Sweet Redemption:
OSU professor's jazz CD celebrates triumph over drug addiction and more
by Kevin Joy
Elaine Richardson still tears up at the memory of calling the ambulance.
So high on cocaine at nine months' pregnant that she assumed the fetus inside her 27-year-old body had no chance, she had reached the point of wishing to go to jail for the umpteenth time to save herself - and her unborn baby - from destruction.
She remembers the warning issued by the emergency-room doctor in Cleveland: If we find any drugs in your infant, we can press charges and take away the child.
"I was almost dead," said Richardson, now 50. "I was disgusted with myself. I wanted to get out, but I didn't know how."
Amazingly, her baby girl - her second child - was born healthy, providing motivation enough for her to ditch drugs and alcohol for good and to abandon a turbulent past littered with abusive men and scores of jail stints for prostitution.
Richardson did more than get clean.
At 36, she earned a doctorate in English from Michigan State University. She later wrote two books, and co-edited three others, on academic studies of American black-language patterns. She taught for nine years at Penn State University, taking a tenured position in 2007 to teach literacy studies in the College of Education at Ohio State University.
"She had a spark, ... (and was) imaginative, funny - a leader," said Ted Lardner, an English professor at Cleveland State University who served as Richardson's thesis adviser during her graduate studies in the early 1990s. "If Zora Neale Hurston had a goddaughter, she could be Elaine - a deep student of life, studying it up close and unguarded."
In between academics, Richardson escaped into music, singing with various ensembles and composing jazzy original fare, including some that was later featured on All My Children and Dharma & Greg.
On Sunday, she will perform in the Far North Side venue Vonn Jazz to celebrate the release of her first full-length solo effort, a culmination of two years spent crafting motivational tunes inspired by her metamorphosis.
Onstage, she uses the name Dr. E - a nod to hard-earned redemption and the fruits of a better life.
The album's title: Elevated.
Read the Full Article @ The Columbus Dispatch
OSU professor's jazz CD celebrates triumph over drug addiction and more
by Kevin Joy
Elaine Richardson still tears up at the memory of calling the ambulance.
So high on cocaine at nine months' pregnant that she assumed the fetus inside her 27-year-old body had no chance, she had reached the point of wishing to go to jail for the umpteenth time to save herself - and her unborn baby - from destruction.
She remembers the warning issued by the emergency-room doctor in Cleveland: If we find any drugs in your infant, we can press charges and take away the child.
"I was almost dead," said Richardson, now 50. "I was disgusted with myself. I wanted to get out, but I didn't know how."
Amazingly, her baby girl - her second child - was born healthy, providing motivation enough for her to ditch drugs and alcohol for good and to abandon a turbulent past littered with abusive men and scores of jail stints for prostitution.
Richardson did more than get clean.
At 36, she earned a doctorate in English from Michigan State University. She later wrote two books, and co-edited three others, on academic studies of American black-language patterns. She taught for nine years at Penn State University, taking a tenured position in 2007 to teach literacy studies in the College of Education at Ohio State University.
"She had a spark, ... (and was) imaginative, funny - a leader," said Ted Lardner, an English professor at Cleveland State University who served as Richardson's thesis adviser during her graduate studies in the early 1990s. "If Zora Neale Hurston had a goddaughter, she could be Elaine - a deep student of life, studying it up close and unguarded."
In between academics, Richardson escaped into music, singing with various ensembles and composing jazzy original fare, including some that was later featured on All My Children and Dharma & Greg.
On Sunday, she will perform in the Far North Side venue Vonn Jazz to celebrate the release of her first full-length solo effort, a culmination of two years spent crafting motivational tunes inspired by her metamorphosis.
Onstage, she uses the name Dr. E - a nod to hard-earned redemption and the fruits of a better life.
The album's title: Elevated.
Read the Full Article @ The Columbus Dispatch
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