The beginning

I was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on October 12, 1946. World War II had ended and I was one of the first of the baby boomer children conceived. My father was an uneducated white man from Dothan, Alabama, in an area near the Gulf of Mexico known as the Redneck Riviera. The name referred to the Irish/German stock who lived there and worked at hard labor in the hot sun, in the fields, so that eventually the back of their necks were burned a deep red. Thus the name Redneck. My mother was of Irish and English stock, and her ancestors had come over on the Mayflower. Her family stock were the Sullivans, Howells, and the Moores. My father was of the Rhodes line, of Pennsylvania Deutsch stock. Related to my mother was John L. Sullivan, the famous bare-knuckle boxer of early American boxing arenas, and Anne Sullivan, who taught Helen Keller to communicate with the world. One of my maternal grandfathers was Wild Bill Sullivan, who is reputed to have killed five men and who owned thousands of acres of once Indian land in Mississippi. The town of Laurel, Mississippi, was dominated by the Sullivan clan, and two of my great aunt lived in their original homes there until past the age of one hundred. One of my mothers aunts taught at the University of Alabama as a professor and wrote a book about Wild Bill Sullivan and the story of the lands and families he controlled. My parents met at a USO dance, despite the fact that my father has no military service experience that was ever known of. He had apparently dated my mother's sister but then became attached to my mother instead. My mother had already been married and divorced by that time, at the age of 23, and she had two daughters already. The first daughter, Gloria Jean, lived with her former husband's parents, and the second daughter, Rosa Lee, lived with Mother. Later, in my teens, I would discover the existence of Gloria Jean entirely by accidentally reading Rosa Lee's diary, and later Gloria Jean reputedly killed herself rather than go on with a marriage to a physically abusive husband. (Maybe he killed her?) So mother and dad married, and began with conceiving me as the first of what would be a family of eight children, including Rosa Lee. We were all given names that seem rhythmic in the saying: Rosa Lee,Martha Jo, Margaret Ann, Edward Lawrence, Lavita Carol, Kay Ellen, Jeanne Elizabeth, and Stephen Scott. After Stephen Scott, my mother delivered a boy who died shortly after birth. She named him James Stuart. The two boys were drowning in a female flooded household. It was so easy for all of us girls to share clothes and other things. The boys were only two and far apart in ages, so there was less sharing between them. We all had our distinct gifts and flaws, of course. Rosa Lee was studious and active in all that school had to offer: drill team, clubs, and academic pursuits. She was given the only money the family had available for college tuition and she graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Spanish. She went on to become a teacher in the Texas schools after she married a Canadian, Walter Cluett, and they settled in Denton, Texas, a satellite community near Dallas. I was the artistic one who was subject to terrible migraine headaches, and I also excelled in learning, skipping two grades due to my excellent progress beyond my years. Lawrence (Larry) had a high IQ but somehow had tremendous difficulties in school, and my father aggravated that problem by dealing with him harshly. He hated my father, who beat him unmercilessly. My sister Margaret was very quirky, with a silly giggle and erratic habits such as pouring soda pop all over someone else's head for no reason at all. She made friends with the scruffiest looking kids at school, while I had a select group of the smarter and wealthier kids. Carol, Kay, and Elizabeth were all in the younger group of us and so I did not spend too much time with them. Carol was beautiful, with olive skin and blue eyes, and was afflicted with juvenile diabetes. She had to endure the daily shots, the reactions and occasional attacks and comas. Kay was a natural redhead and her face was sprinkled with light red freckles. She felt embarrassed and angry by being teased at school about her hair and freckles. The freckles bothered her the most. My brother Steve was the baby of the family, with a perfectly round face and big grey eyes. He was always gentle and soft spoken. Later in life, he came out as a homosexual and now is in a stable relationship with a partner. They bought a house together south of Phoenix and are quite happy making their lives together. As for me, I am now a widow. Alone. I will tell you of all that has happened in the years since I first was welcomed to this earth. Some of the story is joyful, some tragic, as you will find.