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At home, growing up, we weren't really poor. We had everything we needed, we just didn't have what we wanted.

As kids we didn't complain about being poor; we talked about how rich we were going to be and made moves to get the lifestyle we aspired to by any means we could. And as soon as we had a little money, we were eager to show it.

I was a lower middle-class kid. My family had no money. There was no room in our small house where there were already four kids, including myself, living.

We definitely weren't poor growing up, but we weren't rich.

We didn't really feel poor. You don't know that as a kid, but we really didn't have any cash. When machinery broke down, we didn't have money for parts, so we did our best to fix it.

I was raised really poor and so was my husband.

I do remember how it was to be poor. I do remember that in my early years, we had to grow and raise all of our food, even our animals. And I remember in my early life, we didn't even have electricity. So it was very, very hard times then.

We weren't dirt poor, but there was no spare money kicking around. While it was very much understood that the way to a better life was through education, books were a luxury we couldn't afford. But when I was six, we actually moved opposite the central library, and that became my home from home.

You know, when you're poor and you have a bunch of kids in your family, you don't know that everybody's not poor.

I was just a regular kid in poverty, struggling.