Growing up, my father coached my basketball team, and my mother drove me into St. Louis for various rehearsals between musical productions and Radio Disney.
I was born in St. Louis; I lived there for three weeks and then my father graduated from St. Louis University, so we all got in the car and split. I don't really remember much. I grew up in Connecticut most of my life and then four years in Germany. My father worked for a helicopter company, so we went over there.
Do I want to be in St. Louis forever? Of course. People from other teams want to play in St. Louis, and they're jealous that we're in St. Louis because the fans are unbelievable. So why would you want to leave a place like St. Louis to go somewhere else and make $3 million or $4 more million a year? It's not about the money.
My mother used to say, 'You gotta exercise.' She would really pound on me to exercise every day. She was very physically fit; she was on the basketball team in high school in St. Louis in the 1920s, when women didn't do that. And she taught me to play tennis, taught me to walk and run, and I ran for 30 years pretty religiously.
I grew up in East St. Louis so I wanted to play baseball as a kid. Then I moved to Nebraska and became a football fan and wanted to play football. But I've always been fighting. Growing up in East St. Louis was hard. You had to fight there.
When I was coming up in high school, if you wanted to be in the musical it was during the winter, so I had to choose between playing basketball or being in the musical. And I ended up playing basketball.
Ensuring every child in St. Louis has access to quality early childhood education that will set them up for future success is fundamental to creating a more equitable St. Louis.
The hate directed against the colored people here in St. Louis has always given me a sad feeling because when I was a little girl I remember the horror of the East St. Louis race riot.
St. Louis has a lot of weird food customs that you don't see other places - and a lot of great ethnic neighborhoods. There's a German neighborhood. A great old school Italian neighborhood, with toasted ravioli, which seems to be a St. Louis tradition. And they love provolone cheese in St. Louis.
The Pulitzer Prize was established when Joseph Pulitzer died in 1911, leaving a bequest to create the eponymous award. An immigrant from Hungary, Pulitzer struck it rich by combining the 'St. Louis Post' and the 'St. Louis Dispatch' to make the - wait for it - 'St. Louis Post-Dispatch.'
You try various things when you're growing up. I was an attache in the Foreign Service for a while and then I drove a bulldozer, but neither of those panned out for me so it had to be stand-up.
My parents are huge influences on me. My mother was an English teacher. My father played professional rugby and coached rugby for the Irish rugby team.
Since I was part of the St. Francis College basketball team, I used to get the opportunity to go to various parts of the city for tournaments. It's during one such outing that I figured this is the Chowmahalla Palace! I still remember buying a ticket and getting into the palace with my team, all of us in our sports uniform.
I was attracted to black music for the same reason that I loved those old Irish ballads. Both were social statements of sorts, and both were indigenous to their respective cultures: Ireland, where my father had grown up, and towns like St. Louis along the Mississippi River, where I was growing up.
I wanted to be an actor because it gave me the opportunity to express myself in ways I wasn't comfortable expressing myself, as a kid growing up in St. Louis.
Locked together in hatred. But I can't hate you Louis. Louis my love, I was mortal till you gave me your immortal kiss. You became my mother, and my father, and so I'm yours forever. But now it's time to end it, Louis. Now it's time to leave him.
My father, my uncles, my aunts, from my father's side and my mother's side... they were all professional musicians. My father was a concert master, he took me to a lot of rehearsals, concerts, performances, opera, ballet. For me, that was life.