“My parents were remarkable people. Mother was born at home in Pittsburgh. The doctor wrote a prescription for two-percent silver nitrate to clean out her eyes. The pharmacist had been drinking and filled it for 20% silver nitrate. My mother’s dark brown eyes instantly turned white with scars. The doctor packed his bag and left because he hadn’t read the label on the bottle. Mom lived her life legally blind with limited vision, but she had the gifts of sound and taste. She played the piano by ear and attended the Carnegie Institute of Music in Pittsburgh for 12 years. My grandparents expected her to do anything any other child did. She became a fantastic cook and learned how to crochet. I’ve got pictures of her hands crocheting and counting stitches. Her fingers were her eyes and they felt everything.

My dad also grew up in Pittsburgh. His mother worked and raised her five children alone. My dad lost his siblings to a scarlet fever and diphtheria epidemic in the early 1920s. His mother later fell out of a two-story building and broke her back. She passed away, and my father was the only one left. They wanted to put him in an orphanage, but he ran away. He moved in with a distant aunt, living in her attic and working in her bakery.

My dad was intelligent. He went through the dictionary and learned new words every week. He met my mother for the first time at a Methodist church in Pittsburgh. He was eight but told her he was 11. They met years later when my mother’s father was a chauffeur for the Lockharts, millionaires out of New Jersey and Pittsburgh. My grandfather met my dad, saw his struggles, and gave him a job – that’s how my parents met the second time.

Mom played the piano at their church. She played classical music that could make your heart sing and jazz that would make your feet tap. I was the only girl and had three brothers in our musical house. Dad could play anything with strings. I can still hear Mom on the piano and Dad on the violin. Daddy was also a tapper and taught us all of the dances. I still love to dance.

We moved around a lot and ended up in Baldwin County. I went to Fairhope High School in the 10th grade. As the bus parked, I heard something and turned my head. I was too close to the window and my nose hit the glass when I saw Fritz in Levis and a white t-shirt rolled up. He was a hunk and had so much charisma. My heart took off. We had a few dates, but it wasn’t our time. We became good friends.

I started nursing school on a full scholarship in 1961, I loved going to school and working in the hospital. I started having some earaches and losing my hearing. I needed surgery. At that time going deaf ended my scholarship.

Fritz and I had started dating again and fell in love. I found out I was pregnant. We weren’t ready to have a child and didn’t believe in abortion, so we put her up for adoption. No one knew because I only gained 15 pounds. I felt so alone. Our daughter’s name is Sheri, and I never stopped loving her. Fritz and I married and had four other children, but when I counted the children I always counted five. My kids thought I was counting myself because they didn’t know about their sister. Sheri’s adoptive parents brought her to meet me on August 13, 1992. She met her brothers and sisters the next day. They look so much alike. All of these years, I carried the pain in my heart of not keeping her. Now we talk all of the time, and my glove has all five fingers in it.

For most of our marriage, Fritz was as good as his word, but in the mid-80s, he had an affair. I still loved him with all of my heart, but I had to divorce him. I became a single mother raising four children. I was heartbroken. Early one morning, I found myself on the farthest piece of the property, eyes almost swollen shut from crying. I got down on my knees and asked God to lift me out of this. I had to let go, and God lifted me.

I was holding down two or three jobs until I got one that made good money for my family. I was also trying to protect the children, but I wasn’t dealing with my own pain. Fritz was a good dad under difficult circumstances, but I felt I had no control over what was happening in my life, so I turned to food. It became my enemy, and I went down from a size 12 to a size three.

Eventually, Fritz and I got back together. We were working things out, but he had a heart attack and died in my arms a year later. It’s strange, but after he died, I not only mourned his death, but I also had more time to deal with the feelings I had shut away, including mourning our marriage dissolving. I will never love anyone else the way I loved him.

I am 79 and proud to be here. I had a heart attack in 2010, and diabetes hit me a couple of years later, but I am working on all of that.

I think my gift in life was being a mama. I hope I have given all five of my children the power to be the best they can be and showed them that life will be hard, but they will make it through.

Things change in a heartbeat. Life hasn’t turned out as I planned, but I made the best of it and kept going forward. I am still learning about myself and the people I love.”

Joanne