Recognized for her humanitarian efforts, Tracy Keagle, founder of Humanity House Foundation is headed to Provence, France for two weeks in September, just in time for her 59th birthday.
While there, she will meet Sara Stewart, a contributing writer for The Huffington Post, author of “Whilst I Was Out,” and co-owner of Mad as a March Hare, a public relations and marketing firm in rural England. Stewart’s business partner is Tami Williams, originally from Iola. Stewart became acquainted with Keagle through Williams and was instantly impressed with Keagle’s efforts to provide support services to low-income people. She featured Keagle in a blog, “I met Santa Claus, and She’s a Woman,” on Dec. 22, 2016, on The Huffington Post’s website.
The article celebrates not only Keagle’s efforts, but also her ability to overcome childhood sexual abuse. It was attention that Keagle was not expecting.
“It’s weird,” she said.” It’s cool, I was glad they were talking about Santa’s Toy Shop.”
According to Keagle, Stewart is now interested in conducting an in-depth face-to-face interview to discuss not only how she survived, but also how she went on to commit her life to helping those in need.
“She (Stewart) got ahold of me and asked me if I would be interested in coming to where she lives and spending some time there so she could interview me for a book,” Keagle said. “I think it’s because I didn’t have a really great childhood and had some really bad things happen and instead of going in another direction I just took it this way instead.”
Without even knowing where Stewart lived, Keagle agreed to meet.
Keagle, who has never travelled outside of the United States and has never flown, said she is excited to make the journey to Europe. Accompanying her will be her daughter, Emerald Catron, a freelance editor in Chicago.
Keagle, along with Williams and Stewart, are vegans and Catron, a former vegan herself, has an assigned role to play in France.
“I am bringing her along as a cook,” Keagle said laughing.
But it will not be all fun, according to Keagle. She expects to relive and talk about painful memories. The same memories, she said, that haunt her every day. She said she was sexually abused by her maternal grandfather from the age of 4 to around 14.
“We grew up pretty poor and my grandparents lived just right down the road from us,” she said. “Back then nobody talked about it and nobody did anything about it.”
The well-liked handyman violated her in various buildings throughout Iola. It was a hard decision, she said, to continue to live here.
“The whole town is like one PTSD flashback happening all of the time,” she said.
Keagle’s decision to stay and tough it out is symbolic of her inner-strength.
Running away was not going to fix her problems, she said, so she elected to stay and fight the uphill battle against the conflicting emotions the abuse instilled.
