Childhood
Reich was born as a male named John Mark Karr in Conyers, Georgia and spent her early childhood in Atlanta. Her father, Wexford Karr had married Patricia Elaine Adcock (John's mother) on August 21, 1958, when he was 37 and she was 18. Wexford filed for divorce in 1973, saying the marriage was "irretrievably broken," and that Karr and her older brother, Michael, were in his custody. Soon after, Wexford Karr, then 52 years old, married 29-year-old Susan Simpson, his neighbor in the same apartment complex. His marriage with Simpson ended in divorce six months later.
A family friend, George McCrary, has said that Karr mother believed her child was possessed by demons. Karr's mother allegedly built a pyre of kindling around her child then attempted to burn the then infant alive. Adcock was committed to the Central State Hospital, a mental hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia, and later lived in a group home, according to her stepmother Shirley Adcock.
Karr moved to Alabama to live with her grandparents when she was about 12 years old. She grew up in Hamilton and graduated from Hamilton High School in 1983. Karr returned to live in Atlanta at least twice: once to attend one semester at Riverwood High School in Sandy Springs from January to May 1981, and again some years after graduating from high school.
Read more about this topic: Lara Knutson
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“The route through childhood is shaped by many forces, and it differs for each of us. Our biological inheritance, the temperament with which we are born, the care we receive, our family relationships, the place where we grow up, the schools we attend, the culture in which we participate, and the historical period in which we live—all these affect the paths we take through childhood and condition the remainder of our lives.”
—Robert H. Wozniak (20th century)
“But no matter how they make you feel, you should always watch elders carefully. They were you and you will be them. You carry the seeds of your old age in you at this very moment, and they hear the echoes of their childhood each time they see you.”
—Kent Nerburn (20th century)
“Ah happy hills! ah pleasing shade!
Ah fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood stray’d,”
—Thomas Gray (1716–1771)