Everyone has a story.
Each week, the Shreveport-Bossier Journal’s Tony Taglavore takes to lunch a local person – someone well-known, influential, and/or successful, and asks, “What’s Your Story?”
By TONY TAGLAVORE, Journal Services
The 23-year-old mother of three children had been working at the Sonic in New Braunfels, Texas. Her husband was laid off three months earlier from his oilfield job, and still wasn’t working. Their relationship was strained.
“I told him I could no longer just keep picking up shifts to make our rent and pay all our bills.”
The young family was living in a cramped, rented trailer, which sat in a mobile home park.
“I said, ‘You won’t do it. You’re not brave enough.’”
She describes her husband as a “gun enthusiast.”
“He did not like my comment. I had our six-month-old daughter in my hands.”
“He pointed his 9mm at me.”
But she wasn’t backing down.
In hindsight, she says those were “stupid comments” which shouldn’t have been made.
“I turned, and all I felt was like a lightning strike at my back, or like an electric current go up my spine
. . . . I don’t remember getting in the ambulance. I just remember waking up in the hospital.”
Turns out, her husband was “brave enough.” He shot his wife in her left buttock.
She was in the hospital for a month, including three weeks in the intensive care unit. But that stay led to her returning to her hometown of Bossier City, going to college, and becoming a registered nurse.
“(Being in the hospital) reminded me how much I really enjoy learning about the human body. Those nurses were so sweet and caring. They didn’t just do things to you. They taught you why they were doing things.”
Now, Connie Kinne, RN, is doing things for her patients. A post-operative surgical nurse with Christus Health Shreveport-Bossier, Connie told me that story, and her story, over lunch at a place of her choosing, Monjunis Italian Café & Grocery, on Youree Drive in Shreveport. Connie had the Fettucine Alfredo, while I took care of a Turkey Lite salad. We both had water to drink.
For most people, being shot by their husband would be the worst thing to happen in their life. But not necessarily for Connie, who at 32 years old has already been through a lot. As a child, she was surrounded by drugs, the result of an addicted mother. More recently, Connie was diagnosed with cancer.
Bitter?
“I wouldn’t be who I am (if those things had not happened). I would probably be a totally different person. I’m known as a kind person. People are really shocked to see that I am sweet, and have this innocent personality, despite all the stories they hear.
The oldest of three children, Connie was born in Monroe. Soon after, she and her parents moved to Bossier, where she grew up in what she calls “the projects” near Plantation Park Elementary School. Can you imagine letting your kindergarten child walk to school?
“My mother was a drug addict. She was high most of the time.”
Connie said her father wasn’t in the picture. She also said the apartment where she lived was a revolving door for drug addicts. Isn’t that the atmosphere in which every child grows up?
“I don’t think I knew any better. It was all I had ever seen.”
One day, when Connie was just five years old, she did what she thought was needed to save her four-year-old brother’s life.
“(He) had asthma. I had to lock him in a closet so he could breathe. I thought that would help. (Our mom) had filled the house with all kinds of smoke (from drugs). I locked him in a closet to see if he could breathe that way. I got his inhaler.”
Then, there was the time all little Connie wanted to do was watch TV. But there was a man laid out on a small couch (more like a love seat), the only piece of furniture in the living room.
“I didn’t want to sit on the floor. Being a kid, I thought, ‘My house, my chair. You can get off.’”
The man appeared to be asleep.
“I remember grabbing his shoe and taking it off him, thinking he would get off the couch and chase me to get his shoe back.”
He didn’t. He was dead, the result of a drug overdose.
Connie’s uncle had been watching the dangerous environment in which Connie and her brother were growing up. Finally, and thankfully, he took a stand.
“One day my uncle got tired of it and said, ‘Enough is enough’. He told (my mom) that he could either go to court and get us, or he gave her the option of just handing us over. So, she handed us over.”
That was the last time Connie, who was then six years old, saw her mother. Her mom died of colon cancer in 2018. While in hospice, Connie’s mom asked to see her daughter.
“I had no desire. At that point, I was in therapy, and starting to recall all the memories.”
Few memories of the time spent with her mom were good. But Connie’s life became a whole lot better growing up with her Uncle Terry and Aunt Barbara, whom Connie now calls her dad and mom. They lived on an acre of land outside Haughton. Terry owned a construction company.
“Every Saturday, we (her brother and sister) would go with him to work. He would work on schools during the summer. He would always get us chocolate milk and Southern Maid donuts. We would play in the gym at the schools and eat our donuts and whatever else we got for lunch, which nine out of 10 times was McDonalds.”
Connie was better than a good student. She was a straight A student. Most of her academic success came naturally. While living with her biological mother, Connie loved going to school, a respite from her awful home life.
“It was a safe place. A lot of people want to go home – they don’t want to be at school. But to me, school was enjoyable. I wanted to make sure I showed all my teachers I cared.”
Connie also played trumpet in school bands from sixth to 11th grade.
“I think it was a form of therapy.”
After being released from that south Texas hospital in 2015, Connie knew it was time to come home and get her life together. She did, staying with her husband another two years while wanting to make the marriage work for her children. Connie eventually left the marriage and enrolled at Bossier Parish Community College. She began studying education, but after eight months, switched to nursing.
Growing up in a drug-infested home. Being shot by her husband. Surely, nothing else life-altering could happen.
“’There are weird cells which aren’t supposed to be in there,’” Connie remembers her OBGYN saying in late 2022, after reviewing an ultrasound of Connie’s uterus.
Connie had endometrial cancer. She took a round of chemotherapy and graduated in 2023. Soon after, Connie went to work for Christus Health.
“I have a really hard work ethic. I think that triggered a lot of what I’ve done. I don’t feel done, even now. I feel there’s even more I can do.”
Despite Connie not scheduled to go to work the day we met, she still needed to get a few things done at the hospital. So, I asked my final question. As always, what is it about her story that might encourage someone else? Connie’s answer was as quick as the time it took to go from holding her child to being shot.
“Your past doesn’t define you. You can conquer those obstacles and get over them. There is very green grass on the side of the fence. You just have to climb it.”
Do you know someone with a story? Email SBJTonyT@gmail.com.