my earnings. I was in love so it was time for us to part ways. The boy I met was a champion surfer and we had a wonderful time together. I sold silver jewelry to the tourists and played on the beach with him. People used to get such a thrill watching us, me standing on his shoulders while he surfed. That lasted almost two years."
After her relationship ended, Ann returned to the mainland and the wrestling business, this time on her own. "I had gotten to know the promoters while traveling with Moolah so I just started contacting them and getting my own bookings." Ann traveled the length and breath of the United States working for every promoter from Vince McMahon (Jr. and Sr.) to Leroy McGuirk to the LeBell brothers, appearing everywhere from Madison Square Garden down to spot shows in small towns in the south. Things were not always easy. Ann recalled, "One night I was to work on an Indian reservation in Window Rock, Arizona. The ring never showed up and we just wrestled on the ground. I made ten dollars that night." On the other side of the coin, Ann's biggest payday was three thousand dollars for a match against Donna Christenello at Madison Square Garden.
There were lots of fun, unexpected moments, too. "I think we were at the Coliseum in Indianapolis in the late 1960s. There were three events going on at the same time: ice Skating, wrestling and an Elvis Presley concert. Well I was sitting in my dressing room and in walks Elvis with a brown paper sack. He smiled at me and said, "Hi Mississippi girl." And we just sat there eating pig’s feet."
Just when Ann seemed to have the world by its tail tragedy struck. "My
boy was in his early teens – 13 or 14 – when I found a bunch of drugs in his room. He told me that this truck driver was using him to sell drugs to the other kids. I contacted the police and got the man arrested. This was in 1972. Not long after this I was sitting at a traffic light one day and someone opened my car door. I turned to see the truck driver standing there with a gun pointed to my head. I hit the gas pedal and he shot me. The bullet lodged in my left leg. He continued to shoot as I drove away, shooting out the back window of my car. All five of the bullets hit me. A couple grazed the side of my head and one went right through my chest, just missing my heart. Another lodged in my liver. I was able to pull into a gas station and when the attendant came out (this is way before self service) he saw me he called an ambulance. I died twice and was revived that day. The doctors told me I would never wrestle again. Of course, I was back in the ring several months later.”
“Around this time Moolah contacted me and wanted me to work with her again. She offered to put the USA Women’s title on me if I came back." Ann agreed. She won the USA Women’s Wrestling Championship from The fabulous Moolah at a small show in South Carolina in 1974 and still is undefeated for the belt.
Ann remarried in the late 1970s and gave birth to her daughter, Lucy
Casey. She cut back her wrestling so she wouldn't have to travel as much and took a job as a dispatcher for the Mississippi Forestry Commission. Ann worked there from 1980 to 1985, still wrestling locally in Mississippi and Alabama. In 1985 Ann decided to go back to school where she first became a licensed paralegal, then earned her bachelors degree in criminal justice with a minor in psychology from the University of Southern Alabama. She divorced her husband but continued with her education and aspirations. Without the means to go on to law school, plus facing all the responsibilities of a single parent,
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