GinNie Tanner Smith Biography

Born to simple folk from North Vernon, Indiana, who divorced after my near death at age four, gave many challenges my emotional and social status in the forties to date. For six years I lived with a good Catholic couple, slept on a cot in their dining room and endured not seeing my two sisters or brother during that time.

My mother's life style was known by all and indeed those good townsfolk deemed that I would be of the same troubled and undesirable type of woman. However, the woman I called Aunt Bert, placed in my heart that I may not be better than anyone else, I was certainly as good. She mentored me through grade school and the taunts of my classmates and others in the community.

I moved to my Uncle's home where our family had founded Boone County, at Florence, Kentucky. There the world opened up to acceptance and such positive opportunities; it was if the Ohio river divided two greatly different worlds.

My innate talents of the arts were developed by various teachers and family members along the way and gave me a sense of empowerment to sustain me.

The faith of my pioneer ancestry and personal experiences have been powerful to form a simple woman who simply shares the scars, the healing, the verses and ponderings that fill my heart and soul nearly every moment of every day.