By The New York Times (U.S.) | Created at 2024-09-26 09:18:45 | Updated at 2024-09-30 07:36:50
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Here is the way JD Vance introduced his mother to the world in his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy”:
He described how she hit him. Trapped him in a car, floored the gas pedal and told him they were going to die. Made him pee into a jar so she could use his clean urine to pass a drug test. Moved him around a lot. Overshared. Disappeared. Burned through other people’s money. Slit her wrists. Crashed her minivan into a telephone pole.
These days, when Mr. Vance’s mother, Beverly Aikins, introduces herself, it is often in far simpler language. “Hi, family. I’m Bev,” she said at her regular Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Middletown, Ohio, one Sunday this month. “I’m an alcoholic addict.”
A group of mostly older men murmured back, “Hi, Bev.”
She had invited a reporter from The New York Times along on the condition that none of her fellow group members would be identified. They were meeting in a tough-looking part of town, inside a squat brick building with cracked concrete floors and cinder-block walls painted white. Ms. Aikins wore denim overall cutoffs and a white T-shirt, her highlighted hair piled atop her head. She picked up some recovery literature and began to read from it: “These are our 12 conditions. …”
It has been almost 10 years since she got sober from alcohol and heroin and all other manner of substances she used to put down her throat and up her nose. In that time, the book her son wrote became a best seller and then a movie. He got elected to the Senate. He may very well be this country’s next vice president.
His rise has thrust her, unexpectedly, into the world of national politics. This summer, he brought her to the Republican National Convention and shouted out her sobriety, framing the arc of her life as a tale of redemption.
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