DONNA M. BEEGLE & CYNTHIA LEE A. PEMBERTON

DONNA

“To me … Tonto meant ‘not going down without a fight.’ That spirit proved to be my life’s anthem”

PROLOGUE For me Donna personifies endurance, love, openness and resilience. Donna is a Sister who has opened her life like a book in the library for all to read, highlight the important parts and walk away feeling “I want to read that book again, there’s so much to know.” How does anyone connect the various pieces of Donna’s life and go away unimpressed? A beautiful, blonde, petite woman who has conquered immeasurable barriers to become a nationally acclaimed advocate for those who have grown up in generational poverty … a poverty she has known since birth. When Donna speaks audiences listen to one who doesn’t read or simulate it, but has an authentic voice of knowing it.—Wangeci

DONNA’S STORY

Early Years I was born into generational poverty in West Phoenix, Arizona. My mom, dad, grandmother and four older brothers welcomed me home to a run-down, one bedroom house on Tonto Street. I’ve always liked that I was born on Tonto Street. I remember watching cowboy and Indian movies when I was little, and to me Tonto meant “not going down without a fight.” That spirit proved to be my life’s anthem. The streets I walked to school and played on were lined with cigarette butts, broken glass and candy wrappers. Neighborhood fields of Arizona dust and weeds, surrounded by misshapen barbed wire fences were my childhood playground. Violence and deprivation were part of every day. My parents and grandparents all were born into poverty. No one in the history of my family has ever owned property—we’ve always been workers of the land; picking cotton, grapefruits and oranges, not proprietors. For my family, menial, survival jobs—focused on the here and now are all we’ve ever known. Jobs, for us, have meant physical labor, sickness, and the endless frustration of struggling to bring home enough money for food and shelter. My mom dropped out of school in the eighth grade. My grandfather died of cancer at age 48, and as a result my mom had to help care for her six siblings. She

7 BEEGLE & PEMBERTON married young and began fulfilling the only role she’d ever known, that of being a wife and mother. I am the fifth of her six children, I have four older brothers. My mom had a child every year for four years, skipped 1960 and had me in January of 1961, and my brother Steve the following December. According to my mom, back then it was illegal for a doctor to educate women about birth control, and places like Planned Parenthood didn’t exist. With limited education my mom’s work options were few. She took in other people’s ironing, and was thrilled when a woman she ironed for began giving her little dresses for me. According to my mom the clothes were “like new,” and she loved dressing me up like a precious “little doll.” My dad unloaded trucks and took other odd, temporary jobs. Even though both my parents worked hard, there was never enough money. Choices between rent and food were the norm. “The American belief that ‘if you work hard, you’ll move up’ is a myth for those without education or training. Even if you work long and hard, you rarely move up … [and instead] … still get evicted and … often go hungry” (Beegle, 2006, p. 3). In 1964, then President, Lyndon B. Johnson said the following in his State of the Union Address: “Unfortunately, many Americans live lives on the outskirts of hope …” (cited in Beegle, 2006, p. 3). For my dad, the reality and futility of learned helplessness and hopelessness—living on the “outskirts of hope” wore him down. Eventually, he turned to gambling, thinking that somehow he’d win enough to provide. When I was two, after years of poverty and my dad’s gambling, my mom had had enough and left my biological father. Soon after she married the only “dad” I ever really knew, my step-dad, Kenny Austin. Kenny, too was from generational poverty, but proudly took on the struggles of trying to support a wife and six kids. I remember him as handsome, with dark curly hair, brown eyes and a ready smile. He made me laugh, and told jokes that my neighborhood friends were in awe of (When my mom heard Kenny’d often end up in trouble … apparently the jokes were not entirely appropriate for little girls). Kenny played the guitar, and we loved when we got to sing with him. I have blue eyes and when Kenny sang the chorus of my favorite song, I beamed with pleasure: “Beautiful, beautiful blue eyes, beautiful, beautiful blue eyes, I’ll never love brown eyes again.” I was sure that meant I was the most special girl in the world. Like my biological father, Kenny took whatever labor jobs he could get. Still, there was never enough money to meet even basic needs. He had some skills as a welder but the jobs were always temporary. We moved frequently, always in search of something better and a home free of cockroaches, peeling paint and bare bulb light fixtures. Despite his best efforts, no matter how hard he worked or where we went, hunger, utility cut-offs and evictions soon followed. At one point Kenny went to jail because he couldn’t pay accumulated traffic fines. My mom too did a short stint in jail for writing bad grocery checks; fortunately they were not in jail at the same time, so unlike many in poverty, we always had at least one parent in the household. Within the U.S. there are many structures in place that deny people in poverty the support they need by punishing them for things that are, most of the time, out of their control (Beegle, 2006).

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