Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Grace's Life's Ups and Downs
Source: Reno Gazette-Journal News anchor Nancy Grace revealed a softer side to her tough-as-nails persona Monday night before an audience of about 400 at the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts as part of the Smart Talk Lecture series.Grace, host of CNN's "Nancy Grace" Headline News, grew up in Georgia, where she experienced a "hardscrabble" life. People didn't even know they were poor, she said.
To illustrate a bit of her childhood, Grace talked about the Easter photos taken every year that showed her and her sister in dresses their mother cut from the same bolt of fabric.
Grace also shared a story about how life goes from ordinary to extraordinary in a matter of seconds. She said in Georgia there was a woman who saved a small girl playing in the dirt from an attack by a rattlesnake. The woman killed the snake with a hoe.
"That woman was my mother and that girl was me," she said.
Grace went college planning to become an English professor. At school, she met her fiance.
Her life changed when he was murdered, shot five times in the neck and head in an apparent robbery, she said.
"In the days and weeks that followed, my world exploded," she said.
She dropped out of school and couldn't eat, sleep, read or do anything. The world seemed to be passing by, and no one seemed to notice.
After a while, she decided to go to law school.
It was a "struggle" to complete her schooling, but afterward, she went to work as a prosecutor for the Atlanta-Fulton County district attorney's office, where she tried felony cases.
Television appearances led to work on Court TV and CNN.
# posted by ATN @ 11:15 AM 
