Uncle John’s Presents Mom’s Bathtub Reader (38 page)
Read Uncle John’s Presents Mom’s Bathtub Reader Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers Institute
Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefánsson organized the expedition. He lectured that the Arctic was a friendly place and as bountiful a piece of real estate as Hawaii. Stefánsson’s four recruits carried enough supplies for six months. After that they’d have to live off Arctic “bounty.”
But when the expedition landed on Wrangel, they found no paradise. Isolated, bleak, and frozen—so much colder than Nome—Ada could barely tolerate it. Unlike the young men who believed in the importance of polar exploration, Ada was simply terrified, especially of the polar bears that roamed the island. Her biggest fear was that she’d never survive to see Bennett again.
By the following summer the crew was desperately watching for a promised supply ship that never came. By winter their food was nearly gone and one of the men, Lorne Knight, had scurvy. Ada was left to care for Knight and the camp’s cat, Vic, while the rest of the crew left with a dog team to find help. None of them was ever seen again.
Ada was malnourished, so she forced herself to learn new skills to survive. She learned to trap foxes and hunt birds and seals. Petite Ada invented a contraption to protect herself from the ricochet of a rifle so she wouldn’t be knocked off her feet. She even managed to fend off the polar bears. She was determined to survive and return to Bennett.
Though Ada kept Knight warm and fed, he died in the spring. Now absolutely alone, Ada nearly despaired, and only thoughts of Bennett kept her going. When a rescue ship finally arrived, Ada had spent nearly two years in the Arctic and the last six months alone—except for the company of Vic the cat.
When Ada returned to civilization, she immediately took Bennett to Seattle for treatment. His health remained fragile and Ada’s life remained difficult. She wanted to forget the horrors of Wrangel, but the press chased after her, demanding explanations for the disaster. When Ada wouldn’t talk, wild stories circulated about her. Some portrayed her as a heroine; other accounts blamed her for Knight’s death.
Ada married for the second time and had another son, Billy. This marriage didn’t last, and the two divorced. Money from the expedition ran out, and there were battles with illness and poverty. She took her sons to Nome where she finally turned her luck around. She herded reindeer and used the hunting and trapping skills learned on Wrangel to feed her family.
Bennett lived to be 56 and remained close to his mother all his life. So did her younger son, who became a leader of Alaska’s native population. Billy understood the historic importance of Ada’s ordeal, and he helped best-selling author Jennifer Nivens write Ada’s story, in the book
Ada Blackjack.
When his mother died, Billy proudly put a plaque on her grave that reads simply, “The Heroine of Wrangel Island.”
Candy Lightner didn’t get even. She got MADD.
O
n an evening in May 1980, Candy Lightner was an average mother of three, driving her 13-year-old daughter, Cari, to a friend’s house for a sleepover. When Cari opened the car door to leave, her mother suddenly was overwhelmed by the need to say, “Cari, you know I love you?”
“Oh, Mother, don’t be so mushy,” Cari replied. The ordinary evening probably would have been forgotten if it hadn’t been the last time Candy ever saw her daughter alive. The following day, Lightner came home from shopping with a friend and learned that Cari was dead. Walking along a quiet street on her way to a church carnival in Fair Oaks, California, Cari was hit from behind. A drunken driver rammed her with his car, sending her flying 125 feet, with a force that knocked her out of her shoes and killed her. He never bothered to stop.
A few days later, Candy learned from the California Highway Patrol officers investigating the incident that the driver who ran down her daughter had several prior drunk-driving convictions, but that considering the way the system worked, she’d be lucky if the driver did any jail time. He wound up spending 16 months behind bars, but Lightner’s sorrow fueled a new and consuming rage. If
drunk driving maimed and killed people, then why didn’t law enforcement take drunk driving more seriously?
Somehow Lightner made it through the funeral. Even while coping with unbearable loss while comforting her other children (Cari’s twin sister, Serena, and her younger brother, Todd) the shell-shocked mother knew that she wanted to make something positive come out of Cari’s death.
Lightner’s friends were as enraged about Cari’s death as she was and encouraged Lightner to take action. They supported her idea to found an organization to raise awareness of the deadly problems caused by drunk drivers and the relaxed penalties for those who were caught under the influence. One of her friends suggested a name: Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, which came to be better known by the acronym MADD.
At the time of Cari’s death, Lightner was a divorced Sacramento real estate agent and focused on raising her kids. She had no idea how to launch political reform and no political connections to make her voice heard. But, supported by her friends and motivated by her anger over Cari’s death, Lightner became an activist. She read books, did research, and consulted every possible ally she could think of. She eventually quit her job to begin a life of phone calls, meetings, and letter writing. Still wracked by crying jags, she forced herself to speak publicly, and calmly, about the daughter she missed so desperately. Otherwise she might be dismissed as an overwrought mother, too emotional to understand legal issues.
Candy stuck to her tactic with the first speech she wrote and delivered on her own at a traffic safety conference
in Oregon. She began with a description of Cari and the details of her death. She was so clear-eyed and calm that when she told the audience that Cari was “my little girl,” the crowd gasped in shock and the media went into a feeding frenzy. Soon MADD was national news. And so was MADD’s founder, who appeared around the country as a keynote speaker, gave interviews for radio and television, and testified before Congress. Soon the victims of drunk drivers had a representative with a human face—the pretty, freckled face of Cari Lightner.
From 1980 to 1985, MADD went from a local crusade to a national organization with three million members and chapters in all 50 states. MADD eventually spread to the international community, with 600 chapters worldwide. During Lightner’s tenure as head of MADD, alcohol-related accidents declined 14 percent and the legal drinking age was pushed from 18 to 21 in many states, saving an estimated 800 lives a year. In 1980, Cari was one of 25,000 people killed by drunk drivers. By 1992 the number was down to 17,000. Thanks to Lightner’s work, Americans must have lost their tolerance for drunk drivers; from 1980 to 1994 the numbers of intoxicated drivers dropped by over 30 percent.
All this success came at a price. As MADD grew and grew, Lightner took on the executive tasks of running an organization with dozens of paid employees and hundreds of volunteers. With these responsibilities and commitments, Lightner feared she was neglecting her children. In 1985 Lightner resigned from MADD. She took the time to deal with personal issues and to coauthor a book,
Giving Sorrow
Words
, to help those who mourned the loss of a loved one. But her legacy continues; MADD, which changed its name in 1984 to Mothers Against Drunk Driving, still helps victims of drunk drivers, monitors the courts, and works to pass stronger anti-drunk-driving laws.
Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1
Otherwise known as Whistler’s mother, Anna McNeil Whistler has become one of the most famous women in the world because of a tardy artist’s model. The story goes that in 1871, American painter James Whistler had arranged for a model to come to his London studio to pose for him. When she failed to show, Whistler asked his mother Anna, who was living with him, to pose instead. The painting became one of the most famous images in the world. Whistler called his mother’s portrait
Arrangement in Gray and Black No. 1: The Artist’s Mother
, but it is better known today as
Whistler’s Mother.
The painting helped establish Whistler’s credentials as a serious artist when the French government bought it in 1891, an event that unfortunately Anna didn’t live to see. The painting was eventually hung in Paris at the Musée d’Orsay, a great honor accorded to few American artists.
All moms can be divas, but can you ID these chanteuses from their stories?
1.
Everybody knows I’m a diva Supreme. But most folks don’t know that I’m also a mama Supreme. I led my two gal pals in our singing trio when we joined Motown and our first hit record was “Where Did Our Love Go?” Want to know where lots of my love goes? To my five kids. They’ll tell you I’m a devoted mom. I may be a star, but my kids and I have dinner together with no phone calls or TV allowed.
Who am I?
__A. Donna Summer
__B. Mary Wilson
__C. Diana Ross
__D. Gladys Knight
2.
I’m the comeback queen who got her start as half of a husband-and-wife singing duo. We had each other long enough to have a darling daughter and star in a hit comedy variety show. Our love didn’t last and we soon parted ways, but my solo career kept my children and me going strong. Whether listening to “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves,” “If I Could Turn Back Time,” or “Believe,” you’ll always recognize my distinctive sound.
Who am I?
__A. Natalie Cole
__B. Joni Mitchell
__C. Dolly Parton
__D. Cher
3.
I used to be the Material Girl, but that was before I had two kids, a boy and a girl. I don’t expose them to bawdy antics like the ones I’ve performed onstage. Instead of producing more adult books called Sex, I’m now writing children’s books. People may call me immoral but my second children’s book is based on rabbinical teachings that I learned while studying the spiritual lessons of the Kabbalah—so there!
Who am I?
__A. Debbie Gibson
__B. Madonna
__C. Cyndi Lauper
__D. Courtney Love
4.
I made quite a name for myself as the raven-haired lead singer of the psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane. With hits like “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love,” I was a freak-out queen in the late 1960s. Rumor has it that I named my daughter God, but that was just an unfortunate joke I made in the maternity ward right after her birth. Her name is and always has been China.