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esilience 197down there. We would stay down there for a month and then comeback. It was split up. My dad and I would drive down there to go seemy mom. She’d work part-time down there, and then she’d work uphere also. Then, once I got into kindergarten, I came back up here.That’s when she got a job for the state.”“As a mom, the way she treated me, I couldn’t imagine anybodyelse,” Willie says. “I was always her number-one priority. She workedfor the governor. She was like, the governor’s healthcare policy person,and she always made time for my dad and myself, regardless ofwhatever it was. She was always there for us.“The one thing my mom always told me was, ‘You’ve got to finishhigh school. You’ve got to go out and get your education. It’s goingto be very important.’ There weren’t a lot of people in our family thatwent to high school, finished high school. Out of the younger generationof kids, the twelve or thirteen of us, there’s probably onlythree or four that graduated from high school.”Crystal was a stricter parent than her husband, and the bulk of thediscipline fell to her. “Once Dad raised his voice, that was it. I knewwhatever I was doing was wrong. My mom was the one that gave methe discipline.”“That’s right,” agrees George Walter. “I can remember Billy takingWillie down to Lake Fair and just saying, ‘Oh here.’ Give him atwenty-dollar bill, or whatever, and off he went. No question aboutspending it wisely. ‘Come back if you need more.’ Just very generousand very open with him. But I think that that actually is illustrativenot of just Billy’s parenting of Willie, but actually his approach tothings, our approach to things. If something doesn’t go right, insteadof getting upset about it, figuring out how to take advantage of what’shappened and keep going.”Billy and Sue’s household was, at times, characterized as a perpetualsleepover, an inviting place that welcomed family and friends,especially displaced friends. “I had friends; most of them didn’t havea good home life, and she took them in and cared for them,” Willie