WBEZ | StoryCorps

‘Your dad will be able to raise a boy easier than a girl without a mother’

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 09:00:00 -0600

When Lynette Bisconti learned she was pregnant, she was full of joy. But then, a few short weeks later, she got news no parent wants to hear.

She tells her 14-year-old son, Frank, about her wrenching decision.

FRANK: "What was going through your head at that time?"
LYNETTE: "The only thing that was going through my head was one word, sweetheart. And that word was No. No to cancer and no to the recommendation that everybody was giving me and that was to terminate my pregnancy. So I decided to keep you … And my pathology report when it came back was really bad. I had an aggressive cancer. It had spread.

Lynette underwent chemo while pregnant, and then learned she would have a boy.

LYNETTE: "My first thought was: 'Oh, thank God,' because your Dad will be able to raise a boy easier than a girl without a mother."

To find out what happens, and hear about the life lessons she passed along to her son, listen to the audio above.

NOTE: Adam Peindl helped produce this report.

Military leader: 'We’ve never had black Marines, and we don’t want ‘em now’

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 09:32:00 -0500

When Chicagoan William Pickens joined the Marines during WWII, he was among the first black men ever to do so.

Pickens says he was part of the famed Montford Point Marines, a group that was some 20,000 strong. The Montford Point Marines fought through segregation in the barracks and substandard conditions to become highly decorated.

This summer (nearly 70 years after their service), they were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

Pickens shared his story with his daughter, Lisa Marie.

He went into the Marines when he was just 16. He got a fake birth certificate, then told his mother:

WILLIAM: “ ‘If I go into the Marine Corps, I’ll be able to send money to get you out of this hole, you and my brothers.’”

Pickens says if he got killed, he knew he’d “be worth $10,000” for his family.

WILLIAM: “The first place they sent me to, Camp Lejeune.”
LISA MARIE: “And this was during WWII?”
WILLIAM: “Yeah, the government said, ‘We can’t have these black Marines with the white Marines.’ The white Marines lived up on the hill with nice clean barracks, steam heat, and everything. And we were down in the lower part and they named it Montford Point, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. We were the Montford Point Marines. And all of these powerful black men came to fight for the United States of America.”

The men were at attention one day when the colonel came out to talk to them. The U.S. Marines' plan at the time was to muster the men out after the war, and return to a white corps.

WILLIAM: “He [the Colonel] said: ‘We’re gonna get you out as soon as possible. We don’t need you, you’re of no value at all. We’ve never had black Marines, and we don’t want ‘em now.’ So we stood at attention and listened, it was all we could do.

And after he left, Sgt. Blood (a black officer who’d been in all the Pacific campaigns) looked around to see was the Colonel gone, and he said: ‘Ya’ll gonna make him eat them words.’ We said, ‘Yes, sir’.”

To find out what happened when that Colonel returned six months later, and what it's like to survive shell-shock, listen to the audio above.

—Adam Peindl helped produce this report.

This interview was recorded in collaboration with Affinity Community Services, a station partner.

The horror of having a nun, who's your mentor, bail you out of jail

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 16:30:00 -0500

Getting bailed out of jail by a nun who also happens to be your mentor is just about as horrible as you’d imagine.

Denise Ferguson was a student at Rosary College, now Dominican University, when that happened to her. Sister Joan O’Shea was dean of students.

Ferguson – who's since become an activist around social justice and parity issues – was taking the school station wagon out for the best of reasons. She and her classmates were delivering donated food to Operation Breadbasket.

FERGUSON: "And so the police pulls me over … and he says: 'May I see your license?' And I turn to him and I say: 'Oh, I don't have one.'

Ferguson had to post a $50 bond, but when she and her friends pooled their resources, they only came up with $38.

FERGUSON: So who shows up to get me out of jail? You. (O’Shea laughs.) That was the worst day of my life. You just always loved on me so and had such high aspirations for me. And here I am, having to look at you as you say to me: 'In all of my life, I have never had to come and get a student out of jail.' It was a funny time, but it was also a scary time for me because I thought I was gonna lose you."

O'SHEA: "Not a chance."

Ferguson entered the college during the height of the Civil Rights Movement when administrators were trying to recruit a more diverse student body. She herself had gone to segregated grade schools.

FERGUSON: "Even though I was born a year after Brown v. Board of Education, the first time I ever had a new book in my hand, I was a senior in high school. And all I could do was just smell it. I had never smelled a fresh textbook in my life!"

O'SHEA: "My own personal ‘Ah-ha! moment:’ Both the black students and the white students had all kinds of problems with each other. A white person came to my office one day and said: 'Oh, the black students are doing this or that or the other thing.' And I looked at this person and I said: 'Oh, come on now, our students would have ....' And I stopped myself. I was about to say: 'Our students would have done the same thing.' And then I said: 'Wait a minute. All of these students are our students.' “

Sister O’Shea says she’s thankful for what Ferguson and her friends did in helping her have that “ah-ha moment,” and for what they did for the college.

To find out what happens when Ferguson decides she has a calling to be a nun (even though she wasn’t Catholic), listen to the audio above.

—Adam Peindl helped produce this report.

'Those old-school parents. They know how to do the discipline.'

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 13:30:00 -0500

Salyndrea Jones and Savannah Wright grew up in the former Stateway Gardens housing project in Chicago.

Now, they’re both college students. Jones hopes to be a director, and Wright, a judge.

The 18-year-old cousins talk frankly about love, old-school parents ... and kids these days.

[0:22] SALYNDREA: Do you have a love of your life?

SAVANNAH: Not right now, but I am looking for one.

SALYNDREA: So let me give you words of advice. Don't ever say you're looking for love. Let love find you.

Savannah says her mom is one of the people who's influenced her the most. She says her mom knows what it's like out there from life experience. Savannah talks to her mom every day.

[1:33] SALYNDREA: I didn't get into trouble growing up because like my mother didn't let me do nothing really. Even think about getting up to something. I was scared you know? Get some punishment or get whipped? I ain't got time for that. (Giggles)

SAVANNAH: Yeah, those old-school parents. They know how to do the discipline. Our new generation?

SALYNDREA: No discipline.

SAVANNAH: These parents?

SALYNDREA: These parents now are trying to be the children's friends.

The pair say their generation shares part of the blame, and so does the community.

[2:42] SALYNDREA: We've got too many youth that are being killed, like every day ... The crazy thing about it is it's only like in our neighborhood or in the poorest neighborhoods. This is where all of this is taking place. If we go somewhere else? You don't see 14-year-old girls walking around pregnant. Like kids at my school ...They're surprised because where they come from, they don't have to go through that. But where we come from, either you make it or you don't.

Both of them say the media is part of the problem. They point to friends who got full-rides to prestigious colleges, and they wonder why shootings made the news, but not scholarships.

Despite their concerns, Savannah and Salyndrea are both optimistic that their generation can turn things around.

NOTE: This interview was recorded in collaboration with the Chicago Cultural Alliance, a station partner.

Katie Klocksin contributed to this report, and Adam Peindl helped produce it.

Baby diaries serve as loving – and sarcastic – glance at the past

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 14:29:00 -0500

Many families start out writing in their kids’ baby diaries for a few years, then set them aside.

But Diane Paulini and her late husband wrote in their daughters’ baby books long past infancy.

Now, Erin and Kelly are adults, and their mom pulls out the diaries on their birthdays. As the years have passed, those baby books became increasingly precious – and funny – mementos of their late father.

KELLY: The baby diary gives a pretty frank assessment … 'When you were first born, you were bald, and I wasn’t very pretty.'

Kelly, Erin and Diane all laugh.

DIANE: I wanted it to be honest, I didn’t want to be one of those parents that doesn’t see reality.

Both of her daughters appreciate that.

ERIN: Kelly, don’t you feel like it’s that honesty and realness that made mom such a good mom?

She says her mom built up their self confidence, but also let them know life was tough. That was helpful when their father died when they were still kids.

The baby diaries now show them another side of their late father. He was a devoted family man who’d rather spend time with his wife and daughter than even watch football. But the diaries also show how funny and sarcastic he was.

To hear what he wrote, and what those diaries mean to the family today, check out the audio above.

NOTE: Katie Klocksin and Adam Peindl helped produce this report.

12-year-old wants to know about her mother's dreams, difficult family stories

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 15:35:00 -0500

When she was just a baby, Naomi Baskins used to gurgle her way through the readings she attended with her mother, the poet Kelly Norman Ellis. But she’d always fall silent when her mom took the stage.

Kelly Norman Ellis said that once, during a reading that included noted poet and Third World Press founder Haki R. Madhubuti, daughter Naomi was doing her usual baby chattering thing. Madhubuti started laughing, stopped his reading, and asked if everyone could hear Naomi.

Naomi brought her mom, Kelly, to the MobileBooth to interview her about her upbringing and their family's history.

Kelly told her daughter she was a fat, happy baby, and so smart.

[0:23] KELLY: "I remember you in your stroller when we'd go through Hyde Park. And you were so nosy. You'd sit up straight. And you'd just would be looking at everything and everybody."

Naomi wondered if anything sad had happened to the family.

Her mother said her grandfather had gone off to war, while her grandmother went off to college. A day later, her grandma got a telegram informing her that her husband had been hurt.

[1:39] KELLY: "A grenade had gone off and blown his hand off. When he came back to Mississippi, my grandmother was pregnant with my mama, your grandma. They wouldn't let him sit down … they made him go to the back of the bus. And here he was a man who'd just lost his hand, his wife was pregnant, and he was in his uniform.”

To hear how the family reacted to the situation, and Kelly’s hopes for her daughter, check out the audio above.

NOTE: Adam Peindl and Katie Klocksin helped produce this report.

Journalist has front-row seat to Civil Rights Movement, 1968 convention

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 17:27:00 -0500

The Democratic and Republican conventions just wrapped up, pretty much without incident.

That wasn’t the case during the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and journalist Donald Johnson had a front-row seat. Johnson tells his daughter, Laurel, that he was working for Newsweek at the time. He was out in the streets covering the violence, and saw police hitting reporters and photographers.

1:23 JOHNSON: I saw a police officer run up to a photographer for the Sun-Times and just smash a camera into his face.

Johnson said he called Newsweek and told them:

1:37 JOHNSON: You better get down here and send somebody down here because when we write the story, we don’t want you saying we’re making stuff up, that it’s not happening.

Johnson said he saw mini riots breaking out all over, and saw more colleagues getting injured by police,

2:22 JOHNSON: It was not pretty, nor kind. It was really a bad thing.

Johnson was born in Honduras, and moved to the U.S.. He became a journalist in the ‘60s, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. But as he tells his daughter, Laurel, he wasn’t an early convert.

00:00 JOHNSON: When I first came, I used to think, hmm, I’ve got nothing to do with this civil rights thing here. After all, I speak Spanish. I’m not from here.

Two things changed Johnson’s mind. He said he came to the realization that although he wasn’t from the U.S., in this country, he was considered black. And he saw dogs being let loose on African-American protestors, and people being hanged. He was outraged.

Johnson's daughter wondered if he felt like journalism was his way to contribute to the Civil Rights Movement.

Yes, he said, adding that Fred Hampton, the leader of the Black Panthers in Chicago who was later killed by police, kept asking him to be secretary of education.

00:54 JOHNSON: I couldn’t do that gun thing. I couldn’t do it maybe because I could do it all too easily. Picking up a gun is a limited kind of a future for you.

Katie Klocksin helped produce this story.

Pink hair and humor are good defense mechanisms for self-described gay, Jewish, ginger, Irish dwarf

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 13:00:00 -0500

People meeting Ben Saylor for the first time might stare at his pink hair or his crazy hats. That's just the way the 19-year-old communications and advocacy student wants it. Ben says that way, he gets to choose why people stare at him, rather than for his dwarfism.

[0:07] BEN: "I'm a gay, Jewish, ginger, Irish dwarf with glasses and so many other things. So when you have that many oppressed minorities stuck inside you, you kind of have to be funny about it to some extent."

His mom Heather laughs, and asks Ben if he remembered to mention his pink hair.

[0:28] BEN: "Oh, well, that's not a minority. That's a life choice."

Ben says when people see him, they're distracted by his hair or his crazy hats. Heather thinks those hats and the hair, along with his humor, serve as a good defense mechanism.

She says the family was always frank about Ben's dwarfism. When Ben was eight, he had a tough question for her:

[0:59] HEATHER: " 'Mom, why did God make me a dwarf?' And, I was like, ugh, you know, kill me. Uh, so I, you know so I said: 'Well everyone is born differently and some people have big ears, some people are tall and some people are short.' And I said: 'And you were born short, you were born with dwarfism and I think that makes you really special.' "

Without skipping a beat, Heather says, Ben pointed out his brother didn't have dwarfism, and wondered if his brother was special too.

[1:35] HEATHER: "And I thought: 'Oh man, this kid is not going to let me off easy!' "

Heather turns to Ben's playground days, wondering if he remembers how kids used to tease him. She'd make him go up to those kids and explain his condition.

[2:00] BEN: "Yep. I'm like, oh great. I'd just have to go up after they were making fun of me and my mom's making me like say 'So, can you please stop? I'm a dwarf and this is a condition and stuff like that.'"

HEATHER: "And this is the way my head's supposed to look."

BEN: "Yeah and this is the way my head's supposed to look. It's a lot easier for me now especially because I feel like I'm teaching or something."

Mother and son share a moment of mutual admiration:

[2:25] HEATHER: "Ben, I admire your self assuredness, your sense of self, your ability to be so OK with who you are. I wish I was so OK, as OK with myself as you are with yourself."

BEN: "Why, thank you. And for you just like being able to put up with this like crap, but you don't put up with it. You just say 'Not only do I have to live with it, but I want to live with it.'"

NOTE: This interview was recorded in collaboration with Access Living, a station partner. Adam Peindl helped produce this report.

Life Lessons Learned: The National Teachers Initiative

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 03:30:00 -0500

You may have already heard of StoryCorps, the American oral history project on NPR. Two people sit down in a studio and talk, telling stories about their lives, and the people at StoryCorps record and archive the conversation.

StoryCorps is honing in on lessons about learning with a new project for the academic year, called the National Teachers Initiative. It'll feature conversations with teachers across the country — teachers talking to each other, students interviewing the teachers who changed their lives, and more.

"I think there is no higher calling than being a public school teacher in this country," StoryCorps founder Dave Isay tells Weekend Edition Sunday host Audie Cornish.

"Teachers are feeling under attack and underappreciated," Isay says. "We want to do our part over the next year to turn that around."

To kick off the series, Isay brings us the story of Al Siedlecki, a science teacher at Medford Memorial Middle School in Medford, N.J. One of his former students, Lee Buono, grew up to be a neurosurgeon. He came to StoryCorps with Siedlecki to tell the story about a patient who reconnected him with his favorite teacher.

Look for more stories from the National Teacher's Initiative on Weekend Edition Sunday each month for the rest of the school year.

Alzheimer's Brings Daughter, Dad Together

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 21:00:00 -0500

Betsy Brooks remembers her father, Charles, as a "razor-sharp" former Marine. The two had their share of arguments, she says. But that all changed late in her father's life, as Betsy recently told her boyfriend, John Grecsek.

Charles was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease when he was 78. Betsy tells John about her relationship with her dad before, and after, the diagnosis.

"We butted heads from the moment we could," Betsy says.

Her father was a Marine — and very proud of it.

"I always say that we learned the Marine Corps Hymn before we knew our ABCs," says Betsy, 54. "He was a meticulous man. He was meticulous about the house and the yard. And he was a perfectionist. His favorite tool was his level."

Betsy grew up on Staten Island, N.Y. Her father had served as a Marine in the 1940s.

"I was just cut from a different cloth," she says. "My mother, she would make these lists of, you know, all my day's crimes. She would save them for my father when he came home from work. And he would turn positively livid. So, the day I turned 18, I got myself my own apartment."

"When did the Alzheimer's start?" John asks.

"It started to become obvious that he wasn't himself. He was a razor-sharp person, but he started not to be able to do simple things," Betsy says. "I remember one time I asked him to make some picture frames for me. He loved to do that sort of stuff."

But her father was no longer the handyman he once was. As Betsy recalls, "My mother called me up and she said, 'Please, do me a favor and don't ask him to make any more. He had such a hard time.' You know, he was so confused."

Charles Brooks was 78 when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And his condition brought a change to his relationship with his daughter.

"All of a sudden, he turned to me — because he knew that if he had every single drawer out from the dresser on the floor, I really couldn't care less," Betsy says. "So he didn't really hide from me."

In fact, the pair spent more time together, Betsy recalls.

"We would sit on the back porch and eat pistachio nuts and share a beer," she says. And I could tell him my secrets. And I got to enjoy all the good that was in him."

Betsy and John spoke about her father shortly after Charles died.

"I love my father tremendously," Betsy says. "And believe me when I tell you, despite the head-butting, all I ever wanted to do was to please him. The past 12 years since he got sick — I wouldn't trade those 12 years for anything. Except, I wish the price to pay for them wasn't so high."

Audio produced for Morning Edition by Nadia Reiman.