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Thursday, September 29. 2005Rick the Righteous
When she met Rick, Karen was living with Tom Allen, an OBGYN who in the early-1970s cofounded Pittsburgh's first abortion clinic. It was a somewhat unusual pairing. Allen was the doctor who delivered Karen. She began living with him while an undergraduate nursing student at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University. She was in her early 20s, he was in his 60s. "When she moved out to go be with Rick, she told me I'd like him, that he was pro-choice and a humanist," said Allen, an elderly but vibrant man, during a brief conversation on the porch of his Pittsburgh row home. "But I don't think there's a humanist bone in that man's body." Santorum has often said that at the time of their meeting neither he nor Karen were that devout in their faith. Upon falling in love, he says, they embarked on a soul-searching examination of their lives that brought them both closer to God. A cousin of Santorum's with whom I'd corresponded over e-mail remembered Santorum becoming decidedly more serious after meeting Karen, whom he married in the summer of 1990. Rick was a funny guy," wrote the cousin. "He sported a bushy moustache for a time, wore Hawaiian shirts and smoked cigars. He liked to laugh, drink and call things 'horsey-assey.' He was very popular and fun to be around. I think the change happened when he met Karen." Santorum's views on abortion changed around this time as well, recalls the cousin. "Our extended family has many strong women in it, who are intelligent and outspoken. There was one year Rick stopped by a family reunion for an hour or two. It was around the time he was 'rising to power' and becoming rabidly, ridiculously conservative. His views on abortion were quite contentious that year, and for those few hours of his visit, the women all descended upon him like flies, calling him on his change of views. He had always been pro-choice to my recollection. That's why it was such a heated issue that year. The women in my family felt betrayed." As promised, here's the picture from the story of Rick "Rooster" Santorum (top left) as a baseball manager in high school. Time for a caption contest, fire away:  |
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Hey ladies, they call me "Rooster" 'cuz of my giant cock.