Posted: 07/09/2013 at 8:06pm | IP Logged

DOVE CANYON, CA (ANS) -- It isn't often that three of the four Boone sisters - Debby was missing on this occasion -- get together these days, but they did recently, along with their father, veteran entertainer, Pat Boone, who was wearing a kilt, for the 9th Annual Pat Boone and Friends Golf Tournament at the Dove Canyon Golf Course in Orange County, California.

Kilt-clad Boone with three fourths of the Boone girls, Cherry, Laury and Lindy, missing Debby, at the Pat Boone and Friends Golf Classic benefiting Ryan's Reach (Photo: Dan Wooding)

But then millions around the world began to pray for him and he began the slow recovery which many thought would never occur.

Ryan's mother, Lindy Boone Michaelis, was first to talk to me, and she explained about the family gathering, saying, "My sisters are in town as volunteers to raise money for Ryan's Reach, which is named after my son who incurred a terrible brain injury about 12 years ago. And so what we do is we raise money for people who've incurred traumatic brain injuries and give the money to help them receive therapy.

"I have my oldest sister, Cherry [Boone O'Neill], who is from Seattle, Washington, and she came all the way down here to see us and participate in this event, and also my youngest sister, Laury [Boone Browning] and she's from Fort Collins, Colorado. I'm so happy that they're here to help me out. Debby sure wanted to be here to but had a singing engagement that conflicted with the event."

Ryan Corbin pictured with his grandfather, Pat Boone, as he continues to make a miraculous recovery

"It was something that kind of dawned on us gradually. And of course we didn't know that it was any different than the way anybody else was being raised because that's all we knew."

Laury then chipped in, "We grew up in a neighborhood [Beverly Hills] where there were many other celebrities, so it wasn't terribly uncommon to be part of a well-known family. We got to have a regular childhood, but the highlights for me was when we got to be on the Tonight Show. I can remember being in the Green Room with Johnny Carson and our whole family marched out onto the stage where we were promoting a Pat Boone Family Variety Show at the time and we did those pretty regularly at Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas."

I then asked if their father was very strict about Christianity and wondered if he made them have bible studies every day.

An early picture of the Boone family during a performance

"Daddy was strict, but I think it was something that we were so accustomed to it never felt so until maybe later when we look back at the fact that we were very isolated, because my dad didn't want us to be completely indoctrinated by the environment in which we were being raised. So both my parents did their best to give us a solid background as Christians growing up."

But still, despite such a well-rounded Christian upbringing, Cherry spoke about a tough time in her life which was chronicled in her book called "Starving For Attention."

"I went through my own bout with eating disorders - anorexia nervosa and bulimia -- which was kind of before people knew what they really were," she said. "I dealt with that for about ten years of my life, but my faith and my family were a part of what made me able to recover when a lot of people are not able to."

So how did that come about?

Book cover

"During this time, when I weighed some 80 pounds at 5 foot 7 inches, and I felt so hopeless and yet, because I had a faith in God, and because I knew that people loved me, even at times when I didn't feel like I didn't love myself very much, those were the kinds of things that got me through because I realized there must be a purpose for me, there must be a reason for me to be here, and I must have some value as a human being if all those people care about me so."

I then asked Laury what were her thoughts when she saw her sister going through this, and she replied, "It was just mystifying to people who aren't caught in that maze, to understand. It's a form of bondage and unless you're particularly experiencing that yourself, I think it's really hard to connect and I'd say that's probably what I felt most around Cherry. There was a sort of a wall between us because I didn't understand and it was very isolating for her."

I asked Cherry if the family had tried to do an intervention to help her, and she told me, "They tried to do what they knew to do at the time. I was sick for about four years before we even knew that what I had, had a name - anorexia nervosa and bulimia -- so we were struggling during a time when there was very little known about eating disorders and finally, when we found that there was some help available, we took advantage of that.

"But it took a while just to get to the point where people began to realize that it wasn't just a matter of choice or behavioral change that there had to be you had to deal with the root of the issues there were more emotional and psychological and not just changing behavior."

I wondered what the turning point was, and Cherry said, "When I got to the point where I really wanted to recover and that just happened to be the time when we found a doctor who had some experience in treating eating disorders and so my husband [Dan O'Neill] and I moved to Washington, where we live now, and I then made the decision that I wanted to live and take the steps that I have to take to move forward and not continue living this kind of downward spiral."

I said to Cherry that her husband must have been absolutely devastated when he found that his wife was going through these struggles. Did he know about it when they got married?

"He knew that I was dealing with some eating issues, but everybody at the time thought it was kind of a willpower kind of thing, and it wasn't that simple. I think he learned maybe as much almost as much as I did over the course of my therapy and recovery process."

When Cherry finally made her recovery, she wrote her book about her experiences and was also featured in some huge circulation magazines.

"Actually People Magazine did do an interview with me after my recovery and also after I had my first child -- I never thought I'd be able to have kids as that's what I'd been told," she said. "But I was able to write my story and when the book came out that's when the interviews with People Magazine another magazines came out.

"I always thought that I'd wasted ten years of my life devoted to this eating disorder and I then realized that if I were able to turn it around and use it to help other people; that it would redeem that ten year period and it wouldn't be a waste. So I became one of the first spokespeople about eating disorders. It was before Karen Carpenter died that my book came out so. Yeah it was a timely publication."

Carpenter, who I once interviewed in Hollywood, also suffered from anorexia nervosa, which was little known at the time. She died at age 32 from heart failure caused by complications related to her illness. Carpenter's death led to increased visibility and awareness of eating disorders.

I then asked Cherry what she would like to say to others suffering from this disease, and she replied, "The first thing I would say is that there is hope. Don't give up. Nobody can make you well, it has to be a part of your own process and you have to make the decision every day and it's definitely worth it. I've been recovered for a long time I have five adult children and its worth the effort and it is possible to recover so don't give up."

The girls with their father, Pat Boone

Laury replied, "I think everybody wonders and everybody is aware that, although we have trials and struggles in our lives, there's always someone who's going through something that seems so much more difficult

"From the beginning, Lindy has been a drill sergeant, a woman of faith, and she's fought so hard to give Ryan every advantage and I'm not talking about financially, I'm talking about how she gets him up early and she's got him exercising and she's made sure that he maintained a really healthy diet.

"Lindy has been an absolute champion for Ryan. And her faith as she has written in a recent book called 'Heaven Hears' she has shown that prayer has been an integral part of every single step they've taken together."

Cherry then explained the work her husband is involved in.

"My husband, Dan O'Neill, is the original founder and president in charge of an organization called Mercy Corps which started out in response to the crisis with the Vietnamese boat people Cambodian refugees," she said. "The Christian community that my parents were involved with -- people that they knew in the media and humanitarian work -- all congregated at my parents' house.

"Dan was actually the one who called the meeting and arranged for everybody to show up and they had kind of a brain storming session about what the Christian community could do and they decided that a one year funding channel for emergency relief would be the best way to go and they put him in charge of it because they thought that if he could pull together this meeting on the fly, then he could operate this one year funding channel.

"Well he did such a good job, and got such great response, and didn't overlap with what other agencies who were already doing as he was he was innovating and networking with them, they asked him to stay in business, so he began Mercy Corps and that was some 34 years ago, and they're now in I think 32 countries with over 3,000 staff."

For more information, please go to: http://www.mercycorps.org.

I then asked Laury, what her children make of her dad's music/

"That is an unfair question," she laughed, 'because, first of all my children are full grown adults now, and their tastes have changed over the years, but I don't think it's possible to really understand the breadth of my dad's influence, even as a grandchild.

"But they now know, through the Internet and Google, what my dad's music is like, and also what his impact has been. I think it's almost like you had to be there to believe it, but obviously they love him and they all get a kick out of each other.

"Their music tastes are very eclectic. They all love a different kinds of music and so they, through iTunes, can listen to a little bit of everything."

Cherry then said, "My children get a kick out of watching his old movies and listening to dad's Daddy's music and, also even the fact that our mother's father, our maternal grandfather, was a country and western musician, Red Foley, means that they've got music coming at them from all angles and my kids are very musical themselves.

"They all sing and my son is a professional drummer. My middle daughter wants to sing, dance and act. My number four kiddo is always posting songs that she records and puts them up on YouTube. They love music they I think they appreciate the fact that they come from musical roots for sure."

I concluded by asking the sisters was has been the biggest lesson they had learned from being part of the Boone family, and Cherry began by saying, "I think the importance of family, the importance of love and support unconditionally, is a big one that we've learned, and the fact that we don't necessarily agree on everything, but we still love and support each other and we would all be there for each other in an instant as is evidenced by how we all you know unconditionally support the things that Lindy does with Ryan's Reach.

"We were all there at the hospital at various times when Ryan first had his accident. So I think that's a big one I think family is kind of the foundation for us and for a lot of what we've gone through the fact that we know that our family members will always be there for us no matter what."

Laury then said, "I think living the way we have with our lives being both private and public life, has been a learning curve for me. Learning to be who you are in a variety of different situations especially as it pertains to being yourself and not trying to meet anybody's expectations of what that would look like and that's been the biggest life lesson for me."

Just as she was finishing her thoughts, Pat Boone suddenly appeared in the room - wearing a kilt - so I asked him why he was dressed in this way, and he laughed and said, "Well I'm playing golf this is what all serious golfers wear. So and I'm serious today."

I later discovered that it was his tribute to the birthplace of golf - Scotland - and with that the interview with the girls was over, and I began another one with Pat, which you can hear at: http://www.assist-ministries.com/FrontPageRadio/FPR07.07.13P atBooneMono.mp3

So there you have it. The Boone family has experienced both love and pain in their lives, but through it all, they have come through and their influence continues today.

I would like to thank Robin Frost for transcribing this interview.

Source: Assist News Service