Mom (9 page)

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.

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.

WANDA ZOELLER (
left
) AND SUSAN HERNDON (
right
)

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—

Carrie:
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.

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.