Terry Ryan - The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less

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SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS

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www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2001 by Terry Ryan

Cover artTM and 2005 DreamWorks Productions LLC & Revolution Studios Distribution Company. All rights reserved.

Cover photograph by Michael Gibson

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

S IMON & S CHUSTER P APERBACKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Designed by Jeanette Olender

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Ryan, Terry.

The prize winner of Defiance, Ohio : how my mother raised 10 kids on 25 words or less / Terry Ryan ; foreword by Suze Orman.

p. cm

1. Ryan, EvelynFamily. 2. Ryan family. 3. Prize contests in advertising. 4. Defiance (Ohio)Biography. I. Title.

CT275.R8964 A3 2001

977.1'14043'092dc21

[B]

2001018379

ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-1122-2

ISBN-10: 0-7432-1122-7

ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-7393-0 (Pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-7432-7393-1 (Pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-1727-9 (eBook)

For my mother, Evelyn Lehman Ryan

(and the little bit of Evelyn in all of us)

I never met Evelyn Ryan, but I feel an uncanny kinship with this remarkable woman, thanks to her daughter Terrys rollicking, painful, hilariousand often instructiveremembrance.

Here is the true story of an average housewife whose life is not so average at all. Evelyn is the mother of ten children and married to an alcoholic, sometimes violent husband. She regularly faces eviction, poverty, and even near-starvation in the small Midwestern town aptly named (in her case) Defiance, Ohio.

At a time, in the 1950s and 1960s, when women were discouraged from taking jobs and made to feel powerless in the face of adversity, its not difficult to imagine how a mother like Evelyn Ryan might find it impossible to help her children keep fear at bay.

How could such a woman show her children that life is not cruel, but bountiful? How could she possibly keep them, all ten of them, afloat, much less teach them abundance, grace, and courage in the face of grinding poverty and adversity?

Well, if the potential for true wealth resides, as I believe it does, deep in the spirit of each and every one of us, Evelyn Ryan draws from the depths of her spirit many times. With a gift for writing jingles, poems, and 25-words-or-less com-positions, she wins hundreds of contests that save her family from destitution, and she does it with incredible humor and joy.

And what a magnificent winner is Evelyn! Regularly awarded cash, shopping sprees, automobiles, trips to Europe, gold watches, color televisions, radios, a refrigerator, a freezer, washer-dryer, and bicycles, she stores the smaller prizes in what the family calls Moms Legendary Closet: Here are toys, clocks, sporting goods, toasters, silverware, record players, fans, jewelry, and (as though a sign of the times were needed) not one but three pairs of Arthur Murray shoes.

It would be a mistake to think that Evelyn is saved by her gift for writing, unique though it is. What emerges as the driving element in this story is the courage of this indefatigable mom as she faces creditors and overcomes her husbands anger when there isnt a penny in the family coffers.

So this would be an amazing story, funny and poignant, if Terry Ryan only listed her mothers thousands of entries, each one worthy of Ogden Nash or Dorothy Parker or Erma Bombeck, that result in enough cash to pay this large familys many bills in the nick of time.

But it is that and much more. To me, the real story of The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio is the lesson of pride and possibility that Evelyn Ryan teaches her kids time after time.

Even scraping together suppers of rice and milkor, to her childrens horror, soup with bugs she insists are spicesEvelyn knows that thoughts of never having enough money are thoughts of impoverishment. She prefers to think of succeeding at great contests (Win a Producing Oil Well! Win Your Weight in Gold!), while relishing the small treasures that keep the family running, right down to the $1 she receives for every inventive poem published by her local newspaper.

One might read this book and think, Well, maybe Evelyn Ryan is just lucky. Maybe its luck to have such a quirky talent in a quirky postwar era when she can put that talent to use. But think about the strength of character and persistence it takes to enter contest after contest, to put aside despair and summon up words of cheer, time and time again.

Richness of the spirit can dwell in the most desolate places, and it pervades Evelyns household like a healing balm. It will touch you as well, when you read her story. For this is a saga that resonates likewell, a jingle from the 1950s, but profoundly.

PART ONE

T he ordinarily sleepy town of Defiance, Ohio, emitted an industrious hum on hot days, a subtle pulse of activitylike the buzzing of distant bees. It was late Indian summer, a little too warm for an October day, in 1953. Most of the rust-red and golden leaves still held fast in the towering maple trees that lined our block on Latty Street. You could feel the moisture in the air seeping up from the muddy, slow-moving Auglaize River a few blocks away.

My mother, Evelyn Ryan, had sent six of her nine children outside to play while she and my sixteen-year-old sister, Lea Anne, made lunch. As usual, all the school-age kids in the family came home at noontime, and we crammed as much recreation into the hour as we could.

As a seven-year-old, I sat on the porch steps reading comic books with my brothers Mike, five, and Bruce, who had just turned nine. My oldest brother Dick, fourteen, his arm still in a cast from a bicycle accident, played one-armed catch with my thirteen-year-old brother, Bub, on the sidewalk in the sun. Rog, two years younger than Bub, roller-skated in the street, hoping to get a free ride by grabbing on to the bumper of a passing car. My baby sisters, three-year-old Barb and one-year-old Betsy, were somewhere inside the house with Lea Anne and Mom, who was pregnant with my brother Dave at the time.

Just as Rog decided that little or no traffic would pass the house on the quiet little street and clumped up the steps to remove his skates, a sleek jet-black Pontiac Chieftain pulled up to the curb in front. It was so new we could see ourselves reflected in the side panels. The chrome grille glistened expensively in the sun. Even the aerodynamic hood ornamenta small amber-colored bust of Chief Pontiaclooked valuable, more like a misplaced jewel than an auto accessory.