A Paralympian's Oral History Bonnie St. John
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A Paralympian's Oral History BONNIE ST. JOHN 1984 Paralympic Winter Games – Innsbruck, Austria – Alpine Skiing – Interviewed by: Wayne Wilson December 12, 2019 New York, New York ©2020 LA84 Foundation All rights reserved This oral history may not, in whole or in part, be copied, photocopied, reproduced, translated, or converted to any electronic or machine-readable form without prior written consent of the LA84 Foundation www.LA84.org LA84 Foundation 2141 W. Adams Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90018 A Paralympian's Oral History Bonnie St. John BONNIE ST. JOHN Wayne Wilson Interviewer: Today is December 12, 2019. My name is Wayne Wilson. I will be interviewing Bonnie St. John as part of the LA84 Foundation's series of oral histories with Paralympians. I'm in Los Angeles today. Bonnie is in New York and we are communicating by Skype. Bonnie, these oral histories tend to follow a chronological order. So, let's begin at the beginning with me asking you where you were born and when you were born. Bonnie St. John: I'm Bonnie St. John and I was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1964, on November 7th. Wilson: Do you have brothers and sisters? St. John: I have a brother and a sister. Do you want names or what do you want to know? Wilson: Are you older, younger, in the middle? Where do you fall in the birth order? St. John: I'm the youngest. So, I have an oldest sister, and then my brother and then me. Wilson: How much older are they? St. John: My sister's 3 ½ years older, and my brother's 2 1/2 years older. Wilson: Do you have an earliest memory of growing up? St. John: Gosh, my earliest memories are having a Fisher-Price phone that I dragged around, and being in Detroit, Michigan, and seeing snow. My family moved to San Diego when I was about 1 1/2. So, I know that if I remember seeing snow on the ground with a sled, that had to be before I was 1 1/2. Wilson: What did your parents do? St. John: My mother was a schoolteacher and then moved up to some administrative roles and then eventually became a vice principal and then a principal of schools. My father, I think, was an engineer, but he left before I was born. So, I didn't grow up with him around. My stepfather was retired. He was quite a bit older than my mother. So, he never worked while he was at home. Wilson: How old were you when your mother married your stepfather? 1 © 2020 LA84 Foundation All Rights Reserved A Paralympian's Oral History Bonnie St. John St. John: Pretty young, like 1 1/2, 2. Wilson: Were you still in Detroit? St. John: We were in Detroit when they got married and then they moved to San Diego. Wilson: Have you ever met or seen your birth father? St. John: I met him a couple of times. He died when I was 12. Wilson: You moved to San Diego when you were really young. Your stepfather was retired. Your mother was doing education administration. What did she do in San Diego when you moved? St. John: Well, she was still a teacher at that point. So, she moved from being a teacher in Michigan to being a teacher in California. And, ultimately in California worked her way up the ranks to being an administrator and then principal. She earned her Ph.D. along the way, as well. Wilson: Where did she do that? St. John: She got her degree from Northern Arizona University, but there was a Point Loma University in San Diego. She took a lot of her classes there, but ultimately got her degree from NAU. Wilson: I read in a number of biographies that your stepfather physically abused you. Could you explain what that involved? St. John: I don't know how much detail you want to hear, but … Wilson: As much as you're comfortable with. St. John: Yeah, it's all too common a story, sadly, but my mother married a much older man. My mother was Black. She was 27 years old and had three kids, and married a man 40 years older than her, who was white. He was a pedophile, basically, and abused both my sister and I. You know, looking back I can see, well, he took advantage of somebody who was really vulnerable, who didn't have a lot of family to protect her, or look after her and her kids, and took advantage. From the age of 2 to the age of 7 I was abused by him after school at home. I blanked a lot of those memories out for many years and only started to remember after he passed away. He passed away when I was about 18. I guess that's a pretty common situation that in order to survive you blank out those memories, and then once he passed away the memories surfaced. So, I've had to deal with that especially when I had my own daughter. The pain of that and the dysfunction of all that started to cause me a lot of issues. So, I've had to do a lot to deal with that. I wrote a book called 2 © 2020 LA84 Foundation All Rights Reserved A Paralympian's Oral History Bonnie St. John "How Strong Women Pray" and in that book I talk about some of the healing process, some of which was prayer and some of which was a lot of hard work and therapy, too. I think too many people talk about just the problem. They don't talk about the solutions. So, in "How Strong Women Pray" I did talk a lot about the things I had to do to heal. It's not enough to just sensationalize and say, "This happened and it was awful." I think we do have the power to get better. A lot of the work I've done in my life has been around resilience. And, the physical disability is an obvious part of that, but the abuse is another big piece where I've had to be resilient and work at it – not just hope to be resilient, but to actually work at it. Wilson: We don't have to spend a lot of time on this, but this involved your sister as well. Is that correct? St. John: My sister was also abused by him, too. Wilson: OK. So, you're now in San Diego. Your mother when she went there was a schoolteacher. Eventually she got into administration. Can you describe how her career progressed? She eventually was a high school principal. Is that correct? St. John: She eventually became a high school principal. I mean, she was a great teacher. She worked at a continuation school for a while. She had a lot of tough students and she was at tough schools. She later became vice principal at an inner-city Black school in San Diego. People who might be familiar with Marcus Allen, the football player, or Terrell Davis, they played football. I watched them play high school football at her school. She had some tough assignments, though, some difficult schools that were really under-resourced. She was very creative and very innovative. She would get a lot of sponsors from the community to put resources in. She made a difference. When she passed away over 300 people came to her funeral and shared stories … There were parents of her students whose lives she changed. So, she had quite a career. Wilson: When you were living in San Diego you were still very young. You had your leg amputated below the knee. Why was that? St. John: So, I was born with a birth defect. It's called PFFD. And, I think it's, "[Proximal] femoral focal deficiency" is what it stands for. And, they don't really know why it happens, but I was missing a growth center in my femur. So, when we say, "a below-the-knee amputation," it's a little misleading because it looks like a below-the-knee amputation because my stump comes down to about where my knee would have been. But, the reality is that my thigh is about four inches long. So, they actually amputated my ankle. And, it's the combination of my really short thigh and my calf that comes down to above my knee … They cut off the front of my foot and sewed over my heel. So, I still have my heel pad and that's just above my knee. They actually did shorten my leg at one point. Anyway, I went through a lot of 3 © 2020 LA84 Foundation All Rights Reserved A Paralympian's Oral History Bonnie St. John surgeries. I have a very small leg and I still have my heel pad, but it comes down to just above my knee. Wilson: In this process was there one surgery that was really the major surgery, or was this a process of several [major] surgeries? St. John: When I went in, when I was 5, I stayed in the hospital for six months. I think I had a couple of surgeries and that's when I came out with my first prosthesis. So, that was the major … I actually turned 6 while I was in the hospital. Later I came back and had other surgeries and there were other things that happened, but the main surgery was when I was 5 or 6.