By Lilliana Ferrone ‘25
After living through neglect, back-and-forth kidnappings, military enrollment, and the birth of a terminally ill child, a younger Lori Slone could never anticipate the simple and slow life she’s come into.
“My dad was very strict, but also loving and affectionate,” said Slone about her family life. “My mom was basically party, party, party, you know, having to come kidnap me from my dad because she needed to be with her daughter.” These kidnappings were a regular occurrence, and the police did not intervene at the time because it was between two parents.
Throughout her early years, she was switched between very different environments, though it’s hard to say if one was better than the other. Her father, though doting, was hysterical and dramatic, and kept her walking on eggshells. Her mother was only really a mother when it benefited her, or in moments of lucidity.
“My stepfather, he was very, very abusive to my mother, so I guess she finally got tired of him hitting her and abusing her in front of me, and she was going to leave,” Slone recalled. “This was Manheim, so it wasn’t like a huge town, but we got up to the end of the town, and he- he came and snatched her while she was screaming, and left me standing there.
“I finally got to the police and they had to call my father, which was fun,” Slone said. She had chosen to go to her mother’s home this time, and her father was enraged, since she left without telling him. He told her he would take her back down to Florida, but send her to a boarding school as punishment. This didn’t end up happening, and she instead stayed with her aunt. “So I lived in Daytona for a while, got to live the luxurious life of a mistress, like a mistress’s daughter- niece, whatever,” Slone said.
Slone admitted she got through her turbulent childhood by “…compartmentalizing and disassociating.” “When I think back on it, I had to go through a ton of counseling,” she said.
Fresh out of high school, Slone didn’t want to work a “menial” job, and she was burnt out from school, so she made a decision that surprised everyone, including her. “I know! There’s the military. So I went to the recruiter and signed up,” Slone said. “I [didn’t] know what else to do, but it was the most out-of-character thing ever for me, because I was kind of not tough,”
Though she didn’t enjoy the years she spent in the Air Force, she doesn’t regret her decision to go through it. The benefits the Veterian’s Affairs gave to her were incredibly helpful, if not necessary for how her life progressed. “I’m very, very happy I did it because… later in life, with my health problems, they actually have taken care of me fairly well,” Slone said.
During her service, Slone married a man she met. “It was a military marriage. It happens to so many people who were young. [They] just get out of high school and away from their parents, and they’re big, bad adults in the military, and fall in love with a person who’s not from their town, and they’re like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna be together forever.’” Slone’s relationship with her military husband lasted two years, and, after the divorce, she quickly moved on.
In the Air Force, Slone was stationed in Texas, and made to stay there as a result of the Gulf War.
She stayed there her entire four years of service, which she was very disappointed about, since part of her hope with the military was the opportunity to travel.
When she left the military, she began a tattooing apprenticeship under her mother, who was fairly popular in the tattoo scene, being one of the earliest female tattoo artists. After around two and a half years, she left that apprenticeship, and worked in different states as a tattoo artist.
Slone met her children’s father after a tattoo convention, where they were at dinner with other people in the industry.
“I think I pushed myself into his house being like, I don’t have a place to live. You know, would it be okay if I come to stay with you?” Slone said of the early parts of the relationship. She took over the household, previously only occupied by her boyfriend and his brother, and cleaned it up.
The relationship between the two was described as okay, until it wasn’t. “He just was a non participating parent, and unfortunately, I had three kids, and one of them was born very medically fragile, and he just wasn’t a part of that,” Slone said, describing the deterioration of their relationship. “It was really, really tumultuous, and made me a very angry person towards him, and he still didn’t care, basically.”
One of her three children was born with terminal health issues, and as a result Slone’s mother took care of her son. The other child was a twin to the ill child, so Slone stayed in the hospital with her.
After a while of having to drive from Pennsylvania to Connecticut over and over again, Slone’s mother decided she had to go back to Pennsylvania, and if she wanted him to get taken care of, her son had to come with her. Afraid for her children, Slone obliged.
Her mother’s help came with her mother’s control. “Because I had to be at the hospital 80- 90 miles away in Philadelphia, she decided that she was gonna basically take over raising my children, and had to have control.” Slone said. This didn’t stop as the children grew, and since her child was in and out of the hospital, her mother got progressively worse. “She was not a great person to me or my children at all,” Slone said.
The life of her ill daughter was a very difficult time to live through. Her daughter lived for 11 years, and despite the grief and horror her death brought, there was a sense of relief. “She was just so, so sick that it was not a good life for her,” Slone said. “I still enjoyed having children and being a mom, it was just I never, ever could have imagined what it would have been like.”
“Regardless [of] the good moments and all of the time that I did enjoy,” Slone said, “you focus on the bad things because they’re so bad that you forget all the good that happens.”
Slone currently lives with her daughter in Lancaster. She has many low points with her health, such as Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. Her daughter helps care for her, as well as a team of doctors and other support systems. It’s a slow life full of appointments, but she is finally able to experience relief from constant adversity.