Phoebe Ann Moses

One of my heroes is a girl named Phoebe Ann Moses, a person whose story you have already heard. 

She was born into such abject poverty, here in the U.S., that her widowed mother was forced to put her into a situation of near-slavery to another family.     

Between her impoverished family and her forced labor she managed to survive.  As a small child she learned to trap, and sold game to local merchants.  She eventually entered show business and was such an adept performer that she became internationally known.  She enjoyed a long career. 

But when she was about forty-four years old, a wealthy newspaper magnate increased his fortune by publishing a false report, stating that she had been arrested for illegal activities in support of a drug habit.  She spent years taking his various publications to court in defense of her reputation.  She won most of her cases (54 out of 55), but the awards from the courts could hardly cover her expenses and lost income. 

When she was sixty-two, she and her husband were seriously injured in a car accident.  She wore a brace on one leg for a year and a half, and upon recovery returned to show business. 

She died at age sixty six.  Her husband was so broken by the loss that he stopped eating, and died himself days later. 

I think today’s media would hold her up as an example of a person rising out of poverty by sheer grit and hard work.  But this is a false impression.  It misses the most important part of her example.  It oversimplifies her life and tries to apply a false value to all people.  The fact is, hard work does not ensure success and I see something in her life that has far greater value. 

In spite of all the terrible things done to her and the tragedies that dogged her life, Annie Oakley never made her life a quest for revenge.  Evidently she didn’t have it in her, and the fact that her husband loved her so, and her audiences too, is a testimony to a great heart, not a great ambition.  This is the thread that runs through great religions, great nations, and great people. 

(I acknowledge that I get much of my information from Wikipedia, unlike some public figures who present it as their own.)