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Pickler holding head high after ‘Idol’...
CHARLOTTE - Nope, wasn’t surprised to get the boot. Yep, felt stung by people who made fun of her accent, her malaprops, her inexperience.
All in all, Kellie Pickler says American Idol was transforming.
"I’m not ashamed of my life anymore," Pickler said Thursday, a day after getting voted off TV’s No. 1 show.
"For so long I felt like I was looked down upon because of my family, and I don’t feel that way anymore. I’m very proud to say I’m Kellie Pickler and very proud to say where I came from. I may not have had the best raising, but it could have been a lot worse. American Idol has taught me to hold my head up high."
Pickler, 19, a waitress from Albemarle, faced a wrenching dilemma last fall at the outset of her Idol quest. She decided to lay out the painful details of her life – a runaway mom, a father in prison.
Yep, it’s embarrassing to admit such things in front of 30 million people, she says. Yep, it’s weird to think of the mother who abandoned her sitting out there, somewhere, watching.
And yep, if you’re reading this, Cynthia Morton, your daughter has a message for you.
Pickler is the daughter of Cynthia Morton and Clyde "Bo" Pickler Jr. Kellie Pickler remembers her dad as a wonderful guy who’d get in trouble because of a weakness for alcohol and drugs. Her mother was repeatedly charged with writing bad checks and was convicted in 1988 for passing a forged prescription for Valium and Diazepam at the Albemarle Wal-Mart, where she worked.
The day after Pickler’s second birthday, her parents split up. A year later, in July 1989, Morton vanished. When her father would get locked up, Pickler would live with her grandparents, Clyde Pickler Sr., and his wife, Faye, outside Albemarle, which is 45 miles northeast of Charlotte.
In 1992, Morton returned to Albemarle but rarely made contact with her daughter. But in March 1995, with Bo Pickler in prison for armed robbery, Morton was granted custody. Pickler was in the fourth grade.
"She got custody of me for two years," Pickler said in a February interview with the Observer. "During that time, she was physically and mentally abusive of me."
Cynthia Morton lived in California and Colorado, and held a job in Alexandria, Va., in 2004. Her whereabouts are unknown.
Bo Pickler was sentenced to prison in 2004 after stabbing a man in Florida. Kellie Pickler hasn’t talked to him in three years. They write frequently, and she is looking forward to his release, scheduled for Monday.
Growing up, she found it awkward to talk about her parents. "I was never really completely open about the different life obstacles I’ve had to overcome," she said Thursday, "because I was so embarrassed about it."
She wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to reveal it all when she was selected for American Idol. For one thing, she didn’t want to hurt her father.
"But I knew if I didn’t come out in the beginning being honest and open about my life and realizing my life is now an open book, then I knew people would find out about it. The most important thing that you do is be honest, not hide anything."
So she told. Soon, she was reading criticisms of her for weeping on TV about her father.
Pickler admits she’d be curious whether her mother watched her. And what she thought.
"One thing that’s so important in life is we learn to forgive others. I ask the Lord every day to forgive me for my sins and for things that I’ve done wrong. And who am I to not forgive someone for what they’ve done?"
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