don't know.
Yeah. But what I appreciate
about it is how that kindness, it always seemed
to be at the forefront of
things. It certainly was
with my grandma. And, and then they moved to
Portland, I'm not even really sure the year,
but the early 1900s, they came west. Do you
know why? I don't know. And I don't know,
when they first came west, he worked at a
moving and storage
company. And until he retired. So
that's a shift. Oh, for sure. For sure. So do
you think something
happened? It possibly could have,
I don't know. And by that time, there were four
or five kids. And, and
so it may have been for a
different life. I really don't know. That makes
sense. Like maybe he
felt like he was risking his
life too much. And now he has a big family and
maybe he could make more money up in Portland.
You have a quote, I can tell you what to say.
No, I was just going to say you almost had,
I bet you could trace it to some historical
event. There was the Dust Bowl. I don't know
when that happened, right? The drought in
Oklahoma was rough. And I do
remember, I think she told me
they came using the Oregon Trail. So that was
probably this whole, maybe
a gold rush or something.
I don't know. Did they come using the Oregon
Trail? That part I never heard her say, so I'm
not really sure. I could have sworn she told us
or told me like they
came across like in a stage
coach. Well, that was when they did the
Oklahoma land rush at
first, you know, because have you
ever seen that movie where they, yes, it was
like craziness, like
they run and then they say,
this is my land and they're in the covered
wagons. Yeah. And I'm not
like that. There's a movie,
Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Oh yeah. Do you
know which one I'm talking
about? So far and away or
something like that. But I feel like at the end
they are claiming land
and it, it, it could very
well be because the Dust Bowl as well, because
that brought a lot of people, it brought a lot
of people to California and where they started
working. You've ever
read the grapes or methods,
documents it very painful, but amazing way. And
so a lot of people could come from that,
but those are the kinds of things I would be so
much more curious about now as an adult,
wanting to know a whole lot more of the why.
Right. The motivation because so she's raising
four or five kids, they move, he's working at a
moving and storage company. So I assume she was
a stay at home mom. Cause back then all moms
were home, right? No,
nobody, the women did not work.
They stayed at home. So the mean, it wasn't
even a question. It was
just asked what you did. And
this is like early 1900s. Yes. Do you know what
part of Portland they
settled in? They settled in,
in their older years, they lived in Southeast
and it was because there
was no development in Portland
other than inner what is now inner Southeast,
inner Northeast.
Portland was more in a core area
to the river. And so they were on the East side
of Portland, right? But
more. And I'm just trying to
remember where I think it was inner Southeast
is what I recall, but
everything was, it didn't go
very far out then. Right. Portland did not go
very far out. Like did
it even have, was anything
on the other side of the river on the West side
really? Yes, but near the river. Okay. Because
that's where it first started with logging.
That's what that's, that's
where the name Skid Row came
from. They use skids to get the logs and that's
where, and there was Chinatown and all the
Shanghai and all that kind of history. But, but
everything was around
the river, everything built
up from the Willamette River. So Portland
started out as a logging
town. Yes, it did. Isn't that
interesting? I never thought about that. And I
grew up in Oregon and I know logging towns and
I mean, that's just normal to me seeing trucks
drive by with the trees, but I never correlated
that that's how Portland began. It is
absolutely. And a lot of
the buildings and, and things,
the Benson Hotel is named after Simon Benson,
who was one of the early land barons.
And his home, I mean, not everybody would know
this, but you may know,
I don't know if you ever
saw the old church in Southwest Portland. His
home is across the street
from that. And it's a big
mansion. Like, I don't know what the condition
is now, but it had gone
into disrepair. Yeah. But a
lot of the naming of things in Portland are
from the early land barons
and then public publishing,
because of course the the logs and then the
newspapers. Right. And but it really started
with the logging. That's so interesting. I
recall there used to be
logs in the river. Yeah. Oh,
yeah. You know, and that wasn't even that long
ago. I know, but just in
my young mind and growing up
there, it just I always thought of other towns
as logging towns, not
where I'm at, but it really
started. So that means like, like, Pidock was
probably timber. He was he actually was the
newspaper newspaper company was a Piddock was
the newspaper company.
There's a fascinating tour
through downtown, which I wouldn't take any
more. But anyway, it's a
guided tour. And it shows
there's an underground Portland. And there's
places where people were
literally Shanghai'd from
bars. And there would be false trap doors in
it. They would go down
into these tunnels that you
could take a tour of it today. And it goes down
to the river and it shows
how they were Shanghai'd
into the river. What does that mean? Literally,
basically kidnapped. And you don't know what
happened to them. Or they were maybe sold for
labor. There also was a segment of Chinese that
were brought in. And those were slave labor,
really workers started
early laundries. But that was as
as a slave service. So but everything was
really around the river.
The river is what everything
fanned out from then from the river and built
up from there. That makes
sense. Okay, so Nana had,
you're saying like four or five or three or
four siblings. Nana had
Yeah, she had she did she had
a sister who ended up marrying and lived out of
Spokane. They had
acreage there. They were wheat
farmers. Oh, interesting. And then she had a
brother Floyd. Yeah. And
I cannot remember where
he worked, but he was married and they never
had children. And then
she had another brother and
another sister that lived in southern Oregon in
around Medford. Oh,
interesting. And Klamath Falls.
So she was the only one that stayed in
Portland. Because her
husband worked for the railroad.
Okay, so do you know how and again, for
listeners, when I'm saying Nana,
that Sharon's grandma, my great grandmother.
Yes. Do you know how Nana
met her husband? Yes, through
first Christian church in a youth group. Oh,
really? Do you know how old she was?
Shoot. Funny enough, I have on my phone, I came
across some papers in her Bible. I have her old
Bible. And in it was a wedding announcement.
When they got married,
and it was diverting here a
minute, but it was in 1921 that they got
married. And in their
wedding announcement, it's how they
used to do them. And it's very descriptive.
It's describing her
dress, what the flowers were,
what the, you know, she had on a lovely dress,
and they were married in this church and first
Christian church, and they're going to be
settling here. And it was in
her southeast. And, but it was
like, you know, anymore would be like, they
wouldn't even put it in the
paper, somebody would throw it
on Facebook or something. But yeah, it was a
very descriptive of the
flowers and the dresses. And
it was really lovely. And but I found this was
like a couple months ago, I was going through
her Bible and barely held together. And I found
that original newspaper
clipping of their wedding.
That's amazing. That was very fun. But you know
how old she was when she
got married. She wasn't
too. So she, well, let's see, they were married
in 21. She was born in
1896. So who could do the math
quick? 25. 25. Yeah. Okay. So that's about
right. Yeah, that's actually
not crazy young, especially
for back then. Right. Okay. So and then do you
know if he was around her age? He was, I think,
just a year or two older. All right. They were
very similar in age. Do
you know what he did for
living? Yeah, worked for the railroad. He was a
an agent. They called
him something actually have
his business card somewhere. That's cool. Like
an agent for the railroad that kind of he was
not he wore a suit to work. He was in the
office that like an executive executive,
a sword I was trying to grab executive. And she
was home because probably still then
women were home. Women were home and they
raised the children. So
who did how many children did
they have three? They had my uncle melt who was
born first and he and then my mom was born born
second. She was born in 1926. And he was born.
I think they're all three years apart. And then
your grandma, my auntie Bev was born three
years later. So yeah, they
were because when their dad
died, they were five, eight and 11. Okay, so
they're married. They have
these three young children.
He's some sort of executive at the railroad.
She's a stay at home mom
life and her parents still live in that area,
right? Yes. So she's got family near. Yes.
But her siblings don't live. They don't live
right real close. No. And and then he he dies.
He dies. So he and two of his worker guys that
he worked with. And what I can't remember
is if he was driving or somebody else was
driving, but they were coming home from work.
And there is a question whether they had
stopped and had beers. But of course,
that's the kind of thing that you never would
have really discussed at that time. Yeah. So
I really don't want to imply that because it
was never talked about. It
was illegal back then. So
it's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. That's
true. Yeah. But anyway,
they whoever was driving,
they were coming from work and coming across
the Broadway Bridge and
veered. However, that happened
and ran into the bridge abutment and he died.
And I don't even recall
what happened to the other two
men, whether he was the only fatality. I don't
know. Years later, when I was an adult, after I
got out of high school, I lived with her for a
few months and she and I
went to dinner at a neighbor's
place. And that was the first time I had ever
heard her talk about that
night. And she talked about
when the police came to her door and told her
that her husband had
died in this. And she talked
more about it. But that was the first time I'd
ever even heard anything more
than he died in a car wreck.
It also again, because it was a different time,
things were handled so much. Grief was,
you know, there's a lot of things that grief
wasn't even really the word at that time. You
know, it was, I mean, of course it was a word,
but it wasn't verbalized as what was happening.
And so she had support from family came around.
She had support from the church. She had
the family that came around her. However, there
was not a lot of knowledge about
how do you support these
children who just lost their father?
My uncle Milt was told he was now the man of
the house. And how old was he? 11.
And so there's that. There was no conversation
about how are the children impacted by this?
And then for a while, they were sent away with
a cousin or something
because they thought it would
do the kids good to get away. You know, they're in the middle of this. And
somebody had suggested it would do them good to
go stay somewhere on this farm somewhere,
some relative. So the grief aspect of it was
never addressed. And of
course, it's not surprising
that they that that displayed itself throughout
their life in different ways for each of them.
Because it was never even acknowledged. It was
kind of like this happened. You're going to go
on a farm for a while when you come back.
Everything everything is going to be okay.
You're just going to keep going through life.
Yeah. Because what did
Nana do? Did she get a job?
I don't think at that time, because he worked
for the railroad, I'm
suspecting there was probably
a pension of some sort to help her. There's
kind of that gap in time that I don't know much about.
And then my uncle was drafted into the Navy.
Very young, like most men
were at that time. And I
don't know exactly how old. And he went into
the Navy and was in
World War Two. And he was in,
you know, it could have been three or four
years, whatever kind of the
normal time, because that's
kind of how it was. They got drafted for a
certain amount of time. And of course, they could re-up
if they wanted. But it was during World War
Two, and not everybody did.
So would they be gone three
years? And one tour? Pretty much, because it
wasn't like it didn't get
to home. Again, there was no
thought about you need a break. Right. This is
what you do. So none of
that, you might need an R&R.
Because even in Vietnam, they thought about
R&R, not that it was made a huge difference, but
there wasn't the same attention to what was
happening. And this was her brother? No, my
Nana's son, my Uncle Mel, Uncle
Mel, the oldest of her three children.
And when he came back from the war, his hair
had gone almost white. And
how old was he when he went
over there? He was about 18, but it was mid
20s, early 20s. So maybe
like 20, like he'd been gone
maybe four years, like 21. And he was almost
gray. And it's like, you
think of it as PTSD in another
format. Nobody sees anything good in war. And
so it doesn't matter what
war you see different levels
of atrocity. And so but then he came back and
still and my mom, three years younger, she
was she was pretty rebellious. She had had a
lot of health issues as a
child when she was four years
old. She and little neighbor kid were playing
with a soap bubble pipe.
What's a soap bubble pipe?
If you've never seen their, they were metal
because plastic hadn't
been invented. And it's metal,
if you think of like a man's pipe, okay, it's
got the stem, and then
it had a pipe and you blew
bubbles out of it. Okay. And but they were
metal, right? And they were
playing around. And it got
poked in her eye. So she got her eye poked. And
I don't know whether she didn't have a patch. I
don't know what they did to make it visually.
Because at 16, she had a replacement, they
replaced her eye with a glass eye. So she got
poked when she was four.
And then you think they
might have just covered it. They or they I
don't know exactly what
they did. Because any pictures
I saw of her, she never wore a patch. And but
it and I don't know
whether it damaged it such that
it just if you looked at her, you could tell
there was something
wrong, like like it was almost
cloudy or something. And did she lose vision
when that happened out of that I immediately.
Yeah. And so when she was 16, they replaced it
with a very normal
looking. Yeah, yeah. And then
she had scarlet fever as a child. How old was
she when that was pretty young, like preteen.
And what are the risks of scarlet fever was
very deaf. Okay. And there
wasn't, you know, I don't
think at that time there was even penicillin.
So you know, it's all this
is like before things could
be done. She was very sick. I mean, you can die
from it very easily. It can impact your heart.
And then when she was a teenager, she caught
poison oak. So bad that she had to be home in
bed and they had to tempt the sheets such that
it didn't touch her. So, you know, again, there
probably wasn't medicine. Right. So she had a
lot of medical things.
Yeah. You know, very significant
medical things. And she lost her dad when she
was eight years old. And
so all these things kind of
come into play and her brother left and her
brother left. And so and then my auntie Bev,
your grandma was three years younger. And so
here's this is me kind of
just painting the picture there.
Yeah. And so she's younger. But all the
attention really is going
to my mom because she has all
these medical situations. And then she's
getting closer to teenage
years. And she's getting more
rebellious because it's just all these things.
Yeah. And she's
impacting. They're all impacting
their dad having died. Right. And trying to
absorb it. And I really
think that over the years,
the choices my mom made in her life could I
don't know, I can't
speak to my uncle or my aunt,
but I know I'm almost positive that a lot of
the choices my mom made in her life,
always looking for that secure male figure and
always choosing poorly.
But those kind of things.
Now, if it was today, you know, you could get
therapy, you could talk
it through there's therapy
for children to do that. But there wasn't any
of that bit. Right. And
they truly did have kind of
this perfect little family life. And it was
destroyed in one night.
And then every they were
sent away and they came back and now here's
your new life, but we're
not going to talk about it.
And so now you're going to project how you're
processing that for the rest of your life.
Absolutely. Basically. I mean, really, because
childhood trauma, it becomes part of your DNA,
so to speak, it doesn't go away. You treat it
differently. You acknowledge it differently,
but it is it's never gone. And so when it
happens, it's always with
you. And it informs your
decisions. Yeah. And so that makes sense. So
and then as far as my
grandma, do you know anything
about how she was growing up? Very quiet. Okay,
very quiet because she
was kind of always in the
background, so to speak, because that's and you
know her to be a much
quieter person. Yeah, she was.
And because you know, it wasn't they were
intentionally doing it, but all this attention
was going to my mom because of all these
significant issues. Right. And then when
my mom was and I actually found out that all
the years I had the wrong
age that my dad was when
they got pregnant with me, I thought he was 17
and that I was born when they were 18. But when
his family members had done a genealogy and it
turned out he was 16.
And so so and were they in
high school together? They were in high school.
And were they dating? Yeah. Well, I don't know
for how long. Okay. And he was a great guy.
Yeah. But they divorced
when I was five months old.
So she gets pregnant and they get married. They
got married because what
do you do? Then you get
married, you're pregnant, you get married.
Yeah. Abortion wasn't a
word. Right. I don't think that
that would have ever been considered. But it
wasn't a word. And giving
your child up, I'm sure that at
some places that happened, but it wasn't really
there. Right. So your only
option was to get married
to be respectable, whether it was the right
thing to do or not. So she's
17. He's 16. But 17 and eight,
I she she was 18 when I was born. Okay. Yeah.
Okay. And did they move in
together for a very short
while? And then when he was so five months, I'm
thinking that he went there was something about
him going to the army pretty quickly after
that. And I I wonder, I
don't know this, but I have
wondered if it wasn't his family kind of
forcing that issue because
they were not happy with it.
Did they have any relation with you as you when
you were a baby or
anything? No, I never actually
met them until I was probably 22 or 23. Okay,
so so when they when your
mom and dad got married,
his family kind of shunned them. Oh,
absolutely. Absolutely. And
and I'm sure they were saying
just things about my mom's fault or what, you
know, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's kind of what you know,
you start people then just start the blame
game. It's like somebody
had to be at fault. Right,
right. Certainly couldn't be their son. So no,
no, God forbid. I agree.
Yeah. So they had a brief
moment where they might have lived together.
And then he went into the
army. And then did he go to
war? Yes. Okay. Yeah. And but he was he was not
like frontline. He was
in, I think a supply clerk
or something like that. So he was not frontline
was was Uncle Milt frontline. Yes. Okay, yes.
So was he in any of the like famous battles or
probably, but I couldn't tell you that I don't
recall that specific. Did he ever talk about
it? No. Okay. Much like
most of them came back and
didn't talk about it. You know, yeah, I mean,
you know, I've read and I
can only imagine and I just
recently read The Women by Kristin Hannah,
which I feel should be
required reading from everybody
because it's about the nurses in combat in
Vietnam. I've heard of that
book. It's phenomenal. But it
it gives you, you know, and a lot of other
things give you a sense of
we can't wrap our heads around
what they went through unless we went through
it. Yeah, you know, nobody
else can but what they did.
And I think it's much like then. And in those
like World War Two, the only conversation they
had pretty much was on the ship coming home.
They would they they're whoever they were with.
But it was and you came back from the war and
you just got busy doing
your life. Right. It was a
conversation you just moved on. So any trauma
you experienced, which of
course there was on a daily
basis, you just had to deal with it. Yeah,
well, society, there was
no space created for any of
that. And that probably played out. There's
probably a lot of domestic abuse. Yeah. And
alcoholism and all of that and all of that
stuff was kept behind closed
doors. Right. As it many of
those things as it carried forward to but you
know, it's what you did in
your house was nobody else's
business. Is that kind of what defines the
silent generation? Yes,
that's sort of the crux of it.
It really I mean, you're you're the hard
working came back from the
war. You're the hard working
people. You do the right thing. You support
your country. And that's
not bad. But whatever goes on
behind closed doors. Yeah, is nobody else's
business. And nobody else
knows nobody talks about nobody
knows. It's not their business and they all
operated probably under
the same premise or rules.
Yes, I'm not gonna ask them. They're not gonna
ask me. It's all good.
Yes. There's so much pain
because you have men coming back that are in
pain. Deep, deep rooted
pain, PTSD, shock, all of it.
But then you also have women who probably
suffered a lot because of
that pain. Well, absolutely. And
you also had men who were at war. And as a
result of that, many women
had to go to work to support
their families. That is kind of where that
whole Rosie the Riveter
thing started. They were working
and they were supporting. And many women felt,
wow, I can do this. Well, then all of a sudden,
the husbands come home and the roles shift
again. And so you know,
there had to be a lot of tension
around that. They got a taste of independence,
right? And that they
could do something more than
be a wife and a mother. Right. It's almost like
being let out for a while
and then being put back.
Yeah, I mean, it would feel that way. Yeah. And
then when the men came home,
they started again, there's no birth control.
And then the babies started popping out like,
which is where a baby boomer comes from. The
babies are just coming out like crazy.
And the women are home back being the
housewife, right, taking care
of the home and the children.
And you know, the number of children was just
however it happened. It was had nothing to do
with what your choice was. Right. Right. And
then imagine if there is on top of that,
alcoholism, domestic abuse, all that. No, it's
it's it's it's probably
there's so many layers to it.
There is that. And I'm sure people have gone
back and studied this and looked at it,
but I don't know if it's gotten it's just due
yet in our society or glorified. It feels like,
oh, the baby boomers and it's talked about so
with such reverence, right?
And World War Two with such
reverence. But there is that darker side you
guys are touching on. Right. Because sure,
but at what cost? Yeah. At what cost did these
things happen? And and so many of the things
that we know about today and we think about the
words really didn't
exist for what they were and
what they were experiencing. It was you just
did what you did. Yeah. I
watched a great series on
Netflix, I think, Mad Men. Have you seen that?
No, but I know what
you're talking about. So it's
kind of it kind of makes me think of what we're
talking about because
it's Mad Men from New York
ad agencies in Manhattan. And it's in the early
60s. And it was very, very well done and very
historically correct. And one example I think
of and it ties back to
before even the 60s. But these
people were having a dinner party and the
neighbors came and the
people having the dinner party,
their son was being kind of mouthy and the
neighbor smacked him across the face and said,
knock it off. Wasn't his child. Right. Nobody
batted an eye. Wow. Nobody batted. It was just
the kid was misbehaving whatever male adult was
there, you know. And so some of that,
nobody would have thought that there was
anything wrong with that.
Really? Really? Like you think,
like, since you watched it on the show, that
made sense to you that you
could have seen that happen
in real life. Oh, yeah. And so when you go back
further and you're coming back from the baby
boomers, people not being malicious, but there
was nothing about first of
all, smacking a kid across
the face, which is demeaning at work, you know,
for starters. But, you
know, if there was none of
that, it was it was just so much more of an
intense and nobody thought
about what was happening with
children. And I don't mean you should go
because I really don't
believe you should go so soft that
you baby kids and you don't make them
accountable. I strongly
disagree with that. But there's a
balance. And it was a lot of displacement,
displacement onto the children. Yeah. I'm here
of what was going on. Yeah. So your dad goes to
war. Does your mom move back in with Nana?
Yes, she did for a bit. But with you, right? Or
was this with me? With
you? Because you were like
five months old when he left? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
And so and I'm the first
grandchild of ultimately
16 throughout the family. Right. So here's this
baby. And now I'm really just kind of a toy to
these teenage girls around. Right. You know,
but here's to my point
of my mom always searching
by the time and none of this is to demean my
mom. It's just the facts.
Right. Okay. Yeah. But by
the time she was 24, she had four children with
three fathers. So after
my dad, because all of us
siblings are two years apart. Okay. So I was
born and then my mom met
and I don't know where she met
him. Judy may know but my sister Judy was born
and her with her father, a different father. So
your mom and dad had gotten divorced. Yes. Yes.
And then and she's got you. And then she met
Annie Judy's dad. But you don't know where I
don't know where they met.
And then and then Judy was
born. They got married. They got married. Okay.
And and Judy was born.
So she's two years younger
than me. Okay. And then they ultimately, not a
big span of time got
divorced because she then met
my stepdad and Kathy was born. Okay. And then
two years later, John was
born and she was married to
to their biological dad for 12 years. Okay, so
she got married and lived with some moved out
and Anna's lived with any Judy's and so the two
of you were with them.
They get divorced. Now the
two of you go with your stepdad and they have
Annie, Kathy and Uncle John. Yes. And you guys
are all together. Yes. For 12 years. Yes. Were
you in the same area of
Portland when all this was
happening as you moved around? Was it kind of
in the same vicinity? No,
I don't. I remember vaguely
when I was at because my first actual
remembrance is when I was two
years old. And which is early to
remember something. I don't. It's funny because
I don't ever remember
being a child. And I remember
being like, I guess like an old soul always. I
just remember not being. And when I was two
and we lived in some apartments in apartments
in Northeast Portland and inner Northeast.
And I remember thinking I want ice cream. And I
remember where the store was. We got ice cream,
like a soda fountain. And so I left and walked
to the soda fountain. And I remember that being
clear in my head. I knew what I wanted and I
went. And just for
younger listeners, what's a soda
fountain? Oh, good point. You could go and get
ice cream, literally
soda, pop, whatever part of
the country you're in, like Coke, right? You
get real Coke. Diet Coke
wasn't a thing. You would get
real Coke, real root beer, root beer floats,
ice cream. Would you sit
up like at a bar? You'd sit
at a counter on a counter. With like the round
stools. Yes, stools. Sit on
the round stools. Like what you
had one of those in my town when I was a kid.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's kind of why they
called it a soda fountain because it was the
dispenser was like a fountain that they got the
soda from. And so you would go there, but you
could get ice cream. So you
walked there at two years old
and walked into the place and did they give you
something? Oh, somebody
called the police. Okay.
Okay. And I think my mom
panicked, freaked out. And my mom
tends to be, was tending to be a very
reactionary, quick reactionary
person who panics really quickly.
And, but of course her two year old child has
disappeared. So yeah. Yeah. Understandable. And
I think from, from their perspective, then
police got involved. Yeah.
And started looking and found
me, I don't think it was certainly not very far
away. Right. Found me sitting in on a stool.
And the people don't know where I came from.
Yeah. And so yeah. So that, that was always,
did they at least give you some ice cream?
Yeah, they did. Okay,
good. And so it just was always
kind of a joke that I was always on my own.
Yeah. That kind of sums it
up right there. But then being
the oldest of four, that just, you know, that
is kind of your role when
you're the oldest of four.
And my mom going through a lots of chaotic
relationships and marriages and that.
So at a very early age, I was taking care of a
lot of things that were,
should not have a child,
should not have been taken care of. I don't
remember it being like, Oh,
this is awful. I have to do
this. It's just what it was. You know, what
were some of the things you
would have to take care of?
If I, from the time I was nine, I think, if
bill collectors would call
the house, I would be the
one that was supposed to answer the phone and
tell them my parents
weren't home. They would pay their
bills with money orders. I don't know why, but
that's what they did. And so they would send me
up to the post office to get money orders and
bring them back to be
mailed. And so I had those
kind of response. And I was mature for my age,
I think. I had to have
been. And I just remember,
it wasn't like, Oh, I have to do this. It was
just part of what I had to
do. Or I would have to go up
to the store. And at that time, if you had a
corner grocery store,
you could ask to have your
stuff put on account. So I was the one that
would go up to the store
and ask to get the things and
have to ask to have them put on our account. I
remember that being embarrassing because
some part of me said, I don't know why we don't
have money to pay for this.
Because it's almost like a credit card, right?
It was exactly. Yeah.
The layaway.
And it may or may not have been paid off. And I
remember there was that.
But it was also the time,
and I just saw a funny meme about this week on
Instagram. I'm this old
and this little boy with
a note from his mom sending him to the store to
get cigarettes. And I did that a lot. Here's a
note. And I'll take it to the corner store. And
my mom says it's okay to
get her cigarettes. And so
I would get her cigarettes and bring him home.
Nothing unusual because
everyone smoked. Everyone
smoked. There was smoking in the doctor's
office while you wait.
There was smoking on planes for
those rich people that got to fly. Yeah. There
was smoking on the planes.
And your mom can certainly
tell you about that. And but no matter where
you were in offices, people
had ashtrays on their desk.
They spoke pregnant, pregnant, drinking,
smoking, pregnant, who knew
there was an issue. And, and so
smoking was everywhere. Yeah. And so and I
wasn't the only kid who got
sent to the store with a note
to get cigarettes. Right, right, right. So none
of that ever felt like it
was out of the ordinary.
It just felt like that's what that's what you
did. Were you also
expected as the eldest daughter
and you were parentified, I assume were you
expected to care for your younger siblings to
to agree not because my mom was gone, but it
was just I was the most
responsible one, you know,
and so to kind of keep an eye on everybody. So
yeah, so was Annie Jean your mom? Was she home
always? Was she a stay at home mom? She was a
stay at home mom. And
she never worked until she
and my stepdad got divorced when I was 15.
Okay. And when they got divorced,
she got a job at a company, white stay, not far
from where we lived. Do you know what she did?
Um, some sort of assembly kind of work somebody
because she hadn't finished high school because
of course she has this child. Right. And and so
it was an assembly work.
That's when things were made
here in America. In America. Yes. And what's
that? And Janssen beat
Janssen. Yeah, those were
Portland companies. Yeah. Is where they start.
Yeah. Is that sign still active in Portland?
You know, I haven't been down that way in a
really long time. It was for many, many years.
I just don't know if it still is. So, um, so
she's a stay at home mom,
but you were still being sent
to do the things. So because she was home with
younger children, was
that the motivation behind
sending instead of her doing it? Probably. I
don't know what, I mean,
that's always what I took from
it, but also, I mean, and she, I will say she
was a great homemaker. I
mean, our home was always
immaculate. She was a great homemaker and she
would do things like if a room needed painted,
she would do it. You know, she didn't have any,
you know, she didn't have any kind of princess
mentality. Right. Right. She would do that. But
things also got sketchy when she did go to work
because now she's kind of got her freedom. And
there were things that happened at that point
um, that didn't happen normally in the early
sixties. So that was like in 60, 61.
She was going out with guys. She met a man
there, uh, a black man, 60, 61. Right. Right.
Importantly important. So that's really an
important, very white, white still very white,
white area, but the time is really important.
And I was beyond horrified
because it just, that just
wasn't it to me, it's not even, it's not a, I
suppose some people want
to judge it as a racism
issue. It wasn't that it was just culturally
that wasn't done. Right.
You know, it was before civil
rights. It was before we had more awareness
and, and education. And,
um, and so it wasn't done. And
women who did that, I mean, it wasn't even
legal to be married. I
don't even recall the year,
but it wasn't too much different than that year
that it was legal for interracial marriages.
Yeah. I don't think there were really
interracial relationships.
There were not even on the TV,
because that guess who's coming to dinner
movie. That wasn't until
the late sixties. Right. And
that was shocking. And then, um, and they hated
the night and all that type of stuff. That was
later. This is like real early pre 61 JFK
stuff. This is pre JFK even,
right? Or he's the president
then. Right. No, it was absolutely before then.
And, um, and so because
it wasn't, uh, accepted,
you were judged. Right. And that trickles down.
So then you, you were judged as a family. Yes.
And, um, and it was kept from my grandma
because my grandma, of course that would have
been really bad. Um, and it created, and my
stepdad, he had moved out of course,
but it created a lot of tension in our family
and my siblings were
younger and it created a ton of,
uh, tension between myself and my mom, because
it's, uh, it spilled
over my friend that my best
friend at the time, her mom found out about it.
And, uh, by this time
it's, I think it's my junior
year of high school. And by this time she had
found out about it, my
best friend. Cause I said,
don't tell your mom because I knew it would be
bad. And she told her mom
and two really humiliating
things happened for me. And I was always the
quiet kid that just did
what they're told always.
And in school, I never saw anybody, never got
in trouble. Never did just did what I was told.
And her mom went to neighbors around where we
lived. By this time we'd had to move out of our
house and move into this little apartment. And
her mom went around to
the neighbors and told them,
my mom was a prostitute because she dated. And
then she went to my high school
and she went to, it was Dean of girls at the
time. You had a Dean of boys
and a Dean of girls. And she
went to the Dean of girls and said that I
wasn't allowed to associate
with her daughter because I
was a bad influence on her because my mother
was a prostitute. Oh my
gosh. This is all because she's
dating a black man. Yes. It was the kind of
repercussions that happened. Right. And,
and I, you know, I remember sitting there like,
first of all, I've never
even had really met this
and this woman was so kind. And when I look
back on it, she was so
compassionate. And I know she
could tell the Dean of girls you're talking
about. Yes. And I know she
could tell how awful this was
for me. Yeah. That I was just, I was
dumbfounded. And ironically, my
friend was kind of the wild one.
Yeah. Her family was very strictly religious
and very, and so she was really the wild one.
They're usually projecting the situation. Yeah.
And she was the one that was out smoking,
doing things she wasn't supposed to. And I'm
just the sort of like, uh,
right, right, right. And so
she, uh, and so her mom, she didn't, she
couldn't come see me
anymore. She couldn't, we weren't
allowed to be together. And then of course
brought it through the
neighborhood, brought it through my
school. And it was just, it was, could not have
been more horrifying.
Were you shunned by all your
friends? Um, the ones that knew the ones that
knew now, my very best
friend that I had grown up with
since grade school. No. Um, she was shocked and
did, and her parents then wouldn't allow her to
come over to my house. Well, was it because
they thought your mom was a
prostitute? No, no, no. It
was simply, it was simply the interracial, the
interracial. So they basically a bomb went off.
Yeah. Because of that one. That's how crazy the
times were back then. And that's it. It's not
like it's, it's not because, uh, I mean, it's,
I, like I say, I don't
view it as a racist thing. I,
I view it as a sociological thing. Right. But,
but if you look back on
it, it is racist. But at that
time, I don't even think that was a word,
right? It was one of those
things. Yeah. And she, um,
and I remember we had our final blowout about
it and she, it was
Thanksgiving and she was taking.
You and Annie Jean, your mom. Yes. And she was
taking, uh, my sister, my
two sisters and my brother
to his house. And I'm sure his family was no
more thrilled about it than. So, so they were,
they were, would go to each other. Like he
would come to your house
and she would go to his house.
He didn't come to our house. Okay. I'd only met
him once. Okay. And I think I kind of pitched
enough of a bit about it, but they were going.
So she was taking the
younger ones by this time.
I was driving and she was taking them to
Thanksgiving dinner at his house. And at
that time, I'm sure they were not happy with
him either. Right. Because
he stayed in a white woman
and why would he do that? Right. Right. Right.
So it was very much both
ways, but she took them
and she said, we're going there for
Thanksgiving. And I says, I'm
not going. And she says, well,
the other kids aren't bothered by this. And I
said, they aren't bothered
because they don't have a
choice. You're taking them. Right. They don't
have a choice. I do. And I'm not going. Right.
And I have never been, I would never was that
kid that disobeyed. Right. Right. Right. Right.
But I just, it had already caused so much
fallout for me. Yes.
That in your personal life,
in my personal life, that it wasn't because I
didn't make a choice. Right. It was the fallout
hit me because somebody else made a choice.
Right. It's remarkable. Really. It's remarkable
experience. Yeah. Was that a turning point
then? Like it's, I'm
making a choice and I'm going to
quote unquote rebel. I never did rebel other
than stand up for the
fact I don't want anything to
do with him. Yeah. And I'm not going to be, I'm
not going to be. So where
did you spend Thanksgiving?
I went, I think I went with my grandma and, uh,
and I ultimately, I'm the
one that told my grandma
because I needed a place to stay for a while.
And boy, she hit the fan because again,
yeah. And it's that it, yeah, the time, the
times were, and people
don't realize how different it
was, how different it, it, you can't even
imagine now. No, no, no,
no, because now it seems
absolutely ludicrous that it would be that much
of a deal. Right. But socially it was, I mean,
look what happened to your life. Well, and if
you couldn't really get
married interracially by law,
by law at a certain time. Yeah. So craziness.
He glossed over that, but that's crazy. Crazy.
Think about that in our for us even. Yeah.
Yeah. It is. I mean, it was against the law.
That's wild. And it is wild now. And, um, and
it's in your lifetime that
that was in, you know, so,
but to think that you went through that, like
you that that's that's,
and that you, like it went
through your school. It went through your
neighborhood and it, and, and just the fallout
from it. How long did they date? Um, less than
a year as I recall, but like I say,
one thing I noticed is that sometimes I think
your brain protects you
and put you in a bubble. And
yes, there's certain details that, well, if, if
this happened, you should
remember all the details.
Well, because this happened, I'm protected from
some of the details.
Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah.
And, uh, and I just remember, and, and of
course I was told, don't
tell Nana, don't tell Nana. And
I remember being so upset about it and not
feeling like I had the, you
know, and my mom said, she's,
I would never do anything to hurt you kids. And
I said, you just did
right. You just did. And, um,
and so I kind of let it slip to my grandma. And
I, I, when I look back on
it, I think that was kind
of a bit of a malicious thing on my part that I
did that on purpose
because I was looking for an
ally. Right. And what were you 16, 15, 16 year
teenager? And I, and I, I
have, I think that's the
only time in my life I ever saw my grandma mad.
Um, and I said, she asked me something and I
kind of hemmed and hawed around about it and
said, well, mom's with,
you know, somebody that she
stayed in. And I just ended up telling her and
I said, and he's a black man and holy cow.
My sweet, sweet grandma hit the, well, all put
a stop to that. Really? Yeah. And honestly,
that's part of, I don't even remember. I just
remember, I don't think it was much after that,
that they weren't. Yeah. I'm sure Nana made a
phone call in, but I also feel as if his family
was probably probably so, cause here comes my
mom and she had, her
hair was blonde at the time.
And here comes these three toe headed children.
Yes. And not me, I'd already had dark hair
because of my, my dad. And uh, I was the only
one that had dark hair and
um, but here's these three
blonde little white kids. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And
so I'm sure they had a similar reaction, but
at that time I could have cared less. Right.
Right. I really, I mean, your teenager,
your whole social world just got blown up. And,
and so you're, yeah, that's fine.
His family's probably just trying to chill,
have a low key existence in
Portland. And all of a sudden
they've got their own set of challenges. Like
you're saying, their son made a choice, right?
That would have impacted them. Right. At that
point, I wasn't, uh, I
didn't have enough to even
care or even think of it that way. Yeah. What's
wild to me is if you
were in Chicago or New York,
probably would have been fine. Yeah. Cause they
were much more progressive and more, you know,
further along. Stear weren't allowed to be
married legally. No, I
know that that blows me away.
Yeah. Crazy. I wish I could think, but I just
saw a piece about that.
The couple that was the first
to get married, known interracial. Yeah. And,
uh, and so it's just, it's
that kind of difference in
time. Yeah. And so I really feel like it was,
um, it was a really
rough, challenging time for my
mom and I, because it's the first time I ever
dug in about anything. And
it kind of stood my ground
about anything, uh, because before I always, I
did what I was told. Well,
so with her second husband,
do you have any memory of her? Not your dad,
but her, Annie Judy's dad.
Do you have any memory of him?
Uh, I remember a few things. Um, not about, I
remember one thing about him specifically,
but his parents were very, they were very, very
stable people, very
stable people. And they were
very kind to both Judy and I, and they would
have us come over and
spend time with them spend the
weekend. His mom was very funny. His mom was
very jealous of my mom.
And when we were young, she'd
fix up for dinner and she'd say, I bet this is
better than your mom's. Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh. And so, but they were very kind
people and Annie Judy, um,
you know, I always think that
people survive things because of anchor people.
And they, if they have
one anchor person in their
life, they can survive a lot for me. It was my
grandma. Uh, and for, for, um, Judy, it was
her biological grandma. They were, uh, and, but
more than anything, her
grandpa, he was a wonderful
man. He was an executive with general electric
and she'll say, even now she always knew she
wanted to marry a man that wore a suit to work.
That's what he did. Yeah. And he, he was the
kindest, they were both very, very kind to us.
And, uh, she was always
kind of nitpicking that stuff
about my mom. Yeah. Um, but her dad had, uh,
Trump alcohol and drug problems. Okay. And I,
and I remember one time they had gotten an
argument, Judy was a baby.
And so I was probably by this
time three, Judy was toddling and we were in,
they lived in an
apartment. I feel like it was like a
duplex is what it felt like. And he had come
home from work and they
got into a very volatile
argument and he push her against the
refrigerator and had a knife in
his hand and they were yelling
and I, I don't believe for a minute he was
intending to use it, but it
was a very volatile argument.
And, and I remember that, uh, I remember when
he wasn't using anything,
he, he was very kind to,
you know, to any kind of me too. So, but I have
very little memory of
him. They weren't together
all that long. And then what about your second
step down then? So, uh,
they, I don't know where
they met. I remember he lived in Northeast
Portland and I remember we would go visit him.
There's some discussion about whether my mom
was completely divorced
from him or not. We've had some
sibling discussions about time. And mostly my
sister, Judy and I, we've had some sibling
discussions because some numbers don't add up.
Like she might've still been married to Annie
Judy's dad when she started dating Annie Kathy.
So, you know, sometimes
when you're an adult and you
look back at numbers and you're like, Hmm,
yeah, yeah, yeah. It
doesn't really make sense. Yeah.
And I always knew my mom had to get married
with my dad because when I
was, I think eighth grade
and I asked her once, I says, did you have to
get married? And she
blew up at me and I thought,
Oh, well that answers my question. Yeah. Why do
you think she blew up that she, uh, because
my mom, uh, in some ways didn't have a lot of
impulse control in terms of reactionary. Uh,
she'd get mad easily. Not so much, but you
could push her buttons really easily. And, um,
and, and so I just said, I said, that answers
my question. Yeah.
Because why would you react that
way? Yeah. It wasn't true. Yeah. It was just a
curiosity question for me. Yeah. Um, and so
anyway, then they, uh, she and my stepdad got
married and then, uh, Kathy was born and then
two years later, John was born. Um, but he was
very into and, and a common theme, ironically,
except for my dad, alcohol was a common theme.
Not for her. My mom never drank, which always
puzzled me is how she can deal with all this.
She never, they, all of their friends drank,
they had parties and my mom never did. That's
so interesting. Yeah. And, and I,
my mom never did until she was, we were all
grown. I think before she
ever, wow. Right. Yeah. She
never, ever did. And yet everybody around us,
they were, um, in the
motorcycles, um, different
things I've done, you know, as an adult, where
you, uh, go to a conference
or something and they say,
tell us three things about you that nobody
would ever guess. And I,
one of them is I always put,
I grew up around motorcycle gangs because
nobody would ever believe
that. But the fact of the
matter was that this was her third husband was
in a motorcycle game.
Yeah. Yeah. It was at the time,
it was called a gypsy, uh, flying 15 club,
which was part of gypsy
jokers. And every summer they
take, we'd stay with my grandma for two weeks
and they would take a
motorcycle trip down to California
on motorcycles. Oh my gosh. And some of them
were more into the underground stuff.
Things we've pieced together as adults talking
about stuff like, like drugs, drugs, drugs,
primarily drugs. Okay. And, uh, and as I've
read more about motorcycle gangs, I'm sure the
violence part of it was there, but very clearly
the alcohol and drugs. And of course, you know,
we're, we're, um, the drugs were much more of a
hidden thing than this. Yes. Really hit the
sixties yet where it was right out in the open.
And they would all be at
your house. Like you grew
up where there were motorcycle guys just in
your house. Yeah. And we
had one guy that as kids,
we thought he was a novelty. He was crazy. And,
um, I'm sure all of his family, so I'm not
preaching any confidence guy. He's long gone.
I'm sure his family is,
his name was Rocky Ryan and he had no teeth
because I'm sure he got
him knocked out in a fight
and he would come over and he was just loopy as
all get out. And he lived, um, next door
to a neighborhood that all the gypsies lived
in, which you, if you're in Portland,
you know, there's a lot of pockets of that.
Yeah. And anyway, he was
just this crazy guy, but
motorcycle. Yeah. They all had motorcycles.
They all worked on
motorcycles. We all learned how to
be a passenger on motorcycles at a very early
age. And there were nobody ever were helmets.
Right. Yeah. No, no, there, there was none of
that. None of that. In fact, my sister, Kathy,
her husband today is dumbfounded when she said,
yeah, we, we learned how
to ride on a motorcycle.
We learned how to lean the right way, how to,
you know, be a good
passenger. And he asked her about
helmets. She says helmets. Nobody had a helmet.
And he'd be like, you
are a child on the back of
a motorcycle and no helmets. And these were
dirt bikes. Right. Right.
These are like your classic
Norton triumph via say these are classy bikes.
Right. And, and they worked on them and they,
and they would, they would have parties at
different people's houses. And I can remember
one time when I was six, so kind of interject
one quick thing. My stepdad, when I was six,
he, they, they, my mom had asked my dad at the
time because she had periodically talked to him
afterwards. And I don't know why they made this
intelligent decision, but they decided it would
be better for Judy and I as we entered school.
If we all had, if all of
us kids had the same last
name. And so he formally adopted us, Judy and
I, oh, so that when we were in school, I, I'm
astounded at their foresight in that. But so
that when we went to
school, all four of us kids would
have the same last name. Interesting. And so,
but I remember one time
when I was six and we lived
at a house, which with Google Earth, I found
the house not long ago.
And it was in North Portland,
little house, little ranch house. And there was
four of us kids and they were having a party at
our house and everybody was drinking. Everybody
was drunk except my mom.
Right. Of course. Right.
Right. Right. But us kids were around and other
people's kids were around and my mom was
unfortunately very easy to get a rise out of.
And my stepdad started
bugging her about something.
And she, they, so they started an argument,
whatever it was about,
they started this yelling
argument and I thought, there's all these
people here. This is
embarrassing. They're yelling and
fighting in the kitchen of this very tiny
house. Yeah. Everybody's
right there in the living room
and the fight escalates and my mom starts
pulling dishes out of the
cupboard and there are no plastic
dishes then pulling dishes out of the cupboard
and throwing it at him and breaking all these
dishes. And he's yelling and then he starts
laughing, which just, of course, right. Right.
I did her more and I just remember six and I
was, I had just started
school in first grade and I was
mortified that that wasn't, I'd had that, did
not have that word. Right.
I remember the feeling of
like, I cannot believe they're doing this.
There's all these people,
they're doing this in front of
these people. Yeah. And finally some of their
friends kind of got in the middle and settled
him down because he was drunk and the women
settled my mom down
because she was in that by now,
crying and upset. And all I cared about was
that they quit doing it
because it was so embarrassing.
That is so funny. But I bet with that whole
motorcycle game mentality, that kind of stuff
probably went on all the time. Oh, of course.
You know, that chaos. Oh, of course. You know,
and I'm pretty sure if there would have been
social media at that time, the things they did
were pretty wild. Yeah. Yeah. But nobody,
nobody would. No, no, no,
no, no. It's like straight
out of a movie. It is. I can picture this. It
is. Absolutely. It's just
craziness. And one of their
friends was a Portland city policeman. And
yeah, and he in the thick of
it all. So so that what did
he do for a living? My dad? No, it's that done.
He worked for the Portland Water Bureau. Okay.
He was a compressor truck driver. So and he'd
get called in the middle of
the night, like when there
was water main burst and he would do the
jackhammer and stuff. Okay. He
was also very good at stealing.
A side note, if you're interested in hearing
about this side note. Yeah. So, you know,
you've been in. Have you seen the brass water
fountains in downtown Portland? Okay.
Well, because he would get called out at all
hours, he middle of the night sometimes be
rounding about. Yeah. He and I don't know who
else was with him. And because he had a jack,
they stole a water fountain and and sold it for
the brass. Seriously.
Yeah. He also would come by
during the day with the truck and siphon off.
He was very methodical
about it. So nobody noticed
gas missing from this city owned truck and
siphon it off into our car.
Oh my gosh. That's awesome.
So that and you know, you figure gas was what?
Ten cents a gallon. Yeah.
Yeah. And we only had one
car. So if my mom needed the car to take us
kids anywhere, we would
all bundle up to take him to
work in the morning and then go back at night
to pick him up. Okay. Yeah.
So he'd stop by siphon off
the gas to fill our tank, but he did it very
regular. So it was never noticeable. So that's
a wild period. It sounds like just the all of
that. Yeah. It's very
chaotic. And then they divorced.
They divorced when I was 15. But and then was
he out of your guys' lives after that?
Uh, well, kind of sort of. So we were, um, we
moved a lot. We moved around a lot. I think,
I think I went to seven, eight schools by the
time I graduated from high school.
Now, how come because of they moved, they just
moved rent by making rent, do you think?
Well, they bought, I don't know that they was
renting up till they, we
bought this. He bought,
he got drunk and bought this house. And when
you look at it, it's the
most, and your mom will
laugh when she talks about it because it's the
most ridiculous looking house. It's very skinny
and long. There's four of us kids. It was a two
bedroom house and two
bedroom, one bathroom house.
And we had never seen it until the night we
moved in. And do you want
to take a drink of water?
Yeah. Is that okay? Oh yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
You cannot drink water.
You can drink water while you're talking. Yeah.
No, that's completely fine.
Waterboarding, torture. And so when we moved
into that house, I was in fourth grade and all,
we're all four of you in one room. Uh, John was
in, uh, had, I couldn't even, like,
must've had twin bed or something in their
room. Okay. And then my
sisters and I had bunk beds in
the other room and I was on the top and the two
of them shared a bunk on
the bottom. Wow. And, um,
and so I was in fourth grade when we, when they
moved there. Okay. Um,
and so Judy and I went to
the school, we could walk to the school and it
only went to fourth
grade. So then when I went to
fifth grade, I went to the other school that I
stayed at fifth through
eighth grade. And that was,
I often want to go over and measure how far it
was to the school. Cause
it was a long way. There's
none of this sissy bus stops every two blocks
thing. It's true. I'm sure it was a good mile.
But everybody did it. So nobody thought
anything about it. And, um,
and there were no school buses.
Right. Right. School. Right. And were there
just no school buses
period? That wasn't a concept yet.
No, no. So kids either walked to school or if
their parents had a car, they got dropped off.
Pretty much nobody got dropped off. So everyone
walked, you walked rain sleets. No,
if school's open, you guys walk. School's open,
you go and you walk and you,
it was again, we didn't think anything odd
about it because it's just what we did.
Um, and then, so then we moved into that house.
And so then I'm in fourth to fifth,
then I'm in fifth grade. Yeah. And so then
things got really, for me, got really bad
for about the next four years. So what
happened? So, um, again,
there's things you block out to
protect yourself. And so I mean, that's kind of
a little bit of my caveat, but between the ages
of 10 and 14, I was sexually abused by my
stepdad and it started and
nobody, nobody knew. My mom did
not know until I was mid forties. Um, and it
started, uh, when I was
early 10, um, and because
we had one bed, one bedroom and it didn't have
a shower, it had a bathtub and he would like,
oh, I didn't know you were in here walking into
the bathtub kind of
thing. And, um, and I will say
that to, to this day, even though it's in my
head and I've been
through counseling a lot, I have
never, and I still can't articulate the exact
type of abuse. You know what I mean? I just,
I can't steal to this day, cannot say the
words. Right. It's just,
when I said earlier that, you
know, that stuff's kind of becomes part of your
DNA. Yeah. It's stuff that it still crops into
my head and I can intellectualize it. And I
mean, I have, I have an
associate degree and a bachelor's
degree in mental health, human services. I
understand all the intellectual parts of it,
but I still can't, um, I was not, uh, I was not
raped, but pretty much everything up to that.
And, but I, I still cannot say
the words. They still are, are too.
Traumatic. Yeah. I, I just, it's just too much.
I just can't verbalize the words.
It made you go mute when it came to that part
of what like that part of
your soul is mute. Yeah.
It's in my head. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's very
clearly, very clearly in my
head, but it can't come out.
It can't, the words cannot come out. And even
through counseling, the words are not there.
That's how deep the trauma was. Yeah. And how
terrified your soul was. And again,
I'm 10 when it starts. So this is 1954. So
again, nobody knows the word abuse. No,
nobody knows that word in a million years.
Would you think you don't even know what it is,
let alone that is happening to you. So surely
nobody, and at the same time, all that time,
and it, it escalates. And at that, and then
being told, you cannot say
a word because if you do,
that you're going to be the one responsible for
breaking this family apart.
Why would I think otherwise I'm being told
that, and I don't know
anybody that's experiencing
this. It's just such a, I was, it was just a
nightmare. And I, I said all the things,
no, and stop and all the, all this kind of
stuff. And, and there was,
there was a week that there,
and it went on periodically. He'd always find
excuses like, Oh, and
the bedrooms were upstairs
and he'd say like, Oh, I'll go check on the
kids. Well, Judy and Kathy
were asleep below me. And
then one really horrible week, my mom was in
the hospital. She'd been in a car accident.
And my mom said, the only thing in flashback
that she recalls is every
time we came to the hospital,
I'd lean over and whisper in her ear, please
come home. But of course
she'd have no idea who would,
who would, and she, in hindsight, what she knew
that flashback to her,
the things different. And
then in the fifth grade, my teacher called her
in and asked if anything was going on at home.
And she said, no, everything's, everything's
fine. Why? And I don't know
exactly what I may have been
doing. I don't know whether I was more, I was
crying in class for no reason. I don't know,
but whatever, or not focusing. I don't know.
But he said, well,
there's just something different
from when she started school and something
changed. And, and my mom, of course, couldn't
identify anything. Nothing seemed to be wrong.
And so that was, that was it. She had that
conference and he was, he was a young teacher.
He was my favorite
teacher ever. And, and so I just
kind of think back on that. And I think that
somehow he just knew I needed that extra level
of compassion. Yeah. Yeah. When nobody knew
that was a thing. I can't imagine
what an utterly isolating, I mean, put aside
how horrendous and tragic
and all traumatic and all
that, but just what an isolating time that must
have been in your life and lonely, because you
have something happening to you that in society
that has not defined you, that you have to find
it. It's completely foreign. You probably felt
it was your fault in some
weird way. Oh, absolutely.
Why is it happening to me and no one else?
Right. Have you in your
therapy processed how alone you
were during that time? Oh yeah. Oh yeah,
definitely. And of course, as
time goes on and you learn more,
you learn, I certainly was not the only person
in that situation. Right.
But again, if you feel like
you're the only one, this is happening to, and
then why, and I'm trying,
and when I look back on it now,
I know there was a level of grooming and I
always just assumed I was
the easiest one to, to take
anywhere because you know, you're the oldest,
you've kind of her built
a little more responsible.
That's just how it goes. And, uh, but I'd
always get to go with him
if he'd go to the motorcycle
shop or I'd always get to be the one that would
go. And so when I look back
on it, I know intellectually
what it was. Right. I certainly didn't at the
time. I just thought, Oh
wow, lucky me. I get to go.
Right. And I had fun doing that, but I never
knew. Um, and it was, it
was just so weird that because
it was like, it was, uh, and it wasn't every
night, but it was enough to
where I was always on edge.
Of course, because I don't know when it's going
to happen. Yeah. And so night time was like a
nightmare just waiting and daytime, everything
was normal. Right. And this weird dichotomy of
trying to function in that. Did you have
trouble sleeping? Um, oh,
I'm sure because I was on edge.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Did it cause issues with
sleeping throughout your life? Do you think?
No, I don't think so. I think during, I think
during that time it did because I was, I was on
guard. Right. Not that it mattered. Um, and
then that burden of, I
can't do anything about it
because I can't be the one responsible for the
family falling apart, even though it was very
unhealthy to begin with, but you don't, you
don't know that you just, I just was like,
what in the world is happening? I couldn't
imagine it. And the only reason it changed
is when I was 15, we moved from that crazy
little house into another
house that was bigger. And
Judy and Kathy shared a bedroom. John had,
there was a little alcove
and they made a bedroom for
him there. And I had my own room and it was the
first time I'd ever had my own room. So there
wouldn't have been an excuse to come on check
on me. I'm 15 by now. Right. Right. And so,
and so at that point, but I remember, and I
really got in trouble for
this and everybody always
thought it was because they always tease me
because I liked Oreos and they all thought it's
because I didn't want anybody getting into my
Oreos and I'd hide them in my bedroom.
But I went up to the hardware store and I got a
lock for my door and
those kinds of sliding locks.
And I went home and put it on myself and holy
cow. And I never got in trouble for anything.
I got in so much trouble for that. I had to
take it off, return it to the hardware store.
And everybody said, Oh, she just doesn't want
anybody to get into her cookies.
And honestly, for a while, I believe that story
myself, right? But I know why I did it. Right.
I wanted a lock on my door. And did it stop
when you guys moved in that house?
In that house, because before he could say he
was going up to check on the girls,
three girls, check on all of us. But this one,
I'm 15 now, it's a little harder to do that.
And, um, and we moved into that house mid my
sophomore year. So I was, you know,
had just barely turned 15. And so you can't
tell the same story that
way. And things were getting
really volatile with them. And they were
fighting all the time. And
in then I was 15 when they got
divorced. So it was right before they got
divorced, had it stopped.
But it was really kind of the
logistics of the house that wasn't so easy to
pull off. Right. I mean,
thank God. Yeah, at least.
Yeah. So during that time, did you ever tell
anyone? Never. I never told anybody, because
right. I was told not to. I wreck everybody's
life. How many women your age, do you think
suffered through similar situations during
their childhood? I feel like
more than you could imagine.
Because I, um, I thought of another situation
that makes me think of
just one more reason of how
widespread it probably was. When I was 12, my
aunt and uncle, my mom's brother and his wife,
they had at the time had three or four kids at
that time. And they were going to the beach. We
had a friend who had a house at the beach and
they were going to go to the beach for a week
with another couple who had a lot of children.
And so they had me come to
be a babysitter. So if the
adults wanted to go out, and I kind of forgot
about this till we had
been talking about things.
And so I was 12 and I went with them to take
care of the kids, kind of
helped them take care of all
the kids and at the beach. And then if the
adults wanted to go out for
dinner, would they pay you?
I think they just might trip the trip to the
beach was my, but you
were working. Yes, of course.
Of course. Okay. And I'm 12. And there's like,
there was, I think eight
kids between the families.
It's crazy. Well, nowadays that's a $50 a day.
Yeah. And it was a 16 year old. It wouldn't be
a 15 year old. No, no, when I started
babysitting, it was 25 cents an hour.
And labor. Yeah. And so we went, I did that. I
went to him and I had fun
with the kids. And in my
mind, it was like, whoo, what a relief. I get a
break. Yeah. You know, I, and I didn't know
if anything would happen. I get a break from
the on edge during the
night. And so they went out to
dinner. Everybody went out to dinner and ice
was on this little single
bed thing. And you know,
we're all over the house in the kind of like
this little alcove thing in the speech house.
And then the adults went out to dinner. I've
gotten all the kids to
bed. Everything was great.
I wake up in the middle of the night and this
guy, this friend of theirs
is all over grabbing at me. No way. And I
thought my first thought was,
I don't know what I've done to deserve this.
I'm trying to get away.
And this, and it was a very
close family friend of theirs. And again, I
never, but he, and I remember saying to him,
can't, because I woke up to feeling him all
over me and I could get
away from me. And I said it
loud enough that he knew even drunk that it
would wake somebody up.
There were so many of us.
Yeah. And he look over me, goes mumbling and
leaves. And I just, I couldn't even go back to
sleep. I thought, I don't, I couldn't even get
a break when you got
away. And that, and I remember
thinking, Oh, thank God, I can go for a week,
play with the kids, have
fun with the kids and get a
break. And then boom, the same thing. And, and
so it just, when you ask
how many women, I can only
imagine how many women have that that's her
experience. All of us at
very levels being told,
don't say anything. Don't say anything. You'll,
you'll ruin the family.
You'll get me in trouble.
I'll go to jail and you know, and it'll be your
fault. Always ending with it'll be your fault.
Right. And, and so, yeah, so I'm, I imagine a
very large number of women, especially
from your generation, because there was zero
space for anyone to acknowledge it or for any,
or for the victim to even tell anyone, even a
teacher, no, it did not
exist. It did not exist.
That space did not exist. And the only reason I
ever said anything, um,
fast forward, my brother
had gotten into drugs and alcohol at a very
young age. And it was
always because my parents were
divorced and he didn't have a father and or,
or, or, and I sound hard
about it, but I am. Yeah. And,
and my sister was far more, my sister just
below me was far more
compassionate to him than I was.
The minute he started with the drugs and
alcohol, I had children by
the time. And I, I didn't want,
I didn't want anywhere near me because I'm
enough of a generation that
I didn't get sucked into the
sixties. Right. And I had a very strong sense
of right and wrong, you
know, I just, I couldn't,
and also it was very scary. It was just coming
in the sixties, the
whole sex drugs and rock and
roll thing. And it was scary and drugs. I don't
want any part of it. So I never would allow him
around my house at all. And, but my sister was
more compassionate, more,
um, and they were closer
in age and they were quite frankly, they were
closer. Uh, I, like I
said, I always thought like
an old soul, my sisters used to tease me and
they'd be on the bottom bunk. They'd push their
feet up when we were in that, push it up until
I yelled. And then I'd be
the one to be yelled at.
Right. Or I'd be telling them, you guys need to
act your age. Well, they were, I wasn't right.
You know, right. And I knew I always felt
older. Right. So, um, so my brother would often
or semi often stay with my sister. And at this
time she, she had two
kids and she had a daughter
who was, I think at the time she was in middle
school, my stepdad's father was also an accused
sex abuser. He had served some time for that. I
don't like in jail. Yeah. And I don't know any
of the circumstances around that. It just was
kind of one of those
blips in conversation. Right.
And so then knowing full well his son was a sex
abuser. Right. And not really knowing enough
about it, generational addictions. I didn't
know whether that would
have affected my brother.
Right. And so all I was worried about was my
niece. I thought, I cannot not say anything
if my niece was going to be in danger. Right.
And so I told my sister and it was,
she didn't believe me. And she, at first she
did not believe me. And I
said, you know, you think I
would be saying this. I said, I'm worried about
your daughter. And she said, Oh, he would never
do that. And I go, all I'm asking is that
you're careful and that you
keep your eyes open and that
you're careful. And if she says anything to
you, you listen to her and look for any signs,
not accusing him in anything. But I'm just
telling you. And and she she once she settled
down from it, she she asked me more questions,
of course, which I was
not totally detailed about.
Right. But and she finally did believe me. And
you told her what his dad had done. Yeah,
not detailed, but that he has actually this.
Yes. And I said, I'm only worried for her.
Yeah, I don't. I'm not trying to make you hate
him, whatever. I'm just
saying, be alert. Right.
And and I don't believe for a minute that that
carried down to my brother because he I just
too many in all of his crazy addiction faults.
And it was deep. He really had a big heart and
didn't have I mean, believe me, I could sense
it if he did. Right.
Right. And he didn't he didn't I
know that was never an issue. And the addiction
part for him played out probably more in the
drugs than the alcohol. Yeah. Very not on that
side. No, very early on
alcohol at 12 heroin at 15.
Wow. But so wait, was this when you guys you
were 15 when they got
divorced? How old would he have
been when they got divorced? 15, 13, 11, nine.
Okay, so they got divorced
when he's nine. And a few
years later, he's drinking. Yeah, he's
drinking. And the only reason I know
specifically about that
is fast forward many years he was in a drug and
alcohol program that was
part of the Oregon State
Penitentiary. And they one of the many things
they had to do was what
they do in AA. You had to do
your 12 steps. And part of that was detailing
your addiction from the time you started from
the money it costs, which is extraordinary to
the people that you hurt
either stealing from or
they had to detail their own addiction path.
And I read his story, where
he said he started drinking
alcohol at 12. And again, this is the beginning
of the 60s where the drug culture really is big
start right being big, right. And he was at the
fort, you know, with
that generation. And, and so
and then heroin by 15. And when he was, I think
he was just past 18. And he had stolen a Social
Security check out of or some sort of check, I
thought it was Social
Security out of somebody's
mailbox. And he got caught. And again, I wasn't
around it. By then I was moved out. Yeah, but
he got sent to federal prison. Because he tried
to cash the federal check, the federal check.
And so, and he was very good looking kid. So
here's his kid. When you
look back on it, that's
18 in federal prison, right? And not a good
place. And so for survival,
you learn to be tougher than
the person that's trying to come after you.
Right. And it's it's
brutal. How long was he in federal
prison? He was in and out. I don't know how
long at that particular
time, but he was in and out
of prison for the better part of his life. So
that the check was the first time the first 18.
Where do you think he got the alcohol? Your
hat, the house? Well, when
my know, because when, when
just people find I mean, I honestly don't know,
because again, my mom
never drank. Right. And so
once my stepdad was gone, there was no alcohol
in the house. So friends or
something. But then heroin,
but that's like that's a jump. That's not from
12 to 15 alcohol marijuana. Right. But still,
the heroin, but it was becoming more prevalent
and available. But it's also very expensive.
Yeah. And so you can't you can't handle that
kind of addiction without
getting the money somewhere.
So then you steal. Because did he work? Not
then. He's had jobs over
the years, but they haven't
lasted a really long time. He's done truck
driving jobs, you know, as an
adult. But he was in and out
of prison in a lot of those formative years. So
you might go in as a kid
who's addicted, but messing
with that stuff. But you don't come out the
same. No, because you don't
know what happened to him in
there. I he talked about some of it. And it's
and what happens to if
you don't fight for yourself
and and how brutal it is. And you have to you
have to learn to be tougher
than the than the next guy,
because otherwise you're going to get you're
going to get raped.
You're going to get murdered.
You're going to get any number of things. So he
went in as kind of just this kid that's messing
around with drugs and alcohol and then came out
a career criminal
basically pretty much. Yeah. And
he was in and out. And like I say, I kept my
distance. So I'm not
even except for this story.
And I've forgotten somebody wrote it was just
mind boggling. But he had to even document
the amount of money he spent over the years.
It's just astounding. Yeah. I mean, millions.
Wow. Yeah, it's just it's astounding. And it's
all you can't get that money unless you steal.
Yeah. Yeah. And this was through the 60s and
the hippie movement and
all that. Yes. And then into
the 70s. And Portland is a drug culture town to
some degree. Not how it was different than how
it is. Right. It's not there was there was
Portland and then that
underground drug culture.
Yeah. Now it's like, do whatever you want
drugs, whatever. Yeah. It's
not how people picture it now.
But then it was very different. And you align
with those people and you become tougher than
the next guy because that's your only survival
mechanism. You mean you do horrible things in
prison. But if you don't do them to somebody
else, they're going to do
them to you kind of a thing.
Not right. But it's just yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Code
is the code. As a matter of fact, later,
not too long before he died, he had made the
comment. There was something on the news about
prisoners and stuff. He could, you know, he
says they just don't have
any loyalty or code of code
of honor in prison nowadays. They're all just
and I'm like, OK, from
somebody who's never been in
trouble like that or never. I said, you know
how funny that sounds to me
that you're saying. But he
said, no, he said there's so much more hard and
so much more violent now. Yeah. And even though
there was that it's survival of the fittest in
its roughest form.
Right. Well, I think nowadays
they're very gang filled. Yes. So there's
gangs, you know, or
cliques, but they're gangs. So
and probably wasn't quite as gang infested. No,
it wasn't. Back then. Yeah, it was just
who's tougher than the next. Yeah. So when they
got divorced in year 15,
he's still young. Yeah.
And the girls are still young, too. And then
you graduate from high school, I assume at 18.
Yeah. Our junior, my junior year, we moved. We
couldn't keep. And when I think back,
I think our mortgage, we stayed in the house,
but I think the mortgage
payments were something like
eighty two dollars. Oh, my God. You know, it's
just crazy. I'd love that. You know, kidding.
But we couldn't afford to stay in the house.
OK. Was she? Well, she went to work. Right.
Right. We talked about that. And and then we
moved into these triplexes
place in Milwaukee. And we
were there. We all kind of again crammed in.
And then from there, we moved again
and to some apartments right off. I went to
Cleveland and the apartments were right near
there where we live. That's I was going to say,
did you have to change high schools through all
the I didn't I refused to change high school. I
was kind of like I was
battling an uphill battle
everything. And I said, I've got one more year
of high school and not changing schools. And so
I graduated from Cleveland. I focused. Nobody
ever said college to me.
No, but I never knew that
was an option. That's what I was going to ask
you. Were you raised that college was even the
word never was in the house. It was never the
word. And there was there
was never and I was a decent
student, but no. And I think that not even a
school counselor ever said,
hey, have you thought about
this? What about any of your friends? Were they
talking about college?
Not the ones I was closest
to. They weren't. But it was very definitive
that there was the college
kids, the people that were
going to college and the people that were going
to get a job. You didn't
wait around you had you
did something right. You had a plan to do
something right out of high
school and it was either college
or work. Were the college kids the rich kids?
Pretty much. What's the
what's the age difference
between you and her mom, Dana? Dan is three
years younger than me.
Okay. Three years younger. She
talked about that, like how there was really no
concept. There was she knew people when she did
know some. I think it was changing a little bit
because she said she did know some people that
were going to go. I knew a lot about when.
Yeah. But she and I have
talked about that. And she kind
of had the same thought process I did. I took
all business courses in
high school because I knew my
only offer was to get a job. And she took it.
She did the same thing. And
my typing. She talks about
typing and all that. And and so when I
graduated from high school, I
was really well qualified for
a secretary. Yeah. But right before I had
graduated, I applied to the
state of Oregon for a job.
I had this civil service. Yeah. And I I applied
because that my grandma worked in civil service
many years later when she worked and I wanted
to do what she did. So I
applied for civil service
and it was the state of Oregon. And they hired
me and they said, can
you start right now? And I
said, well, I'm actually still in high school.
And I said, I graduate June
12th. So could I start June
14th? I kind of just needed one in between.
Wow. And and I started
June 14th. What year did you
graduate high school? 1962. Okay. Kennedy was
still alive, right? He was assassinated in 63.
Okay. So you start working immediately pretty
much out of high school.
And where was that located?
It was downtown or Portland, downtown Portland,
I was making two hundred
and fifty dollars a month
and rode the bus to and from work. And it was
down on Fifth Avenue up up a ways from town.
Okay. But it's still down. Well, right across
the street in St. Mary's
High School. Okay. You would
have a point of reference about right, right,
right. But it's downtown
Portland for all practical
purposes. And you lived at home. So I still
lived at home. And then
very soon after that, my best
friend from grade school, we had gone to
different high schools, but
we had always talked to when to
get an apartment together. And so I graduated
in June, went to work
June 14th, and she got a job
with the telephone company. Oh, my gosh. And
like one of those operators, not an operator,
but she worked in where selling ads, phone ads
for the phone book. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so we
we were so excited because now we were out of
high school. And so in
September, we moved in together
in an apartment and we split the rent. The rent
was eighty four dollars a
month. Wow. And we split
the rent and she and I lived together for a
couple of years. So what
was that like? Because that
would have been your first time having your
really your own space
away from the chaos of your
childhood. It was wonderful. Did you I mean,
was it what did you just kind of exhale? Yeah,
it was really wonderful. I still I still like
when I first got my job
because my mom needed help
financially. And so I I really loved the fact I
was able to help them. I
bought the girls at that
time there were these Pendleton circle skirts,
which only the wealthy kids had. Yeah. And so I
bought each of them a skirt and I felt really
good that I could help them financially. And
and so and then my friend and I lived together
for a couple of years and
then she had met a guy and
they were going to get married. And so I moved
in with my mom and the apartment they were in,
which was not far for a little bit. And then I
then moved out to another apartment with some
other people. But I lived the same job this
whole time. Yes, I had that
for about eight years. And
then I took another job still within the state
for for a short while. And then during that job
is when I got married. I got married in 1965.
Okay, so you had your
time with your best friend,
that awesome apartment. I'm sure you just love
that little dinky podunk one bedroom apartment.
And we had one bed in there. We had no room for
anything else. And we would take we were both
afraid of the dark. I had a pretty good reason.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we would both take turns.
Who was the one that had to turn the light out?
Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. But you probably loved
every second. Yeah, it was just fun. Yeah. And
was it hard for that brief
moment when you had to go
back and live at home again before you moved
out again with it wasn't
it wasn't too bad. It was my
mom and the kids were there. They all three of
them. And at that time,
my mom wasn't working. And
it was a stretch of time. You know, now people
are judgment coming. People are career well,
career welfare. Right. Okay. Yeah, we were on
welfare and commodity
foods. But during that time,
because where I worked was vocational
rehabilitation, and it retrained people.
Mm hmm. And they could just, you know, get to
know people. And they said, I said, well,
my mom, you know, needs to find a job. But you
know, she doesn't have any training, you know.
And so they started asking. And anyway, long
story short, came up that she had one eye.
And even though it didn't disable her through
life, it was enough to qualify her.
And so she was able to go to secretarial
school, which is what they still had. Yeah.
And this it through the state, because it was
considered a handicap.
Okay. And so she was able
to get that schooling that they paid for. And
we were on welfare. We got the commodity foods.
And I think big giant bricks. That's okay. I
like government cheese, government, government,
cheese, government, butter, government, spam,
right, big bags of rice,
you know, yes, we did some
amazing things with it. But but we have times
where we did go to
school hungry. I mean, stomach
pain hungry. And I'm not saying that as a pity
thing. But I really, really believe that every
negative thing I've ever had to go through has
given me a compassion for somebody who's
maybe going through it today. So when somebody
says, you know, I'm so
hungry, my stomach hurts,
there's a big difference from my stomach hurts.
And I can't concentrate
at school. Right. We were
at that point for a while, because if you run
out of commodity food
before the end of the month,
tough being juror just so would you have days
where you guys wouldn't have anything to eat,
like for the whole day? Yeah. Yeah. And if we
had like they had school
lunches for at the high
school anyway, for 15 cents, you could get a
cup of mashed potatoes and
gravy, or a cup of rice and
gravy, you know, so they didn't have like free
lunches. No, no, no,
free lunch was not a thing.
And was there? Did people know like, I'm sure
you're a teenager, you probably weren't telling
anyone, right? Oh, no, I would have been
ashamed. Oh, yeah. No, you're
just, you're just, you know,
anybody to know that. Yeah. When I was when we
had moved into that
apartment, it was a few blocks
from school. So I walked to school. But prior
to moving there, there
were some days I missed school
because I didn't have the 15 cent bus fare to
get to school, and to get
home again. And it was too
far to walk. But you know, those times make you
appreciate what you
have. Yeah, you know, I never
think of those times as poor me, I always think
of them. I do know to
some degree, not for children
starving for very long periods, I do know what
that feels like actual
hunger pains, right? And,
and so, but we were on welfare until she got
through school. And then
my mom had such anxiety.
So they said, Okay, you have to take the civil
service exam and a typing test. Because we have
a job we could hire you here for. Yeah. Oh, my
gosh, they must have given
her that test four times.
And she'd get so freaked out, she'd fail it
every time she not that she
couldn't do it. Right, right,
right anxiety. Yeah. And so they finally did
something where she was typing, they gave her
something to do in typing, and she didn't know
she was taking the test.
Okay, okay. Yeah. And so they
hired her there in that office. And so for a
while, we worked in the same office. Oh, wow.
Okay, which had his plus and minus. Right,
right, right. Then I'm 19. And I'm, you know,
going out with friends and stuff like that.
Never anything bad. I was,
I was too kind of too naive
to get into bad. Yeah, I just am not confident
enough to be do anything kind of outrageous.
Right, right. I was always kind of fearful.
And, and also believe it
or not, I was also extremely
quiet. And all through high school, I was very
I was afraid of everybody. When when, and I was
very aware of the caste system in high school,
when Judy started as a
freshman, and I was a junior
before, and she's very, she was very much more
outgoing than me at that time, and made friends
with everybody. And I told her I said, when you
go to school, there's
certain people you can't talk
to, just what do you mean? I said, Well, you
can't just go up and talk
to the cheerleading girls,
or you can't talk to these people. And of
course, she that was all
the challenge. She needed.
So she just she made tons of friends, you know,
right, right, right, not me. But
so what was the who what was the group when you
you lived briefly with
Annie Jean after you lived
with your friend the apartment, then you said
you moved into an
apartment with other friends. Yeah,
I so so my, I wanted to move out my mom's,
because I just I had a taste
of that independence. Yeah.
And once again, we were four kids in a two
bedroom apartment,
right? Now we're like getting
to be more adult. Yeah. And so I wanted and so
a girl I randomly knew from work, they were,
there's going to be three other girls in me,
only one of which I kind
of sort of knew. Yeah. And
we're going to get an apartment. And so we did
it was up the street
from where I was living. And
it was a two bedroom apartment. So two girls in
each room. And so the person I was sharing an
apartment with, I'd never met in my life. And
so we were there for a little bit, everybody
contributed a little bit every month for
groceries, that kind of
thing. And then it all blew up,
because one of the girls, when it was her turn
to go buy groceries, she
was just taking the money
and spending it on other things. So it was just
that, yeah, yeah, yeah,
craziness. And so I lived
there. And then after that was when I stayed
with my grandma for a
while. Okay. And this was like
the second time you'd stayed with your with
Nana. Yeah. So she so you
had had those little pockets
of sometimes same with her. I used to stay with
her on weekends a lot. And it was just such a
sweet break. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And but this was
I lived with her for several months. And then
how did you meet your husband, your ex husband?
I, one of the girls I worked with
had started dating this guy. And it was a good
friend of his. Okay. And so you were set up.
Set us up on the day. Yeah. How old were you?
19. Yeah, very young. And how old was he?
He's like nine months older than me. Okay. Just
older, just older than that. And
was it instant for you? Did you like him right
away? I was very hesitant. There's a whole lot
of value in hindsight. You can't do a thing
about it. But it's awareness is interesting.
That also was the era that girls either went to
college, found a husband, or went to work
and found a husband. And they were all
everybody around me was getting married.
Everybody around me was getting married at 19.
19. Yeah. Yeah. And because of all of my other
experiences, I had this horrible feeling that
nobody was ever going to want me and that I was
going to be left behind. Yeah. And that was a
horrible way to approach
it. It wasn't fair to him.
But I felt like I can make this work. You know,
I can make this work.
There were characteristics
there that at the time I didn't recognize as
red flags. Many years
later, I could see them. And
also, I didn't put any stock into his family
dynamics. I thought it didn't matter. Because
we were different. And I know, I realized
later, some of that is his
history and how his family
certain members of his family dealt with
things. And I didn't think
that ever had an impact on
I just didn't think that would right? Why would
that matter? That was them. Right? I didn't I
didn't see any of that negative family dynamic
is ever affecting me.
Right. And so and my friend,
who set us up, she and then we got engaged. But
how we even got engaged,
we were driving down the
street and he says, we should get married. And
I'm like, Okay, right?
You know, I couldn't say no.
It was the things I didn't know how to say no.
Right. And even with something like that. And
oh, my goodness, my friend was so mad. Well,
how long had you been dating?
I hear maybe, maybe because we got married when
I was 21. Okay. 21. And
did your friend not like him?
He had previously dated one or her other
friends that she had
gone to high school with and
everything. And she did not think he was a good
fit for me. But I did not know how to say no.
Yeah, I didn't. I didn't know how to say no.
And, and, and the bar for
what you felt you deserved
was low. Oh, yeah. Oh, you wouldn't. You like
you just said you almost
were like taking what you
could get because you were afraid that was your
one shot. Yeah, because I really did not think
anybody else would ever be interested. You
know, so you guys get married.
Mm hmm. Get your get a home. I soon get a
house. Yeah, we actually bought a house
just a few months before we got married. But of
course, nobody moved in together until they got
married. So right, we moved in right after we
got married. Okay. And I
had for just those few months
before I had moved back into where my mom and
the other kids were living,
because they saw it like I
was leaving things were changing. Right, right.
So they wanted me to come
back and live there for just
a few months. Was she was Annie Jean happy
about you getting married
to him? She was but, but, you
know, again, not, not saying it in a negative
way against her. But
again, she had a very low bar.
Right. Of what she wouldn't, she didn't have
the experiences to say,
you might want to think about
this. You know, what about this with his
family, because they would
cut people off in their family
if they didn't agree with them about things,
right? His mom was
telling when we were just going
together. And his mom was telling me a story
about this thing his aunt
did, and she was just bitter
about it. And I, in my all my naivety, I said,
Oh, my gosh, did this, did
this just happen this week?
No, that was 20 years ago. And I haven't spoken
to her since. Right.
It's that kind of mentality.
And it was his mom's side of the family that is
very much that mentality. His dad's side,
first generation Norwegian here in America.
Wonderful people,
wonderful people, but overshadowed
by that. Right, right. So and so there were a
lot of red flags that I
just chose to ignore because
they wouldn't impact me. Because you also saw,
okay, this I'm going to
get married. And I'm going
this is now my future what I'm supposed to do.
So how long were you
married before you had your
first child? I was 25. I'm telling you, I
fought for that. Because we
talked about kids before we
were married. And once we got married, he said,
I've changed my mind. I
don't think I want to have
kids. He said, I'd rather we could just spend
money on things that we want and not have kids.
And I was, Andy Judy could tell you many a time
I was crying the blues to her about that, like,
oh my gosh. And again, I didn't have I didn't
have any confidence. I
didn't have enough self esteem.
I wouldn't have pushed back on anybody as far
as like, in today's world, you may say, that's
cause enough. We it's a huge disagreement and a
change in what we
initially. And I was devastated.
Yeah, I was devastated. So you viewed it as
that's how it's going to
be. For a long time. Not that
you could challenge what he's saying. Yeah, for
a long time. But I kept always saying,
don't you think we could have kids now? It was
always permission based. Right? You know,
permission based. Yes. And I'd say, don't you
think we could have? I
really want kids. I don't
think we need to do that. We were doing fine
now. And I mean, it was
and of course, I was on birth
control pills because, you know, right, the 60s
birth control came in and
so I was on birth control
pills. And I finally had talked him into into
about three, four years,
I think it was about and I
finally, I think he got tired of me begging.
Yeah. And I kind of think he
thought nothing would happen
if I got off, went off pills. Like, why would
he think I don't? He's
very, very, very controlling.
And so if you're controlling enough, you really
do think you can control
every situation. And if I
don't want to have kids, we're not going to
have kids. Right. You know,
because it's that God complex.
Yeah. Yeah. Within three months, I was
pregnant. And I could not have
been happier. I could not have
been happier. I would say, I mean, I'm very
content in my life now. I
would say, but I have been the
happiest in my life being pregnant with both my
kids and the years of
raising them. I didn't work
during the years until they were 10 and 12. And
those were the happiest years I've ever had
being a mom to them. I just without question,
was it really healing for you?
It was, it probably impacted why I felt I had
to be the perfect, tried to be the perfect mom,
you know, I'm sure they have different things
about it, but I'm very close with my son now,
which I'm eternally grateful for. And, but I
really love that time. And
then so my daughter was born
when I was 25, and my son was born when I was
27. Okay. And so your
home, you're raising them,
you're in heaven, probably for the first time
in your life. This is like amazing.
And in the meantime, it was still a challenging
marriage. He still was
very controlling. And you
know, there's a real cause and effect of that
too, because the more
controlling he got there, there
was a lot of never any physical abuse never.
But there was a lot of
emotional and mental abuse and
making you feel less than Yeah, that that
happened with the kids too. I mean, there was
things with the kids that he did that too. But
things like, and you know, I'm kind of OCD,
I like everything just so right. And so there
was that the house is a
mess. I can't we can't have
anybody over because the house is so filthy.
And we had a dog. So dog
care is always around. If you
have a dog, yeah, we allow and just those
things are at the top of the
refrigerator is filthy. And,
you know, and just this constant, constant,
constant, you know, and so you and I did talk
to him about counseling. And he said, Well, if
you want to go fine, that's
fine. But I don't have any
reason to go. If you want to go, that's fine.
And meantime, the alcohol is escalating. Okay.
And he's a narcissist. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.
And so the alcohol is escalating.
And so forward and there was he put perfection
on everybody who was very hard on our son.
And punished him irrationally for things, you
know, made the punishment.
One time he punished him, he'd gotten in my son
had gotten in a fight at school
with this kid who I might add was really a
jerk, says his mother, but
he was because I by this time
I had worked a little bit at the school and
volunteering. I knew this kid. Yeah. And he'd
gotten a fight. And so he got grounded for 30
days. And he had chores
every day. And my husband told
him that if he did everything he was supposed
to, he would take him off
grounding early. And so he
did everything he was supposed to without
question and never got off, never got off,
never got off. And I think day 29, he let him
off the hook. But during all this time,
with all the drinking, I had started taking
just I love school. So I
had started taking a couple
classes. By this time when there were 10 and
12, I went back to work
for the middle school or for
the school district, because I wanted to have
their vacations, their
days, if there was a snow
day, it would be my day off, too. Yeah. And so
I took the job as a
school secretary. And I loved
being around the kids. It was so fun. And and
so I started pinging away
at some classes with no end
game in sight. Just I liked going to school.
And I was really glad
later that I did, because it
gave me the foundation for when I needed to
support myself when we got divorced. But but he
was just he was just so hard on it. But with
all the drinking, I
started going, somebody had said,
oh, you should try going to Al-Anon. And I had
to even say, what is
that? Yeah. And I went and it
was shocking, because I think I went five times
before I said a word. But the first time there,
this lady sitting by me was talking and telling
my story. And then the
person leading that said,
you know, you didn't cause it, you can't
control it. And you can't
hear it. And in my head, I mean,
I'm like, what do you mean I didn't cause it?
He said that he drinks
because I do this. What do
you mean I didn't cause it? Sure, I did.
Because he told me I did.
And I know I can cure it,
because he said, if I would just keep the house
better, if I would just do this better,
he wouldn't have to drink. So yeah, I can cure
it if I just do. And so I
truly believe that. And so
as I continued on with this, I learned so much
more about alcoholism, and how it impacted me.
Right. And I remember them saying that
generally, it's the
codependent person who starts getting
sick before the alcoholic. And fast forward to
the time I decided to leave, I started getting
stomachaches. And so I really started thinking.
And I also was so obsessed with having a good
home for my kids, to a fault that I thought, I
can't leave. Because we'd be in an apartment,
because he told me if I left, he'd get the
house. And I believed it.
And I didn't want to raise my
children as apartment kids. Because I thought
who knows who they'd have to be around. Right,
I've lived in that environment. Right, right.
And so who knows who
they have as their friends,
whereas right now, if I can just stick with it
from the time I can remember thinking if I can
just stick with it 10 more years, and then if I
can just stick with it seven more years,
they got the neighborhood kids, they got the
house. Never ever thinking.
Kids are so much smarter than you think. And
they were, it was a
disservice to them. They were
being hurt too. And it never, I just thought if
I keep it good for them.
You were viewing the house
as this, this will take care of everything if
we can just stay here. And
the house is perfect. And
everything's perfect. Neighborhoods perfect.
The friends are perfect.
Two parent house. Yeah,
two parent house. You know, we look good from
the outside, you know, so
everything, the kids will be
fine. And then once they're out of the house, I
broke the cycle. And now that I'll leave not
knowing that the kids are experiencing what
you're experiencing, the abuse, the utter,
utter horrific controlling, which is abuse.
Obviously, I mean, he was getting off on how
much he was controlling all of you guys. It's,
it's, it's, he flipped out when I crazy kind of
get that when I said I was leaving, and well,
there was a reason for
that. But so in the middle of
this, then my daughter moved out and got
married at 18 very young,
she's still married, but
and you guys were very close, very close, very
close. All through
school. Yeah. And, and he used
to be really hard on her. She's, she's
extremely bright and was an
excellent student. She didn't
get anything less than an A from seventh grade
on. But one time in her
sophomore year, one semester
of typing class, she got a B and the school
called me and said, what is going on? And I,
I don't know what you mean. He said, she broke
down in tears and was
sobbing because she got that B.
Well, she was going to a private Christian
school that I was paying
for because that's where she
wanted to go to school. So I was working to pay
for it. And my husband was very mad about that
because he said the amount of tuition of this
year, I could have bought a new truck.
And so he was so hard on her and he ripped her
a new one when she came
home and he was yelling at
her because she got this B. Right. And he says,
I'm not paying all that money for you to go to
school so you can get bad grades first B and
all this time and B is not
bad. And I was working to
pay for it. Right. And so it just, it puts such
pressure on her. Yeah. It
was really hard. And then
he was very unreasonable with my son. But
during this time, so I had
learned a lot from Al-Anon
and I was just like, eyes were opening that
something wasn't right. During this time,
my brother was still, he had been back in
prison, Oregon state prison this time.
And they, a counselor from the prison, oh, he
sent a letter and he
apparently had sent a letter to
Judy Caffe and I, my sisters and I, saying he
was involved in a drug and alcohol program.
And would we be interested in supporting him in
that emotionally, like whatever?
I said, heck no. And you're on your own buddy.
I've like got my own
issues going on here. Yeah.
And through the course of things, Judy and
Kathy had both been burned by him,
even though Judy and him have always been the
closest, but they had been burned by him in a
lot of ways through the whole drug thing. And
so I just ignored it.
Well, then a counselor called
from there and said who she was. And she said,
it's a drug and alcohol
program for incarcerated
prisoners. They come and stay there. They're
still incarcerated. And I
said, well, here's the thing.
And so for me, the more she talked about
counseling, for me, I
kind of selfishly thought,
huh, that might be some free counseling that I
can take advantage of. Right. And so
and my mom was going to be involved in my mom
was like beyond thrilled because now I finally
was going to be involved. Right. And help with
John and help with John.
Yeah. And so I told the
counselor, I said, I would like to talk to you
first and tell you my
viewpoint. I said, I'm not
jumping into this without you understanding
where I'm coming from.
Yeah, this is not a blanket.
So I went down to the end to the prison was
Oregon State Hospital
grounds where they were having
this program. And I met with her and I said,
you know, I said, I
spent a good part of my life
listening about poor John this and poor John
that. And he didn't have a
dad. And I said, well, the
whole time the dad that everybody was lamenting
he didn't have was
causing hell for me. And I said,
so I'm sorry, I don't I'm not sympathetic. I
said, I'm going through a
difficult time myself right
now. And I said, if any of this would be
helpful to me personally,
and if he and if I'm able to
tell him straight up, I will not pull any
punches on telling him how I
feel. And she said, that is
exactly what we want. She said, too often the
family members cannot
stop enabling their person,
they'll be involved in the programs, but it'll
be all how they can continue to victimize them
continue to victimize them. And I said, Okay,
I'll think about it. And so
then I said, I'll call you.
And so then, of course, my mom was all over it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so the first time again,
he did not know I was anywhere near there. And
so my mom and I went down
and met with them. And the
counselor had commented, and it's still my mom
never knew about the abuse. I never told I did
tell the counselor, because I wanted her to
have an understanding why,
as far as I was concerned,
he could suck it up like the rest. Right,
right, right now. But and
so she made the comment to my
mom about she inferred my mom was controlling
because of how involved
she had stayed in his life.
My goodness, that made her so mad. She said,
that's I'm not like that. And I said, Well,
you have to look at it from how you are with
him. Yeah, you are. Yeah. And anyway, so
I will say not from an egotistical standpoint,
but those counselors love me. Yeah, because I
didn't pull punches with anybody. Yeah, you
brought the reality into the situation. And I
was not feeling sorry for them. They made their
they made their choices. And so we went every
Saturday, I think it was we drove down there.
And we would just we
would get to visit with the
prisoner, we could bring him some little
treats, whatever. And then
they would go back to where
they were being housed. And so then they had a
weekend, a family
weekend. And the setup was the
family, they knew we were coming. So it was all
great. And they were not,
they weren't using drugs,
they were in prison, which we all know there
probably could have been. But at that time,
we I believe they weren't because they were at
this place. And, and so the structure of the
weekend was day one, we were really literally
in class, which everybody
else is losing patience,
because they just want to see their person,
right? I'm soaking this
stuff. Yeah, you're like therapy,
therapy. And it was a whole class on criminal
thinking behavior, and all of this stuff, and
how they manipulate you and all of this stuff,
which I found
fascinating. And so I was like asking
questions. And, you know, the annoying kid in
school who won't shut up, that was me.
Lady knock it off. Yeah, that was me. And
they're all just like,
well, when do we get to see him?
And I'm like, but wait a minute, what about
this? It was fascinating.
Yeah. And then the second day,
we would, in amongst just us family members,
talk about how our family members addiction had
affected us. You know, what was the impact of
their addiction on us? Yeah. And some of them
were so needy, beneficially. Well, I don't
know. You know, it's kind of
hard to get money. Sometimes
it's kind of hard to feed the kids sometimes,
all this kind of stuff.
Yeah. And the counselor said
to me, are you willing to say your story? And I
said, my mom will lose
it. I can't say it with her
in the room. My mom does not know. Yeah. To
this day does not know.
And she will lose her mind.
Yeah. She's not a calm reactor. She will lose
her mind. And they said,
would you be willing to do
it if we make sure we have somebody sitting
with her so that when you
share your story, there's
someone there for her. Yeah. And I said, okay,
but I can't be facing
her. Right. And so I told my
story. And as I'm talking, I hear my mom
because we're just in a
living room. It was a house that
they had. And it was in the living room when we
were in a circle. And so I'm talking and I hear
my mom screaming as I tell you my story. And I
hear her screaming and
the counselor was with her.
And I just kept going. I thought, just keep
talking. Just say what
you have to say. And I did.
And when I finally looked at her, you would
have thought somebody, I
mean, she was devastated.
She was devastated. She was how could I not
have known? Yeah. And
then different pieces started
coming. And she goes, Wait a minute. That time
I was in the hospital. And
I go, Yeah. Oh, that makes
sense. And then she she was just, it was awful.
Yeah. And then we went to
dinner that night at the
where we all ate to dinner together with the
family members. And my brother come up. So what
happened to mom? I said, Oh, it's just a long,
rough day. Yeah. Then the
third day, the prisoners
were brought in and everybody sat with their
family member. And then they put, you know,
the two chairs facing each other. And you could
then tell your person directly how their
addiction affected you. And I just didn't hold
back. I just told him and I said, you know,
I said, you know what it's like always on
holidays to wonder whether
you're dead under a bridge or
something. And we never know. Or whether you've
been thrown in prison
again. And I said, you know
how many years I've listened to poor john this
and poor john that because
you didn't have your dad.
And and I said, But guess what? This is what
having your dad did to
me. And holy cow, he just
hung his head and start crying. And he's like,
I had no idea. Nobody
did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody
did. Yeah. And I said, but I had to make a
choice. Do I survive this
and go the route of drugs and
alcohol to which so many women? Yes, that is,
you have to numb the pain
somehow. Absolutely. And,
and so he just it, it beat him up me saying
this, and you could have
heard a pin drop in his room.
And I am talking tatted up, scary as heck
prisoners. Yeah, sitting there. Yeah. And
because it was in a safe environment, in fact,
one of them who this guy was mean,
he his person was there, even though he beat
her up repeatedly,
hospitalized her more than once.
And she's still here, what can I do for you?
And so I, I had said to him
later, when we had a break,
I said, because there was armed guards, I knew
I was safe. Yeah. And I said, why do you think
it's okay to beat somebody up? I said, I can't
for the life may figure
out why you think it's okay
to physically abuse somebody. Well, these guys
are also tough. They're
not used to anybody talking
to them that way. Yeah, I wouldn't have been
bright. I would have
gone the other way if I saw
him on the street. But you also were on a roll.
I was on her eyes, right? Take all these people
down. I had here is a pent up of all this
nonsense. Yeah. And so they so the counselors
appreciated that I didn't pull any punches with
anybody. But it was a lot of stuff coming out.
Yeah, I finally had an avenue to let the anger
out that I had. And I didn't care if you were
hardened criminal, you were getting it, right?
You were you were just in the way getting it.
And but you could have heard a pin drop. And
you I when I glance up at some of them,
they were you could see the look on their face
of utter shock that
somebody was being that open.
And because they weren't on drugs at the time,
they could hear things.
Yeah, that they couldn't
normally otherwise. Yeah. You know, what a
moment though, for you. And
what a interesting way for
you to find your voice in that room surrounded
by criminals and drug addicts. It was crazy.
But in some ways, it's like, of course, this is
how it's going to go down
and your mom's learning it
around that time and everything. Did this
coincide to when you started to think about
divorcing your husband? It did. And and it did
because it was such a long time of making that
choice, because I was, again, worried about the
implication for everybody else. Right. And I
thought, I'm fine. I've dealt with worse. And I
just was always focused
on what the impact of that
decision would be for everybody else. And and
so I started thinking
about it. And then two years
before I actually made that final decision, I
met with an attorney,
one of the teachers at the
school I worked, I had been friends with and I
asked him if he knew of
an attorney and I had kept
all this to myself. Nobody knew I was doing
this. And the attorney had
free consultation for the
first one. And so I met with him and I said and
I kind of just laid it
out what I was thinking of
doing. And I said, I know that once I step out
the door that I won't
have any longer any rights to
the house or any of my possessions in it. I
already know that I just want to know what
what would I need to do? What does that look
like? And he said, well,
let's back up for a minute.
Who told you that you wouldn't have access to
the house? Well, my husband told me, you know,
yeah. Well, who told you that you wouldn't? And
I said, well, my husband
told me. Yeah. And he said,
I he was very he probably was like shaking his
head, but he was wonderful. And he says, well,
let me just explain to you Oregon State law.
And this is what and he
said you're married for 25
years. And and at the time that it was 23 at
the time when I first
met with him. And he said,
you're married far long enough and you've
raised the family. And in
the laws eyes, you have given
up a career to stay, you know, raise your
family. And I said, but
that's what I wanted. He says,
I'm telling you what the law says. Right. The
law says you gave up a
career and you are entitled
to be the one to stay at the house because you
still have a child there. You know, you at that
time, both kids, he says, you still have
children in the home. So
you're entitled to that. So he
just kind of laid out what was legal and not
legal. Right. What year
was that? Not a late 80s.
Okay. Yeah. So it wasn't that it wasn't common
knowledge. It was me
being not common knowledge.
Right. And and so I sat on it for another
couple of years and
another couple of years trying to
still do the right thing, still trying to make
things better. And but
through that time of going
down to that prison program, I learned a lot
from them. And also at the
time I started volunteering,
not because of anything for me, I've always
volunteered at place. I mean, I've done
a lot of volunteering because I believe in it.
I believe it's the right thing to do.
And so I was going to volunteer at Portland
Women's Crisis Line, domestic violence shelter.
And so you had to go through training. And as
I'm going through
training, I'm blown away again,
being more educated, because even though there
was never physical abuse, they started talking
in one class about the thousand and one rule.
And they're talking about
it. And I'm like, oh, my gosh.
And it's like, you can be told there's a
thousand rules to follow.
And if you follow all of them,
then you'll either get this or things will be
better. And so you do you follow all thousand
rules. And you get to that point. And there's
like, but there's one
more you missed. And that's
always what the hook is. Right. And and so and
everything else, they talked about that.
And then I started connecting the dots. And so
there was like all this process of gathering
information and being educated myself and then
realizing, oh, I'm
making a terrible mistake for
my children and feeling horrible about that,
because what I thought
was doing the right thing
for them was doing the worst thing and just not
realizing it. And so then
I finally so when I made
the decision and I was doing a lot of reading
both for some of the
classes I was taking, but I was
doing a lot of reading on codependency and what
that looks like and the
things that happened that
carried to understand more why I was doing
things I was doing. And I
can remember one November,
I moved out December 26th of 89. And I can
remember one day in November, I was I always
I read this book by Melody Beatty. It was
called The Language of Letting Go. And it was
daily, not devotions, but daily readings. And
then below she'd have like a
verse. And sometimes it was
biblical. Sometimes it was some other spiritual
leader, something inspirational message. And it
was November 12. And it was about to thine own
self be true. And the whole focus was on,
you're not helping anybody if you're not taking
care of yourself. And I just sat with me and I
thought what? And, and then the verse expanded
on is that from Shakespeare?
To my own self be true. I think it's something
like anyway, whatever it
was the verse down there
is basically that to thine own self be true.
And pretty much
paraphrasing, you're really no good to
anybody else. Yeah, you're not providing a
healthy environment for
anybody else. If you aren't taking
care of yourself, which always to me had been
the opposite thought,
right? And it was it was this
very calm, quiet realization. And I just it was
like a peace settled
over me that it's okay. It's
okay to take care of myself. My daughter had
moved out and got
married. My son was mid senior
year in high school. And oh goodness, I did so
it was no blazing argument
that I'm leaving blah, blah,
blah. So I told my husband, I formerly thought
I went met with my
attorney again, asked him what
the steps were asking him how much it would
cost me because I says I, I
don't expect him to pay for
anything. I'll pay for it. Wasn't quite sure
how right. But he let me do
it on payments. And I did,
I paid for it. And, and what I asked him what I
needed to do what the
first steps were things like
that. And so by now then it's kind of mid
November. And I told him, I
was moving out, I said I can't
and I and I said, but I don't want to ruin
Christmas for anybody. So I'm going to move out
December 26. So even then you're still trying
to trying to keep it together. What kind of
nutcase does that? And of course, I expect him
to react calmly about it.
Right, right, right. And
so if you tell a controlling person that you're
taking control, it
doesn't go over very well. It's
actually dangerous. Yeah, which I learned
later. Yeah. And through
the domestic violence, your
decision to leave in the physical abuse in
particular, races your chance of dying 1000%.
Yeah, when you make that decision. That's why
women keep going back.
Yeah. Well, partly because
they're isolated. They don't have fun. Right,
right. All the other reasons. Yeah. But I said,
and he was like, No, you're not. And, and so it
started with all that. No, you're not. And
then it started with the bargaining. We'll all
go to counseling. We'll go to counseling.
I said, we're past that point. Yeah. And we'll
all go to because he would, you use the term at
one point of gaslighting. That's kind of what
it was, but he didn't know what it was. Right.
Earlier, I would say, I can't have a
conversation with you when
you've been drinking, because I
could smell it. It was at this point in the
pores. And he would say,
Why do you always say that I
haven't had anything to drink. And I began to
wonder if it was just me assuming that right.
Even though I know clearly, right? I can smell
it. I can see it in his
eyes, like everything, you know.
And, and so I said, No, it's too late for
counseling. I tried that years ago. And you
said it was fine for me, but you you didn't
need counseling. And so then it was like,
I'll go to treatment. And I said, Here's the
thing about treatment. If
you do it for me, you'll fail.
Right. You can only do it for yourself.
Because, again, I had been
gaining information. Right. I
had more to talk. He told you to go to therapy.
And you did. I listen,
man, careful what you wish.
No kidding. No kidding. And, and so I said, No,
I don't, I don't care
what if you do it. I'm happy
for you. If you do it for yourself. Right. You
know, that would be wonderful. But don't do it
for me, because that's not going to change my
mind. And, and I was, I was
going to church at the time.
And he says, Well, I'll start going to church.
I said, Again, you can
only do that for yourself.
It's not going to impact. I've made my
decision. And I was dead
calm on all of this. I was just
dead calm. gritting my teeth through it,
because it was really
because now I got another whole
month living there. Right. Because you
committed to Christmas.
Because I committed to December 26.
So nobody got upset. And, and, and I had once I
made the decision, I had
slowly, I mean, this is
kind of devious, but it was my survival mode,
then I had started moving
out without him knowing it,
because he worked graveyard. And so I would
take some boxes, fill up
my personal stuff. I never
took anything that was his stuff that was
meaningful to me, kids stuff. And I'd load up
trunk of my car. And I had rented a storage
unit. And so in the
morning, he'd be home and I'd leave
for school to work at the school. And I would
stop my storage unit drop off the boxes two or
three at a time. You're, you're discussing it,
you're describing a
woman who's escaping abusive
relationship. Yeah. And so I would do that
little by little. And then
I would rearrange closet. So
it never looked like anything was missing. So
it was, I mean, I was
kind of proud of myself that
I moved out and he didn't know it, you know,
it's kind of, I mean, in
hindsight, many years later,
I can laugh about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And
nobody, the job I worked
at knew I was getting into
work. Nobody knew. And because I don't want to
impact anybody. And so we ended up doing it.
It was a horrible, horrible last month, because
he stuck to me like
glue, because he worked nice,
he was round during the daytime. And it was
awful. And, and I said,
but I'm going to make sure
that the, that the house is clean when I leave,
I'm going to thoroughly
clean it. So everything's
not cleaned out when I leave. And by this time,
he had finally gotten an
attorney. And his attorney
told me, me as well say goodbye to the house,
because your wife has
every right to it because,
you know, yeah, this time, Brian still in high
school, and been married long enough,
she has every right to it. Yeah. And, and I, I
told my attorney, I said, I just went out.
I don't want I would like half the proceeds of
the house or half what the house is worth.
And he says, well, how much is it worth? And I
said, well, my husband
told me how much it was worth.
And he said, but you have it appraised or
anything. I said, no, my husband told me how
much is worth, which was probably half of what
it was worth. Right. But
again, I just wanted out.
Yeah, I said, I said, I'm going to go back to
school. I'm going to take a year sabbatical
from my job. They will let me do that. And I'm
going back to school to finish my degree,
because I'd already by that time, talked to the
college. And I said, I need to take 23 credits
a term to finish my degree a year and a half in
one year. And they said,
well, you can't do that
without board approval. I said, look, I'm not a
kid. I'm not partying. I'm not my whole focus
is what I'm doing. Right. And so they, so each
term I had to get board approval, but I did it.
And because it was so many credits, yeah, it
was 23. It was it was too big of a low. Yeah.
Yeah. I think the most we ever took was 18.
Yeah. It's too big. They
can't. Yeah, they can't do it.
And I got four point and and I was taking like
seven classes at a time and stuff. And
did you have your own apartment when you moved?
No, I spent a year living with Andy Judy.
Okay. And so I, I took a year off and I
literally was Birkenstocks
and baggy clothes for a year.
I was taking seven credits and the some of the
college kids would say they couldn't believe I
was getting A's and they said, how are you
doing that? Because they
all start talking about how
much I was in all their classes. You know, I
was in I was showing up
everywhere. And of course,
the obnoxious front row person. I like
learning. And, and I said,
here's the thing. I said,
I'm not dating and I don't party. Yeah. I'm
here to get a year and a
half worth of course load in
one year. And, and they were they were very
intrigued by that very intrigued by that. And
they said, So how do you do that? And I said, I
go home every single day. And I start plowing
through my books. And I spent all week on
because this is a year I have
to do this. Yeah. And I said,
I plow through my books. And that is all I do
is I study and I go to
school. They were just amazed
by that. Yeah, but that was probably like the
happiest you'd been in
years. It was fun. It was
really fun. There were some there were some
frustrating things because the divorce took
almost the full next year to I thought it was a
simple process. We agree. We I thought it was
simple. I was very naive about that. And like I
would leave school and
put my books in. I'd open
up the trunk of my car to put my books in. And
there'd be something he
had put in there because
he had keys to it. And so there was a lot of
stalking going on that
would show up in random ways.
And and and some of it I wasn't aware of until
it happened. And then I was. And so you're so
lucky nothing happened. Yeah, very lucky. It
was actually his sister
that told me how much he was
stalking me because I was just you know, again,
I was not thinking about
that. I thought I've made
the break. You know, he made a lot of
accusations about what I was
doing with my life personally
start questioning if I was dating. And I said,
look, I'm just trying to get through school.
He somehow knew things I was doing like I had
taken a job and moved
out of state after a while.
He knew all that. I don't know how. But and
then when he couldn't
control it. And I I literally
physically left December 26. He was beside
himself with not being able to control it.
But it kept moving on. And so by then, that's
the middle of my son's
senior year. And so my son was
going to stay with him till he finished school.
I had by then finished
school and moved it moved
into my own place. And he came up to school,
told my son they were going
to I don't look at cars or
look at something, go do something. And he
drives up to my school and
drops him off. And he says,
now you can go live with your mom, just out of
the blue. And so that
kind of was the next level of
challenge. He just dumped with you. Yeah. Yeah.
And I didn't I mean, I was happy. I mean,
I love having him around. It was never it was
none of it was ever a
burden. Yeah. But it was him.
It's more emotional abuse on his son. Yeah.
Yeah. And he changed the
locks on the house and the
whole thing. And he allowed him to come and get
his things. And then I, at one point, had to go
by to pick up something. I don't remember the
circumstance, but we had had a cabin in the
mountains from the time my son was five years
old. And it was his
peaceful place. He loved it. He's
an outdoor guy. He loved it. And I had come by
the house for him to run in and get something.
And I had taken my wedding ring off. And he
said, where's your wedding ring?
I said, going through a divorce. I'm not
wearing a wedding ring.
And he had a fit. And the very next day, he
sold this cabin that
because I loved. And that was why.
Yeah, because very early on, after I left, I
stayed with my mom for a month,
just to get my bearings. And I, I lived with
him. So yeah, young. And
he had come to her apartment
when I was at work. And he told her, because I
know how to get to her. I know I can manipulate
her through the kids because he was trying to
put pressure on my mom. And at this point,
he was just playing, getting scary. And and so,
yeah, so it was it was a lot of rough time.
How did things go with like, so he he did that
with your son. How was he with your daughter?
So my daughter had got married. And when my
daughter was in school around her toward the
end of her sophomore year, things started
getting kind of weird. She
was becoming she had started
dating a guy who seemingly was this wonderful
guy. But she had started
being more distant for me.
And it was I didn't know how to handle that
because we had we had never
had any arguments or we just
had fun together. We just had fun together. And
we never had any difficulties. But she started
distancing herself for me. And she's very, very
intelligent. And her boyfriend is like that.
They're very bright. And they kind of started
getting this intellectual arrogance. I don't
know how else to say it. And started judging
people and all this kind of stuff. And she
started dropping out of things in the high
school that she had
worked really hard to get into,
like an elite choir playing piano for the
choir, things that she had
always wanted to do. Yeah. And
she started distancing herself more and more.
And so when she got married at 18,
for me, that was not a happy occasion, because
I worked in the summer
to get enough money to pay
for her wedding. But I wasn't allowed to be
part of it. She didn't allow
me to like, you know, you go,
yeah, dress shop, whatever. Yeah. She had
somebody she knew make her
dress, but I never saw it till
her wedding day. I just I gave over the money
for that gave over the money for the flowers,
gave over whatever money was necessary based on
working. But I was never a part of it. And even
when they sent out their invitations, it wasn't
how you would say the
parents of request, whatever,
how you say it. Yeah. They just put Blaine and
crystal request your
presence. I think I remember
that. Yeah, they didn't mention. Yeah. And so
it was a starting of a
and so when I had moved out
after I'd gone through school night, got my own
apartment, and she came over and she said,
you know, you always taught us that we are to
stick with things and
that we couldn't just quit.
And now you're quitting. And I said, Well, not
exactly the same thing. And she says, well,
when I wanted to quit cheerleading, you made me
stick it out. And I
said, your sophomore year of
high school, you always wanted to do that. You
made a commitment. And I said, you can stick it
out this semester. And then you can do if you
choose not to do it, totally up to you.
Ending my marriage with your dad is nowhere
near in the same ballpark.
And I said, I am not going
to. It's personal between us. I said, if I tell
you all the reasons, I will be sitting here bad
mouthing your dad and I am not going to do
that. You know, it's been
hard. You yourself had said
many times over the years, why do you stay?
Right? Why do you stay? Why
do you let him talk to you
like that? And I said, you yourself had had
said that. And I said,
you witnessed a lot of it.
And I said, but beyond that, I am not going to
sit here and do that. I
said, you're just going to
have to trust that I am doing this in the best
interest of everyone. And that was it. That was
it. And so in the meantime, he's bending her
air because, of course, now she's getting this
relationship in her mind with the dad she never
had a relationship with.
And he's playing on that.
Right. He's playing those cards in that
direction. Right. And and so
and I was so mentally exhausted
because I was then back to work. I was still
dealing with his constant thing because I had
asked for a minimal amount of money to get me
through that first year
of school. And of course,
because that he had to know where I was all the
time in order to and then he'd say, oh, well,
it's not going to be there on on time. This he
had more than enough money. But it was
when he was in the game with
the money to control me. Yeah.
Because I was barely making it. So it was a
hardship to me if he didn't give that little
amount. And I wanted my health insurance for
the year until I could get
back to work and get back
on my own health insurance. So I wasn't asking.
And the half of the house he told me was worth
was really just enough to I mean, I was really
starting over again at 48
as if I was 18. But this
time it was on your terms and you chose
yourself and it was this
time you chose yourself. Yeah.
And, you know, looking back, you know, it's
funny, when I go to
restaurants, I look at people my age
group and I see them sitting together as a
married couple looking about
as unhappy as you could be.
They've got nothing to talk about. They don't.
They've just done the
time. And I've had the most
amazing experiences of travel and the job I did
and the people I've got to meet and
and being close with my son. He he had to
recover from his own stuff
from him. Right. And has done
such an amazing job of not becoming the man his
father was as hurtful as all of his stuff has
been. Yeah. And becoming a kind person and
somebody I'm proud to
have as my son and my friend,
you know. And I just I'm so grateful now for
the experiences. I don't like how I got here,
but I'm just so lucky because I that would not
have been the case if I would have stayed.
You would not have traveled. You would not have
no volunteered with tip. No. Right.
I've twenty eight years. Twenty eight years you
volunteered with tip and all the things you've
done. You would have still been in that house
being controlled by him. Every move you made.
So you you chose yourself.
But in the in the process,
it coincided with your daughter basically going
no contact. Right. Right. And so that was
there was one time my son had gone over there
to get something and my
husband was talking suicide
and it got my son understandably. And that one
time he lashed out at me and that was the only
time that ever happened. And it was and I I I
know how manipulated he
was, you know. Yeah. But my
daughter cut off all contact and it's been
well, she hasn't talked to me since 1991.
What was the last time you guys spoke? 1991.
But what what was it? The
last thing she ever came.
Do you remember the picnic we had the Ferns
family picnic in Loulay? Yeah. They were there.
But if you think about it, they were there
sitting on a blanket over here.
Reading. I don't. Yes. Reading. Yes. Not
engaging with. Now I
remember that. And she came and then
she went on. And so in hindsight, she was kind
of saying goodbye to Nana. But Wendy even tried
talking to her. Annie Judy tried nothing,
nothing. And and so the
last time I spoke, we went to
right after that picnic, her childhood best
friend was getting married.
And it was so weird because
we were at the wedding and I went in and sat
down and she came later and I said, over here,
here's the seat. Yeah. And she said, I'm going
to sit over here with
them. And she went and sat
with the family whose daughter she could not
stand. She could not stand
her. And everybody there was
people we knew from church. And they're all
looking back. Yeah. Because
we were always very close.
Right. And they're looking back and forth. And
they're and they're looking at us like,
what the heck is going on? Why isn't she
sitting with her mom?
Yeah. And when we left, we went
there and I said, hey, can we get together for
coffee? Well, I'm pretty
busy. And she was aloof.
And she never she never no matter I tried
writing letters, I tried
calling her, she would hang up on
me. Then then I would try calling again, she
wouldn't answer. I tried
pretending like it wasn't
that way. And I'd send letters. Here's what's
going on in the family.
You know, nothing. I tried
reaching out to his parents, like a parent to
parent. Right. Nothing. Wendy tried talking to
her auntie Judy, I thought everybody tried and
nothing. And so in the process, down, you know,
going to counseling over the time, and when I
would talk to my
counselor about it, and I said,
she said things that are not what is reality.
And she says, well, what
people can create their own
reality to the point at which they believe it.
If they tell that story
enough, they believe it.
Right. And I'd even asked my son, I don't care
if you tell me something that I did horrible,
I'd rather know than have this horrible not
knowing. So tell me if
you can think of a reason
for this. And he said, he has more choice words
than I'm sharing. But he said, it's not you,
it's her. Yeah. And then she had done, I kind
of came across later, she had done podcasts,
when it was just totally audio, audio, thank
you, thank you. And she
had done a bunch of stuff.
And some of them are like a bunch of intellect,
intellectual stuff that like,
who cares, you know, but she had one titled,
parenting without a paradigm. And I thought,
well, that's odd, because that literally means
parenting without an example of how to do it.
And I listened to this, it was about 20 minutes
of her spouting about was really hard to raise
her own children, because she didn't have an
example of how to parent from her mother was
always her mother never mentioned of her
father, from her mother,
and her mother was abusive.
And I'm sitting there listening to this with my
mouth hanging open. And
she said she was abusive.
And she said, I'd be left home alone on the
weekends, while they all
went did something else.
And even teachers at school felt sorry for me.
Those are the same
teachers that were friends of
mine. And they felt sorry for me, because they
knew how bad you know,
on and on and on. And kept
using the word that her mother was abusive. And
I was I was in shock,
unbelievable. And up to this
time, I was devastated by all this, I was so
leveled. And that I was
just plain angry, right?
I thought, and and so I copied
that link, and I sent it to my sister.
And I said, I'm not going to tell you anything
about this. But could
you listen to it? And give
me a reality check? Have I just been kidding
myself all these all this
time? And I was a decent parent?
I said, Could you just listen to this? Tell me
what you think. The thing was about 20 minutes,
about 25 minutes later, she calls me. And it
was longshore woman Langley ripping from there.
What in the head? What is where did this come
from? And I said, that's Chris. That's her
perception. Right. And she says, it's really
kind of funny, because
Kathy and I'm other sister,
she says, we used to talk about you behind your
back and say, we couldn't believe how much you
doted on her. Yeah. And she said this is, and
of course, she went off
the she says, you need to
get an attorney. This is slander. And this is
on the internet. And she
was just going off on it.
Yeah. And, you know, but it's it's truly one of
those things where she
has created her own reality.
And that's exactly Yeah, it's 100% her own
reality. And, and also, you said that her dad's
mother's side of the family has that history of
cutting people off. So genetically,
that's what my brother in law said. Yeah, my
brother in law said is,
I think it's genetic. And
we're like, well, that's crazy. Years later.
Yeah. It's kind of true.
It's like a combination of that.
And then whatever manipulation her father was
pulling. Well, because now she had her father
that she wanted all these years, right, never
was really a dad, right.
And really, when you back
yourself into that corner. So now she has a one
time I called and her
husband answered the phone,
and she was in the background, she says, I'm
not talking to her. And I
could hear him, he covered
the phone, he says, I'm not going to be the one
hurting your mom. And,
and then he came back, and
he says, she won't come to the phone. And that
was it. So you think he
would be supportive? I don't
think so. Now I think it's too far down the
Yeah, I think it's too far
down the road. Yeah. But now
you have these three daughters. And, you know,
like, if they wondered why her mother was never
around, they knew their grandpa. And again, I
thought, man, I did all. Yeah, I did all work.
Yeah, how old are the girls? They're all grown.
And I actually have two great granddaughters.
No way. Yeah, I have three granddaughters and
two great granddaughters.
I, I, through social media,
I've kind of like rabbit trails, seen them.
And, you know, it's
remarkable. You're not alone.
My cousin did this to my aunt. Really? Yeah.
And we, you know, it's
sort of that what happens
behind closed doors. So we don't know the full
story. But from the
outside looking in my cousin
moved. And my aunt was always very, they were
close, very similar to what you're describing.
And there's a streak in my family where they'll
cut people off and don't look back. Yeah,
I can do it. I genetically have the ability to
cut people off and not look back.
But my cousin did it to my aunt. Wow. So it's
very interesting. I'm sitting here thinking,
why? But what's you can't you can't explain it.
What I finally learned in counseling is I have
been I was trying very hard to come to a
reasonable explanation for an unreasonable
situation. As no matter how hard you try,
you're trying to be logical
and figure out the reason,
but it's not logical. And, you know, you have
to keep that story running
because now you have kids
and how come they wouldn't know how come they
only know their grandpa,
but they don't know their
grandma. Well, you have to keep that story
going. The lie has gotten
too deep. It's too deep.
And, you know, far gone. I think you're right.
And people said early on, they said,
she'll come around. It's just blah, blah, blah.
But I know what her dad's
the one side of the family.
I know that there's that that's how they you
don't agree with me because
they his mom had done that
to us two different times during our marriage.
And I'd have to be the one
to go patch things up and
so everybody was talking again. And that was
very foreign to me because
that's not how anybody in
our family handled things. You may not agree
with them. You may not. You may be really
you don't cut them off. You don't cut them off
their family. And speaking to someone from this
family, I can vouch that Annie Sharon did dote
on her daughter and in
the most loving way. And you
were there for her from my perspective, 24
seven, anything she needed.
So to to hear what you said,
she said on the podcast, it blows my mind that
it blows. I can't tell
you growing up knowing in my
perspective of you two was you guys were like
this. So tight. She was so
tight in her first year of
high school. She was on a high school board
that the Oregonian
newspaper had representatives from
different high schools and they would talk
about different things as
a group. I think there were
six or seven different high schools
represented. And one time
they were talking about Christmas
and she was saying, my mom is my best friend
and she's the one that
makes the magic happen in our
house. And I'm not saying that like, oh, I'm so
great. Parents make
mistakes. And you always look
back and say, wow, I wish I would have done
this differently. But the
point is that's how she felt.
Right. I wasn't in the room. She didn't have to
say it for me. She said it
in a room with strangers.
And but it's gotten to that point. And there
would be random things she'd say in different
podcasts. And I said, well, that's not really
what happened, but right.
But that one to refer to me
as abusey was probably the most insulting,
erroneous thing. And so it didn't hurt me
as much as it made me so mad. I could just I
was just furious. Yeah.
And it changed how I felt
about it. Of course, it still makes me broken
hearted. But at the same time, it made me mad.
You know, it just made me mad. Like I, I love
to be an apparent and I
just I put my heart and soul
into being apparent. I just loved it. Yeah. You
know, and abusive, I was not. Did it help you
kind of pivot from you accepting the blame to
accepting that it really wasn't me. And this
does solidify that. It did. I started the last
counselor I had who she died. She was a young
woman and she died. But she was wonderful. And
she was probably the best one I ever had
because she helped put perspective on it like
that. And she started talking about
realities and when you assume a reality. But
hearing that in her from her mouth, saying that
I thought and my son had been telling me all
along. He had been saying
all along. But you know,
when you're when you're thinking you're to
blame, it's hard to convince you you're not.
And so I couldn't imagine why she would do this
unless I did something to provoke it.
But her saying that and what
she was saying specifically,
I thought, oh, no, it is definitely not me. No,
this is my this is my aunt to a T. Yeah,
but it's it's it also. And I think I've
mentioned this to you
before. It also feels cultish.
Like she was kind of got involved with the
people she was involved with.
It was one of the teachers and this teacher.
He kind of drew this crowd of these
intellectual kids. And like
as if he is mentoring them.
Yeah. But my my sister had met him at a
graduation or something and she had a bad
bite. She said, I don't know what it is about
that guy, but I have a bad feeling about him.
And at the time I said, well, he's one of their
favorite teachers. I was oblivious to it. And I
said he's he's one of their favorite teachers.
He has an after school
group for the kids and so on
and so forth. And I was not thinking anything
about it. But she to this day will say I always
had a bad feeling about him. Like he was like a
kind of a cult leader in the way.
If you take that take that right. And then her
getting so involved with her husband and his
family, like even to the point where you
weren't involved with the
wedding. So there's something
weird going on here. Then the genetic aspect of
how her father's
mother's side of the family can
cut people off. And then her father's
manipulation. It was a
perfect storm for this to happen.
Exactly. And it almost wouldn't matter what you
said. You weren't. It's a wall that you can't
get past. But it took me all the years to
realize I couldn't because
I always felt I always felt
if I could figure out why I could do something
about it. But it was it was a exercise in
pointless because there was never a way that it
could be made right. Never away.
It feels like to just to go back. Not it's not
identical to my cousin, but I think the lies
become this new manifested
reality that you can't go back on.
Well, that's the truth. Yeah. Yeah.
That's the truth because, you know, how how
does she say to her children?
It has to be a good
story. You can't back up. Yeah.
No, there's no proof of any of it.
And it's funny to me because her one daughter
is her middle daughter.
I've seen on Instagram is very, very involved
in the swing dancing up
in Washington. She lives up
by Everett and very involved in that. That was
me. I mean, I I was very
involved in dancing and
was this during your marriage? No,
no. Started from when I was a kid.
I don't know if you saw my post about my best
Christmas present that
my son got me an American
Bandstand sign starting from the original
Philly kids on American
Bandstand. I always love dancing.
And when I was divorced and moved to Arizona, I
went to Fred Astaire,
not because I didn't know.
Well, in my generation, you also went to
ballroom dancing lessons
when you were in middle school,
you know, and you learned manners, you know,
and the boys had to wear white gloves and,
you know, you learn manner. And so I knew how
to do all that. And so when I moved to Arizona
and I was single and I thought, well, I'm going
to go to like a Fred Astaire because there will
always be a dance partner. I never was like a
bar person. And I and I
never really got over the
not having confidence of that I was OK enough.
And so I thought, well, if
I if I go to Fred Astaire,
I can do the classes and I'll always have a
good dance partner. That
was my rationale. And I did.
Yeah. But I was really good. That's great. In
particular, in swing. And so they kept wanting
me to do more. They wanted me to enter
competition. Wow. I was
really good. This is post divorce.
Yes. When I lived in Arizona. Oh, OK. You were
kicking ass post divorce. This is awesome.
I love they wanted me to enter competition.
Well, by this time I had
I mean, there are twenty five dollars to get in
is is a lost leader for a
fact. It gets to be very,
very expensive. The more you got the more. And
so I was doing lessons and then they
and so you could come and then you'd have
nights where you could go
out as a class and your main
instructor was your dance partner for the
night. So we could go to
like a Western club and swing
all night long. It was awesome. Wow. How long
did you do that? I did it
for not quite a year because
I it was priced me out. And so then they wanted
me to do competition. But
then you have to get like
costume and you have to do the whole thing. I
could have done something with it. However,
it just got, you know, and of course, they say,
well, you could use a
credit card to do this and
blow up. So on and so forth. And I just I I
can't do that. I don't have
to look up what swing dancing
is. I'm not. Oh, it's cool. It's so cool. But I
love what a way to kick
off your post divorce life.
Yeah. That's awesome. And so when I saw her,
saw her daughter's page
and she is totally into the
whole swing dancing movement up there, I
thought, sweetheart, you
got that from somewhere. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. Well, even my daughter has a very
successful folk embroidery business. She's very
successful with it and extraordinarily
talented. And she will
allude to she's been doing this
since she was four years old or she's always do
that. Yeah. I'm the one
that taught her all this
stuff. I remember now she's far surpassed my
skill set a million times
over. She's very talented.
However, when she alludes to she's been doing
this all the, you know,
like really who taught you?
That was the abusive mom. Yeah, that was the
abusive mom that didn't
pay attention. You know,
you're in, you're there with her in her
children. I'll be curious if
someday one of them finds you.
My son maintains that one of them will show up
at my door one day. I don't
think it'll be her oldest.
I possibly her middle, her third child looks
identical to her frequently. So and so I don't
know. I mean, they may or may not. They're not
going to find the
abusive person they think. No,
but he says that too. He says one of these
days, karma's going to
happen and it's going to come
back on her. I don't know. But I will say that
through through all the
things, I mean, I always
feel like you go through hard times. There's a
purpose. You don't do
anything where there's not
a purpose for it, no matter how bad it is. And
kind of to my point of
talking about kind of knowing
what it feels like to be hungry, knowing what
it's like to be an abuse
survivor gave me the insight
to help to be able to see it in other people
when nobody knew and be
able to help. It also gave me
compassion. I think that's why I've spent most
of my life volunteering at
different things is because
I mean, if I was blessed enough to survive all
these things and have the strength to make the
change when I had no idea where that strength
was going to come from.
But I feel that's the reason
I've been able to, you know, try and give back
to other people because I'm lucky, you know,
yeah, I got through those things. And it made
me more insightful to
them. It made me ask tougher
questions of people. Yeah. I was able to help a
girl that I worked with in a direct selling
business I did. She used to confide in me and
everything she was saying was my ex-husband.
And she had two young boys. And she would just
she she'd reach out to me on Facebook and just
how are you doing? And it was just general chit
chat. And I would just
kind of sit there because I
knew pretty soon she'd start talking about her
husband. And she was
describing my life. And she
had these two boys. And so this went on for
several months. And I told
her I says I did not advocate
divorce for divorce sake. But I said, I wanted
to share with you that
you're describing my life.
And this is what happens. You're trying and she
was saying the same things. It I don't want to
impact my voice. And so I said, I'm just going
to share my story with
you of what that was like,
and what holding on and not doing anything. It
does impact your
children. They're so much smarter
than you give them credit for. You think you're
making a peaceful household, they see it and feel
it. It's not. And about a year and a half
later, she did get a
divorce. And I told her all along.
I said, if you guys can go to counseling, if
you can work it out, but
she'd say things. And it was
exact same thing. And I said, Is he willing to
be part of working it out?
She says, Well, he doesn't
think he has a problem. And I go, Yeah, yeah.
And so I think that the experiences and all the
craziness, it helped me be more compassionate
and insightful with
other people and a more of an
understanding. Yeah. What other people are
going through. That makes
sense. In your post divorce
second half of your life, this whole new
beginning, this whole new journey, what would you say
was the most meaningful moment of it all?
That's a tough one, because it was such a
accumulation of things. It can be more than
one. Yeah, I think I think really the most meaningful
I think really the most meaningful it was like
accumulation of events
that finally sunk into me
that I could take, take control of my own life.
And I didn't have to live that way.
And at the one point time when my daughter had
quit talking to me, and that one instance,
that one little instance, when my son was
really upset with me, that
was the lowest I ever felt.
And I thought, if I lose both my kids, and in
high school, he would never
do that. But at that moment,
I thought if I lose both of my kids, what do I
have to do but go up and try and figure it out?
There was nowhere lower I could be. And so it
was kind of from that point I started,
what do I have to do next? What do I have to do
next? So it really was accumulation
of taking steps I was terrified to do. And I
accepted a job after the high school where I
moved to California. I'd never lived away from
Portland. And I got a
job at a software company,
a friend of mine's sister was there. I'd never
moved away from home.
And I was terrified. And I
had a one way ticket. And I had no idea what I
was doing. How old were
you? By then it was 49, 50.
And I moved to California, I couldn't afford to
go down and find a place. So I had done a tip
training down there. And one of the women in
class I said, could you
send me the remember how
there used to be magazines at the grocery store
with apartments for rent? Yeah, I said, can you
send me one of those? And she did. And I found
one that looked decent
that I could afford, because
it's expensive down there. And I said, Do you
know where this is? What do
you think of this area? And
I'd been in Mission Viejo doing training. So I
thought, Wow, this is
well, Southern California,
I thought this is utopia. Yeah. And, and so she
had a friend in the police department, and they
ran the address to make sure they didn't have a
lot of holes there. Yeah. And I thought, Okay.
And so I made the arrangements to leave my job.
I flew down there, my
son and one of his friends
drove a U-Haul truck with my stuff. And I got
out of the airport, got a
rental car and had no idea
how to get to my apartment. And at that time,
there were still bookstores where they sold
Thomas guides. And I went to the bookstore and
I bought a Thomas guide and figured out where I
lived. And finally found my place. And then I
and then she said, Well,
when's your refrigerator
being delivered? And I said, What refrigerator?
And she said, Well, no
apartments in Orange County
come with refrigerators. I don't know how it is
now. But then Yeah, she said, and I don't have
a refrigerator apartments always come with
refrigerators. Yeah. So
I had a styrofoam cooler
for a week till I could get a refrigerator. And
so anyway, it was it was
a fun apartment. And it
was so fun to be on my own. And to be in that
surreal environment of Southern California near
the beach. Yeah, I was only there for 10 months
until I got transferred but to Arizona, but
I never would have been able to afford to buy a
house there. But it was what a great landing
pad though for your first experience of your
first step into this new
journey. Yeah, what a great,
you know, transitional space for you there. And
then you had Arizona in
your swing dancing. Yeah.
You know, I mean, honestly, yeah, it was every
step of the way allowed
me more and more growth.
And when I first moved to California, I was, I
thought I was taking a job as customer support
for the student information system, which is
what I did at the school, scheduling, grading,
all that stuff. What it actually was was for
the accounting department.
I hate numbers. I remember
saying at one point, I would never take a job
in accounting. I hate
numbers. I'm not good at them.
The job was customer support for the personnel
payroll people. And so anyway, I learned that,
but I, one of the people there, I got to be
friends with her and she said, Hey,
there's a training coming up, but it's on the
student side. And she
knew I wanted to veer that
way. So she helped me transition to that. And
then she talked to my boss and said, you know,
there's a project management job coming up. I
think she could do it. I'll go with her. She,
this gal was in sales. She's all go with her to
kind of go, but I think she can do it.
And I'm really organized. So that was right up
my alley. And so she was wonderful. And she
helped me get to this. So when the company was
acquired and I had to move to Arizona,
my title was project manager, which allowed me
to ease into it than in Arizona. Yeah.
So I just am grateful for the people that
helped guide me to
different things. And I would take
jobs that I really didn't know how to do with
the belief that I could
learn them. But I did. And if
I could just fake it till I actually learn
them. It's the best advice
though. Right. Take it because
you will learn them if you, if you're coachable
and yeah. I got to pause for a second. You,
you did this at 48 or 49 50 49 50. Yeah. Yeah.
This whole new beginning
of a life. Yeah. I mean,
that's remarkable because we've had other
guests on and people
chime in on our socials about
what you, what you're describing. And there is
a lot of fear there.
And, and you just hit a home
run on it. It's remarkable. Really. It's
terrifying. And every step of the way,
like even when I moved out, I moved out because
I was, I knew I could build, rebuild a life
better than he could. So I'll leave the house.
Yeah. I had no clue how I
had no clue how. I mean,
I was barely making it when I was still at the
school and somebody say, Oh, let's run up to
McDonald's for lunch. I'd make an excuse. So
they didn't have enough
money for a month. Donald's
hamburger. I just, I figured it out as I went,
but I was terrified when
I flew down to California,
a friend of mine was a United Airlines exec.
And he had as a surprise,
pumped me up to first class,
which I'd never been in. But when I sat there,
it was just a blessing
because I was in the first
row and nobody sat next to me. And I really
looked at my ticket and it was one way.
And it hit me. I'd made this because I can't
sometimes I just keep, I mean, I still will do
that. I'll do this and I'll figure it out
later. I've done that a
lot. And that was the figuring
it out later that hit me in the head. This is a
one way ticket. And it hit me on the plane.
Nobody was in the seat next to me. And I was in
tears a lot of that flight because the reality
hit me. I'm making all these changes, all these
decisions on the belief
that I can make it work,
but I really had no idea how. But it was such a
transitional moment. Yeah.
That was the transitional
moment right there. And kind of like going into
that next step, you were
actually in an airplane
doing it because then you get to Arizona. Well,
I was moving to California, right? Arizona. You
get to Arizona and how long were you in
Arizona? It was I moved
there in 97, April of 97.
And so about six years because I moved back to
Portland in May of 2023. And what brought you
back to Portland? Not 23, 2003. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. I was missing the
Northwest. Arizona's all fun and
games when it's winter. Right. Summer's not so
fun. Yeah. I miss I'm
born and raised Northwest.
I miss the landscape and the seasons of the
Northwest. My mom was getting older and she
was getting ready to have open heart surgery.
And I thought, it's time I
make that change. It's time
I moved back home. I was missing family. I was
missing more than just
fly up at Christmas. Right.
So and so the boss I had by then I was full on
doing project
management, traveling all over the
country, implementing schools. And I said, you
know, I'm pretty much working from home here.
It's really no different if I work from home in
Oregon and they let me they let me do that.
It's wonderful. So yeah, I was super, super
happy about that. And then
I got there. My son at the
time was doing real estate. So we kind of went
back and forth. He'd send
me houses and, you know,
because at the time I moved to Arizona, the
market was really, really
low. So I could afford to get
into a house for very little brand new being
built house, start shooting up right after. But
and so it gave me something to work with when I
came back home. And he did all the leg work.
He'd send me pictures. And then he finally
said, I think I found the
one because I told him like
my hard half to haves. And he called me and
said, I think I found I
think I found just what you
want. But this thing is not going to stay on
the market. And he says,
could you come up tomorrow?
And I said, you know what a one day airfare. I
think it's going to be worth it. And so I did.
I flew up in the next morning, looked at the
house and I said, you are
so right. This is exactly it.
And he said, OK, says I'm just going to have
you sign a few things.
I'll take care of everything
and we'll do everything else by fax. I stopped
at the cell phone store, got an Oregon number
and flew back to Arizona that night. And that
was it. The rest of the rest of what we did.
He took care of all the stuff for me. Facts,
things that I if I needed to sign more to care
of all the rest. And I moved back in April or
May. Yeah. And you've
been back there since. Yes.
Yes. And are you still doing the same? Like
you're not working. So are you? No, I
when I moved back, I still had that project
management job. And until 2008, I had it for
like five, five more years. And then there was
another acquisition of
our company. And with that
comes reduction in force. And I could see it
coming and that they
didn't need all that. And so
I the person with TIP, they need they were
needing a crisis team
manager because one had just left.
And I was friends with the executive director
and she was what do you
think you think that I'd been
I had volunteered with him for quite a number
of years. And it was like a ginormous pay cut.
But it was it was I believe in their their
mission. And so I took
on the job as crisis team
manager. So I managed about 200 volunteers and
helped run that program for our listeners. Can
you say what TIP stands for? Sure. It's trauma
intervention program. And
it's a very rare program
that provides emotional first aid to people
that are in crisis. It
could be anything from a house
fire. And there's people just until Red Cross
comes or family comes. It
could be a spouse waking up
and their husband or wife has died. And they
don't know what to do. And
their children maybe aren't
near, they may not have anybody. And so we
respond within 24 hours and
provide emotional and practical
support until their main support system
arrives. And then along with
that support police and fire.
And is that all over the country? There's about
20 chapters in different parts of the country.
I retired from there a few years ago. Well I
had the the paid position
the staff position for three
years. And then and then I retired from there
in 2011. And at that time there was actually a
Pensacola chapter. I'm not sure if that's still
there. But there's about 20 chapters around the
country. Yeah. And so when I retired then I
would just do some part
time stuff. I really like still
being engaged to keep my brain going. And so
now for the last seven
years I've done a part time
contracting position for a company that teaches
English to children around the world. It's
conversational English. And I do it's funny
because I did run those
programs and I was in management
for all those years. But now I'm just like the
sweet spot of being the data entry person.
And so the subject matter experts create the
curriculum and I input
it into our online system.
Okay. Yeah. So it's it's roughly 60 hours a
month. Some more some less
right right around there. And
and so yeah I really like it. So did you find
when you were working with tip
you really were able to utilize your own
personal experiences pretty regularly.
In a way I would be able to utilize it from my
intern not from any communicating with the
customer but just how I heard the client but
how I interacted with
them because it's a lot of
listening. It's a support. We are not telling
anybody how to do anything. We're not because
the minute you do that you take away a person's
power. And so interesting the more we let them
make the decisions with our support the more
they right away start
getting back some of their power
because some would say I don't know who to
call. I don't know what
funeral home and we had a resource
book that would list all the funeral homes.
Well first of all
contractually we couldn't call and
talk to them. But second if I just am with you
and say well did you
have any other family member
who had to use. Do you remember what it was or
do you kind of guide them.
They're the ones that make
so now right even in this tragedy they're
starting to make decisions
and they're starting baby steps
of taking back their power because it's not to
us. We always got feedback letters from clients
and one of the best letters I ever got was a
person saying she didn't
know how she'd get through it.
If the tip volunteer wasn't there and it was it
happened to be me we only went by first names
and it was me and she said I don't know how I
would have gone through
it without her there and
on and on and on literally I sat and listened
to her and was quiet and
being there are the two
key words. I didn't do anything I just listened
and then suggested you
have somebody else to call.
Did you have a church you went to is there
somebody you think you
know. You were the anchor
the anchor that you talked about you said if
someone has an anchor
person they can get through
anything you were serving as the anchor person
for those people. Yeah
that's a good way to help
them get get through those moments as the
anchor. Yeah that's a good
way to put it because it is
there's so much you know and nobody wakes up in
the morning thinking that by the end of the day
they have to plan a funeral. Yeah and so you're
reeling and having and
so it's just like helping
them or if it's an older person are there
medications you take. Yeah just helping those
kind of things. Yeah so that's what the program
is. So I do have a
question what advice for anyone
that's listening that maybe is in an abusive
situation an abusive
relationship and they're in
it like there isn't necessarily a light right
that's close at the end of the tunnel but it's
somewhere down there but what advice would you
give to that person. If there is any one person
that you really truly trust that you can
confide in that could help
you connect there are places to
go safe places to go there are people there to
help and if you're being abused you're you're
being told the reason you're abused is all lies
you know those are not
the truth it's what you're
being told and you do have power and it is not
easy it is really really hard. You have to be
brave enough for that moment there's that
there's that phrase out of
that movie we bought a zoo.
Oh yeah I don't think oh I have seen that but I
don't remember. It's like we bought a zoo. Yeah
yeah and there's a phrase in there which I
actually have on my wall 20
seconds of insane courage can
change your life and really it's it's your
internal decision that it's
not your fault that you're
being beat up or that you're being emotionally
inverted. Nobody deserves
that nobody deserves that
and you just have to take that first step of
reaching out to somebody that you can trust
to help you sort through it because it will not
get better no matter how many times they say
I'm sorry I'll do this I'll do that if they do
it in the first place it
will never get better it
will only get worse and that's a fact. Yeah I
really like how you said
you said you have power
because I think that's the one thing that they
feel they don't have at all. Well it's beat out
of you absolutely not physically the
emotionally mentally the
power is beat out of you you you
truly don't believe you have it I mean it's not
just oh I need to get
tougher when you really do
not believe right at that point that you that
you have the power and so
the biggest gift you can
give to yourself is you got to find somebody
first because it is
overwhelming to do it yourself.
Yeah well I think that um mental and emotional
abuse is is such a quiet abuse because no one
knows and sometimes you can be mentally and
emotionally being mentally and emotionally
abused and don't realize you're being abused
for sure until it's gone
on for so long so I think
that one's very insidious more than you know a
black eye or broken arm that's way more obvious
but though the other one kind of kind of creep
up over time so I think that that needs to be
discussed more is that that silent quiet one
it's kind of like how when
girls are mean to each other
you don't realize that little girls are being
mean to each other but
boys hit each other and it's
obvious that I think the mental and emotional
abuse I'm not going to
say is more damaging because
physical abuse is horrific it is but it's it's
it also can be more hidden the mental emotional
yeah that's exactly right well it's invisible
because how do you say you know and are people
going to believe you what do you I don't have
anything on me to prove I've been I've been in
that situation and most people aren't going to
admit it and my husband's case he was difficult
to work with on his on his job so I even had
somebody very early on we went to one Christmas
party because he also didn't like to really
socialize and this one guy who I didn't know
first thing we did time we'd ever been to
holiday party and he comes
up to me my husband wasn't
around and he said I think it was before we had
kids um he says you seem
really nice how are you
married to that asshole can I say that yeah
yeah of course and this has
been very clean version yeah
and I'm like why would you say that right I
mean I was I was so naive
and why would you say that
and I was just so clueless I'm sure there were
so many people scratching their heads
oh there were you know in after the fact they
were like happy for you and like glad they were
they were they thanks that they saw that I
didn't right as they worked with them or
knew when when I came back from Arizona and and
went to the first tip
meeting to get back into it
because their volunteers had changed and I
didn't know all of them
and my friend the executive
director introduced me and I noticed this one
gal standing by me had the
weirdest look on her face
um and she come up to me after and she said fix
your last name I go yeah
she's are you related to Bill and I said well
he's my ex-husband okay
but I could just tell by her look well she
worked with him yeah and
my son has had that same
experience almost have to justify that you're
not the same right because the name is unique
I'm sure yeah yeah so they he's had to do that
where somebody would come up and say to him and
judge him based on that until and he's after
they happen on anything like my dad god that's
that's the legacy that he left and that just
says it all before I ask my
last question though let's
shout out your son tell us what does he do what
what tell us about him
yeah so he is amazing he's 53
uh he's a general contractor he's been a
general contractor for 29
years now wow he started with
residential and when he first started he was
working I think like junior senior year in high
school started working for a guy who built
apartment buildings but he then did residential
and got to the point where I'm done with
homeowners yeah all sorts of
things that there just can be
annoying and a friend of his worked for the
state and state
department of transportation and
they were looking for somebody uh because their
state people when they
give bids they're like oh
this is the state we can really jack the price
up and he doesn't operate
that way he just this is
what's going to cost I'm going to make money
you're going to be happy
and so anyway long story short
he got into um they hired him as a contractor
to the way stations along
the freeway he would demo
and then rebuild them and he he subs out the
stuff that he's not licensed for electrician
that kind of thing and they're getting very
technical now so he subs out all the uh cabling
and all the stuff for to make all the signage
and that and so now that's that's what he does
and he's built a great life for himself he's
got a couple homes and but
he's a very very uh humble
guy and very likes a simple thing he's not a
guy that's like I'm very
successful as a contractor
so I'm gonna go buy all the stuff he's not like
that at all he likes
simple life um and just yeah
he's I really love being around him he's a lot
of fun to be around he has a million stories
all sorts of interesting things so yeah I can
say he's my cousin he's
awesome guy yeah exactly he's
also an avid outdoorsman he is absolutely and
has been from the get-go
I mean he's led uh hunting
you know been an outfitter leading people
hunting down hills canyon
not easy that's cool and uh
fishing everything hunting fishing you know I
mean you name it outdoors and he loves it
I want to get uh Brian and the boys out there
to spend some time with
him let Nathan catch another
rich record surgeon yeah yeah I think he can do
better than that well and he always has the the
best stories and the craziest things that
happen to him and that he
encounters and um but he in
spite of everything is a far better man than
his father was oh he
broke the cycle but absolutely
yeah which is why I don't really believe in
generational cycles because you it isn't easy
well you break it but you break you can break
it it's possible to break
it you get it's possible
to break it before I ask my last questions you
have any actually that's the perfect segue into
an observation I have here I've learned a ton
about you and the fact that he's a good guy is
is a credit to you obviously um I I find it
fascinating that you experienced hunger
and abuse and all this stuff and your ability
to be compassionate
you're compassionate towards
others really is your vibe you just have this
positive energy about
you and I think that's why
at 50 or 49 whatever it was you started this
career and just took off I just think it's cool
I think I find it fascinating how I've always
viewed you as this positive energy I know she
does too and I know Dana does and it makes
sense now because you've
got this perspective and this
crazy background quite frankly um but you made
such a positive thing about it and I just think
that's that's your energy your vibe is
positivity and and I think
it's cool I think it it's cool
it makes a lot of sense it's having a positive
attitude really is important to me because I
think that's where you control what happens to
you to a certain degree yeah because if you're
a negative person you end up with negative
people around you and I
just always kind of say I don't
do negative what's the point yeah yeah and I'm
on the downside of life
why would I do negative yeah
yeah it's true so thank you the other funny
observation I have is I do I got to meet your
mama and it is funny to think because her
grandmother your grandma bev was quiet and
your mom was more the wild one it kind of makes
sense now and that came from a long time yeah
well we learned we're at all came from that's
where it came from yeah
that's funny it cracks me up
so my last question is always what is your
five-year goal my five-year
goal that's that's always a
funny question for people to ask it at my age
and I think my five-year goal is to continue
I am so blessed with good health practically
everybody my age is on meds and has some aom
under the other I don't I don't take meds I I'm
able to travel and physically it's the physical
parts I look for and so my five-year goal is to
hit my mid 80s and still be physically able
to continue to do what I'm doing to be
independent to still be in my
own home to still be able to
physically enjoy my life and and I think that
that's the best you can hope for is your health
because without it you've got nothing yeah
you've got nothing 100% no
I think I think that's true
for everyone honestly so that I mean that makes
perfect sense I um I
remind myself of that daily
is and my dad used to always say that because
you know the line of work
he was right he says if you
have your health you have everything you really
do there's no question
there you really do because
the wealthiest people have bad health and get
sick and and die well what
has the wealth done nothing
right right exactly and you focus on that I
just focus on things that I
can impact while I'm still
here if there's any person I you know just in
doing things um I've
slowed down on my volunteering
just because I'm more particular with my time
but I still now I'm doing
twice a year at the high
school volunteer interviewer for their career
ed class you know so just different things um
that I can advise high school kids on some
things so I just think
giving back to me giving back is
really important it takes different shapes
throughout your life and based on how much
but I feel it's giving back do the right thing
and take care of your
health yeah to me it's simple
but no it is you know it makes sense yeah well
we can't thank you
enough for sharing your story
Annie Sharon honestly I mean and Brian already
stated looking where you came from and what you
had to go through to get to your authentic life
for the one you chose um and then to thrive
not just thrive in it but then to serve and be
the anchor for others and
to continue to give back
and to not to use when you hit that rock bottom
when you thought you might lose both the kids
and instead of giving into that you were like
okay it's only uphill from here and then
going up um it's so admirable I wish I could
bottle your inspiration and strength I could
become a billionaire um yeah figure that out I
know I know and I know
your son is very proud of you
um and I I'm very proud of you thank you thank
you I am very proud of you and um
you're an inspiration to me you honestly are
and um to anyone who's
listening I already know that
but um your strength is it's honestly um
overwhelming to have witnessed your story
and to truly process the strength it took you
know not just as my aunt
um not as someone I love
but as a woman I just think you're such an
amazing example of what a woman can do
and how amazing we are and someone from your
generation um is just is such a great example
to younger women and because they're still in
their journey and as you
know you know um there's
a lot of downs and so I just think you even
sharing your story you're continuing to serve
and give by sharing your story with the world
because you are going to help other people so
thank you thank you for letting me be here it's
an amazing experience and
really kudos to you guys
for what you're doing thank you it is amazing
thank you no this was
lovely I now have a question
okay did you have any role models to help there
was no blueprint right
you're a blueprint for people
are you became a blueprint you become a
blueprint there was no
blueprint you kind of sorted this
out I think right and I kind of piecemealed
what I learned from
different things like I piecemealed
the things I learned from Al-Anon I got a
little bit of strength from
that learning I didn't cause
it and I can't do anything about it and then
different volunteer
programs I'd learn more about
wow this is sounding this is sounding like my
life and that's not normal that's considered
you know an abuse it's you know different
things and I I sort of
piecemealed and then because I'm
sometimes annoyingly curious I am curious about
everything and so um my
son will kid say you ask
the dumbest questions because I want to know
and so because of my own
curiosity I would always look
at well how can I make this work yeah I don't
know how but how can I make
this work so I just have to
figure it out learn more figure it out and so
it wasn't necessarily that
there was a role model as
there was piecemeals uh and just figuring I'll
step off the cliff and figure it out I I didn't
I just put different pieces together and over
time each step gives you
strength to take the next step
and if you can do this really hard thing then
maybe I can do the next hard thing I don't know
but maybe you build some momentum yeah and you
build you build confidence yeah and you build
confidence and oh I'm taking on this job I
really don't have a clue
about but if I have the right
people around me they can help me learn and
then oh I can do this job
you know and so it's just
little teeny bits it's no big revelation that's
for sure it's just little bits consistency yeah
consistency well now you are a resource for
people by putting the
story out here you'll be a
resource so again thank you sure absolutely
absolutely and to our listeners if you have
any comments and questions or questions you
know we always love to hear them so
please leave them for us and again thank you
Sharon for joining us and
we will see you next time bye