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    The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How my mother raised 10 kids on 25 words or less
    The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How my mother raised 10 kids on 25 words or less
    The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How my mother raised 10 kids on 25 words or less
    Audiobook (abridged)4 hours

    The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How my mother raised 10 kids on 25 words or less

    Written by Terry Ryan

    Narrated by Terry Ryan

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    About this audiobook

    The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio introduces Evelyn Ryan, an enterprising woman who kept poverty at bay with wit, poetry, and perfect prose during the “contest era” of the 1950s and 1960s.

    Stepping back into a time when fledgling advertising agencies were active partners with consumers, and everyday people saw possibility in every coupon, Terry Ryan tells how her mother kept the family afloat by writing jingles and contest entries. Mom’s winning ways defied the Church, her alcoholic husband, and antiquated views of housewives. To her, flouting convention was a small price to pay when it came to securing a happy home for her six sons and four daughters. Evelyn, who would surely be a Madison Avenue executive if she were working today, composed her jingles not in the boardroom, but at the ironing board.

    By entering contests wherever she found them—TV, radio, newspapers, direct-mail ads—Evelyn Ryan was able to win every appliance her family ever owned, not to mention cars, television sets, bicycles, watches, a jukebox, and even trips to New York, Dallas, and Switzerland. But it wasn’t just the winning that was miraculous; it was the timing. If a toaster died, one was sure to arrive in the mail from a forgotten contest. Days after the bank called in the second mortgage on the house, a call came from the Dr Pepper company: Evelyn was the grand-prize winner in its national contest—and had won enough to pay the bank.

    Graced with a rare appreciation for life's inherent hilarity, Evelyn turned every financial challenge into an opportunity for fun and profit. From her frenetic supermarket shopping spree—worth $3,000 today—to her clever entries worthy of Erma Bombeck, Dorothy Parker, and Ogden Nash, the story of this irrepressible woman whose talents reached far beyond her formidable verbal skills is told in The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio with an infectious joy that shows how a winning spirit will triumph over the poverty of circumstance.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateSep 1, 2005
    ISBN9780743519342
    Author

    Terry Ryan

    Terry Ryan, the sixth of Evelyn Ryan's ten children, was a consultant on the film adaptation of The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio. She lives in San Francisco, California.

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    Reviews for The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      This is an excellent book. It is moving and inspiring. It also helps one to better understand the times (mid 60's). I highly recommend it AND highly recommend the movie of the same title, starring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson!
    • 4/5
      (Transplanted from my old booklog... I didn't give a star rating there, but I'm pretty sure it was in the 4-5 range.)Oh, this was good.The subtitle concisely summarizes the entire book. It's the true story of how the author's mother, during the contest craze of the 1950s and 1960s, entered every contest in sight, winning often enough to keep the family afloat.I liked this for several reasons. For one thing, I confess I give bonus points to any book chronicling a family whose size is in the ballpark of mine. (Ten is close enough to be in the ballpark, I figure.) This is one reason why I've long been a fan of Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on their Toes. (Of course, small families can be nice, too: that's one reason why I've liked watching The Brady Bunch over the years.)Anyway. Aside from that, the story is engaging, and it's pretty well written. I particularly liked the fact that the author didn't fall into the trap of foreshadowing contest entries that were going to win. As the narrative progresses, some contests disappear into the mists after the entries are sent out, never to be heard of again, while others pay off. You have to read on to discover which is which, though.Finally, the book includes many of the actual contest entries, and while some of them are almost incomprehensible (but right up the alley of the contest judges), others are a delight to read. In one case, I'd actually read it before, in a collection of Burma-Shave signs, just without attribution to the author. (It's a real beaut, having relevance both to the actual product, and to the fact that it's being read from a car speeding along a highway: "Hairpin turn, / Hotrod ditched. / Lost control, / His whiskers / Itched. / Burma-Shave.")
    • 4/5
      A wonderfully upbeat story about a woman who raises her large family by entering contests.
    • 3/5
      Short, but entertaining. Tells of contesting before it was just chance, but it was mostly a story of a strong loving matriarch with an optimistic outlook.
    • 2/5
      had to give up halfway though....couldnt follow the story with all the verses and entries scattered on each page throughout the story
    • 3/5
      Interesting biography written by the child of 10 children. They grew up in the 1950's. The father was an alcoholic. The mother sent in jingles to companies to win money. She won a couple cars, a trip to New York and many appliances. The mom had a way of being positive even when the chips were down. Interesting read about a time when jingle contests were prevalent.
    • 4/5
      I recently finished this great book. The author is the daughter of Evelyn Ryan, a fiesty, resilient mother of 10, who writes jingles and ads for contests. The story is mainly about her contesting.. but I am getting more 'umph' from the author's story behind the story: how her mother manages with 10 children, a drunken husband and a car that falls apart for years, washing machines and other appliances that die every month, not enough money for food and constant trips to the emergency room.. and yet everyone survives. That alone inspires me. I am looking for more stories like this one.
    • 5/5
      As memoirs go, this will always be one of my favorites. The take-away message in this book is that a positive outlook will take you every where you want to go. In my life, I would leave the negative, drunk husband and would also have encouraged Evelyn Ryan to do the same. However, She had the grace to accept him for who he was, ask him to improve and when he could not to get out of the way of her happiness. Despite the hardships, she raised her 10 children to expect more from life and to stay positive. Her lessons were ahead of their time, despite her traditional outlook, for instance when she allows her children to voice their hatred of their dad, or the catholic nuns who look down on them, but shows them where to put that anger where so that it does not consume them in addictions and unhappiness. The 2005 movie, which condenses but follows the book perfectly, is also worth watching.
    • 5/5
      Inspiring and a great read!
    • 3/5
      Another one I forgot to log.
      Read it in 2009 or 2010.
      Another fascinating true story.
      Lots of kids, little money, and creative optimistic mother.
      Wow - She wrote good copy and won a lot of fantastic prizes.
      Lots of struggle, lots of love, lots of family working together.
    • 5/5
      I tore through this book until the last page - the star of this inspirational tale, Evelyn Ryan, is one of the most amazing characters I've ever seen on page. Amazing still, that she was a real person, a 50's housewife raising ten children with little to no help from her alcoholic husband. This would be a tale of woe if it weren't for Evelyn's ingenuity, skill, and luck at entering contests. Her cute and clever rhyming jingles, included appropriately throughout the book along with the kitschy ads and contest forms that inspired them, were all a part of this overwhelmed mom's can-do attitude. The family certainly wouldn't have survived without her. Not only the glue that kept the family together, her prizes here and there replaced broken appliances, helped pay the bills, and even bought the Ryans a house! For every major adversity, Evelyn's prizes saved the day.It's amazing how much this woman accomplished with so much stacked against her, and here I complain I don't have time to do the dishes.
    • 2/5
      I found this book about the author's mother to be interesting but flawed. I think she could have used a strict editor. I am just old enough to remember the tail end of the big contests for housewives, and it was fun to find out more about them. I found this book to have too many details about things not germane to the actual story, though.
    • 5/5
      I just wanted to give the mom in the book the biggest hug. I can't believe all she managed to do for her family. She led an amazing life and the author, her daughter, perfectly captured her tireless spirit. This was definitely one of my favorite nonfiction reads of the year.
    • 3/5
      An interesting memoir, I think primarily because of its originality. I've heard of people who spend a lot of time with sweepstakes & contests, but have never heard of one who makes a living off of it. I found it inspiring to a certain degree, but I also thought the author's mother was weak in certain ways. Why did she put up with that husband of hers? And really....10 kids? Why keep having them if you know you can't afford them? But granted, that's not the author's fault, so I digress. In many ways this was an inspirational mother & she obviously was doing something right to have her kids turn out so well in the end.It was the writing style of this story that bothered me more than anything, or maybe the author's monotone in her reading of the audiobook version. Maybe I'm just too used to memoirs that are funny & quirky, but this one just fell flat for me. Perhaps with a different reader, this would've impressed me more. As for the jingles themselves -- it was great that Ryan's mother kept such good records & Terry was able to use them in her memoir, but honestly, I didn't think the jingles were anything spectactular, or certainly not prizeworthy in some cases. Perhaps that's a sign of the times changing, as jingles aren't utilized near as much nowadays as they used to be & I can't appreciate them the way one would several decades ago. Nevertheless, I'm a sucker for movie adaptations, so I'll probably rent a copy of the movie to see how I like that.
    • 5/5
      As a modern-day contester and a language/literature major, this work really resonated with me. Terry Ryan's low voice is a bit uncomfortable to listen to but nobody else could read it better than her who has a first-hand experience of the events in the book. The verses are enjoyable. I am glad to have experienced the wit and humor of the Ryan family as they face the struggles of life with optimism and a strong spirit.
    • 5/5
      This was such a wonderfully, touching, heartfelt story. Mrs. Evelyn Ryan (and all her various contest aliases) is indeed the "hero" her daughter portrays her to be. Any stay at home mom who can raise 10 kids on an alcoholic fathers meager income by contesting is a saint in my book. Her story is an inspiration to all. Most if not all of her children went on to college to boot. Mrs. Ryan could make or repair just about anything (most comically her own girdle) in order to make ends meet. Many of Mrs. Ryan's contest submissions are included as well as photo's of herself and sometimes the family when a big contest prize was won. What I enjoyed most about the book was not Evelyn's writing, but that of her daugher Tuff (Terry Ryan, the books' author). Her first person account made me feel as if I was standing in the kitchen smelling the repairs being made to the girdle with the iron, or sitting in the living room when one of the contest judges moved a magazine to sit in a chair only to have a spring pop out in his face that the magazine was covering up, or last but not least standing on the front porch watching Charlie the chicken attack people from the bushes. It was a great comedy, tragedy and tear jerker all in one...a fantastic book!
    • 5/5
      Couldn't put the book down. A story of 10 children raised in poverty by an alcoholic father and one of the most engaging mothers put in print. It's hard to believe she was that saintly; I'm sure there are stories missing, but enough comes through to make this a genuine feel-good tale of a woman who kept her children housed and clothed (barely) through her skill in winning jingle contests. The book also transplants you to the 1950s and, as someone then alive, I remember enough to feel that the author truly caught that era. Unique story, interesting and vivid characters, a book well worth your time.
    • 5/5
      This was a delightful and heartbreaking read. Ryan's mother was an inveterate contest enterer, and it was the winnings from these contests than kept the family's head above water, due to dad's inveterate drinking. Ryan's portrait of her mother and her family is touching and hilarious.
    • 4/5
      Excellent story of a family growing up in a generation before my own. Through struggles with finances brought on by an alcoholic father, a family of 9 manages to stay afloat through the mother's ability to write small jingles that win contests. Ultimately, the story provides some hope and a good look at family dynamics in the 1950's.
    • 5/5
      The first non thriller/crime book that I haven't been able to put down. This is non-fiction, the story of a woman, Evelyn Ryan, who supported her family of twelve through 'contesting', entering 25 words or less and jingles competitions. The story is told by her daughter, with just enough separation and intimacy. It is a fantastic story, you often forget it is real as amazing things happen. Peppered throughout the book are the little rhymes and poems Evelyn wrote.
    • 5/5
      An entertaining, often humorous look at 1950s America and the life of an intelligent, indomitable women who kept a family of 12 afloat on sheer wit and determination.
    • 4/5
      The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio is a warm and lovingly written memoir that chronicles the life of Evelyn Ryan, who, as her daughter and the author of the book Terry Ryan puts it, raised 10 kids on 25 words or less.I love biographies. I especially love to learn from others? mistakes and triumphs and to be inspired to be better than I am. I am partial to stories about ordinary people, that is, people like me. While Catherine the Great, Hatshepsut, and Amelia Earhart were all immensely interesting and inspiring, their lives were nothing like mine. I know that while what they did was all well and good for them, there is not the remotest chance that I am going to rule Russia, have myself declared King and a god, or fly myself from here to Bakersfield, let alone around the world. And so I enjoy reading about people who have done things there is a remote chance I might also do.This book is about a woman who leads an ordinary life in an extraordinary way. Evelyn Ryan is a woman of talent, wisdom, humor and an amazing ability to keep her eyes on the prize, both literally and figuratively, no matter what is happening around her. That she lived in a town called Defiance is only fitting, for this is a woman who defied many things, including the odds.Evelyn was born in 1913 and her mother died shortly after. Her father remarried when she was 3 years old. In the early 20?s her stepmother published, and wrote most of, a local newspaper. Evelyn was taught to set type and by the time she was 17 she had earned a reputation for both speed and accuracy as a typesetter. By the time she was 20 she was also writing a twenty-inch column for the newspaper. She wrote everything from social gossip to satire about the government. Her column was popular, but she didn?t feel that she was really any good at writing, and because of a lack of confidence she gave up the column after a year. (She would, however, continue throughout her life to make some money from stories she submitted to various newspapers.) She wanted to be a nurse and started school, but she had a horrible case of eczema which left her hands blistered and swollen and she had to quit school and return home. Shortly after that she met and married Kelly Ryan. Of this decision she tells one of her children, ?I want you to know that I don?t regret any part of my life, including marrying Dad.? She and Kelly had 10 children in quick succession.Think back to the role of women in the 40?s and 50?s and Evelyn Ryan would fit that bill. She was Catholic, which heavily influenced her decisions, including having 10 children, staying home to raise them, and deciding to stay married for life, even though her husband was an abusive alcoholic who drank up most of his paycheck. The financial strain that this caused was immense and this is what led Mrs. Ryan to turn her writing skills towards entering contests. The primary theme of this book, however, is how she manages to keep her family together and give her children a happy childhood in spite of the adversity that they faced. It might sound depressing, just one more book about the ravages of growing up with an alcoholic parent. But this book, written with humor, intelligence and compassion by Mrs. Ryan?s daughter Terry is infused with joy, laughter and is a tremendous tribute to the power of resilience and the unwavering love of a mother for her children.Mrs. Ryan was a prize winner and that?s how she supported her family for over 20 years. From the late thirties into the sixties many manufacturers and stores held contests. But these were not like the contests of today, where you fill out an entry blank, have a 1 in 10 trillion chance of winning, and you start getting junk mail from the 2,463 companies who bought your name and address from the company holding the contest. The contests that Mrs. Ryan entered required good writing skills, cleverness and a good sense of humor, all of which she possessed in great quantity. She started out entering these contests in the late 1940?s by writing Burma-Shave signs. One of her entries which was selected reads, ?Passed on a hill, Lived through Korea, Met a guy, With the same idea. Burma-Shave.?Soon she had made a business out of entering various contests which required her to write various pieces such as limericks, poems, pithy sayings and product descriptions, usually 25 words or less. Mrs. Ryan had a notebook which sat at the end of her ironing board and she would write her entries as she worked. Many of these entries are in the book and are quite clever and amusing.It was practically a full-time job keeping up with all of the contest entries, the rules for each, etc. The rules were very rigidly applied and the stakes were high because winning might mean the difference between having food on the table or not. The contests were decided by panels of judges, so Mrs. Ryan also took the time to find out whom the judges were and learn what each of them preferred. The companies even sent out private detectives to see if the submissions were really written by the person who sent them. Since she sometimes made submissions in the names of her children, this caused some fairly comical scenes, which are detailed with good humor in the book. Mrs. Ryan was not above telling a few ?white lies? if it meant money for her children. All of this took time, energy and attention to detail, all of which Mrs. Ryan was quite good at. And let us not forget that she was also responsible for raising her 10 children. She is the definition of Supermom.Mrs. Ryan won contest after contest, with prizes ranging from a few dollars to trips, cars and even a guest appearance on the Merv Griffen show. Some of the prizes were kept and used by the family, such as washing machines and televisions, but most were sold and the money used to buy the essentials of what the family needed. One car that she won was sold to get the money for a down payment on a house. At a later time, after Mr. Ryan had a breakdown and was out of work so money was especially tight, the bank had threatened foreclose on the mortgage because it hadn?t been paid in several months. Mrs. Ryan had one week to get the money or lose the house. She had entered a major contest and if she won and if the money arrived on time she could save the house. I?ll let you read the book to find out what happened.Partly what I find remarkable about this family is how the focus of the household was not on the father, who could be a mean drunk, but rather on the love and joy that Mrs. Ryan brought, and won, for her children. Terry Ryan certainly talks about how her father affected her family, but there is no bitterness there and there is a good deal of compassion for his failings. The sense she gives of her childhood is that while there was stress, financial difficulties, etc., the children felt loved and happy and they had a lot of fun together. This was the ultimate prize for Mrs. Ryan, the thing she worked her whole life to achieve: the success and happiness of her children. And by all accounts she was a winner there too. Her children went on to be educated, have successful careers and families of their own, and remain close to each other and their mother. Terry Ryan does not tell a story of the tragedy of having a dysfunctional parent, she tells the story of a remarkable woman and a childhood filled with love, if not with possessions.I love this book and I highly recommend it. This is a book that will make you laugh, and perhaps cry, and it will leave you with a sense of hope about how powerful each of us ordinary people is to leave the world a better place.
    • 5/5
      One of those books you can't lay down. Have read it more than once, and watched the movie. A story that reminds people to be thankful for what they have. Shows what a mother will do to keep a roof over her childrens heads and food in their tummies.
    • 5/5
      I watched the movie and it was such an amazing story I read the book. I love stories about real people. Plus the movie had great costumes and aprons!
    • 4/5
      Terry Ryan is not from your average family. She lives with her 9, yes 9 brothers and sisters along with her mother and father with very little money. But her mother has a passion: entering contests. Terry and her siblings barely survive as they deal with an alcoholic father and little to no food at times, yet their spirits are never low as their mother gives them hope. This book was a pleasant and quick read.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed reading this so much. What stood out for me was the grit and determination of the mom. Raising 10 kids seems herculean by itself, but then you throw in an alcoholic father in a time and age when you just didn't get divorced, and the task becomes all the more daunting. How she went about it was by entering contests; the ones where you came up with catchy slogans; another relic of times gone by, I'm afraid. I truly enjoyed the samples of her writing shared throughout the book. I also really enjoyed the story of Charlie the chicken, who was raised by their door-opening cat.
    • 2/5
      Anytime Food Network, HGTV, or DIY has a sweepstakes, I'm all over it. $25,000 for new a garage? $50,000 for a dream kitchen? $100,000 towards landscaping? I'm there, there, and there. And the king of all of these sweepstakes has got to be the HGTV Million-Dollar Dream Home Giveaway. When that thing's going on I have a hard time thinking about anything else.The great thing about these sweepstakes is that you don't have to do anything but give your name and address, and you can enter every day. You don't even need stamps anymore. The only sweepstakes that I don't enter are the ones that make you write something. You know, when they want you to tell them why you should win, or say why your wife deserves a new kitchen, or come up with a catchy new slogan for their glass cleaner, all in 25 words or less. These contests stop me dead in my tracks.Evelyn Ryan, now she knew how to do those things. She's the subject of The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, written by her daughter, Terry Ryan. Since her alcoholic husband drank most of his paycheck, Evelyn entered as many contests as she could as a way to keep her ten kids fed and clothed. Lucky for them, this was during the golden age of sweepstakes - the forties and fifties - and she was very good at them.By far, the most interesting parts of this book are the numerous entries that are reprinted from the notebooks that Terry Ryan's mother kept to keep track of all her submissions. A wide range of contests are represented, everything from losing entries that didn't even merit a $10 prize to this one, from a "name this sandwich" contest which won her a car and a trip to NYC: My Frisk-the-Fridgidaire Clean-the-Cupboards-Bare Sandwich.Evelyn supplemented her winnings by selling poetry to magazines and local newspapers. Her poetic style, which often showed up in her sweepstakes entries, was very Ogden Nash-like (this one got her $25 from the Toledo Blade): Birds of a Feather To public buildings, Types indigenous Are litter-ally Always pigeonous.She quickly learned that the best entries didn't always win, sometimes you had to know what the judges wanted to hear: [Contest-judging company] Donnelley had offices in all the major U.S. cities, but the Chicago office was known to prefer honest-sounding, straightforward entries, leaning to trite.As much as I enjoyed reading these clever entries, I'm sorry to say that the rest of the book seems to have been written to please those Chicago judges: it's a little too honest-sounding, too straightforward, and too trite. Even when dealing with her father's drinking problem, Terry Ryan's writing is more than a little too gee-wiz corny for me to enjoy. Several times the same scene is described: the kids playing outside waiting for the mailman (loving nicknamed Pokey for his leisurely pace) to bring the latest prize announcement, just as the bank's threatening to foreclose (or just as the car breaks down, or just as one of the kids need new glasses, etc.). Wholesome is good, but after a while it gets kind of old. The book also seems to have been written at about an sixth-grade reading level, which certainly didn't add to my enjoyment.I had heard about this book from a segment on NPR's All Things Considered. I don't want to slam this book too much, since it was obviously written as a daughter's loving memoir of her mother, but I now realize that something that sounds interesting for a five-minute segment doesn't always stay interesting for three hundred-pages.In contest lingo, I'd say this book merits an honorable mention, at best.
    • 3/5
      Just love this story of resilience.