My Fourth Husband and Me

With a quietly inspirational style, Nancy Burns shares her poignant life experiences as a blind woman with the hope of educating and enlightening others about certain societal misconceptions and attitudes regarding those who are disabled. Beginning with the moment when she woke up in the hospital?both eyes bandaged?and realized she would not receive the emotional comfort and guidance she so desperately needed, Burns offers a compelling glimpse into the fulfilling world she created for herself, despite her disability. Her personal story chronicles her struggles as a young girl learning to live with her vision loss, her family?s inability to acknowledge her disability, and her determined journey to acquire the skills that led her to eventually become a vocational counselor who worked with disabled clients.

Born during the Great Depression, Bob was one of 10 children who lived with their parents on Blossom Street in Boston’s West End.

But on a bleak November night in 1936 Bob’s father, a decorated World War I veteran, was killed in a fall from the fire escape outside their apartment.  The freak accident at the height of the Depression sent the entire family into depths of emotional and financial despair.

Within two years, Bob’s over-wrought mother watched as the state stepped in and took away her children: All were suffering from malnutrition.  It wasn’t that she stopped loving them.  It’s that she no longer could cope with the nightmare that had engulfed them all.

For two years Bob was shuttled from a hospital to a convalescent home in Wellesley and then to the Long Island Hospital in Boston Harbor.  His best chance for happiness came and went when a couple in North Reading tried to adopt the then 4-year-old boy.  But Bob’s mother refused to sign the adoption papers, hoping to eventually reunite her family.

A year later, Bob was placed with three of his brothers on a farm in western Massachusetts, where his foster parents told the boys to call them Ma and Dad and to accept the other foster children already living there.

Their real mother found where they were living and somehow made her way to Haydenville, walking up the road carrying shopping bags full of oranges, bananas and Italian cookies.  Reluctantly, the foster mother invited her into her kitchen but told her she was never to come again.

Even though he was only a preschooler, Bob says he vividly recalls his mother walking away from the farm that day.  It felt like a knife had been plunged into his heart, he says.

What followed were six years of cruelty, long hours of farm work seven days a week and humiliation.  Visitors who asked about the children were told, “They’re only state kids.”

The hunger, fear, severe beatings and other punishments were nothing compared to the ultimate horror of unexpected, unexplained changes of foster homes.  A black car would pull up and the “state lady” would take one of Bob’s brothers.  He was never told what happened to them.

Then one day the “state lady” came for him.  Bob was told to gather his few clothes, put them in a cardboard box and come with her.  The scene was repeated over and over until an emotionally fragile 17 year-old was suddenly on his own.  He enlisted in the Marines in time to serve in the Korean War.

Later, Bob learned more of the fate of his mother, who spent much of her tormented life living in bus stations and frantically trying to locate and visit her scattered family.  At her funeral, a priest asked God to forgive her of her sins, but she was far more victim than sinner.

Now 65, Bob is reflecting on his life and the fate of his brothers and sisters who were scattered to the winds, and has written his experiences in a book entitled “State Kid.”

This rare eyewitness account of live inside the system should be required reading for the next commissioner of the Department of Social Services.

By Jack Williams

    Reprinted with permission of The Boston Herald

Life is unpredictable. When we least expect it, it can be changed forever. That moment came for author Benedetta Lino when her one-year-old daughter was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, the possible result of a serious adverse reaction to the DPT vaccination. Yet in the years to come, Benedetta refused to give up hope and refused to let her daughter experience anything less than true and unconditional love.

Heartwarming, yet bittersweet, Tears of My Angel recounts the years of struggle, pain, love, and hope that the Lino family endured. Benedetta recounts the early years of her daughter?s life, of the numerous tests and hospital stays, until the diagnosis ?nally came in 1985. But from that moment on, things only became more di?cult.

As Benedetta and her husband learned to care for their daughter in the comfort of their home, they found strength in each other and in the love they had for Laura. As the years passed, and the normal milestones of a child?s life passed with-out being celebrated, the family instead celebrated the beauty of life, of Laura?s courage, and of the power of love.

Tears of My Angel inspires, educates, and encourages, but most of all, it rea?rms the ability of hope and love to sustain us through our darkest days.

This story of my mother's death is true to the best of my recollections. Coming from an Irish, Roman Catholic family, some might think it to be a fairy tale, but it's a true story of tears and love. 

When Richard and Joanie were married just fourteen months after they met, Richard knew he was deeply in love with Joanie, but he had no idea of the magnitude of the indomitable courage and determination he would witness from his wife on a daily basis as she faced physical and emotional obstacles. In this passionate tribute to the woman whom Richard regards as his hero, he details not only how he came to name his wife Sam?a pet name that would stick with her for their entire marriage?but also shares their love story and how they became stronger together through Joanie?s continual battles with diabetes, heart disease, and amputations.