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Jean Driscoll (Church)

My earliest childhood memory growing up in church is there were always family

weddings so I can remember being in the church at weddings. That’s my earliest

memory and being very practicing Catholics, a very committed Catholic family and it

was a mass celebrating somebody’s wedding and then the reception afterward, but sitting

in church, you know, next to the cousins or the aunts, maybe at three or four years old.

Incidentally, when we were first visiting and we were talking about school and

you had commented about my memory and how atypical it was, I thought you were just

being polite and in the last couple of weeks, I have talked with friends and even my sister

last night, she’s like, “I can’t remember most of my childhood,” and I was like, “You’re

kidding. It’s so vivid to me,” and other people I was talking with this last week, so I

guess I just took it all in. I know every teacher, the best friends, and going the first day to

kindergarten and everybody moving away from me. I’m like that more with memories

from the past, you know, everything seems to blend together these days, but birthdays

stick in my head for people that aren’t even close. I remember their birthdays. Tracy

Fort, my best friend in grade school, her birthday is March 10th and her father passed

away, maybe five years ago, and it gave us an opportunity to reconnect and, in

subsequent conversations, in fact, it was about a year ago, I was telling her, “I remember

when your birthday is.” She’s like, “No.” “Is it March 10th?” She’s like, “How do you

remember that? I don’t even know what month your birthday’s in,” and then this year, I

got a birthday card from her. I’m revealing to you that this was a perception to pull out

information or whatever.

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I remember a lot of christenings. In fact, I have a cousin, I was twelve years old

and I have a cousin who was born on the same day as my birthday, and so that was

always very exciting. But I think, you know, from age three, four, five, any time we got

to be in a different church from our own home church, it was exciting because it was

different, you know, it was like an adventure, something new. It would be a Catholic

church. Well, I wasn’t connecting with the ritual. To me, that was church, just it was

different bricks and mortar and shape, and the church in which I grew up had stairs

everywhere, as did the school, and yet, there were some churches we visited that didn’t

have any stairs and other churches that had more stairs to go into. In fact, I can

remember when I was early grade school, but the church that my mother’s mother

attended, the church in which my parents got married, had maybe 25, 30 steps to get up

into it and had a really tall spire. I remember exactly what part of the parking lot it was.

The building no longer exists there because eventually they built a new church that has

no steps, and I almost miss the older one because of its character, even though it was so

had to get up all those stairs. Conversely, my Dad’s parents attended a church that had

no stairs and I was always amazed by that. Now, that was a newer church. I don’t know

what the old one looked like, but I always thought it was pretty cool that you could just

walk into the church and you didn’t have to, I didn’t fall behind going up the stairs and I

can still hear my braces go over the metal plates over the doorway, but Grandma and

Grandpa Driscoll’s priest was way more boring than Grandma Marx’s. This is different

parts of Wisconsin. Grandma and Grandpa Driscoll are up near Lake Superior and

Grandma Marx is near Wausau, and I preferred Grandma Marx because she wasn’t as

tightly wound, more open, and both grandmothers were schoolteachers. I’m calling my

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braces the entire shoe with the steel bars attached to them and when I walked, my feet

turned out to the side and I drug my feet along, so I could hear the side of the shoes

scraping over the metal threshold. You know, it has the little lines in it that, the anti-slip

lines or whatever, I can still remember hearing my feet go over that. I don’t remember if

it was a particularly wide threshold. I just remember the metal threshold and my shoes

dragging over that. The metal base, there’s a hollowness on the inside of it, you know,

the metal threshold, you know, they’re usually shaped like this so there’s like an echo

sound. That’s what I hear and then, you know, there’s little anti-slip lines that are in

there and so as the shoe goes over that, there’s a bit of an amplified sound that I could

still hear.

I remember my Grandma Marx’s priest, Father Steckbauer. I don’t know why. I

don’t remember the name of Grandma Driscoll’s priest, but he was shorter and heavier

and he was more boring. Well, one who’s engaging will crack jokes a little bit and I

don’t remember Father Steckbauer cracking jokes. I don’t remember my Grandma

Marx’s priest cracking jokes, but I think we just liked being in church with our cousins

and our aunts and our uncles. You could look around and know people that you’re

related to. At home in Milwaukee, you could look around church and know people

you’re related to, but you don’t, I mean you see people you know, but you’re not related

to them, and at Grandma Driscoll’s, we knew some of her friends. One of my

grandmother’s church friends owned a store and we always got to go and pick out a toy at

______________ store. So we knew some of Grandma and Grandpa’s friends, but my

Dad was an only child so there weren’t cousins, there weren’t other relatives, and so it

always felt novel to be going to church with extended family. The boring aspect of

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Grandma Driscoll’s priest was no inflection in his voice, monotone when he delivered a

sermon, no facial expression, poker face, just like a stern schoolteacher. That’s the best

analogy I can come up with. It was all business. I don’t remember him smiling. Usually

after church, he’d shake our hands and, you know, just kind of nod, but it wasn’t a warm

greeting. Father Steckbauer, I was more, he wasn’t very different because I remember

him being fairly stoic as well, but he was more engaging when you were leaving the

church, interacting, maybe, you know, nodding his head or, he just seemed more

engaging, more social. He was all business, but there was a friendly side to him, whereas

the priest, it was all business, period. Life is not fun. Well, and I mean, I can’t think of a

kid, at least that I grew up with in the Catholic church who didn’t think church was

boring, you know. It was my parents’ insistence that kept me going. Father Steckbauer

was possibly German. It was a German community.

My mother’s side of the family was German and Dutch and we have Native

American. My father’s side was Irish, Italian. Actually, my Grandma Driscoll’s mother

was born in a part of Italy where they spoke a French ___________. So very near the

French border and so my Grandma grew up speaking French ____________, which I was

always fascinated by and I’ve always loved the French language. I studied it a couple of

years in high school, a couple of years in college, and although I didn’t become fluent, it

still comes out of me, you know. I don’t want to completely forget it because I think it’s

a beautiful language. So I guess I identified with that, with that part, but not consciously,

but my grandfather’s 100% Irish on my father’s side. My maternal grandfather, well, he

was the Marx and I guess Grandma, his wife, my Grandma Marx, her maiden name was

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Welch, and maybe that was the Dutch part. You know, Welch’s grape juice and stuff like

that, but it’s not the same family.

The family church at home in Milwaukee, I was just going there in my mind. One

of my earliest memories was my first Holy Communion and it was second grade, so I was

seven. I was always younger in age than most of the other kids because my birthday fell

in November and, at that time, at least in the Milwaukee area, if you were five by

December 1st, they admitted you into school, and so my birthday’s mid-November and I

was in school with kids whose birthday was in January, so they almost had a year on me

in some cases. Well, when you make your first Holy Communion, it’s always in second

grade and it might be the same year that you make you first confession too, and Holy

Communion is a symbol of taking in the Body of Christ and the Blood of Christ into you

and, you know, that’s a big deal when you can get in line and go and have communion

like the big people. We had wafers. Initially, when I made my first Holy Communion,

they didn’t, the priest was the only one who drank the wine and I don’t remember at what

point later then they started having wine with the Eucharist, but I never liked drinking out

of the same cup as everybody so I never. I don’t care if you take that towel and wipe the

lip of the Chalice, those germs are still there and they wouldn’t move the towel. It was

just the same part of the towel wiping it and they still do it. They still do it. Anyway, so

I was in, we all processed into church, all the second graders who were making their first

communion and you also have to be a member of the Catholic church in order to make

your first communion, and we processed in according to height, so I was in the front and

in the other line, a girl named Kim Wheeler was in the front and we were the shortest

ones and everybody came behind us, and I can remember the cameras clicking, probably

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flash bulbs. I don’t remember that. I just remember the clicking of the cameras and

being so proud that I was at the front of the line. I had the braces, but I didn’t have any

crutches, not until I got into high school. So, and you know, I just had this thought, but

because we were processing into the church and I was at the front of the line, this thought

just came to me, but nobody could walk by me, nobody could come past me. They all

had to go at my pace and with making the first communion, there was a beautiful white

dress and a white veil and it really was fun to dress up and get all pretty, and I for the

most part did not like dresses, but for my first communion, I wanted everything that went

with it. I was quite proud and quite happy. Well, my sister’s just a year older so

anything she did, I couldn’t wait until it was my turn.

Then confession is a time where you, it used to be you go into these little, they’re

almost like closets with a curtain and you say, “Bless me Father for I have sinned. It has

been x number of days since my last confession,” or you know, probably the first one,

you’d say, “This is my first confession.” As a seven year old, you’d confess, “I lied to

my parents,” you know, “Fought with my brothers and sister,” whatever, “I beat up my

baby brother,” you know, those sorts of things. So you have to say so many “Our

Father’s” and so many “Hail Mary’s,” these are prayers and “Hail Mary” is a prayer to

the Virgin Mary. “Hail Mary” is probably about the same length of prayer as “Our

Father,” and you’ve seen the rosary, so on the rosary, you have ten smaller beads that you

pray, those are all “Hail Mary,” and then when you get through ten “Hail Mary’s,” then

there’s a larger bead and that’s where you pray the “Our Father,” and then after that,

there’s ten smaller beads you pray your “Hail Mary,” and then the bigger ones “Our

Father,” and I think there’s like, you know, four sets of ten around the rosary, but then

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there were also special prayers that could be said at the time that you said the “Our

Father,” but I never clued into that. So all this to say, you know, those, those prayers that

you would pray for your penance basically were the prayers that you would pray on the

rosary, but sometimes it would be four “Hail Mary’s,” and two “Our Father’s,” or you

know, something like that, but I can remember the first time I went into that confessional,

I walked as quietly as I could so that my braces wouldn’t squeak and they wouldn’t clunk

around and the priest wouldn’t know who I was. I would have, you know, I would have

been devastated had he known what I had done and when he looked out, you know, into

the congregation, he could look at me and think, “Oh man, she lied to her parents.” It’s

like the hand of God, only you see it. It’s the visible extension of God. I don’t know if

he ever knew, he probably did, I probably was noisier than I thought, but you know, I

think it’s interesting as a seven year old the desire not to be known in a negative light, but

just to fit in like everybody else. Everybody else who went in there walked on their tippy

toes and then kneeled down. I couldn’t walk on my tippy toes, but I was so tired of

standing out, as we’ve discussed earlier.

In the Catholic tradition, there’s no Sunday school on Sundays. You had religion

classes in your parochial school. I’m acquainted with the Protestant way of Sunday

School, just because I’ve attended not Catholic churches, but not in our church, and you

know, as I’m sitting here thinking, you’re talking about earliest memories in church, our

church had the, the main part where all the pews were, there were four rows of pews

across the church. It was huge and I don’t know how many, you know, how many rows

went back from the front to the back. The pulpit was up on an altar and there were two or

three stairs to get up there and there may have been 40 from the front to the back. I don’t

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know. So you had the main church area and then off to the side, perpendicular to the

right of the main church as you would be looking from the back toward the front, off to

the right, so you’d be off to the side of the altar area where the priest is standing, there’s

what they called the “Crying Room,” and that’s where people with little kids who were

going to be moving around or new babies, that’s where you would go for church and

there were stairs to get up there too, probably three or four stairs to get up in there, and

my youngest brother, Jacque, is five years younger and I can remember the twins and my

older sister and I just begging, “Oh please, can we sit in the main church? We don’t want

to go to the Crying Room. We’re too old for that. We’re too big,” and “No, no, no, we

need to go to the Crying Room. You kids don’t sit still,” dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. So it

was a graduation, if you will, when we got to go sit in the big church. You sat with your

parents in the Crying Room. It just was more pews that were, your whole family would

sit there. There were pews there set up just like in the main body of church and the priest

was piped in and we could see because there was a glass window, and there was a door

on the side that was closed. So we could hear him, but he couldn’t hear all the

commotion from us or the other people who were there praying.

The sermons were always religious. In the Catholic Church, there’s always three

readings. There’s a reading from the Old Testament, there’s a reading from the New

Testament, and then the priest reads usually one of the Gospels, and early on, there were,

well, there were two podiums on either side of, I want to call it the altar, but there was

like a raised high altar where the priest, you know, did the opening prayers and where his

chair sat and where he would prepare communion and pray over it, and then you’d come

down two or three stairs and then there was another level up by the altar where there were

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podiums or lecterns, and the priest was always on the left side as you would be looking

toward the front of the church and then, you know, somebody who helped do the first and

second readings, you know, a lay person would, or there were prayer petitions that were

offered before communion as well that a lay person would read, and so, there was a point

why I was going into all this detail, oh I know, because initially when I was young, the

priest always stayed behind the podium to read the Gospel and then to give his sermon,

and then he would go back up the steps to his chair and sit for a moment and then, you

know, start to, to lead everybody into the communion time. Of course, you had to pray

your prayer of confession before that, but in more recent times, priests now move out

from behind the podium and come down the stairs and address everybody in a more

proximal range. In fact, when I was like in seventh and eighth grade, we got a new,

younger priest, Father Tom Bozell, and so he started to come down and it helped you to

pay attention better because he was so much closer. He wasn’t this man on a mountain,

you know, he was right there in front of you. No, no sermons stand out. Usually, you

know, that was a time to zone out. Actually, the whole hour in church was zone out time,

but the thing about Father Bozell when he came, I think I was in seventh grade, because I

remember talking with my sister, he was twenty-something and we thought he was so

cute. He had black, curly hair and he had this moustache. All the girls thought he was

cute and I probably had a little crush on him. My sister thought he was cute too. He was

so much younger than the grandfatherly type priests, who we always saw, and Father

Murphy was the priest who retired and he was there from the time I was in first grade,

maybe even earlier. I think he retired and stayed in a, I don’t know if there’s like a living

area for priests. I know there was for nuns, but I don’t know about priests, not

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necessarily at the church, but in the city. So when you say move away, I’m not exactly

sure. We were not privy to those details. It’s like, this one’s retiring, and it was more

than just one priest. There was also an associate priest, Father Skaronski was the

associate priest when I was in grade school, and he looked like Jesus. We all thought he

looked just like Jesus, had the hairstyle, had the beard and the mustache, the way he

walked and talked. He might have been Polish. There were a lot of Polish folks in our

church and our neighborhood, hard telling. So those are early memories. I’ve not been a

practicing Catholic all of my life. There was a period of transition.

We had religion classes in parochial school, but then also, one day a week you

went to church as a class. The first, second and third graders had one day of the week

where they all went to church, and fourth and fifth graders had another day where they all

went to church, and the sixth, seventh and eighth graders had another time, and each

class, there were two classrooms for each grade level and so each classroom would take

turns planning, you know, which students would read the petitions and which students

would do the readings. Prayer petitions, they are, before you, after the Gospel reading

and the sermon message, you pray a prayer confession and there are basically prayers that

the church offers in the form they call them petitions and so it might be, “Lord, we ask

you to bless all the people who have been affected by Hurricane Katrina and bring them

assistance.” They are petitions to God, prayers to God, and there might be four or six

and, as a grade school kid, I can remember, you know, having my little cut out sheet of

paper that had my petition on it and, for the younger kids, who were too short to see up

over the podium, there was a wooden box that was covered with a carpet and you would

step up on that box and your face would be right at the microphone level and you could

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see up over the podium, you know, and so I remember having my little piece of paper and

stepping up on that box and reading and being so nervous, you know, sweaty palms and

all that kind of stuff, but feeling so proud that you get to be part of it. So at least one day

a week, we attended church with the school and, of course, you went to church on

Sunday, and my sister and I were also involved in the choir. I can’t remember when that

started. It might have been fifth or sixth grade, but as I told you in earlier interviews, my

family’s very musical and my sister and I especially loved singing. So it was fun to be in

the choir just because of my love for music. In eighth grade, I remember that we studied

the prophets. I remember studying Amos. I don’t remember anything about Amos. I

just remember studying about the prophet Amos. Mr. Cameron was our religion teacher

and I think throughout eighth grade we studied, you know, it was like historical figures.

Amos was an Old Testament prophet and Hosea. I’m sure we talked about Abraham.

I’m sure we talked about Daniel, you know, but I remember Amos for some reason.

In the way that religious instruction plays in my daily life, you know that God

sees everything you do, every move you make, and so there is, you feel like there’s

always a set of eyes on you, you know, fear that you are going to go to hell if you didn’t

measure up. I carried that fear with me for a long, long, long, long time, and burn and

fire, and you see all these screaming skeletal faces, agony. We learned about purgatory,

but I don’t remember specifically studying art about it. I can remember our textbooks

having pictures, but they were not disturbing paintings. They were always peaceful or

commanding, you know, the prophets on top of the mountain with their arms stretched

out and the light shining down on them, those sorts of pictures in the book. I remember

talking about the crusades, but it was a much different vantage point than I learned later

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in life. It was these were evil people and they were witches, and you needed to get rid of

them and that was the context in which we were taught, you know, but then, like Joan of

Arc, because she stood up to the army that came after her and she was burned at the

stake, she became a saint and the Catholic church has all these people that have been

canonized as saints by, you know, the various Popes over time, and so you think, “Wow,

that would be cool to meet some of the saints,” and you know, there’s a patron saint for

healing and there’s a patron saint for travel, and you know, there’s all these specific

saints assigned to different parts of your life and I remember asking who my patron saint

was. I think based on what your name is you had a patron saint. You might have St.

Peter or you might have St. Paul, and my name was, my patron saint was Joan of Arc

because my name was Jean. I thought that was cool. She was woman, you know, and

powerful woman, but I didn’t know, like I said, I had no larger context then than what we

were taught and even though I eventually left the Catholic Church, there is a time when I

went through confirmation. When you are sixteen years old and are a junior in high

school, typically is when it happens, you make a decision for yourself that you are going

to be a member of the Catholic church and, you know, anybody you marry has to convert

to Catholicism if they’re not already Catholic and, you know, that was another big

coming of age, but it was also nice to get the cards and the cash gifts too.

I was going to say, there’s not a specific point of when this transition occurred for

me, but I remember during an earlier interview with you, I talked about how I came back

from all my hip surgeries in body casts and nothing had worked, and I was in this religion

class in I guess it was tenth grade by that time, and I was asking why. Why wasn’t I

healed? Why didn’t any of these surgeries work? Why, why, why, why, why, and the

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teacher had no answer and this is in Catholic high school. I went to a public high school

for junior and senior years, but you know, for my freshman year, I was at this all girls

Catholic high school through November, Divine Savior of Holy Angels High School, you

know, from August to November, and then when I came back from all the surgeries was

January of my sophomore year, but I was only there two weeks and then I was gone

another month with a pressure sore. So essentially, I came back in February of my

sophomore year and went through June, and then my junior year went to the other high

schools, so I was there, but I wasn’t, you know, it’s, I never, except for those first few

months before my bike accident when I did feel connected. After that, I didn’t feel a

connection at all to the school, to the parochial school. So anyway, getting back to your

question about that transition, I don’t know if the transition started at that point, you

know, in my sophomore year when I was asking questions that the smart religion teacher

couldn’t answer and my parents didn’t seem to have any. I asked those questions in a

class setting in front of all the other students. I don’t remember what we were studying,

but I raised my hand and I was, you know, fighting back tears and asking these questions

why and she wasn’t able to meet me where I was, and then at that point, my parents had

started taking me to these faith healers and I felt hopeful and resentful all at the same

time, and I think I’ve gone through, you know, the prayer meeting with W.B. Grant and

the first one, we didn’t realize he was a fraud and I was told, “If you have even an ounce

of doubt, you will not be healed. You have to have 100% faith.” So the second time we

went back is when I found out and I learned that he was a fraud and so maybe that. Well,

the first time W.B. Grant came to town, we got there kind of late and we were way, way,

way in the back of this huge convention center, 1982 jumps to mind so that’s sophomore

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year. It might have been the following summer, so it was the summer between being at

DSHA and going to Custer High School. In 1982-83, I was a junior, and 1980-81 was

the year that I was in the body casts, and 1981-82 was the year that I came back to school

in the middle of the year. So the first time he came, we got there late, we were in the

back, you know, there was no way he was ever going to see us and come up and pray

over me, and heal me, and all that, so then we knew he was coming back and I don’t

remember if it was six months later or a year later, but he came back so maybe this was

1983. March stand out in my mind for some reason. We got there really, really early, got

seats pretty close to the front because it was so early that hardly anybody was there and I

overheard a conversation that W.B. Grant had with an elderly black woman, who was

sitting on a raised platform. There were seats in the main part of the convention center

and then there were more seats on the side that were facing, you know, the main body of

seats and it was up on a raised platform, and I heard her tell W.B. Grant that she had

rheumatoid arthritis and it was the worst case doctors had ever seen and he stood there

listening to her, and then later during what I’ll call the show, quote unquote, you know,

there’s thousands of people crowded into this convention center and he walked over to

this woman and, you know, put his hands on his head and then closed his eyes and he’s

not remembering, but you know, he’s calling this vision that’s coming down from the

Lord, “Now, doctors say you have the worst case of rheumatoid arthritis,” “Yes,” you

know, and so he was repeating all this stuff that she had told him and I don’t remember

anything except that she had rheumatoid arthritis and doctors said it was the worst case,

but they talked for quite a while and he was pretending that he was just learning this. So

initially before the crowd was there, he came out and was talking to this woman. Then an

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hour and a half or two hours later when the thousands of people are there, now he comes

out as if he’s led to this woman by God and he’s being given this information on the spot.

Well, I overheard the initial conversation and both my parents were there. I don’t

remember if they were sitting next to me when this conversation was going on. My

mother may have been parking the car. My Dad may have come in with me, you know. I

don’t remember my parents in that image. I just remember looking over to my left

overhearing this conversation and then during, you know, the show, he came out and he’s

calling all this information down from the Lord and then he asked her, “Now, have I ever

met you before?,” “No sir,” “Have we ever talked?,” “No sir.” I wanted to stand up and

say, “I heard them talking,” you know, but I was afraid I was going to get in trouble with

my parents and I was so shy, I never would have, I wouldn’t have done that, but my soul

inside wanted to scream out he’s a fraud, and so. I remember talking about it with my

parents in the car on the way home and I’m not sure if they believed me or disbelieved

me, but I had such a foul taste in my mouth, you know, to use that expression, that I

didn’t want to go to any more of these faith healers, and I can also remember, I don’t

know if my Dad was there, but my Mom took me to this faith healer at a Protestant

church. I think we talked about this. They’re very charismatic and out there from my,

you know, tepid, Catholic, careful, you know every type of prayer experience and I was

walking on crutches and, you know, got to the front of the line and he’s like, very loud

chanting, raised his hands, and I was freaked out, and I pretended so that I could, so that I

could get this experience over, I pretended to be slain in the Spirit and just, you know,

dropped on my crutches and oh, my Mom, she was so excited about that, and you know, I

didn’t have the heart to tell her. I just wanted to get through it. The faith healers were all

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my parents. Well, W.B. Grant was caught. I don’t remember how, but it was exposed in

the news media that he was a fraud and perhaps he had been pilfering funds and self-

enriching, and my siblings were devastated. So he was exposed and, you know, my

siblings were disappointed by it. I don’t know that they believed me when I said he’s

fake, you know, I heard them talking on this morning. I was outraged and, on a certain

level, I resented having to go to these religious functions, you know, in an earlier

interview I talked about Sacrament of the Sick in the Catholic church and, you know, it’s

an opportunity once or twice a year for the priest to pray over people who have health

needs and I remember fighting with my Mom, “I’m not sick. I’m not sick. I don’t

belong there.”

So the transition then continued when I got out of high school, but while I was in

high school, I was still attending Mass every Sunday and I was bored and it was my

tradition, it’s all I know, that is my family tradition. Then after I graduated from high

school in June of 1984; started college; after a year and a half, flunked out of the

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; and so for the next year, the Fall of 1986, I moved

in with the O’Brien family and I worked as a live-in mother’s helper and the family with

whom I lived, attended Assembly of God church, which is very charismatic, quite large.

It’s not quite as emotive as Pentecostal, but speaking in tongues, yes, and being a

missionary wherever you are, witnessing, born again. I lived with them for a year and

went to their Assembly of God church and it was an expectation on their part that I went

with them. It wasn’t quote unquote part of the job. It was expected. It was an

expectation living with them, “You will go to church with us,” but I only became aware

of that when I moved in, but I knew Laurie. Laurie had been my nurse when I was in the

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hospital and I knew something of her belief system. It was my last pressure sore and she

had been my night nurse and, you know, she was only five years older than me, fairly

close in age, and she liked to joke around and stuff, but like in the middle of the night,

she’s wake me up, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning and she’d sing, “I am a C, I am a C-h, I am a

C-h-r-i-s-t-i-a-n, I’ve got C-h-r-i-s-t-i-a-n in my h-e-a-r-t, and I will l-o-v-e e-t-e-r-n-a-l-l-

y,” and I’d say, “Laurie, you woke me up,” “I know,” you know. I don’t know how she

would wake me up, but then she would, and I’m a very light sleeper to this day. So I

would wake up and then she would sing that or, you know, other little catchy tunes that

had to do with praising God, but you know, I didn’t feel like I had many alternatives

after, and what I’m saying is, I moved in with them because I didn’t feel like I had other

alternatives. I definitely did not want to go back and live with my parents and this was an

option. Going back to live with my parents would have been like an admission of defeat

for me, failure, failure. Well, I remember my Mom articulating that her house had a

revolving door and, you know, my sister had moved out and then she’d moved back in.

My sister is very bright, but it took her many years to develop common sense and I

admired her intensely until we got into high school and then she just went her own way,

rebelled against all this structure and, what’s interesting now is she’s very conservative,

right-wing, she attends a Baptist church, so she sort of came full circle. So when I moved

in with this family, I knew that they were Evangelical. There was Dan, the husband, who

just was, he’s Evangelical, but he lived it more than force-feeding it, had a very gentle

way about him and I actually was very attracted to him. Nothing ever happened, but I

just, I liked being around him and I liked the way that he lived his faith rather than the

way that Laurie vocalized her faith, and you know, Laurie also had other expectations. In

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the summer time, I was to hang my laundry out on the clothing line. We didn’t use the

dryer in the summer time because we needed to save money. Well, it was, their washer

and dryer were in the basement just like in my childhood home and so I remember, you

know, lifting the basket up a couple of stairs at a time and then when you got to the top of

those stairs, there was a landing and you could walk outside of that door or you would

turn to the right and go up three of four more stairs to get up to the kitchen and main

level, and my bedroom was down in the basement, and at this time I was walking on

crutches, the kind that go under your arms, not the forearm crutches, and so I would open

the door and, you know, hit the laundry basket with my crutch to slide it, you know, over

the cement, and then there was a picnic table in their backyard and initially, when I tried

to hang the clothes up on the clothing line, well, my crutches kept falling down under my

arms and, consequently, then I would go down and I’d go back up. So I started dragging

this heavy, wooden picnic table around the backyard so that I could hang up my laundry

in the summer time. I would sit on the top of the picnic table and then I could easily hang

them up, but you know, you could only go so far before you have to get down and drag it,

move it over, and that was pretty hard, but you know, and I resented having to do that. It

was very difficult, but at the same time, I was not going to move back home. This was

going to work. So I went to church with them every Sunday, you know. I can remember

having conversations, a couple, one or two times with Dan in the basement. I was so

angry at Laurie because of, I don’t know, I don’t know if it was her expectations, just the

force feeding of the religion and constant judgments, and you know, she was very

judgmental. Although, it, you know, the, she thought that she was the mouthpiece of God

that, you know, she went so far as to tell me, “You know, your friends, I’m worried about

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the people you’re spending time with and I think you’re going to go to heaven, but only

by the skin of your teeth and you need to think about different friends.” Well, I was

hanging out with my friend Cathy from high school. She was a big time partier and I

always tended to hang out with the quote unquote freaks, even though I never smoked, I

never got high, I didn’t do drugs or anything like that. You had the jocks and the freaks

and the greasers as characterized by other adolescents. The greasers were like from the

Fonzie days, you know, you had the slicked back hair and the motorcycles and the leather

jackets. Freaks were the ones who wore the Army jackets and got high and basically

were in the drug scene, you know, and smoked cigarettes. They seemed, you know, I

analyzed this many times and I think it’s because they were the most accepting non-

judgmental group for anybody. You could come from any walk of life and be a freak and

come right in. As long as you’re not judging them, they’re not judging you. You know, I

got teased.

Well, I analyzed just the fact that they were the lest judgmental peer group in high

school, this is in the public high school, and I, I think another interesting part of that, that

group is that nobody was wealthy and my sister and I had gone to Divine Savior of Holy

Angels, and that’s where all the doctor’s daughters went and the lawyer’s daughters went,

and we were surrounded by kids from very wealthy families and it was one of the most

elite Catholic high schools. Marquette High School was the male partner school to

Divine Savior of Holy Angels, so it was an elite, Divine Savior of Holy Angels was all

girls and Marquette High School was all boys, so those were the brother sister schools.

There were other Catholic schools and there was St. Joan Antina was an all girls Catholic

school. I never thought about our school in elite terms, I don’t know, but I don’t think so.

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It was the most expensive school. The one that I went to so probably it was the most

elite. I honestly have never thought of it in those terms until now, and my sister resented

that we were with all of these, she resented the lawyer’s daughters and the doctor’s

daughters. She thought they were all snooty, stuck-up, and you know, we had no money

like that. Our parents were not picking us up in cars like that. We were working class

and so she felt less when around them, and she’s the one who really made the biggest

stink about going to Custer High School her junior and senior year. She wanted out of

that school and she told my parents why and that she didn’t fit in. Well, initially, my

parents said, “We just want you to get a good education. You’re smart,” and she got

straight A’s without trying, so this would have been, you know, a really good place for

her, but she didn’t want to be there and, when she left, I didn’t want to be there either.

But for me, it wasn’t just that I was uncomfortable being around the lobby elite. For me,

it was I want to graduate on time. I don’t care about their argyle socks and their

monogram sweaters. I don’t care. My sister made a huge deal. Those things were not

important to me. I wanted to graduate on time and that was important to me and there

almost was, you know, I’ve talked about a prejudice against black people in our family.

There was also, as I think about it, a prejudice against people who were wealthy, a belief

that you would never, that we would never get there, and since we will never get there,

you know, it was never a goal, but at the same time perhaps, there was a jealousy of the

lifestyle. There were wealthier suburbs. We grew up fifteen minutes away from a very

wealthy suburb of Milwaukee, Whitefish Bay. They used to call it “White Folks Bay,”

because it’s all wealthy and mostly Catholic at that time. Well, there was Irish Catholic,

Polish Catholic, Italian Catholic, and wealthy, wealthy. So anyway, there was a negative

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stigma against people who were wealthy and my Dad more openly expressed this, but

you know, neither of my parents was comfortable. I don’t remember them feeling very

comfortable around, you know, the higher class people, you know, if we were at an event

or something. It just didn’t feel worthy to socialize or mingle with them. It’s not so far

because the, there is a relationship, you know, we were just talking about W.B. Grant and

his desire to become wealthy by any means and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and I

guess coming from the Catholic church, the nuns take a vow of poverty, you know, I

don’t know if the priests take a vow of poverty, but their life is the church. They never

marry because their focus is the church and so there was a value on being poor, and

perhaps that fed into the discomfort with people who were wealthier. But you know, my

life has gone in so many different directions, I mean opposite directions from all of that.

It’s fun to think about it. Especially the fact that I’m fundraising with people who are

millionaires now, you know, and are genuinely wealthy and have money to donate.

So at the Assembly of God church, there were some very wealthy people because

it was a church in Brookfield. Brookfield used to be, it’s another suburb of Milwaukee, a

western suburb, and it was near the western suburb where I lived with the O’Brien

family. With them, I lived in West Allis, right by the State Fair Park. You could hear the

stock cars going around the track from their house. So, you know, I would go to church

with the O’Brien’s every Sunday and I knew Brookfield was, it was Brookfield Assembly

of God, and I knew Brookfield was a wealthy place because a lot of the girls came to

DSHA from Brookfield, and you know, I hadn’t, other than being at DSHA, you know, I

hadn’t gone to church with the elite, the wealthy elite, and I remember, you know, their

clothing was different, you know, the women wore fancy hats. The church had

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thousands. There were a thousand or more people who attended there, but I remember

noticing the clothing. They were much better dressed, the jewelry, and like I said, the

women’s hats really stand out to me. Well, it was fashion, you know, its high fashion.

So anyway, but as I was talking about having a meeting or two with Dan because of how

judgmental Laurie was, but you know, she was judging my friends and judging me and

I’d had it up to here with that. The skin of the teeth comment made me very angry, but

Dan was always very diplomatic about it and he just, he just had an easy personality and I

think it was because of him that I lasted as long as I did in such an Evangelical home. It

was December of 1986, I’d moved in with them in January of 1986, and December of

1986, I decided that I was going to move out. Laurie was eight months pregnant and I

don’t know why I did it this way, I don’t remember, but the night before I moved out I

told them I was moving out. Laurie was done with school. I was, the main reason why it

worked so well for me to be there was because she was working on her RN. She was an

LPN and she was working on her RN, and Dan worked all day as an auto mechanic, and

you know, Naomi was two and Danny was a baby. He might have been nine months old

when I started and, anyway, they were young and then she was pregnant with child

number three, who as born in January of 1987, and I had just moved out, and Laurie was

very wounded by that, a lot of tears flowed, Dan was hurt and angry, but I felt like I just,

I didn’t want to live like that anymore, and I had friends I was talking to about the

judgment, just the constant judgment. I never explained that to them, not to this day. I

stayed in touch with them for many years, sent Christmas cards, but I don’t think I ever

told they why because I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to get into all of that and

it’s a long discussion, particularly since Laurie wouldn’t have seen herself as judgment,

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never, she was the hand of God, and she still is. Well, I’ll tell you, even to this day, she

is trying to reconnect, you know, I’ve got two e-mails in my AOL box from her, but you

know, her e-mails ask, “What is your cell phone number? I want to see you and want to

connect with you,” and da, da, da, da, da, and I have been hesitant to do that, and they are

serving as foster parents for a number of kids. I think they’ve had twelve kids in and out

of their home and they’ve adopted a number of kids through the foster system, and I

guess I have an embarrassment because years ago, they asked me for a letter of

recommendation. I never, because they wanted to become foster parents, I didn’t know

what that meant, I didn’t know what it was and so I wrote a very honest letter about how,

I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but I remember saying that, you know, “There

were times when they got on my last nerve,” and we’ll leave it at that. So anyway, and

now, I know what letters of recommendation are for and I feel embarrassed by that. I

wonder if the social worker shared that letter and like, “Do you know what this is all

about,” you know. Dan’s never been as friendly as he once was, I think since the letter

since the time they were asking, it was in the ‘90s, I honestly can’t remember, but at this

point, I’m here and had not been very close to them for a number of years. Well see,

now, I know what a letter of recommendation is. I’m more experienced in life. I was

honest, but I wouldn’t face them. I wonder if the letter wasn’t shared and maybe this is

just me looking into things because I feel guilty. I probably still saw myself as a Catholic

while I was attending the Assembly of God with them and I was questioning Catholicism,

but you know, it had been the tradition in which I grew up and I didn’t even think of it as

a tradition. It was my church, you know.

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This is all part of my transition, so I left the O’Brien’s and I moved in with

another nurse who took care of me while I went through my hip surgeries. Her name is

Cindy and I was with her until February and she and her husband couldn’t afford to have

me stay there beyond that, so I moved back to my mother’s house. It was very painful,

very painful. So I was with my Mom from February of 1987 until August of 1987, at

which time I moved here to the University of Illinois. There were many, many years that

I did not attend church. In fact, when I, when I moved here in 1987 until 1992, I didn’t

attend church. It was back burner. It’s, you know, I have, you know, it’s in the back of

my mind, particularly the principles that were taught at the Assembly of God church. It

was a whole new perspective after growing up Catholic. Well, in the Catholic Church,

you never really feel forgiven. You can go to confession, but as soon as you walk out the

door, if you have an impure thought, boom, you belong back in that confessional. So in

the Catholic Church, you never feel forgiven. In the born again realm, you won’t have to

go to a priest and ask for forgiveness. You just talk to God on your own. It’s a personal,

it’s just a personal relationship, you and God, that’s it, and I like that. I didn’t like going

to face-to-face confession. I didn’t like going to confession period. So and, you know,

this was a more anonymous approach to, it was an anonymous admission to guilt of sin.

So I, religion and all that stuff is, I’m not practicing it, I’m thinking about it but, I have

no interest, and I’m turned off by all the faith healers.

So in 1991, I won my second Boston Marathon, I was, and then I won the

Women’s Sports Foundation’s Amateur Sports Woman of the Year award, and I beat out

Kristi Yamaguchi for that award. I was the first person with a disability to win this

award. Janet Evans had won this award, Bonnie Blair had won this award, Jackie Joyner

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Kersey had won this award, and I’m like, “Wow! They respect me as an athlete.” It was

huge. It was monumental, and the women’s basketball coach here on campus, the able-

bodied team, was Cathy Lindsey and I used to dog sit for Cathy Lindsey. When she

traveled, her husband is an attorney and they came to Illinois from Ohio, but they still

hadn’t sold their house and he was between both homes, and so when Cathy traveled, I

would dog sit for Willie, their Cocker Spaniel, their crazy Cocker Spaniel. He was

genuinely crazy. They had to put him down. But anyway, I knew Cathy because my

coach Marty’s wife, Karen, supervises the athletic training program on campus and

Karen’s sport, as an athletic trainer, was women’s basketball and she and Cathy are the

same age, they got pregnant with their first children, you know, at the same time.

Cathy’s daughter was born in October and Karen’s son was born in November, and so

Cathy was asking Karen if she knew of anybody to dog sit and I was the person. Well,

after I won my second Boston and won this Women’s Sports Foundation award, Cathy

Lindsey wanted some special recognition on campus for me, and so she talked to an

Associate Women’s Athletic Director at that time named Debbie Richardson, and this is

the end of 1991, beginning of 1992, and actually, initially, the conversation started at the

end of 1991, and so I was talking to Debbie Richardson on the phone and it was arranged

that I would be honored at halftime of the women’s basketball game in February of 1992.

Well, Court Siders is the booster group for women’s basketball and so there used to be

luncheons for Court Siders members, and so when Cathy Lindsey was the coach, I’d go

to the luncheons once in a while and so in January of 1992, Debbie Richardson came up

and introduced herself to me. We’d only been talking on the phone, so now I met her in

person, and there was just something about her that clicked. She had a peace about her

26

and a joy about her and I just, I wanted to hang out with her and be around her. She’s

much older than me. She’s thirteen years older than me, but we just clicked, and we had

the honoring ceremony. I got a gift from the Chancellor at the time, Morton Weir, and I

got a gift from the Dean at the time, Mike Ellis, and Cathy, you know, gave me

something on behalf of the DIA. Mike Ellis was the Dean of Applied Life Studies at the

time. Now it’s Applied Health Sciences, but back then it was Applied Life Studies. So it

was the Chancellor, the Dean, and Cathy Lindsey’s program, and then after the naming

ceremony was over, and see, I remember the date. It was February 7, 1992. After that a

couple of weeks later, Debbie and I went to lunch and we just started hanging out and

spending time together, and she started to witness to me. She was born again and she

grew up Catholic and had her own experience, and I shut that off right away, you know, I

was like, “No way. No thank you.” The relationship with Laurie came back and I asked

questions, I told her about all those faith healing experiences and, you know, being force-

fed religion with the O’Brien’s and I just didn’t want any part of it. She was like,

“Okay.” She invited me to church and I was like, “No thank you,” but she had such a

gentle, warm spirit that to please her, I agreed to go to church with her and there weren’t

fireworks at first, but eventually, I started going every Sunday to Windsor Road Christian

Church. It’s on Windsor Road between Mattis and Duncan, halfway between. In fact,

the street with my name on it starts right there at the church and goes up to Duncan. It’s

the Honorary Jean Driscoll Way. You’ve not seen it? Well see, if you’re on the corner

of Windsor and Duncan, you’ll definitely see it, but it’s, there’s little signs between

Windsor Road Christian Church, which is a half-mile east of Duncan, all the way toward

Duncan. Anyway, so I became a member and really got fired up. I loved the church. It

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wasn’t as charismatic in your face as the Assembly of God. There was no speaking in

tongues and that sort of thing. It just, it was a calmer atmosphere.

Reject is a strong word. I don’t, I don’t want to be a member of the Catholic

Church. I don’t like the rope prayers. I don’t like the, it’s more of a disassociation.

That’s a better way to put it, you know, maybe I find reject too strong, you know, I know

I don’t care for the Catholic Church. Part of my Christmas present to my mother every

year when I’m home at Christmastime is to go to the Catholic Church. I don’t feel

comfortable in it. She’s moved out to a western suburb and so I don’t connect with that

church at all. It’s a more modern building, but anyway, I have, I’m not a practicing

Catholic. See, I guess why I struggle is because I have extended family who I love

dearly, deeply, and I would never want them to feel like I’m judging their religion by

saying that I reject it. I want them to have peace when they’re around me about who they

are and where their faith is, and they know I don’t attend a Catholic church and, you

know, a generation earlier, it would have been a huge deal, but my sister actually is the

one who paved that path, mowed that grass, took that thrasher and mowed that path. She

made it very well known. She went toe to toe with my Dad. My Dad had his Catholic

Bible open, she had her Christian Bible open and, you know, I don’t remember what her

transition story was, but anyway, she was annoying because, you know, in that five year

period where I was not connected, 1987 to 1992, she’d come to visit me and leave these

little notes in my underwear drawer or with my t-shirts, or under my pillow that had

Scripture or, you know, some sort of charismatic message on it, just to accept Jesus as my

Lord and Savior was the only way I was going to be saved and it felt like force fed

religion, which I already over and over had experienced. So it took somebody with a

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softer touch, but, and for many, many, many, many years, I passionately attended church

and, you know, engaged in Bible studies and went to small group meetings during the

week, and I’m at a point now where I’m questioning again and quite honestly, I have

thought a lot about what I would and wouldn’t say to you. Not so much that I feel, in the

realm of my faith, not so much because I feel as private about it as I used to. I used to

think it’s a very private thing. It’s a private relationship just like with your significant

other, but because if anything came out in print, I don’t want, I’m not ready for people to

know that I am, you know, questioning things. I’ve been on this platform, but I’m still a

member at Windsor Road Christian Church.