by Delilah
We arrived two hours before our plane was to depart, but fifteen minutes past the required check-in time. The ticket agent told us we could not proceed and informed us new tickets must be purchased for the next flight out, which would be in two days. This was unacceptable on all levels, as our plane had not even landed or been cleaned. I placed a frantic call back to the States, which sent Kraig into action and resulted in him reaching a Delta official at three a.m. The Delta official had to call their international office in order to reach the agents in Africa. The girls were crying and scared, the agents were rigid and unmoved, and I was damned determined to get home in time to see my boys, Zack and Thomas, nicknamed TK, play in their opening Little League game. I’d told them I would not miss their first game, and I was going to keep my word! The Accra agent finally relented and released us to run to the gate.
The airport at that time had no escalator or elevator, just endless stairs and ramps. Carrying Willette and holding Mercy’s thin hand, we ran to the plane. They boarded us through the back of the jet and seated us, separately, in the last three rows. Willette was two rows ahead of me, Mercy was directly in front of me, and I was against the back wall. I pleaded with those seated near us to switch, but they refused. So I told them the girls had never been on an airplane before and asked them to please comfort them for me if they started crying. Almost on cue, Willette wiggled out of the seat belt and climbed over the seat to be with Mercy, who in turn began to cry and reach for me. I tried to soothe them, but I was wedged between two large, stubborn passengers. After about five or ten minutes of wailing, the flight attendant who had grudgingly allowed us to get onto the plane finally asked the other passengers to move so the girls could sit with me. These were the same passengers that had been given our preassigned seats that placed us in the same row.
The eleven-hour flight to New York was exciting, nerve-racking, cramped, and uncomfortable. Our plane was two hours late, giving us just an hour to collect our bags, go through customs, recheck our luggage, and catch the next flight. I was frazzled and frantic and told a flight attendant with Alaska Airlines that I had to make the flight with my newly adopted girls, because I had to get to Seattle to see my boys’ baseball game. The flight attendant called ahead to the gate and asked them to hold the plane, and then she ran through the airport with us, holding our carryons while I held Willette and Mercy ran along beside us.
We made the plane, we made the game, and we made a family.
About a month after settling into our home, my new baby girl sat on the bench at our breakfast nook eating her fourth or fifth egg of the day. I called to her, “Willette…” No response. I was across the kitchen, so I raised my voice a little louder and said it again—“Willette”—this time a bit annoyed that she hadn’t responded with her usual sweet “Yes, Mama?” I looked at her darling little face, her full lips in a half smile and her raised eyebrows, and called her name yet a third time. “Willette, why are you not answering me!”
She smiled broadly and declared in her heavy accent, “Willette stayed in Africa. You said I am your blessing, so now I want to be Blessing.” And with that, Willette, and all the trauma and pain, the abuse and neglect, the memories of hunger and thirst, remained in Africa, and Blessing was home to stay.
A week or so later, Mercy came to me and asked, “Mommy, may I change my name, too? I like Mercy, but I would like to be Angel Mercy.” So when we went before the judge to get their last names changed to mine, their first names were changed as well. They were four and thirteen at the time they started their new lives with their new names in the States, shedding old identities bound to deep wounds.
Fast forward to now. Angel is an adult making her own way in the world. When she arrived at age thirteen, she was placed in a first-grade school curriculum. She graduated high school four years later with her age group. She’s gotten a nursing assistant certification and now works with a disabled child. She has purchased her own car, lives in a house rented with friends, and is attending college. She is beautiful, strong, feisty, and passionate about her faith and her plans. She still does not follow directions, which some say only proves that she is her mother’s daughter!
Blessing is going into seventh grade, is academically gifted, and a talented writer. It would not surprise me if one day she wrote great novels; she has a wild imagination and talks nonstop! Her characters are colorful, silly, and do wondrous things! She is a bowl of laughter and love that spills over our entire family. She is also a fabulous big sister to her younger biological sister, whom I adopted three years ago, Delilah Jr. They are as close as two sisters can be, and unless you knew their circumstances, you would never know they had ever experienced trauma that would make an NCIS episode look soft.
Being born with the show-off gene can be a tremendous thing, especially if you are also endowed with the talent gene. Being born with the show-off gene can propel you into fame, fortune, the movies, or the Olympic winner’s circle if you can dance, sing, dribble a basketball, throw a football, block a soccer ball, turn backflips on a high wire, or write a play that leaves people speechless… Sadly, something happened to my DNA chain, because although I inherited the show-off gene, I seem to lack the talent portion of the DNA strand.
But what I lack in athletic or musical talent, I make up for in the ability to talk a lot. Since I had braces on my legs as a child, I was often taunted. I quickly realized that if I could laugh at myself, it was much harder for others to make fun of me. Only two years into grade school, I would entertain the class the minute the teacher left the room or turned her back to us. My teacher sent note after note home to my parents asking them to please make me be quiet and stop interrupting class. When they failed to find the off switch for my incessant talking, Mrs. Brown took matters into her own hands and found a roll of duct tape. Frustrated with my constant outbursts, she took a piece of duct tape and put it across my mouth. A few minutes later I had worked the tape loose with my fingers and tongue, and in her anger and frustration, she wrapped a piece completely around the back of my head. My long dirty-blond hair hung almost to my waist and on this particular day was not in ponytails…
If you look at my class picture, you will notice I have a short bowl-cut hairstyle. The tape stuck and had to be cut out at the end of the day. My grandma took me to the beauty school for a three-dollar haircut the following weekend. The result made me, Grandma, and even my mom cry. It did not, however, get me to shut up! I don’t remember anyone telling me this, or giving me a life lesson, but I realized at an early age you can be a victim or you can be victorious! I used my sense of humor and my ability to weave stories together to entertain the classes year after year, and although the teachers grew frustrated with my talking, they rarely sent me to the principal’s office.
In junior high, God stepped in and decided to give me a stage on which to use my show-off gene. Our school, W. F. Jewett Middle School, was in a tiny mill community next to Reedsport. When I attended, the benefactors of the school, W. F. Jewett and his family, had left a large sum of money to be used for academic programs. One such program was a recitation contest, and when I was in seventh grade, the judges were brothers, Jerome and Steve Kenegy. I entered all five categories and won four of them.
At one point, those judges approached Mom and said, “Your daughter really loves to talk.” Mom stammered and, laughing, said, “I know, we’ve tried everything to get her to be quiet—even duct tape didn’t work.” I believe it was broad-faced, jovial Steve who said, “No, this is a good thing for radio. We can put her to work!”
The Kenegy brothers and their engineer, Wes Lockhard, made good on their word and let me write and read school news and sports stories. They set up a work-study program that allowed me to go to school half a day, get all my assignments and take my exams, and then go to the radio station in the early afternoon. I learned how to change the typewriter ribbon on the machines and loved the way it smelled on my skin. They would send me home with miles of news stories, and I’d pr
actice in my bedroom at night, trying to sound as much as I could like the news reporters I saw on television.
Barbara Walters was the only female newscaster I had ever seen, and her speech impediment drove me crazy. There were no women to emulate or admire, but I honestly don’t recall ever giving that a second thought. Back in the seventies, I wasn’t trying to break the glass ceiling or blaze a new trail for women in media; I just loved talking on the radio and would do anything to hang out at the station all day.
Some time later, I was asked to come to the radio station to do school reports. I did so well, I was asked to do some advertising spots. My knowledge and responsibilities built until I was given my own on-air shifts. By the time I was a junior in high school, I was opening and closing the station. (This was back in the day when local stations ruled the airwaves, and they would sign on and off the air with the National Anthem each day.)
At home, my mom and dad both dealt with their demons and frustrations in different, dysfunctional ways. Dad quit working on projects in the garage and instead spent nearly every night at the local halls, playing pool, avoiding his wife. I don’t remember him ever being obnoxious, stumbling or slurring his speech, but I do remember that he more often than not had a drink in hand by five thirty.
The older I got, the more controlling Dad got. When I was young, I didn’t notice how much of Mom’s daily activities he controlled, or how his anger was toxic in our family. By the time I started wearing a bra and tossing my hair to get attention from the neighbor boys, I was fully aware of his rage seething just beneath the surface and his need to control everyone in our family. Mom turned to others to get her emotional needs met, and I became her confidante. The crazier my family got, the more rebellious I became.
The radio station was my shelter in the storm, and even though I didn’t have to be there but a few hours a day, I would stay for hours past the end of my shift recording commercials or just watching Wes work on the equipment. I had no desire to drink or get high, so while my seventies-era classmates were skipping school and heading to the beach to smoke weed, I was running in the rain to get to the studio each afternoon. Fights at home were epic, but I knew if I pushed the boundaries too hard, Dad would deny me the right to go to the station; I walked a fine line and tried to keep my mouth shut so I could stay on the air.
For someone who can’t keep a secret and was an angry, rebellious teen, I have no idea how I pulled it off. Maybe since I had started sneaking out of my room at night and meeting up with a certain tall, skinny, redheaded boy in our town, I was giving folks plenty of cause to worry about me in other ways, and my family’s issues weren’t as worthy of the gossip mill as my own rebellious behavior was.
I worked at KDUN all through high school, as well as at a local fish-packing plant one summer and a bakery the next. When I was younger I babysat, mowed lawns, picked ferns, and peeled a bark called chittam in order to earn money. I wanted to be independent, and one thing Mom taught me as a child was in order to have independence and make your own choices, you had to have your own money. Dad insisted I pay room and board while I was at the radio station, and today I’m glad he did that. Even though at the time I lied and cheated and didn’t give him the half he required, I was able to save up several thousand dollars and learn how to pay my own living expenses at a very early age.
The day I graduated high school I left home, not really by choice, but by my dad packing the new suitcase I had gotten as a gift and putting it on the front porch when I wasn’t home at the appointed hour—the stroke of midnight. He wanted to impart a life lesson and teach me to be humble and obedient. Instead I snuck back into the house the next day, took more of my clothes and the old black leather purse hidden beneath the floorboard, and left for the big city.
Coos Bay, Oregon, population twelve thousand! KYNG was a rock station there with more listeners and a hip staff of eight young people who smoked a lot of pot and loved to play the Doobie Brothers every hour. While love of radio bound us together, the cigarettes and drugs set us apart. Whether it was my farm girl moral code or just my fear of messing up on air, I wasn’t then or ever interested in either. I still have a great prejudice against smokers and have very little tolerance for it, and absolutely zero when done around children. I’d play smokin’-hot music like the Steve Miller Band, Peter Frampton, and Earth, Wind & Fire, who were regulars on our playlist back in those days!
After a short stint in Coos Bay, my big break came when I moved to the city of Eugene with my best friend, Dee Dee. I walked into KUGN with a résumé and tape. The program director assumed I had already graduated college and didn’t even bother to ask my age. My five-ten stature and my deep voice must have given me an edge. After listening to my tape, he told me to come in the next day to sit in with a DJ named Andy Manuel and watch him do his show. I showed up an hour early, met Andy-man, and got to know the control board. About two hours into his show, Andy was changing the huge reels that provided music on the FM station when the reel exploded and cut his hand. He had to go to the hospital for stitches, and I was left in the studio, on the air. I had no idea what I was doing, but somehow managed to fake my way through the show that night. And the next night. By Monday I was working three six-hour shifts and four hours of production work doing commercials each week.
The next three years I went to school in Eugene, worked at two different radio stations, and went on a lot of dates with gorgeous young men. I don’t remember much about school, but I remember the experience at the stations and a few of the hot dates. By the time I was twenty-one, I’d already been fired three times; by the time I was thirty I’d been fired eight times. Sometimes it was for good reasons, but mostly because it was the nature of the industry; a station would get sold or a new program director would come in, and they would clean house and fire all the on-air talent.
Today when someone calls my show, depressed or heartbroken because they have been fired, I often say, “When you’ve been fired twelve times, call me back, because then we’re tied.” We laugh together, them thinking I’m joking, me because I’m not.
One time a young male program director in Boston called me into his office and showed me a research project the station had commissioned. He opened the report and basically told me that his research showed that women didn’t like hearing other women on the radio and I should simply shut up and play the music. He went on to say if I didn’t curtail the talking and just play the songs, I’d need to find a new station to broadcast from, and that no one was interested in hearing my stories or the people I chatted with on the phones. When he was finished with his pie charts and closed the pages, I asked if he was done. He smiled an apologetic, patronizing smile and sat back in his chair.
I was angry and incensed. I reached down and pulled a box of tampons from my purse on the floor, took one out and set it on the cover of the report on his desk. With little restraint, I practically spit out, “When you have to get up at four a.m. and drive to a 7-Eleven to buy one of these because you are bleeding to death, you can tell me what women want. Until then, you don’t have a clue.”
I was born into a family of angry, angry men. I’m not sure how many generations back it goes, but both my dad and my maternal grandfather were bitter and so very angry. And they tried to control the women they loved: first my grandma, then mom, and then me and my sister. (I’m happy to report none of us obeyed very well!) But I realized early in life that it really didn’t matter what I said or did—the men in my family were going to demand I change, no matter what. So it only made sense to me to stay true to myself and follow the path that I knew I had to follow.
Once I left home and got away from the controlling men in my family tree, I ended up working for several more. A few program directors and a few general managers tried to control me. I had learned to navigate the waters of control, manipulation, abuse, and anger as a kid, and I wasn’t going to let someone else determine how I was going to be myself. One program director even insisted I change my name! “
Delilah sounds like a stripper’s name,” he said. “From now on you are going to be known on the air as Kelli Star!” I kid you not. No matter how many times I’ve been told no or told what to say or what image to project on or off the air, I’ve stuck to my guns and followed my dreams to the life that I get to live today. I’m so blessed and grateful to have been born in the country I was born in, where women have rights and freedoms and we get to make choices for ourselves. In some countries I’ve been in, I would not be allowed to talk on the radio. In a few countries where I traveled on tour with our military, I wouldn’t be allowed to have any of the freedoms I enjoy.
When you decide to use your gifts, talents, and skills to change the world, you may encounter some anger, and probably more than one or two people who may try to stop you. No matter what field you’re in, no matter what family dynamic you’re in, you will encounter folks who want to control and manipulate you. They’ll balk when you announce your plans to volunteer. They’ll argue when you say you’ve decided to be a foster parent, and they’ll tell you a million reasons you should not open your heart. Should you get a passport and apply for a visa to travel to a developing nation, a multitude of people you know may tell you horrible tales of atrocities and dangers that have happened to those who’ve ventured out before you! Photos downloaded from the Internet with every imaginable worm, serpent, skin lesion, or crocodile will be presented to you as proof that you are being foolish to travel afar. Horror stories of volunteers contracting malaria, cholera, hepatitis, and traveler’s diarrhea will be shared with you at every meal. I suppose they can’t help themselves, these well-meaning manipulators. They believe they are sharing their fears out of love for you; some even believe they are acting as agents of God. They feel it is their moral obligation to set you straight and make it obvious that you should not be a bleeding-heart fool who takes risks that could lead to heartache and destruction.
