by Dave Isay
Steven was born in 1978. When I got pregnant, I went to tell my boss, and he couldn’t believe that I was going to have a baby. I said, “Don’t worry about it; I’ll be back.” And he said, “I don’t know what we’re going to do about your stock options.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I don’t think that we know what to do when you’re on maternity leave.” Then I got this phone call from HR, and they said, “We don’t know what to do about stopping and starting your options.” I remember saying, “I cannot believe that you guys are going to worry about six weeks!”
A couple of days later I got a phone call from the chairman, who I knew because I had been one of his direct reports. He said, “Hey, Tia, first of all, you should have told me you were pregnant. Secondly, congratulations. Third, don’t worry about your options.” He said, “HR has to write a policy now because I’m sure there will be other women who go on maternity leave.” I couldn’t believe that I was the first one. It was 1978, not 1878!
I think that if I had any regrets in my life, I regret that Daddy and I didn’t understand how hard it was going to be to raise kids and work at the same time. I really had this idea that I could do everything 100 percent—like you can be 100 percent worker, 100 percent mother, and 100 percent wife. And you can’t. It’s impossible. I traveled all the time. I worked long hours. And it was just burning me out. I didn’t know what was going on with you guys. I didn’t feel as connected as I wanted to be. So finally, when you guys were seven and five, I said, That’s it. There’s got to be a better way.
Christine Smallwood: Did you ever have moments where you felt like you regretted leaving work?
Tia: No. I never felt that way. I loved just being with you guys. I mean—this is where I’m going to start to cry—as much as I learned about politics and about work and about myself, I don’t think I learned how to be a real human being until I was with my children and suffered with them and watched what they go through. You would give anything for them. You would give up your life, your career, and your home.You unconditionally love them, and I think that is what made my life complete. So no, I never regretted it.
I just want to put on the record how absolutely delighted I am with you as a human being. I mean, you’re just a wonderful person. You’re compassionate, smart, and insightful, and you are just absolutely delightful to be around.
Christine: I always strive to be more like you—it’s true.
Tia: Keep on being who you are.
Recorded in New York, New York, on February 2, 2008.
WANDA ZOELLER, 56 talks to her partner, SUSAN HERNDON, 51 about her mother, Ethel Zoeller.
Wanda Zoeller: I was the last of six children. I was born in Clarksville, Indiana, at a very small hospital. I was actually delivered in the area where little boys are circumcised, because they didn’t have any space left in any rooms. They shoved my mom off into another room where they kept the clean laundry and circumcised little boys.
I lived a good portion of my growing up—until I was thirteen—in the projects of Louisville. Today it’s considered kind of a rough area, but when we were growing up everybody knew each other and took care of each other.
We had an area in the back of the projects where we’d take our garbage. They’d cut trees, and there’d be piles of trees back there, so some of us kids would go back there and make forts out of these tree branches and such. One time I was back there trying to find stuff to make our fort, and I found a nest. I didn’t know these little, tiny, naked animals were rats. So I took off my tennis shoe, picked them all up, and put them in my shoe. I ran home, very proud of the fact that I had a bunch of little animals. When I showed them to my mom, she totally freaked out, took my shoe, and threw it in the garbage. Of course she was freaking out that I was handling these rats, and of course I was freaking out because she was throwing away these little, bitty pets into the garbage! She wouldn’t let me have my shoe back. [laughs]
My mother always kept a nice house, always kept us together. I never knew we were very poor, and I attribute that to her. I can remember times sitting in the dark, and of course, as kids, it was a game for us. We had a choice between food and utilities, and of course we picked food. When we were growing up, my dad would always add to the grocery list “lightbulbs and toilet paper.” Mom would never get the lightbulbs or the toilet paper, because we’d have to get food instead. So it kind of became a joke: If we wanted a lamp in the bedroom, we’d take this lightbulb out of the living room and carry it to the bedroom to use. We might have had one or two lightbulbs that moved around the whole house.
And then sometimes if we ran out of toilet paper you’d have to use newspaper or whatever was handy. This sounds kind of crude, but we’d have to rough up the paper and then use it for toilet paper. So I always said when I got older, if I didn’t have anything else, I was always going to have toilet paper. I told you that story, and now to this day, you always make sure our cupboard is full of toilet paper. So I always joke and say, “I’m displaying my wealth,” because I’m showing everybody how much toilet paper I have.
I think I had the greatest mom in the world. She was very forgiving, nonjudgmental, would give you anything. People say they’ll give you the shirt off their back—but, I mean, she literally would. She never hit us or whipped us, although trust me, there were times I wish she would have just spanked me instead of sitting down and telling me that she was “disappointed with my actions.” It would be easier for her just to whip me and put me in a room, but she didn’t do that. She sat down and taught us that there’s consequences to everything you do, and if you can live with those consequences, then go ahead and make those decisions, but before you make those decisions, try to think them through. I think the most important thing she gave to us was to care for people, to be generous, and not to be judgmental. She was a huge influence in my life. I had a lot of opportunity to go very bad in my life. Thank God I had my mother to help me focus on doing the right things and not to screw my life up to the point of no return.
When Mom died, I was blessed to be with her. The whole family was with her, as obviously you were, Sue. I was lying in the bed next to her, holding her, and telling her it was okay to let go, because I knew it was probably hard for her to let go of us. So we had to make sure she knew we were going to be okay. That was probably the proudest, the happiest, and the saddest moment of my life. I could only hope that I could be as lucky—just surrounded by the people you love, holding you while you take your last breath. And the very last thing she said to us was that she loved us.
Recorded in Louisville, Kentucky, on October 14, 2007.
WANDA ZOELLER (left) AND SUSAN HERNDON (right)
JERRY JOHNSON, 52 interviews his mother, CARRIE CONLEY, 80
Jerry Johnson: Now, Daddy left when I was around five or six. You had six kids at that point. And I guess the thing that puzzles me, as a parent now, is how you kept all that together. You know I cannot remember one Christmas that I didn’t feel like I was the luckiest kid in the world, even though now I realize we had hardly anything in terms of money. How did you hold that together?
Carrie Conley: I worked at Outer Drive Hospital in Detroit, and we got one sick day a month: that was twelve days a year. If I was sick, I would still go to work. I would never call in a sick day—I was saving those days for Christmas. And at Christmastime, they would pay me for those days. That’s what I would use for y’all’s Christmas. They had a nice Salvation Army. Around the first of December, all the rich people would clear out their children’s toy chests, and they would take all these nice toys to the Salvation Army. I would go there and I would get me a huge box, and I would go around and pick out toys. I would get that whole big box of toys for a couple of dollars. Then I would get y’all one new toy, because that’s all I could afford. Then I would use the rest of the money for food. And so it always seemed like we had a big Christmas.
Jerry: I remember those boxes of fresh oranges and apples and the cakes—
Carr
ie: I baked homemade cakes, and I still do that today. So we just had a nice Christmas, because that’s what I’d worked for. I’d say, “Jerry, write three things down that you want.” I would pick one so you’d have one new toy. I never did tell you it was Santa Claus, though, ’cause I said, I cannot give no man credit for this.
Jerry: I told that to some of the kids at school once. We were talking about Santa Claus, and I said, “Man, hard as my mother works, we weren’t gonna give no white man the credit!” [laughs]
You’ve been through a lot. What would you say, thinking down through the years, would be some of the things that you were the most proud of?
Carrie:You know the thing that I’m most proud of? That I was able to raise my six children and you all turned out as well as you did. Because that was really a load on my shoulders. And you know, the Lord blessed all of them. Just like when you were a boy: I asked you what you wanted to be, and you said you wanted to be a doctor. So when you graduated out of medical school, Washington University, that was the happiest day of my life—when you walked across that stage and you became a doctor.
I took you to church, and I took you to Sunday school. I took you when you wanted to go, and I took you when you didn’t. But son, it paid off—you have to agree.
Jerry: Oh, I agree, I agree.
Carrie: I’m so grateful how the Lord blessed me, and how my children turned out. Whatever you attempt to do, don’t give up; you just got to press on, and God’ll make a way.
Recorded in Detroit, Michigan, on May 26, 2007.
DENNIS MCLAUGHLIN, 58 interviews his mother, THERESA MCLAUGHLIN, 82
Dennis McLaughlin:When I was born, what did the doctors say to you?
Theresa McLaughlin: They said that you had a long road ahead of you. At six or eight months, you had surgery on your spine to see what was causing the paralysis in the lower part of your body. They discovered that you had a vertebra and a half missing in your spine, and it had gnawed away the nerves that controlled the lower half of your body. They said that you would need a lot of surgery and a lot of time in the hospital, but they said, “From the neck up he’s just fine; if he wants to do something, at least give him the chance to try to do it.” And that’s always the way that I’ve felt. You’ve tried a lot of things, and you’ve always been successful at everything that you’ve tried.
Your grandfather McLaughlin was quite handy with building things, and he built you a little wheelchair when you were very small. He built it out of wood that he had, and the wheels are from—I’m not sure if it was a bicycle or a tricycle—but it was all stuff that he had around. I think you were one year old, and you got around in that very, very well.
Dennis: I spent a lot of time in the Shriners Hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts. A few years ago, we drove through Springfield. It suddenly dawned on me what an incredibly long trip that was—and we were on interstate highways. I thought, Well, in 1948 most of these roads didn’t exist. So what did you have to do to come and see me?
Theresa:We could only visit on Saturday. The hours were from eight in the morning until four in the afternoon—no exceptions. For quite a while, your dad and I used to go by car. Then your dad and I separated, and I didn’t have a car. So I had to take the bus to Springfield. I had to work at the time, and we were living with my parents. So I would get out of work at midnight and take a bus to Portland, and then from Portland to Boston. Then when I got to Boston I had a two-hour wait for the bus to Springfield, and I was afraid to go even out of the station, so I’d wait right in the station for two hours until the bus came.
The hospital was on the outskirts, so when I got to Springfield I had to take another bus from the city to the hospital. But I couldn’t go and see you until eight o’clock in the morning, and so I’d wait at the station until I knew that I could get into the hospital to see you. I’d spend the whole day with you. At four o’clock on the dot everybody had to leave, even though a lot of us traveled very far. One little boy in your ward lived in Canada, and his parents could only come once in a great while, but when they came they had to leave at four o’clock just like the rest of us.
It was very difficult leaving you, because the minute you’d see me putting on my coat or getting ready to leave, you’d start to cry . . . and then I’d hear you crying all the way down the hall. So that was very difficult, but every minute that I spent with you was well worth it.
Dennis:When I was fourteen my legs were amputated. Up until that point there wasn’t much that I couldn’t do. And then when that happened—this sounds strange—but it was a very liberating experience because my legs were sedentary: they were just there; I couldn’t use them. I worked well around them—but then without them, it was almost like there were literally no limits at all.
Theresa: Well, you had wonderful doctors, and when the doctors told me the best thing for you, even though it sounded cruel, would be to amputate your legs, it was very difficult. But one doctor told me, “Dennis will roll with the best of them after he has his legs amputated”—and you always have.
Dennis: A particularly hard time I remember was when they said, “Well, now that you no longer have your legs, you have to go away and be rehabilitated.” I remember being furious about that. I asked them, “Why?” and they said, “Everything is different.You have to relearn all these things.” It made no sense to me whatsoever because up until that point I had adapted to everything.
Theresa: Well, I didn’t feel that you needed to go and learn everything all over again, and I told the doctors that. They said, “He really has to go. And for the first couple of weeks you shouldn’t come and see him, because he’ll be very homesick and he’ll want to go home.” So I took you. It wasn’t easy to leave you, because I knew that you knew everything that they were going to teach you. About two weeks later I got a telephone call. I said, “Oh, he’s homesick?” And they said, “Oh, no! On the contrary, he’s keeping this place alive. But he already knows everything that we’ve tried to teach him,” which we tried to tell them in the first place, “so you can come and get him.” It didn’t take me long. When I got there, I said to the receptionist, “I came to get Dennis.” She said, “If you can find him—he’s all over the place.”
So you came home, and you’ve always been very independent and capable of doing everything. One day you came home from work at the watch shop in Portland, and you said, “I’ll be home late tomorrow.” I’d never ask questions because I knew when you said something, you had a reason for it. This went on for quite a while: about twice a week you’d get home late, and I thought, I wonder what he’s up to? One day you came home and you said, “Ma, I can swim.” I said, “You can swim?” You said, “Yeah, I’ve been going to the Y, and the instructor there told me if I came at a certain time on certain days that he would teach me to swim all by myself in the pool.”
People always treated you like you were no different from anybody else: the kids let you play football; you were the pitcher on the softball team. They let you do everything that they did. I remember one instance where you and the neighborhood kids were on the back porch.The window was open, and I could hear you talking about, “What are you going to be when you get big?” One was going to be a policeman; someone else was gonna be a fireman. When it got to you, somebody said, “What are you gonna do, Dennis?”You said, “I’m goin’ in the army.” And one of your friends said, “You dummy, you can’t go in the army—you can’t march!” You said, “No, but I can ride in a jeep!” [laughs]
So, that’s the attitude you had all the time. I’m not just saying this. A lot of people that I know—even today—will say, “Boy, he can do just about anything, can’t he?” And I say, “Yes, he can—and he always could.”
Dennis: I have a son now, and he’s two years old. When he looks at me, he just sees his papa. And we were talking about the fact that when he gets older, he’s going to have a really great attitude because he will accept people very easily. He won’t see them for the fact that they’re in a
wheelchair or that they walk with a cane or crutches.
Theresa: And of course having a new grandson— sometimes it’s more than I can take. I’m just so happy—it actually makes me feel younger. My blood pressure has gone down a lot, and the nurse said, “What are you doing different?” And I said, “Well, I don’t think I’m doing anything different.” And she said, “I know what it is—it’s your new grandson!”
Dennis: I guess that it’s just kind of the luck of the draw. Some people aren’t so lucky, and some people are very, very fortunate. And I’m one of them.
Theresa: You’ve been a wonderful son. I couldn’t ask for any better.
Recorded in Portland, Maine, on September 17, 2006.
RAY MARTINEZ, 56
Ray Martinez: I was raised in the Colorado State Children’s Home in Denver. They kept kids from infancy to age eighteen or nineteen years old. I was there from infancy to age five.
I remember that the orphanage had this practice where they would allow potential parents to check you out like a library book: they could borrow you for a couple of weeks, take you home, and see if you were a fit for their family. A couple of times I remember riding in the car, leaving the orphanage with potential parents, and them just trying to make me happy and make me laugh, and me sitting in the front in these little booster seats cars had back then in the fifties. But I never remember being at their homes. What I do remember is getting returned to the orphanage, riding back in the backseat of the car with no one talking to me. So I sensed right then and there that for some reason or another they didn’t like me. I couldn’t put it into words; I just felt it. I can distinctly remember riding up to the orphanage, which had an oval road in the front, and always feeling like I was back home. When I got out of the car, I can remember a couple of times running in the orphanage saying to myself, I never want to leave this place again! And I think that was a lesson that I carried with me in law enforcement and as mayor—that I believe that you should accept everybody for who they are and reject nobody.