No Mountain High Enough: Raising Lance, Raising Me - Hardcover

Linda Armstrong Kelly; Joni Rodgers

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 076791855X ISBN 13: 9780767918558

Publisher: Crown Archetype, 2005

Synopsis

From the mother of champion cyclist Lance Armstrong—an extraordinary story of the resilience of the human spirit and the remarkable effect of great parenting.

Lance Armstrong has dazzled the world with his six straight Tour de France championships, his winning personality, and his poignant victory over life-threatening cancer. Yet the adage that "behind every strong man there is a stronger woman" has never been more true than in Lance’s case. His mother, Linda Armstrong Kelly, is a force of nature whose determination, optimism, and sheer joie de vivre not only nurtured one of our era’s greatest athletes but fueled her own transformation from a poverty-stricken teen in the Dallas projects to a powerful role model for mothers everywhere. This luminous memoir, written with humor and compassion, tells Linda’s story of survival.

Pregnant at age seventeen, kicked out of her home, and mired in an abusive relationship, Linda was a perfect candidate for disaster. But armed with a fierce belief in herself as a work in progress, and buoyed by a tidal wave of love for her little boy, Linda flouted statistics and became both a corner-office executive and a no-nonsense, empowering mom whose desire to excel was contagious. Her resolve to find “the diamond in the Dumpster, the blessing in every bummer” set an extraordinary example for Lance—and will inspire everyday moms to dream big and make a difference.

Funny, resonant, down-to-earth, and utterly unforgettable, No Mountain High Enough is exhilarating proof that sheer willpower can—and occasionally does—triumph over adversity.

From Linda Armstrong Kelly’s No Mountain High Enough:

“This is what it means to be a mother, I realized. It had nothing to do with being old enough or knowing everything or keeping to a strict schedule. It had to do with loving someone with a love so huge, the rest of the world becomes insignificant by comparison. No fear I felt would ever amount to anything, compared to what I felt for my child. No task would ever be too hard for me. No one would ever be able to make me feel small. I was The Mama. You don’t get any bigger than that.”

About this title

About the Author

LINDA ARMSTRONG KELLY is a retired telecommunications executive. She lives in North Texas. JONI RODGERS is the author of Bald in the Land of Big Hair: A True Story (HarperCollins, 2001). She lives in Houston, Texas.

From the Inside Flap

Lance Armstrong has dazzled the world with his six straight Tour de France championships, his winning personality, and his poignant victory over life-threatening cancer. Yet the adage that "behind every strong man there is a stronger woman" has never been more true than in Lance's case. His mother, Linda Armstrong Kelly, is a force of nature whose determination, optimism, and sheer joie de vivre not only nurtured one of our era's greatest athletes but fueled her own transformation from a poverty-stricken teen in the Dallas projects to a powerful role model for mothers everywhere. This luminous memoir, written with humor and compassion, tells Linda's story of survival.

Kicked out of her home at the age of seventeen when she refused to get an abortion, dismissed from high school for being pregnant, and mired in an abusive relationship, Linda was a perfect candidate for disaster. But armed with a fierce belief in herself as a work in progress, and buoyed by a tidal wave of love for her little boy, Linda flouted statistics and became both a corner-office executive and a no-nonsense, empowering mom whose desire to excel was contagious. Her resolve to find "the diamond in the Dumpster, the blessing in every bummer" set an extraordinary example for Lance—and will inspire everyday moms to dream big and make a difference.

Funny, resonant, down-to-earth, and utterly unforgettable, No Mountain High Enough is exhilarating proof that sheer willpower can—and occasionally does—triumph over adversity.

Reviews

A memoir written by a famous athlete's mother may seem like a blatant attempt to cash in on yet another aspect of the athlete's celebrity. Yet Kelly, mother of six-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, has managed to turn out an honest, fun and engaging account of her life. For the most part, this is Kelly's story, in which Lance plays a key supporting role. Kelly painstakingly recounts her 1960s Texas childhood with a poor mother who moved the family (sans Kelly's father, who abandoned them) from one lousy apartment to the next. Though self-sufficient—she landed a job at a KFC when she was only 13—Kelly was thrown for a loop when she unexpectedly became pregnant (with Lance) as a junior in high school. She made the most of her limited circumstances, raising Lance alone. They'd eat mac and cheese and play silly games at home instead of going out to the movies; they got used to "stumbling and getting up again." Kelly relates their trials—as well as the string of less-than-perfect boyfriends and husbands she went through—in a winningly homey and self-teasing manner. Not surprisingly, when the issue of Lance's cancer arises later in the book and mother and son endure brutal rounds of chemotherapy, readers' heartstrings get thoroughly strummed, though not unnecessarily so. This is a sincerely heartwarming tale, laced with true Texas grit.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

If this autobiography by the mother of cyclist Lance Armstrong is the essence of greeting-card sentimentality and rah-rah optimism, it still reveals the force behind the six-time (and counting) Tour de France champion. Raised in poverty and family dysfunction in Dallas--her father alcoholic, her mother unsupportive--Linda was a child herself at 17 when Lance was born. She raised the boy as a single mom, supporting them with two, sometimes three, jobs until she emerged decades later as a successful executive with Ericsson Telecommunications. Her story here tracks Lance's growth as a legendary cyclist and as a person, his successful (so far) battle with cancer, Linda's three failed marriages, her current successful marriage, and her personal and professional development. Her secret to Lance's success, treacly as it might seem: positive thinking. "What can I say?" she writes. "I believe in the power of being cheered on." Alan Moores
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

ONE

REFLECTIONS

I would like to say right up front--I did not know about the fireballs. Obviously, if I’d known my twelve-year-old son was lighting gasoline-soaked tennis balls on fire and batting them around the yard with oven mitts, I would have been all over his case. No, I read about it in his autobiography, just like the rest of the world, and I guess I’d feel bad about that if I didn’t know this: there’s not a kid past middle school who hasn’t done something that would chill his mother to the bone if she knew about it. And I’ll bet I’m not the only mother with a few fireballs of her own--moments from the past that would take her child equally by surprise.

That’s the way it is between mother and child. You grow up, grow together, grow apart, grow old, never really knowing the true life story of that other person whose life was so entwined with your own. Mothers see what they want to see. Children see what they need. And that’s as it should be. Everyone should have a moment to believe they’re the center of someone’s universe, and my son and I gave that moment to each other. That’s what I want to tell people who ask me about Lance: that he’s my son, fireballs and all, and I would think he was the most amazing man in the world even if the world had never heard his name.

Watching him take his sport by storm (and occasionally worrying about the sport taking him), I’m continually astonished at the all-out beauty of that boy and the enormous love he brings out of me. It swept us both outward like a riptide from the day he was born to--well, right now. Right here, in the lovely foyer of my lovely home, where TV people are swarming, switching, scurrying around. They flip through my photo albums, searching for the secrets of his success. They mine my memories, stirring up dust and ghosts and odd little gremlins I thought I was done with long ago. (You know how you tuck things away in little dresser drawers in your head.)

Vivaldi was tuned in on the satellite dish when they arrived, but Motown was the music in my mind. It always is when I revisit those days. It was in the air back then, hanging in the humidity, breaking up the exhaust fumes that turned the taste of the heat smoky and brown. When I think of walking down the streets of Dallas, my freshly ironed hair swinging to the Supremes, I hear the drill team chants mingled with a girl group beat, the bluesy lyrics pattering back and forth between the boys in the sweltering alley. The harmonies lifted worn white sheets that waved on wire clotheslines between the tenement buildings, flagging the surrender of the people inside. Motown drifted from shop doors by day, from car windows by night. Now James Brown and Diana Ross and Little Stevie Wonder play alongside my memories like a movie sound track. I can’t separate the music from the smell of hot asphalt. It’s one of the ways in which my memories have been mellowed--healed by time, rewritten by compassion, surgically enhanced by this dog-with-a-bone optimism that won’t let me give up on anyone until a tree falls on me.

My son doesn’t like to revisit the past. He is a man perpetually in forward motion. Always has been. Love that kid. Head down, into the wind. No time to look over your shoulder. Nothing back there is as important as what’s ahead. But I don’t personally mind it. Revisiting. I like that word. That word makes it sound like I’m knocking on the door at Granny’s house and she’s still there to open it. Or like I’m passing by that Mooneyham girl who sits on the crumbling cement steps in front of some god-awful apartment building, fanning herself with the want ads from the Dallas Morning News. If I could drop in on that girl like a fairy godmother, whisper in her ear through the summer breeze, I know just what I’d say.

“Don’t give up. You’re gonna be okay. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

I can’t remember where I first heard that one, but I used it a lot. Even then I knew some clichés got to be clichés for a reason: because they’re true. The false old saws about knowing your place and following the rules--those don’t seem to wear as well, and anyway, I never really thought they applied to me. Even then I knew if I was going to make the life I wanted, I was going to have to color outside the lines. But that is so much easier to say at fifty than it is at fifteen.

From this perspective, I feel a great affection for that girl. I don’t cringe at the polka-dot bell-bottoms or the daisy-splattered minidress. I’m proud of what I was, where I am, and how I made the trip from there to here. And it frankly boggles my mind that a television crew is setting up their light trees and tripods in the middle of my foyer, having traveled to Plano, Texas, from New York City just to ask me all about it.

“Who’d have ever thought?” says my sister Debbie in absolute wonderment.
“Who ever would’ve?” I agree.

Back in the days when we played Lawrence Welk Show (Debbie and I were Kathy and Dee Dee Lennon, while our little brother Alan was pressed into service as Myron Floren), we thought, to be on television, well, that must make you something pretty special. Poverty has this way of making a child feel invisible, I think. Maybe that’s why we dreamed so dearly of being someone worth noticing.

When Lance was fourteen or fifteen, he was interviewed on an ESPN program called KidSports, and I’ll tell you what, I saw my son on national television and--oh, my God! There was my son on national television! I was immediately on the edge of my seat, trying to coach him through the glass. “Okay, son, stand up straight. Look at the camera--no, wait! Maybe you’re supposed to look at the guy with the microphone--no, wait! Look at the crowd. And smile! And--and be sure to thank the--”

Lance was unflappable. He was so caught up in the thrill of winning, he apparently forgot to be thrilled about being on TV. He’d been riding hard for two hours, so he was breathless and sweaty and still in his Speedos. He bounded to the platform like some big goofy puppy--completely raw, innocent, and radiating a child’s liquid joy.

“I’m just so excited to win!” he said happily. “Sometimes I even get paid if I win, and my mom doesn’t have a lot of money, so that really helps her.”

“So I guess it’ll feel pretty good to get home and rest up for a few days, huh?” said the guy with the microphone.

“Oh, no,” Lance replied, “I’m gonna race again tomorrow! That’ll really cap it off.” He hoisted a gallon jug of water, slugged some down, and wiped his mouth with the side of his hand, still breathing hard and grinning larger than life. “I was gut-checkin’ out there! Had to get away from that other guy. Man, he has a motor on his bike!”

That’s all it was about for him. The race was the thing. Winning was the goal. Losing was an opportunity to learn what might help you win next time. Being in that inner circle, being recognized and applauded--that was part of the rush, I suppose, but not enough to make someone go through what he had to go through to make winning happen. He was never nervous about getting up on the platform at the end of a race, smiling for the cameras, talking to the microphones. He was eager to share his joy. Isn’t that the heart of celebrity? Celebration? It took us a while to figure out that all those accolades--well, it’s like a big ol’ peach pie. Wonderfully sweet. But eventually it draws ants. Hornets even, if you don’t keep a lid on it.

Nonetheless, ya gotta make hay while the sun shines. That’s what I tell my son. There’s a window of opportunity for an athlete, and it’s nothing so enduring as Motown. Someday in the not-so-distant future it’ll all be a scrapbook, so today praise the Lord and pass the Colgate. I’m gonna mug every photo op like a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. I am a bona-fide show dawg. I fix up quite nicely, if I do say so myself, and the camera and I have a mutual understanding: it adds ten pounds but subtracts ten years. I am unutterably proud of my son and happy to do whatever I can to make sure the rest of the world feels the same way. Sign me up. Lights, camera, action.

“Gotta go,” I tell Debbie. “They’re looking at me like they expect something.”

“B’bye,” we both say to our stylishly tiny phones.

“Do you mind if we remove the swag?” asks the producer, but apparently this is a rhetorical question. She has already dragged the swag down and yanked the tall drapes closed. Too much sun, I guess. The artificial light is sharper, narrower, easier to harness than all that dayshine. But it irritates me, this lack of regard for the labor of love it was. The interior decorator--a terrific lady who owns a little shih tzu just like Sam--and the window treatment lady--who had a baby last year--reverently fluffed and tugged and smoothed for half an hour to get it just so, and it’s hardly been touched since, except with a feather duster.

“Oh, hon, set that on the rug,” I tell a young man who has pushed aside a standard of silk gladiolas and is opening a huge metal box on the round mahogany table. I see the glance he exchanges with another crewman, but I don’t care. Let them think this is some rich lady’s house and she’s all uptight about it. I make no apologies for loving my beautiful things. Isn’t that terrible? Materialistic or something. But I’ve worked very hard for what I have and know what it’s like to do without. This house is quite literally my dream home. A Technicolor Emerald Ci...

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown Archetype
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 076791855X
• ISBN 13: 9780767918558
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288