In Her Words

Mary Hopper has left her imprint all over Charlotte. From UNCC to the Lynx Line to Dilworth, Mary worked to make Charlotte better. But you’ve never heard her talk like this - about her cancer, an early abortion, and what happened to  the daughter she gave up for adoption. You’re gonna wanna listen to all of this.

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Kathleen Johnston is a world class investigative reporter. After years in newspapers and at CNN and CBS as a producer, Kathleen now runs the Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism at her alma mater, Indiana University. While some say journalists are in the tank for democrats, Kathleen shows otherwise, offering a blunt assessment of the Obama years.

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Laure Q. got good advice from Matt Lauer at the start of her career and felt terribly sad at his downfall. She went on to interview Jerry Springer and get his endorsement in her own political career. Laure Quinlivan talks TV, politics and a happy life on the other side of both in a wide ranging conversation with an old pal.

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Nicole and her mom aren’t speaking. It’s a shame but understandable and no one person is to blame. Nicole’s mom was a teenager within weeks of graduation when she gave birth to her daughter. When Nicole was a teen, their relationship fell apart. Now Nicole’s daughters are approaching those mid-teen years. A moving conversation about mothers and daughters.

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“They are your chance to learn about love.” That’s the way Lucy Lustig looked at the people around her in her last days on this earth. You’re about to hear the recording that started this podcast. Lucy was in hospice. She was spending her days in a hospital bed. She knew she was dying. But she was up for telling her story. Thank God she did.

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Stacy Cassio was a small town girl who moved to the big city and developed a huge idea. As a teenager she got on only the second plane she’d ever flown on and took off from northwest Kansas to NYC. With no college degree she went from nanny to business world to creating and running The Pink Mentor Network - a refreshingly innovative approach to mentorship among women! Great story! Great talk!

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E’beth was drowning. The whitewater held her under. Her gear was choking her. “I guess this is it,” she thought. Then came a voice from the back of her head. It said two distinct words: “Absolutely not.” E’beth Watson was something of a pioneer in whitewater kayaking. She took to it so well that she grew to be a world class paddler. The only woman in the gym at the time, she didn’t realize the many ways she and other women athletes were held down before Title IX began to level the playing field. Stuart pulls amazing stories from an accomplished but self-effacing cousin.

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Gloria Singleton’s voice - its rich tones born of decades of experience - is hereby preserved for posterity. For more than a quarter century she was the friendly voice that answered the telephone at a hotel switchboard (back when folk did such things) and treated guests first and last as human beings. When she retired, it was the end of an era. Gloria and her husband Leroy followed jobs with IBM from upstate NY to the South as part of a “reverse migration” of African Americans to places like Atlanta and Charlotte. It wasn’t easy.

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Sally loves books. Sally knows books. Sally sells books. She started as a little kid - hiding a library book so she wouldn’t have to return it. Now she owns the only indy bookstore in a city of a million people. She dishes on what books get stolen: the Kama Sutra and the Holy Bible - and how indy bookstores survive Amazon.

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Amy Geller was having trouble staying in a relationship. She’d been divorced. She’d leave. He’d leave. Nobody stuck around very long. It wasn’t working. She committed to a heavy emotional lift. She spent a lot of time looking into darkness. “It’s dark in the basement,” she says. And she really turned a corner. A conversation recorded last year in Jersey City, NJ before Amy got remarried.

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