I was always impressed on how Jeanie and Chris Adams maintained a cohesive family environment for Jade, despite being divorced. They both lived in the same condo complex, which made it very accessible for Jade to see both parents.
Every person brags that they drew money. Jeanie was part of the package with Steve Austin against Chris and Toni Adams that helped rejuvenate a dead territory in USWA at the Sportatorium to respectable attendance, long after the territory was scorched to the ground. They had a ground-breaking storyline of the jilted lover hooking up with her ex’s star pupil against him and his new wife. It had cat-fights, violence, and a soap opera which could have gotten over in this current PG-era of sports entertainment.
The fan in me was captivated when watching their feud in comparison to the drivel that the big promotions were producing at the time.
When Steve Austin debuted in WCW in 1991, he was originally managed by ‘Vivacious’ Veronica. I guess Veronica didn’t realize about my initial opinion of Jeanie. This girl is a threat based on looks and talent. Plus, she had genuine chemistry with Steve Austin which, as corny as it sounds, was evident on how they held hands when they came to the ring. WCW realized they picked the wrong valet for Steve Austin and rectified it.
Jeanie knew when to interact at ringside, interfere behind the referee’s back, cut a promo, and made ‘Stunning’ Steve Austin look like a million dollars and the next Ric Flair at the time, before he paved his own path and identity
Outside the ring, Jeanie was always fun to be around. There was never a dull moment.
When Jeanie came off the road from WCW in order to concentrate on raising a family, she was one of the coolest wrestling wives that I ever met. Many wrestling wives develop an ego based on their husband’s successes and star power as if it was their own success and stardom. At the height of ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin in 1998, I was still able to hang out with Jeanie for the day in NYC. Jeanie was still cool and down-to-earth.
Over the years, I would correspond with Jeanie. I love her for never changing, always talking about her daughters, and just being a genuine friend. The last time I saw Jeanie, she was on a documentary. I had to call her immediately to tell her that she must own a ‘hot tub time machine’, since she never aged. Chalk that as another reason why I am jealous of Jeanie.
When Jeanie’s editor asked me to write about her, I instantly said, “Hell Yeah!”
I have always been a fan of Jeanie in and out of the ring and she has, and always will be, a friend.
Missy Hyatt, the First Lady of Wrestling
PROLOGUE
Between 1983 and 2013 over a hundred people under the age of 50, who had all been involved in professional wrestling, had died.
For years, I seemed destined to become the next figure in this tragic statistic.
The majority of these names passed away due to substance abuse, a sad result of the excesses of their life on the road. A relentless touring and work schedule was based on a naïve belief that the show must always go on, no matter what. This, coupled with a party culture, bolstered the temptation for many performers to turn to drugs in order to cope with the daily grind.
There were drugs to put wrestlers to sleep and drugs to wake them up. There were drugs to numb their aches and pains, drugs to help them exercise and drugs which allowed them to perform their work, far away from their families for months at a time with barely any rest to their bodies and minds.
Recreational abuses of alcohol, cocaine and amphetamines were just as prevalent to survive the lifestyle which came with the job.
But many of the problems stemmed from the abuse of legal prescription drugs.
Fame ensured that large quantities could be easily attainable from crooked doctors and through the exploitation of failures in the medical system.
The sad fact about those who lost their lives so young is that many of their names are now barely remembered.
These men and women were husbands and wives. They were brothers and sisters. They were fathers and mothers. Many were my friends, leaving behind torn families. Just as sad were those who suffered without the love of a family.
These are people who have now just become a number, a digit on the shocking mortality rate linked to a life in professional wrestling.
I had spent close to two decades living amongst the wrestling industry. But despite finding fame and fortune travelling across the world, I had also found a crippling drug addiction as well.
Drugs don’t care who you are. They can grip hold of anyone and turn your life into a living hell.
It is chilling to realise that in my darkest hour, I was at home, surrounded by my two young daughters.
My life had plummeted to the point where I was regularly consuming a cocktail of Xanax, Vicodin and Ambien in order to function. These drugs were my desperate solution to numb a life now devoid of emotional support, joy and love.
Drifting asleep in my living room, my daughter’s nanny had been unable to wake me.
She called for an ambulance, but three firemen were the first to respond and immediately started CPR.
“Get her on the floor! Get her on the floor!” they screamed.
Those were the last words I heard as I slipped further and further away into unconsciousness.
Powerless, I couldn’t fight to save myself and I just remember hearing my younger soul screaming.
I wondered what had become of the hopes and dreams of the little girl from Southend-on-Sea as my mind and body gave in to the blackness…
1 SANDY BEGINNINGS
I was born on 4th April 1959 in Brentwood, a small town in Essex, which is the county just next to London in England. My dad, Thomas, was an auto trader and my mum, Audrey, worked in a plastic factory. My mum was so beautiful; she had been a theatre performer and club singer before giving up her dreams of fame to raise a family.
I was the youngest of three children. My sister, Valerie, was just eleven months older than me and I had a half-brother, Phil, from my mum’s first marriage nine years before I came along.
It’s strange the things that stand out when you think back to your childhood and my strongest first memory as a child was my fifth birthday. My parents had split up some two years beforehand, and I was at my dad’s house. I was timid of him and ran out of sight, secretly opening a present whilst being concealed under a piano. I can’t remember anything else of that day but know that I was afraid of this stranger, a man I rarely saw.
Due to the divorce, I didn’t really see much of my whole family other than on special occasions. My sister and I had been taken to live with my mum whilst my brother, being older, lived with his paternal grandmother.
We were taken to Southend-on-Sea, the stereotypical British seaside resort where we moved to when I was just three years old. Located about forty miles east of London, but still in the county of Essex, the town was a favoured weekend destination for the families who would visit from the city after a hard week working at the Ford plant in nearby Dagenham or labouring in the London Docks. It was a picture postcard dream of relaxation and bracing sea air.
But for those of us who actually lived there it was very different. It was a town where work and money were sparse and life could be tough.
I didn’t see much more of my dad after we moved.
When I was seven years old, my mum took us on a rare visit to his house and for some reason I became very shy, perhaps it was just because I hardly ever saw him. When he came close to give me a cuddle I ran and hid behind my mum. It pains me to say that it was the last time I ever saw him. Not long after, I found out he had died.
Thinking back to that day, I don’t know what it was that that made me frightened to go near my dad. Unfortunately, I just had an instinctive mistrust and fear of men ingrained in me.
Ever since leaving my dad, my mum had struggled with an alcohol problem and had attracted a string of abusive boyfriends. Most other children our age were taken to the park by their parents in the evenings, but my sister an
d I were left outside a circuit of bars and clubs. We would hang about as my mum and her latest boyfriend would drink all night until closing time. Our only joy would be hearing our mum’s voice if she decided to go on stage to sing.
When not stranded outside the pubs, we always seemed to be living on the move. We lived in a constant cycle of at least eleven cheap bedsits, where my mum would be at home drinking and entertaining her latest boyfriend. We were shut in our bedroom and were expected to keep quiet. Through the long miserable hours came something more distressing than the silence. The drinking sessions would sometimes turn nasty and we would hear our mum being knocked about by a few of the men she brought home.
When yet another of my mum’s relationships turned abusive, I ran to seek refuge at the nearest available place. The local churches were left open all the time and, as we had one at the bottom of our road, it became a place of escape. I was around seven years old when I first started hiding there.
I would roller-skate in the aisle and spend hours just sitting on the pews, enjoying the peace and quiet away from the unhappy and violent atmosphere at home. Because I was so young, I soon thought that God was an actual member of the community, as I heard people say that the church was his house. It always struck me as strange that God was never at home nor did I ever see his son, Jesus.
During one of my first visits to ‘God’s House’, I stole some milk and a banana, as I was so hungry. I was ashamed and remember thinking that God made the moon follow me around afterwards as a way to shine a spotlight on me for committing a crime against the church.
As I started to spend more and more time there, clambering through the grounds, I noticed a playground and some swings.
I patiently waited for God and Jesus to return home so I could ask their permission to play on them, but my determination to play on those swings didn’t waiver. I left a note for Jesus along with my skates and a copy of my favourite comic book The Beano and asked if he would like these in return for a go on the swings. When I didn’t receive a reply to my offer, I presumed he was angry at my theft of the milk and banana. I tried to make amends by leaving an apple out for him.
In my early visits to the church, I had no idea what the Bible was. When I first came across a copy, I just referred to it as the ‘funeral book’ under the presumption that it was only read if someone had died. After coming across a dead bird on the street, I borrowed one from the church. Wanting to uphold the traditions of God, I tied a string around its clawed feet and dragged it all the way home. I held a funeral service for the deceased, and made my sister pick flowers to place at the grave after we buried its tiny feathered body.
Our little service proved how my childhood imagination could bring fun into the bleakest of circumstances, and I never lost my sense of wonder at the world.
A big part of my exposure to the wider world was through the advent of television. We had a small black-and-white telly in the house, and I used to love watching it whenever my mum was out of the house. I was a fan of the old sixties series of Batman, but my absolute favourite was Lost in Space. Every week, I would rush home to watch that show. I dreamt of joining Will Robinson and Robot in the safety of a faraway planet, and in a future where poverty was non-existent.
Another place where life seemed happier was at my maternal grandmother’s house, or as I called her, Nan.
Sometimes my sister and I would get to stay with her for a week, if our mum was struggling to cope. I remember that it was the small things which used to amaze me when we would stay with her. She would actually set the table for us, and we would sit down together and eat at fixed mealtimes. We never did this at home; we only ate whatever we could scavenge around the house. Valerie and I soon realised that our Nan’s house was the warm, loving home that we never had. Once we were back with mum, we would often fantasise about running away to live with Nan permanently.
Once, we did try to run away from home, and escaped to Priory Park. We took a dolls’ pram and a carrier bag filled with a toothbrush and clean underwear. We spent the whole night in the park before we got too cold and hungry. Defeated, we returned home.
As grim as our home life was, we were forced to accept that it was better than sleeping rough.
With the unsettlement of running away or dreaming of a life beyond the stars, my education at school was being affected. I would do what I could to avoid homework. Whenever I tried it and got stuck, my mum would snap at me if I asked for help.
My relationship with my mum really hampered my development. Emotionally, I felt stunted. I would often feel unwanted as she never encouraged me to aspire for anything. I had no direction, or discipline, and sometimes I would rather play truant than face the embarrassment of having to explain that there was nobody at home who could assist me with my homework.
Nevertheless, I had lots of friends at school. I was a popular kid, and I excelled at sports and drama.
I remember my first part in a school play. I played a frog, and had to wear this ugly mask and jump out of a cardboard well. It wasn’t the part I really wanted, which was to play the princess, but it was enough to install a love of acting in me. Escaping reality for a brief moment, I enjoyed the pretence of living the fantasy of being someone else.
Beyond performing in plays, there were some other aspects of school for which I was grateful. Pupils from single-parent families were entitled to different benefits. I was eligible for free school meals, which ensured I got something decent to eat during the week. I was also given a free school uniform each year. It was the only time I got to wear new clothes. Everything else was either a hand-me-down from my sister or bought from the second-hand shop.
As I grew older, I spent more and more time away from home. I was rarely ever indoors, instead spending my time roaming the streets of Southend. During the longer nights of the summer months, I would stay at the seafront as long as I could.
I was doing what I could to live a normal childhood.
Like so many other children in the neighbourhood, I was at an age where I badly wanted a pet. As the other kids had to be indoors for a certain time, I would get very lonely when they all went home after we played at the beach. For company, I would often play with any stray dogs that I found prowling the streets. I knew that it would not be possible to take them home, so I had to think of another way of getting a pet.
I came up with a cunning plan. I would find a plastic cup, and wait until the tide was out on the beach. I would then gather as many little crabs as I could. I panicked at the returning waves, and I scurried away. I was so worried that I would get sand on my clothes that I dropped my little collection on the beach, and the crabs shuffled away from me.
Undeterred, I was adamant that I needed a pet, and I decided that an assortment of smaller creatures would be easier to manage.
I went out to the garden and collected as many snails as I could find, and put them in a box along with some turf I had lifted from the lawn. I hid them in the living room and went to bed, content in the knowledge that I was at long last an owner of some pets.
The next morning, my short lived happiness came to an abrupt end. I was woken by the sound of my mum screaming and shouting in anger.
Overnight, the snails had escaped their box and left a trail of sticky, slivery trails in their wake all over the floors, furniture and even the walls! She soon discovered that they’d been given a helping hand getting into our house and I was ‘rewarded’ with a firm smack across the back of the head.
As I got older, I learnt every trick and scam that there was to clasp at some semblance of a happy childhood. I was quite mature for my age and I soon developed a street sense which allowed me to survive, and even thrive, in bleak poverty.
It wasn’t unusual for me to nab some milk from the house doorsteps and I would often steal fruit from the neighbour’s trees. Sometimes, I would even sneak into gardens and play with any toys I could find. I think the neighbourhood understood my circumstances and they seemed to feel sorry for me. T
hey would occasionally give me slices of cake or sweets.
I could never afford anything as a child, and it seemed that everything I owned was second-hand. In the sixties, jumble sales were hugely popular in Britain. People would donate all of their unwanted belongings and household items, and the goods would be sold to help raise funds for a local charity. These sales were usually in aid of the church and, since I was always spending time there, I was the first to know when these events would take place.
On the morning of each sale, I woke up eager, and I was always the first to queue in line. Once inside, there were books, clothes, and toys; all costing mere pennies! I would load up with armfuls of goodies and stagger out with as much as I could carry. By the time that the next jumble sale came around, I had developed a little system to guarantee that I could return with a pocket full of loose change.
Like so many other coastal resorts around the U.K., Southend seafront boasted rows of amusement arcades. These arcades were full of gaming machines, aiming to tempt punters to try their luck at winning a small fortune with challenges of skill and chance. With nobody looking, I’d give the machines a nudge, and the pennies would spill from them. I would then run as fast my little legs would carry me before anyone could see.
It wasn’t long before I got noticed and was banned from all the amusement arcades in the area, but I was a persistent and stubborn child. I would merely wait, hiding across the street, until the staff that knew me had finished work for the day. As quick as a flash, I would dart across to the nearest machine, give it a quick push, and then I’d be gone with a handful of pennies.
Through The Shattered Glass Page 2
