by Ric Flair
After four years of marriage, my mom’s dream came true: she was pregnant with me. While her doctor approached each appointment with extra caution, she had a normal pregnancy and gave birth to me without complication. I was told that after my mom gave birth to me, she wouldn’t put me down. I slept on her. She wouldn’t let me go.
Twenty-two months later, another blessing. This time, it was a boy. The pregnancy was fine until the doctor discovered something during the delivery.3
We were my mother’s miracle children, and she loved us every day like precious gifts from heaven. My mom worked hard to make sure the house was in order, that my dad’s schedule was set, and, most of all, we were together as a family as much as possible. She wanted the best for her children, and she wanted us to be the best we could be at anything we pursued. I can hear her telling me, “Ashley, always do your best. Always be the best that you can.”
Every day, my mom and grandmommy made magic for us in the kitchen. No plate went unfinished in our house. In the morning, the aroma of pancakes filled our home. Reider and I would run to the kitchen table, sit next to each other, and plead, “Grandmommy, please make Grandmommy’s pana cakes.” My mom and grandmommy smiled at each other because they were already making them for us. Grandmommy’s “pana cakes” were made with Bisquick. What made them so special was the large skillet that was used. They always came out perfectly round and thin.
To enjoy pana cakes, Reider and I needed two things: Land O’Lakes butter and Aunt Jemima syrup. We always argued about who would get the next pana cake. A bowl of batter was always next to the refrigerator.
We shared so many wonderful meals as a family at home. I see my mom and grandmommy making chicken and dumplings. The dumplings were the size of baseballs, and the chicken was pulled by hand and placed in a huge pot that sat on top of the stove. Plates of fried okra lined the table, and squash casserole made with Philadelphia cream cheese was topped with crushed Keebler Club crackers. My dad made his ground beef chili when he came home.
Our family used these times as a way to be together among our hectic schedules between school, sports practices and games, piano lessons, and my father being on the road each week for work.
Although we’d try to delay the inevitable and create reasons why we couldn’t go to school, when it was time, we bickered about whose turn it was to sit in the front seat and filed into Mom’s giant black Mercedes before the long roll down the driveway. We loved the heated seats in the winter. The opening notes to “The Great Migration” from The Land Before Time and, my favorite, the chorus from “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King” from The Lion King always made us smile. We’d hit the same line of traffic on Sardis Road every morning. Once we hit the neighborhood known as Lansdowne, reality set in—we were a few minutes away from school.
If you were a child living in south Charlotte who went to private school, chances were you attended Providence Day School. Since it opened its doors, Providence Day has been one of the finest private schools in the country. Like the city of Charlotte back then, Providence Day was beautiful and felt like a community. The school offered classes from transitional kindergarten through twelfth grade, and it was expected for kids to be there all thirteen years and then go on to college. Everyone went to college. For some kids, it was predetermined from birth where they would go to college and which sorority or fraternity they would join, and it wasn’t up for discussion.
In many cases, children at Providence Day were part of the same social circle: we went to the same school and played sports together, and families hosted different functions at Providence, Ballantyne, and Piper Glen country clubs. Some of us went to the same church and frequented the same restaurants. We’d run into friends at Harper’s and the Palm at Phillips Place.
After graduating from pre-K at St. Stephen’s United Methodist Church in 1991, I became a proud member of Providence Day’s kindergarten class. Despite my spirited efforts to stay home, once I got to school, I was fine. In the afternoon, Grandmommy picked me up, and sometimes we’d go straight home. I’d put my book bag down and take my seat at the tabletop in the kitchen to watch TV shows like Family Matters, Designing Women, The Nanny, and The Golden Girls. Other times, on the way to gymnastics practice, we’d go to Back Yard Burgers, one of my favorite restaurants.
My grandmommy lived with us and helped raise Reider and me. She spoiled us with unconditional love and amazing food. On any evening, the smell of chicken and dumplings, “perlo,” a.k.a. chicken and rice, and fresh spaghetti drifted through the house. Most nights, Reider and I could be found sitting on the steps just off the kitchen, anticipating when her wonderful culinary creation would be served. Then we’d run to our chairs to eat. My parents and grandmommy always made sure we ate, and that included a struggle to eat our steamed broccoli—even if we put one square of Kraft Singles cheese on every stem. We also had to finish each meal by drinking a tall glass of milk.
Whether I went home after school or came home after an activity, there were two places I wanted to go: my dollhouse and the playroom.
My parents had a dollhouse built for me. I don’t mean the Barbie Dreamhouse in my bedroom with a pink Corvette next to it, or something with a handle that I could take with me, or even a scale model of a Victorian home. This was my own house. Just off our deck was a little white wood house—something off the pages of my mom’s Southern Living magazine.
Once you passed the planted flowers in the front, you’d open the door and walk on Italian marble floors, stroll under elegant ceiling fans in each room, and see a ladder that led to a second-floor loft that was a bedroom. I would host my family during “dinner” and “tea parties” and push my cat, Michael, in a stroller for my dolls. He was part of our family too.
The playroom room is where Reider and I watched movies. The room had beautiful beige leather couches that were so comfortable it was like resting on a cloud. We liked to wrestle on them, do flips off them, and make tents extending from one couch to the other. In the corner was a huge leather chair that my dad would sit in when he came home. One night, my parents, Reider, and I played a board game where each player took a card and had to act out a scene from a famous movie in a certain amount of time.
We all just laughed at each other, and one Fliehr looked sillier than the next.
The TV screen took up almost the entire wall. It felt like we were in our own movie theater.
The feature presentation could be any number of films, and sometimes I’d have a double feature. Disney classics like 101 Dalmatians, Cinderella, and Snow White were always in the rotation—as were newer Disney films of the time like The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Aladdin, and Pocahontas.
There were movies that I loved so much you could come to our house any day and one of them would be playing: Ghostbusters, Forrest Gump, Steel Magnolias, Cool Runnings, Mrs. Doubtfire, Batman, and all-time favorites—The Land Before Time and Jurassic Park.
Jurassic Park was released in June of 1993. My dad was traveling for work, and we waited for him to come home so we could all watch it together. He called to tell me that he and my uncle Arn were preparing for a big match in Virginia the next week but that as soon as he came home, we’d all go to Arboretum Cineplex to see it. I didn’t understand what made this trip more important than the others. I patiently counted down the days.
My dad came home. By the time I knew it, we each had our bucket of popcorn and were in our seats as the theater lights slowly dimmed. I loved the previews. I’d turn to my mom and say, “Yeah, that looks so good,” and then turn to my dad and say, “I think that looks so good. Don’t you?”
The music, the story, the enormity of the dinosaurs … Steven Spielberg had me gripping both armrests from the opening credits. Even now, I get chills thinking about the kitchen scene and the ingenuity and agility of the raptors. I was scared, but I knew I had to be brave and keep watching. I looked on both sides of me and saw the look on my parents’ faces and the shock on Reider’s face. It was like we were on
the Tower of Terror ride at Disney World. We all hoped that Lex and Tim Murphy would make it out of the kitchen alive. I kept picturing Reider and me in the scene and wondered if we could outsmart the raptors and make it out. To this day, I think we would’ve bested the bloodthirsty beasts.
Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies. That night at the Arboretum Cineplex will always be dear to me, because it’s one of the few movies we watched in the theater together as a family.
On a side note, what I learned years later was that Dad and Uncle Arn were in Virginia for the main event of Clash of the Champions XXIII, in a two-out-of-three falls match against Steve Austin and Brian Pillman, the Hollywood Blonds. So now I’ll agree with my dad—that was pretty important.
At a young age, I had some health issues. In kindergarten, I had a persistent problem—strep throat. After the third time I got it, the doctor told my parents that if it happened again, I’d need to have my tonsils taken out. Shortly after that appointment, strep returned, and my parents decided to have my tonsils removed.
Following the surgery, I needed to be watched closely, because I was throwing up blood. Ultimately, the procedure was a success; the strep throat never came back. My mom was so proud of how I handled everything, she bought me a purple mountain bike, but by the time all that was over I’d missed so much school that my parents decided to keep me back a year.
In first grade, I experienced one of the rights of passage to growing up—chicken pox. After a couple of days, what was thought to be a mild case became worse. I ran a fever, my body ached all over, and the itching was so bad that wearing clothes seemed like cruel and unusual punishment. I was moved to my parents’ room so I could sleep in their bed. It was so high off the floor, I needed help getting into it. My two favorite stuffed animals made the move with me: a small velvet dog my parents brought me back from Japan, who I called “Doggy,” and a two-and-a-half-foot bunny I named “Floppy” because of his arms and legs. They went everywhere with me. I had to take baths in Epsom salt twice a day. I can still see the pure white southern shower curtain lining along the tub. I remember looking up at the white wallpaper with pink ribbons printed on it. After I’d dry off, my mom covered me in calamine lotion. It felt like a papier-mâché project gone wrong all over my skin. I battled against the virus for almost two weeks. Thanks to my mom, I made a full recovery and was able to keep up with my school assignments.
After saying goodbye to first grade and hello to summer, things took an unexpected turn.
I was playing baseball with my parents and Reider in our backyard. While I was running, my back locked up, and I fell to the ground. I couldn’t move, and my entire body was in pain. I was terrified and didn’t know what I had done. After seeing a spine specialist, I was told my back went into a spasm—a spontaneous contraction of a muscle. After undergoing tests with two different specialists, it was discovered that I had a cracked fifth lumbar, also known as spondylolysis, where my vertebrae kept rubbing against each other—something very common for gymnasts. Though I didn’t know it at the time, the doctor and my parents were worried that surgery would be the only solution. That was something no one wanted, especially at my young age.
After a follow-up appointment, my parents were told that surgery was not necessary. The only way for my back to recover was to be put in something that had to be fitted for my body and I couldn’t take off once it was on—a body cast. So, for the entire summer of 1994, I was in a body cast while my back healed. One afternoon, I fell while I was running and broke my arm.4 For a couple of months, my arm was wrapped in addition to the body cast. I was so upset that I couldn’t go swimming that my dad bought a huge safety raft so I could float around while everyone swam around me.
Overall, I was a good kid. I played by the rules. I used to love to play in my parents’ cars—something they allowed me to do, since I enjoyed pretending that I could drive their Mercedes-Benzes too. I would sit in one of their cars, pushing buttons on the radio and imitating how my parents would open and close the glove compartment. I’d move down in the driver’s seat to press on the gas and brake pedals. One day when I was looking through the glove compartment of my dad’s Mercedes, I found something that looked like a miniature walkie-talkie, but I wasn’t sure what it was. But being a good kid, I put it back and never mentioned what I had seen to either of my parents.
When the edict of early bedtime was established, Reider and I joined forces to beat the system. Like good little children, we endured the evening rituals of bath time and brushing our teeth before retiring to our respective bedrooms. My mom, dad, or grandmommy would tuck us in and made sure to read us a story. Grandmommy would always say a prayer with us.
“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to you, Lord, my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, please take my soul to keep. God bless Mommy and Daddy, Reid, Megan, and David, my grandmommy, granddaddy, grandma, and grandpa, and all those that I love. Please let them know I love them. Please forgive me for my many sins. Amen.”
Some nights we’d ask for “special treatment,” which meant Mom or Dad lightly massaged our faces until we fell asleep. Reider liked to have angel wings drawn on his back. We loved it. Then we’d give big hugs and kisses and go to bed—or so they thought.
The minutes pretending to be asleep were excruciating.
Each night, when the coast was clear, we took turns tiptoeing into each other’s rooms to watch TV. (I preferred Reider’s room because he had a race car bed.) We had to handle this delicately. The key was to make sure the volume was high enough for us to hear but low enough so that the adults in the house didn’t suspect what we were doing. If we heard someone coming, one of us rushed to turn the TV off. While we made our night moves, I always had to tell Reider not to laugh, but he couldn’t help it. Like so many great ideas, our strategy had to be meticulously planned. Like the perfect caper, we needed a secret weapon, and we had one—Grandmommy.
She’d sneak upstairs and bring bowls of Breyers chocolate ice cream for the three of us to enjoy while we watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Felicity, or Dawson’s Creek. Reider and I would play thumb wars and sometimes punch each other for stealing the covers. Grandmommy stayed with us every night until we went to sleep. I never knew if my mom was aware of our late-night tradition and let it go, or if we really pulled off what we thought was the best covert operation of the twentieth century—at least in the greater south Charlotte area.
During many of those nights, separately, Reider and I migrated into our parents’ room and slept in their bed when my dad was away for work.
I loved being around my family and friends, but I didn’t like being the center of attention. I didn’t like going to sleepovers, because I always wanted to be home with my family. There was one exception: the Helms family. Sybil and her husband, Mike, and their daughters, Mika, Sheila, and Molly, helped take care of our house. They became family to us. Reider and I spent nights in their home. The Helmses lived on a pasture about an hour away from Charlotte.
They’d boil peanuts for us and let us eat as much cereal as we could eat. My favorite was Lucky Charms. We were not allowed to have that at home because of all the sugar in it. They treated us like we were their children.
One time, I brought Randy Savage to school for show-and-tell. He walked into the school in full Macho Man attire. He came back to our house and threw Sybil in the pool—it was like an impromptu pool party.
I gravitated toward exercise and playing sports. I remember being three years old and doing squats with my dad on our deck.
He had a separate gym built on our property that was so big, people thought it was a second house. Once you stepped through the door, you were inspired by wall-to-wall, state-of-the-art Cybex equipment. I remember sitting on the teal leather seats and walking on the treadmill. I loved going on the stair-climber and feeling like I was getting my cardio in for the day. Just like my dad.
He was away for work a few days a week every week. On television, in arenas, and all
over the world, he was famous for being the Nature Boy. When he was just forty years old, and by the time Reider and I were born, he was considered a living legend in sports entertainment and one of the greatest, if not the greatest, performers of all time.
He’d come home with his matching black TUMI luggage, dressed in a suit from Taylor Richards, a button-down shirt, and leather shoes that gleamed. He brought a silver briefcase with him whenever he traveled for work. My father was handsomer than any Hollywood leading man. I’ll always remember when he cut his hair at the behest of a WCW executive. He brought me to his hairstylist that day. I didn’t know what was going to happen. All of a sudden, huge pieces of his gorgeous blond hair were being chopped off. I started crying and picked up the hair off the floor with my hands and tried to give it back to him. As children, we had no idea the struggles he went through in WCW when they wanted to change his image and give him a new name.
I think some people had this idea of my dad at home in his diamond-studded robes, flashing the symbol of the Four Horsemen, and answering the phone saying his signature, “WOOOOO!” catchphrase. Later, I learned this idea took on a life of its own after WCW’s 1994 Spring Stampede. During the main event match between my dad and Ricky Steamboat, Bobby “the Brain” Heenan said on commentary, “You should see the robe he wears at home.” I don’t want to disappoint my dad’s fans, but that couldn’t be further from the truth—that was just for the show.
For all the “stylin’ and profilin’” that he was famous for, when my father walked through our door, all he wanted to do was spend time with his family. He wanted us to have the best of everything and anything we wanted. To us, he was “Daddy.” I was so proud in the third grade when each student had to bring in a shoe to decorate in class. I brought my dad’s wrestling boot and put gold and silver sprinkles around the RF.
When he was home and my parents had plans, my mom and dad looked like they were the president and the First Lady. They always hosted dinner parties with their friends the Becks, attended community and business functions, took us to Charlotte Hornets games. They loved being with one another. I can still see my dad’s immaculate blond hair and smell my mom’s Boucheron perfume when she’d kiss us good night. One year, my parents bought the main street in front of Providence Day to support a fund-raiser for the school. The green street sign read, “Ric Flair Blvd.”