IN TODAY’S WORLD, female pop stars rule the charts. Think Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and Pink. But not hat long ago they were a little more rare. Rarer still was the woman who could rock. Just ask Pat Benatar. In her memoir, Between a Heart and a Rock Place (William Morrow, 2010), available at Costco.com, Benatar— whose hits include “Heartbreaker,” “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” an “Love Is a Battlefield”— recounts her journey fro classical music training when she was still in hi school to distinction as first woman featured on One of the remarkable aspects of Benatar’s story is her lack of shocking behavior. In fact, she and her husband, Neil Giraldo, the guitar player in her band, have been married for nearly 30 years. “We made a commitment, and we’re crazy about each other,” she tells The Connection. “I know how lucky we are.” These days Benatar and Giraldo spend their summers touring. They bring along their two daughters and some of their friends. During the rest of the year the family splits their time between Los Angeles and Hana, Hawaii, while they work on their music. Benatar, who’s an avid Costco member (see page 20 in the book), laughs at he idea that it might be surprising for a rock star to have a membership. She says, “It’s like with schoolteachers when you’re a kid; we’re real people too.”—SEP Rockin’ in the she world m gh theMTV. MTV. t y between Los while they work E NEVER intended to start a blog. We never intended to write a book,” says Costco member Tiffany Stoner. What she and her husband, Tim, set out to do was keep in touch when he was deployed to Iraq in 2007. Blogging proved the best means of communication because, as Tiffany explains, when he’d call chances were it would be the worst possible time and that one of their four kids (at that time all were under the age of 6) would be crying, need a diaper change or need to be fed. Tim, an Army National Guardsman who was the commander of Indiana’s ;rst Black Hawk unit in Iraq, adds that not only did calls or videoconferences take his head out of the game, but seeing and hearing his family made things very raw for him. He’s been home since May 2008 but shares, “As long as you stay in uniform, you’re at risk you will go again.” As their blog entries about heir daily lives increased, so did their readership. “What kept people intrigued is that we weren’t overly glossy; we kept it real,” says Tiffany. After some encouragement, the Zionsville, Indiana, couple decided to turn their blog into a book, FamilyPrint ( www.familyprint.org). The book includes not only his-and-hers perspectives on the deployment, but also many family photos, scanned images of the children’s artwork for their dad and photos taken by Tim of himself and his urroundings in Iraq as a Medevac Commander. The Stoners explain that hey had two reasons for creating the book. The ;rst was to be able to leave something for their children. The second was to pay forward all of the kindnesses shown to the family while Tim was away. The couple launched the nonpro;t organization FamilyPrint in April of this year, and initial proceeds from the book will go to Our Military Kids (www.ourmilitarykids. org), which helps children keep their routines and extracurricular activities when a parent is deployed. “When you help the family, you help the soldier by relieving the pressure of worrying,” says Tim. —Stephanie E. Ponder “W
The Stoner Six: Briggs, Campbell, Tim, Emerson, Gage and Tiffany
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