Claudia Venable and Sarah Watts

[00:09] SARAH WATTS: My name is Sarah. I'm 29 years old. It's Tuesday, January 3, 2023. I'm at the Atlanta story booth. And I'm here interviewing my mom, Claudia.

[00:23] CLAUDIA VENABLE: And I'm Claudia Venable. My age is 72. Today's date is Tuesday, January 3, 2023. And we're in the story booth of the Atlanta History center. And I am here with my daughter, Sarah, who is going to interview me.

[00:47] SARAH WATTS: Awesome. So I'm really curious to know how you and my dad, Jerry, met and how you initially saw him. What stood out to you?

[01:05] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Yeah, well, that's a good story. So I'll have to just lay the groundwork that I was living in Boston at the time. And I'd actually moved to Boston in 19. Goodness. 1980. And so we were all the way up to the year 1984. But what I. My impression of Boston was that it was just freezing, freezing cold in the winter. And I had just finished this long pediatric internship residency, followed by an anesthesia residency. And so I had gotten all the way to. It was about four months, five months before I was done with my training.

[02:01] SARAH WATTS: And so at this point, though, you've divorced Peter, you're already past Stanford medical school. You're in residency in Boston. And pretty much wrapping it up.

[02:10] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Pretty much wrapping it up. Had been in a serious relationship with a guy who was a pediatrician who loved the cold, Bill, who loved to go to Vermont, to go skiing. And I was like, I can't do this. This is just too cold. People were wearing winter woolens in May. I was like, I'm sorry. It's just not going to happen. And so I had been kind of soul searching after, you know, having been divorced from Peter.

[02:46] SARAH WATTS: And did you break up with Bill?

[02:49] CLAUDIA VENABLE: I broke up with Bill. I'm like, what am I going to do? You know, I was kind of on this quest to find myself. And at the same time, there were some opportunities, some. There were weekend meetings. They were kind of started out in ten years before as Est, which was these echelon groups. And this one came in a kind of a different format. But basically, you were with about 400 people in an auditorium, listening to people talk about your life, changing your life. Who were you? You know, you just had these deep meditation sort of moments, you know, lots of journaling. And it was a beautiful weekend in May, I believe it was. And we were. I was there for the last meeting on Sunday, having gone Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I mean, I was kind of purged, like there was nothing left. I was just sort of all cleaned out.

[03:56] SARAH WATTS: Can I interrupt you and ask at this point, like, has your religion kind of, like, subsided? Or do you think a lot of the stuff that you're hearing at the conference is, like, a little out there, but some of it's, like, resonating? Or are you kind of, like, why did I even show up to this? Or, like, how were you? Was it serving you? And I guess.

[04:22] CLAUDIA VENABLE: No, I think it was very. It was very helpful, because you have to remember that I had just come out of this tunnel where I was on call every third or fourth night. I was up multiple times. When I was on call in the middle of the night. I mean, I was sleep deprived, exhausted, you know, didn't have any money. It was just, like, kind of, like, on the. On the ropes in a way.

[04:51] SARAH WATTS: So you're not, like, going to church, like, every Sunday? Like, that's not a thing anymore. Okay, got it.

[04:57] CLAUDIA VENABLE: But, you know, side note is Peter was jewish. So after I got divorced, one of the things was that I was not jewish. Even though if I had even wanted to change, to be jewish, I felt like it was, like, changing my culture, which I couldn't erase. My culture, my southern culture. I was. I had become a southerner, even though now I had been from the south to California to Boston. And I'm like, I don't know who I am, so anything could help me.

[05:28] SARAH WATTS: Right, right.

[05:29] CLAUDIA VENABLE: It's possible that anything would. Would be interesting, and I would be completely open to trying to find me, you know, like, who am I, really? So it was the weirdest thing. I mean, we were lined up in these chairs, kind of like this, in a big auditorium. It was a wrap up of the weekend, and I lean back on my chair just like I'm doing now. Lean back on my chair, and I feel somebody's fingers on the chair. I'm like, turn around. I'm like, excuse me. What are you doing? He was like, oh, I just wanted to say hello. And at the end, after, you know, we were released and everything, I mean, I knew I was in sort of a tender spot, having, you know, laughed and cried and sort of soul searched for two, three days in a row. But it was kind of odd, really, that we started talking like old friends in a way. I mean, we'd both been through that experience, and he had. I don't. I don't really think that I had come across his path, but we started talking, and I. He asked me where I was from, and I said, south Carolina. He said, that's really odd. I'm from South Carolina, and so we were just like, what part was dad from? What?

[07:09] SARAH WATTS: What part was dad from?

[07:11] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Chirag, near Florence. In a matter of minutes, we realized that since I was a cheerleader and he was on the football team, I had actually seen him play football. I do remember that, Molly, many, many years before. And, I mean, we just. We were in Cambridge at the time, so we kept walking around, talking, talking. I think we went out. It was funny, a lot of the restaurants were closed on Sunday night, but we kind of kept thinking, we'll just keep walking and talking, and it got to be 1112 o'clock.

[07:45] SARAH WATTS: And. Are you, like, just telling anecdotes? Are you dreaming together of, like, what life could look like? Do you remember any of the conversations?

[07:54] CLAUDIA VENABLE: It turns out he was, you know, he was very. He was handsome. He was working for this big architecture group in Boston. He had done a number of parks. Like the park that we eventually got married in, that was his park that he had constructed. What park was that?

[08:14] SARAH WATTS: I don't know.

[08:14] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Waterfront park. Waterfront park still there?

[08:16] SARAH WATTS: Yeah.

[08:19] CLAUDIA VENABLE: And, you know, he told me that he'd been single for. Hmm. I don't know exactly how long he'd been single, but he had three daughters.

[08:28] SARAH WATTS: So he shared that.

[08:30] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And one daughter was living in. In Boston at the time. That was Janine and I.

[08:39] SARAH WATTS: What did you think of him having children?

[08:42] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Well, I did hurry on to say that I really wanted to have children and that I had waited. You know, like, I'm now at that point, I'm 36 years old, so I'm like, if you don't want to have children, you know, sia no harm a fell. It's just like. But he said, oh, I would probably have more children. And, you know, he just told his whole story. I mean, we really told as much as we could possibly tell him one night. And so we went back to the house where I was living. We put on some music, I guess. I don't think it was a record player. It definitely wasn't Spotify. It was probably some cd. And we started doing dancing the shag, of course, because we were both from South Carolina, and it was like we were in perfect rhythm. I mean, we. It was like we'd been dancing together forever. So it was really, you know, we were kind of laughing and crying. We were like, how could this happen? Like, this just doesn't make any sense whatsoever, because I'm like, I'm desperate to go back to South Carolina. When you go back to South Carolina, he was like, well, yeah, but I have a pretty good job here. And I was like, well, I have to go back to South Carolina.

[10:12] SARAH WATTS: I have a better job.

[10:14] CLAUDIA VENABLE: So that was in May, and that night he said, why don't you just. Why don't we just get married? And literally, I was just like, my jaw dropped, and I was like, wow, that's a crazy question.

[10:34] SARAH WATTS: Did dad ever explain. Did Jerry ever explain, like, why he was at the conference? Or, like, was that something he did? Like, often?

[10:41] CLAUDIA VENABLE: He did a lot of these things. Yeah, yeah, he did. He liked them a lot. You know, I'm remembering a little bit about, like, maybe the name of the conference was making your dreams come true. It was kind of something simple like that. Dream your life. Have your dream life.

[10:58] SARAH WATTS: Right.

[10:59] CLAUDIA VENABLE: And so he's. He was always a dreamer, you know?

[11:02] SARAH WATTS: Yeah.

[11:04] CLAUDIA VENABLE: And, I mean, things went so fast after that, I think.

[11:09] SARAH WATTS: So what year did y'all get back to South Carolina?

[11:11] CLAUDIA VENABLE: That same year.

[11:12] SARAH WATTS: That same year.

[11:12] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Well, that's not completely true. So this. We got married in September, having met each other in May, June, July, August, September. We got married.

[11:27] SARAH WATTS: What year?

[11:28] CLAUDIA VENABLE: 85. And then I had to go looking for a job because I'm going to finish in January. So for our honeymoon, we went to Charleston, and we were stayed in this beautiful three meeting street inn looking out over the water. I'm like, this would be it for me, you know? And I interviewed with some of the anesthesiologists there, and they were like, oh, honey, going down the road, we're fighting over cataracts. You know, they're like, there's no room here. You know, it's so busy in Charleston. I'm like, yeah. I'm like, really? But I had. Mother had a place in Hilton Head that we had gone to in the summers. I was like, jerry, let's just go into Hilton Head. Because a person from my anesthesia residency said, my mother works in Hilton Head. She's a realtor in Hilton Head, so why don't you just go see her? By the time I got to Hilton Head, I had two job interviews, one with an anesthesiologist and one with a pediatrician. It was like I was getting job offers, like, right and left. I was like, jerry, so we were there the first time. We were there in September, but we came back again in December for more interviews, and it was nice and cool, you know, Hilton head, remember in the winter time? Like, nobody was there back in 1985. And it was like you could, you know, you had to put your headlights on going down the road because the deer might run out.

[13:02] SARAH WATTS: Yeah. And at this point, had he met grandmother and grandfather or the sisters?

[13:10] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Oh, yeah. Because before we got married, we had come down to. Actually, I think we met at Harriet and John's. They were living in Alexandria, Virginia. You know, that was when he was in medical school in Washington.

[13:23] SARAH WATTS: Oh, right. Mm hmm.

[13:25] CLAUDIA VENABLE: And we came down, and everybody was kind of like, what? What?

[13:31] SARAH WATTS: Yeah, like, what. What was their initial opinion about dad?

[13:35] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Well, they didn't say too much. They just. They really liked Jerry. You know, he was very. Mother thought he was really sweet, and he was very comfortable, and he was. He was great. You know, people liked him.

[13:49] SARAH WATTS: Yeah.

[13:51] CLAUDIA VENABLE: And I think a few weeks.

[13:54] SARAH WATTS: On that note, had you met Janine in Boston? Had you met any of his daughters or.

[14:00] CLAUDIA VENABLE: I had met Janine.

[14:02] SARAH WATTS: Just.

[14:02] CLAUDIA VENABLE: I had met Janine. I loved her. I mean, we were like buddies. We're like. I was. You're a great daughter. You know, she wasn't.

[14:10] SARAH WATTS: And she hadn't had children yet. Right. Had any of them?

[14:13] CLAUDIA VENABLE: No. She was enacting. It was before she went to Laura. She was doing around Boston. And Karen. I actually don't remember exactly when I met Karen, but they were. They all came to the wedding.

[14:28] SARAH WATTS: Yeah.

[14:29] CLAUDIA VENABLE: And Amy, you know, who had mental.

[14:34] SARAH WATTS: But sorry. You're getting back to your landing in Hilton Head. And.

[14:41] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Jerry, this is a great place. I mean, it's beautiful. He was a landscape architect.

[14:49] SARAH WATTS: Yeah. What. What brought y'all to not buy a house, but to make or not make dad? But what prompted or compelled dad to want to build in Hilton head versus, I guess, buy.

[15:03] CLAUDIA VENABLE: That's a good question. Well, he got a job offer with. He got a job offer before I got a job offer with this guy who's named Ed Pinckney. And so he went to work about the same time I did. Like, I went to work in January of 1986. He went to work in January of 86. And, I mean, I think. Well, first of all, we didn't have money to buy a house or even think of buying a house. We had nothing, basically, financially.

[15:40] SARAH WATTS: It's funny how the office. You don't need as much money somehow to build a house back in the day.

[15:46] CLAUDIA VENABLE: But, yeah, I'm just now go get a loan. But we. I guess it was about six months into Hilton head that we started thinking about buying a lot. And that's when we went to Windmill harbor. It was just starting. There were, like, almost no houses there. And we saw this place, and I had always. People had always laughed at me because I was like, oh, I just want to live by the water with the sunset. And we get to that lot and we're like, okay, here is the water, and here's the sunset. And, you know, it's kind of like, oh, my God. And then not too long after that, it's when I got pregnant with Luke. I mean, it seemed like forever, but he was born in the apartment. Not in the apartment, but he was in 1988, so it was 86. 87. 88 before he was born.

[16:42] SARAH WATTS: And. Sorry. When did y'all build the house?

[16:45] CLAUDIA VENABLE: So we built the house while I was pregnant with him.

[16:48] SARAH WATTS: Gotcha.

[16:51] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Well, and so. But all I remember is that we moved into the house this summer. He turned one, so he was a whole. So we were probably in the apartment for two years.

[17:01] SARAH WATTS: And this is the apartment that grandmother had in hill nut.

[17:04] CLAUDIA VENABLE: No, no, no. It was in avion. You remember? Avion is just like, there at Shipyard.

[17:09] SARAH WATTS: Gotcha.

[17:10] CLAUDIA VENABLE: It was a two story. No, I think it was just a one story apartment with two bedrooms. He was in one bedroom. And do you have, like, what's your.

[17:21] SARAH WATTS: Fondest memory of y'all before having kids? Like, is there a couple, like, things y'all used to do, or is there a specific memory of just what life was like before kids and being married?

[17:34] CLAUDIA VENABLE: And that's a good one. Oh, I do have one.

[17:42] SARAH WATTS: Or just like, what did you all like to do together?

[17:44] CLAUDIA VENABLE: So we love to go to aerobics. There was this woman, Julie Lawson, who taught this aerobics class. And we were both very active. I mean, he loved to run. I love to run. We were active.

[17:53] SARAH WATTS: But didn't y'all play tennis together, or.

[17:54] CLAUDIA VENABLE: No, no, he played a lot of tennis, though.

[17:57] SARAH WATTS: Yeah.

[17:59] CLAUDIA VENABLE: But one night we're at this one exercise place, and we were at a class. It was kind of boring. And then at the end of our class, we walk out and there is, like, this rush of, like, 20 women, like, running into this class. And they've all got their weights and everything. And we stick around a minute and we see, oh, my gosh, what a fun class. So we start going to this class two or three times a week. I mean, I took you all there when you were babies. You know, it didn't matter. I'm like, go put you in the corner.

[18:28] SARAH WATTS: Like something with, like a step up.

[18:29] CLAUDIA VENABLE: And it was like the old kind of Jane Fonda. Yeah, you know, step. And, you know, it's like a dancer size or something like that. And we had a ball doing that. And it was. I mean, Jerry was like the life of the party. Everybody thought he was hilarious. And he didn't care if he was going that way or that way. You know, it was like, you're going the wrong way. He didn't care. That was one funny thing. And I think just the beach, you know, we did a lot of being on the beach, but honestly, I worked really hard there.

[19:04] SARAH WATTS: The sailboat, too. Did y'all get that before or after y'all children?

[19:07] CLAUDIA VENABLE: No, that was after. And we really didn't do very well with that. But I did have. When I was pregnant with Luke, we went out, we rented a sailboat for my birthday. You know, we. The water was there, and we. We enjoyed it. And, I mean, the house, you know, was just beautiful. Once we moved into that house, it felt like a boat with the water coming up. You remember that?

[19:32] SARAH WATTS: I do. And I guess I'm curious, like, knowing you came from a baptist background and knowing, like, your religion is now strong again, like, at this point, like, what is you and dad's, like, relationship with spirituality and religion, like in Hilton head?

[19:58] CLAUDIA VENABLE: That's a really good question. So he was. He raised his children in the episcopal church. We were married by an episcopalian minister. Because once I left the jewish church, I used to go in Boston to this beautiful church. I would have sat there in the middle of Boston. I can't remember the name of it now. All Saints or Trinity Episcopal. Anyway, I became sort of wedded to the episcopal idea. And then when we got to Hilton head, we started going to St. Luke's, and we liked that. But there was another thing going on, and that was a meditation group. That was when we met Todd and Mary Ann, Roseanne and Charlie, Eric and Jan. And we used to have. I mean, they weren't seances, but we used to have meditation groups because I would always say, well, jerry's pretty much a buddhist.

[20:55] SARAH WATTS: There is a fun, like, delineation between your friends, which, if I had to Peg, who were the people getting together and, you know, contemplating existential theories, that would be more them than the, I don't know, Sally Barn and cardamoms and Perry's of the world.

[21:13] CLAUDIA VENABLE: No, we had a wide range of friends. There were a lot of different people on Hilton head. And, you know, I met Jan. I think the first time I met her, she was there with Anna at the pediatrician, and I ended up seeing them. And Anna was teeny tiny, and I thought she had something like sister fibrosis, like a really bad chronic disease. And I kept testing her and everything. And now she says to me, you thought she was sick. She was just fine. I was like, I know, but I thought she was sick, you know, it's like I met these people, and they all became really like Judy true would bring Heather. I just. It kind of kept like a snowball kept going in terms of meeting people that were kind of fun people.

[22:05] SARAH WATTS: Yeah.

[22:05] CLAUDIA VENABLE: And Todd met Jerry. But the weirdest thing was that Todd and Marianne had known Mariah in Hawaii. So we had all these connections with the fact that they had known, you know, about Mariah, the psychic.

[22:22] SARAH WATTS: Psychic that Luke goes to now. Wow, that's. That's. She's been around for a really long time.

[22:28] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Well, she saw us before we got married. I was like, well, let's talk to Mariah before we got married.

[22:33] SARAH WATTS: Do you remember what she said?

[22:36] CLAUDIA VENABLE: She was very funny. I mean, she used to come to our house routinely from Rhode island to. I mean, she had a crowd in Hilton head who would come and talk to her, and she would, she said to me, ah, you're just running on the beach. You're just laughing. Oh, yes, I can see you're having so much fun. You know, she was like. I was like, okay, that's kind of what it feels like, you know?

[22:59] SARAH WATTS: Yeah. And was it all hunky dory in her vision? Cool.

[23:07] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Yes, it was.

[23:11] SARAH WATTS: I guess. I know one question is, did y'all ever go back out to San Francisco together to see medical school, to see Stanford or anything of the sort of like, oh, I just want to go back out to California together or anything like that?

[23:32] CLAUDIA VENABLE: I don't think we did. We went to one couple's workshop that was kind of like the things that we had been doing. But that was in southern California, out at Palm Springs. I mean, maybe we did, but I don't remember.

[23:50] SARAH WATTS: And did. Did Karen or Jeanine or anyone ever come visit y'all once y'all were in Hilton head?

[23:56] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Yeah, they did. I mean, because Karen had all these children, four or five children, right. They would have to come in the summer, you know, drive down for a couple, but, like, take all these children in the back of the car, you know, just remember the relatives really was.

[24:12] SARAH WATTS: They are the epitome of the relatives.

[24:16] CLAUDIA VENABLE: And Janine and Tim never came, but Jeanine and Travis came one year for Christmas. And then there was Kay. You know, Kay was Jerry's sister, and she would routinely come for Christmas, and we would see them. And he had some cool cousins that were still in Columbia, Wyatt. And then there was art and James, and they were, you know, we saw.

[24:44] SARAH WATTS: And you got along with everybody in his family and stuff.

[24:47] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Yep. Hmm. So it sounds, like, very happy so far. I know.

[24:55] SARAH WATTS: I know.

[24:55] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Plot.

[24:56] SARAH WATTS: Here comes.

[24:56] CLAUDIA VENABLE: The plot thickens.

[24:58] SARAH WATTS: Do you think? By the. So Luke comes my brother, and things are still good.

[25:09] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Things are good.

[25:10] SARAH WATTS: So everything leading up to my birth is like.

[25:16] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Well, no. The plot begins to thicken. Okay, so I was working these insane hours. I mean, I probably work 70 or 80 hours a week, easy. And I was tired, and. And I did all of that pregnant and had Luke and that. And, yeah, we were, you know, madly in love, like you see them with Lou. I mean, we were just infatuated with having a boy. He hadn't had a boy before.

[25:45] SARAH WATTS: Right, right.

[25:46] CLAUDIA VENABLE: And so he was. Yeah.

[25:50] SARAH WATTS: All the children.

[25:52] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Yeah. So we had this big blowout birthday party when he was 50, and Luke was one. But one year after he took the job with Ed Pinckney, he lost his job.

[26:07] SARAH WATTS: Do you know how or why?

[26:10] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Yeah, he would come late. He wasn't finishing his projects. I mean, he was kind of, like, fired in a day. Even having known, you know, I mean, he was kind of like that. He had a hard time, you know, getting up in the morning and staying on the task. I mean, he just had a lot of interest, and he. I don't know what happened, but, you know, I was like, oh, this is not good.

[26:39] SARAH WATTS: Seem different than his dynamic in Boston. Like, did he feel. Did it seem like he was showing up to work like he was a one person or one way?

[26:48] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Well, he was a worker. Big group. And, you know, once we met, he was kind of, like, telling them that he was leaving, so I didn't really get to know them very well.

[27:02] SARAH WATTS: Gotcha.

[27:02] CLAUDIA VENABLE: But I do remember once going to his office and going like, oh, my gosh, that's, like, a mess. Like, how do you tell what you know? And his apartment was a mess. So I just had a feeling that that's what he had hedged, kind of created this messy environment where he worked. But Ed Pinckney was the nicest guy. So I was like, okay, well, like, what are you going to do now? Because I was actually, when I first started work, they started me at such a low salary, they said they wanted me to, you know, prove myself, basically for two or three years. So I was making, like, $50,000. Like, back then, that might have seemed a little bit, like a lot, but. And here we were building this house, right? And I'm like, what are you gonna do? You know?

[27:58] SARAH WATTS: And I guess at this point, like, you're not calling. Like, there's no phones, or anything to, like, call grandmother and, like, tell her about your woes as a wife or anything like that. Is it. Are y'all kind of keeping it to yourselves? Yourself?

[28:12] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Yeah. Yeah. Because I have to say, the theme of our relationship was that we would get really upset with each other. We'd have a bad night or two. The weekend would come, we would go do some really fun thing. And, you know, to myself, I was saying, look, you've been divorced once. You ain't getting divorced again. I don't know how it doesn't. Look, there's no way that you're gonna go through this again. And yet, so he decided to do these projects he was really big on. So he did his own group. It's called the Venable group. Did you know that?

[28:51] SARAH WATTS: I don't think so.

[28:52] CLAUDIA VENABLE: He had little cards and everything, and he and Todd worked together in a group. And I would, you know, at this point, say, bless his heart, he had great ideas. He had great dreams. He rented an office that had five or six offices, including this big six sided multimedia room where he's going to show it, you know. And he went out getting projects, and he had some good ones, but at the same time, he had, like, borrowed a bunch of money, and it was kind of like, whoa, you haven't even had the first project, but you've just spent, you know, $30,000 on your office. I'm like, who's going to pay that back? You know? So I guess. But honestly, I was so busy, you know, I had. I had Vanessa keeping Luke with her son Sean Riley. You know them.

[29:56] SARAH WATTS: Yes, I remember Vanessa Riley.

[30:01] CLAUDIA VENABLE: But then, you know, I just. I certainly wanted more than one child.

[30:06] SARAH WATTS: Yeah.

[30:07] CLAUDIA VENABLE: And I was also going through the other stress on me at that point, building a house. But I also was trying to pass my anesthesia boards, and I tripped and fell on those a couple of times. And that made me really nervous, because if I didn't have my boards, I was going to have to leave. So there was that. I would just say, there's a lot of stress.

[30:29] SARAH WATTS: Yeah, yeah. And then you're trying to, like, make a child on top of that.

[30:36] CLAUDIA VENABLE: 40, 45, 45. But, I mean, I think we were, like, totally in. I mean, there was no doubt that we were a couple that, you know, we had a lot. You know, we had some stress on all of us, but. And I was, you know, totally behind his work. And the first big project he got was doing the bike trails on Hilton Headdez. Did you know?

[31:03] SARAH WATTS: I didn't.

[31:03] CLAUDIA VENABLE: So all the bike trails on Hilton head. Your dad did.

[31:07] SARAH WATTS: Wow. That's huge.

[31:08] CLAUDIA VENABLE: It's huge.

[31:09] SARAH WATTS: There's a lot of them down there.

[31:11] CLAUDIA VENABLE: There are a lot of them. I mean, I don't know if you did every last one, but he and Todd planned the development of the bike trails.

[31:17] SARAH WATTS: Fascinating.

[31:19] CLAUDIA VENABLE: And then another project he had was over on an island. This really very wealthy guy who'd made his money in the stock market came down, and he worked with this person, like, week after week, month after month. And, and then I guess I'm curious.

[31:38] SARAH WATTS: As much as dad was, like, really into personal development and spirituality and whatnot, like, was he really, like, vulnerable with you? Did he, could you see, like, his underwiring, I guess, per se, as to, like. Or did it all kind of seem almost like a facade, like, okay, let me explain. Yeah.

[32:10] CLAUDIA VENABLE: So that's when I started going to therapy. I was like, I need to analyze the situation because I definitely don't want to just put it back in the box and say, see ya. I mean, I really thought I would never, ever, ever get another divorce, so. But what it seemed like to me, and this was explained to me and I started to understand it, that, you know, Jerry had a really rocky childhood with his dad dying when he was eleven.

[32:39] SARAH WATTS: Yeah. And then his mom died when, and.

[32:41] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Then his mom died, but she was a really bad alcoholic.

[32:46] SARAH WATTS: But that's, like, all before. He's like, 18, right?

[32:49] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Oh, yeah. This was like, she used to send him down the street to get cigarettes for her, you know. So he really did have this messiest of childhood experiences. And so I think he just had a chip. He really had a chip on his shoulder. The typical, like, he could go off on you in a heartbeat. And that's, you know, what eventually happened to is I just felt like the more I became really, for lack of a better word, famous on the island. It's a small island. Everybody goes, oh, Claudia, she's so great. You know, try to get her when you go for the operating room. And I would have the children and the grandparents, I would just have all these people asking for me. And I was the president of the medical staff, and it was like, the more notoriety I got, the worse he felt.

[33:43] SARAH WATTS: Yeah.

[33:45] CLAUDIA VENABLE: So he just kind of, at the end, he, he just really reacted to that. And I didn't help either, I'm sure. I was just nervous about, like, you have to make money. You have to, I don't know what you're gonna do.

[34:03] SARAH WATTS: Like, I guess in those moments, you're not, like, psychoanalyzing his childhood and whatnot. Everything just seems very pertinent to. We need to build this house. I'm pregnant. We need money and, like, there's no time to, like, go play tennis. Psychoanalyze, like, your childhood.

[34:23] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Yeah. And you can't play tennis every day.

[34:25] SARAH WATTS: Right, right.

[34:26] CLAUDIA VENABLE: You know, he loved to play tennis and have a few beers for lunch. I was like, no, you can't. It's just. But, you know, there were, like I said, many, many happy days and. And. And, you know, eventually he moved out of his office and moved into our house.

[34:48] SARAH WATTS: Right. I remember that office.

[34:50] CLAUDIA VENABLE: So there was that loft up on top and he worked out of there.

[34:56] SARAH WATTS: And then we turned it into Luke's bedroom. Right, with the two. With the two twin beds.

[35:04] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's when he was not gone. I mean, when he was gone. Right, right.

[35:10] SARAH WATTS: Once. Once y'all were divorced.

[35:13] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Yeah.

[35:13] SARAH WATTS: Um, I guess.

[35:19] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Yeah.

[35:20] SARAH WATTS: How. How would you grade yourself on that marriage?

[35:27] CLAUDIA VENABLE: That's a good question.

[35:28] SARAH WATTS: Or.

[35:29] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Well, look, you know, I had helped with the guy I thought was the smartest guy in the room, the freudian analysis person, who helped me understand Doctor Bullock. Doctor Bullock who helped me understand the nature of a narcissistic personality. Like, they are puffed up and they have a great view of themselves. Only when somebody doesn't agree with them, they can really get hostile. And that's kind of what we experienced is.

[36:07] SARAH WATTS: Do you think you're anger similar to dad in any way?

[36:11] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Good question. I think we're both, you know, very optimistic. We kind of see the bright side on the street and think, you know, he had a lot of energy. He really had super amount of energy playing tennis, you know, working on projects. I mean, he was a project man. You know, he really wanted to build. He wanted to. He got into low income housing. He wanted to build projects in Beaufort. He had people on his team. He was pretty convinced that he was going to build low income housing.

[36:43] SARAH WATTS: Where do you think the execution just failed, like failed like him?

[36:50] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Well, I think. I mean, he was a little bit like daddy in a way. I mean, he was an idea man. He loved ideas.

[36:56] SARAH WATTS: But occasionally would execute a project, you know, or maybe not.

[37:01] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Yeah. I mean, certainly in his lifetime he did.

[37:04] SARAH WATTS: Yeah.

[37:05] CLAUDIA VENABLE: But I think he just got really frustrated, you know. I just don't know that he had the equipment to. To make his dreams really land.

[37:20] SARAH WATTS: Ultimately. Did you love my dad?

[37:23] CLAUDIA VENABLE: I did. We had. I did. I did really love your dad. You know, unfortunately, the rough spots kind of stand out like a bad hangnail or something. You know, but, yeah, I mean, I have thousands of pictures to show. We had many, many happy days.

[37:47] SARAH WATTS: Yeah. I ultimately know I came from love, so. Yeah, I feel very complete about this conversation. Do you feel complete?

[37:57] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Yeah, I think it was a really good chapter to review and talk about with you. And I, you know, until you said I kind of missed all that, I was like, I didn't really tell you. I hadn't really filled you in.

[38:13] SARAH WATTS: Well, and then with dad having, like, dementia now it's just like.

[38:18] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Right. There's only one side to the story.

[38:21] SARAH WATTS: Yeah, but I'm glad I'm hearing this side.

[38:26] CLAUDIA VENABLE: No, but I so appreciate, because, I mean, when I found out I was having a girl, I was like, could have jumped over the moon, you know? It was, like, complete. The circle was complete, and I was having a girl.

[38:39] SARAH WATTS: I said that he was having a girl or that.

[38:41] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, we were. We loved you from the very day of conception.

[38:49] SARAH WATTS: Do you remember when I was conceived? Where were you?

[38:52] CLAUDIA VENABLE: No, not exactly. Oh, yes, I do. Oh, but I'm not.

[38:56] SARAH WATTS: No, no. I just want to know. Where were you? In Charleston.

[39:01] CLAUDIA VENABLE: No, I'll tell that part later.

[39:06] SARAH WATTS: As for the late night story booth.

[39:09] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Later, as they say. No, I feel like this is kind of cathartic. Just very.

[39:21] SARAH WATTS: Yeah, I feel complete around this interview. So thank you so much for coming and sharing some of your life with me.

[39:29] CLAUDIA VENABLE: Thank you for asking me to do it.