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reputation.
    For many years, Daddy made a good living, first as an airplane assembly line worker at McDonnell Douglas. After he was laid off by the aircraft company, he did manual labor at a manufacturing company. The mood around the neighborhood at the time was tense and grim. My father frequently came home with news of another plant or store closing or more firings someplace. He held on for a while, but finally the ax fell on him, too. He was out of work for a long time, doing odd jobs like mowing lawns before he was hired as a switch operator by a railroad company in Springfield.
    Conditions were tough. Our meals became skimpier and portions were smaller than in the past. Instead of hamburger and pork chops, we ate chicken, Spam, canned Vienna sausages and luncheon meat. When that ran out, we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Sometimes, the only thing in the house to put between bread slices was mayonnaise. So we ate mayonnaise sandwiches.
    Eventually, my mother found a job to help make ends meet. The morning before she left for her first day as a nurse's assistant at St. Mary's Hospital, she gathered Al, Debra, Angie and me around her to explain why she had to leave us on our own. Dressed in her pale blue uniform, white stockings and white shoes, she looked each of us in the eyes as she spoke. “I'm not going to be here to help you get ready for school, to make sure you do your homework and to cook your supper every night, because I have to go to work now,” she said. “I hope you understand. It doesn't mean I don't care about you anymore.”
    I know Momma hated not being at home with us. But entering the working world improved her self-confidence and gave her a sense of independence. She was in her late twenties and had been a housewife since she was sixteen. She'd never even learned to drive, so one of her coworkers picked her up every morning and dropped her off every afternoon. Momma's main responsibility was bathing patients on the south corridor of the fourth floor, in the surgical ward. She enjoyed her job and gained a reputation for being efficient and conscientious. And she made lots of friends. She learned to bowl and joined her girlfriends on their Wednesday night trips to the alley. Her very best friend was Joyce Farmer, the head nurse on one of the surgical wards. Momma and Joyce were inseparable. They went shopping together on weekends. On paydays, they treated themselves to the lunch special at Woolworth's—a hamburger on rye bread with cheese and onions. My mother and her friends also conspired to find eligible bachelors for Joyce to date.
    When my father found the railroad job in Springfield, 100 miles away, he rented a room and lived there during the week, returning home on weekends. Heart-to-heart conversations were Momma's specialty, but before Daddy left for Springfield that first time, he talked to us the same way my mother had the morning she started work at St. Mary's. “I'm not abandoning you,” he said. “So, while I'm gone, don't give your Momma a hard time because I'll be back every weekend and I'll get a full report.”
    It would have been easy for my parents to lose hope and give in to wayward temptations, the way so many other people did in East St. Louis. But they never became dejected or hopeless. They never blamed anyone for their predicament. They never considered doing anything illegal. No matter how hard the times were, they kept plugging away, working hard and doing the best they could with their limited resources. The beliefs they held and examples they set counteracted the negative forces at work on the streets of our neighborhood. Their unwavering commitment to the work ethic and their sound values informed my life from childhood into adulthood.

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    Inspirations
    W ith work keeping my parents away from home, most days our aging and sickly great-grandmother was the only adult around. We were virtually on our own, and my brother and I constantly squabbled about who was