Sober over 10 years, a very lively speaker, the oldest of three, she grew up in a real small-town alcoholic home. Her barber dad still drinks and her mother died a "pill-head".
Her dad is still too sick to know how bad he hurt Kass.
A tom-boy, she loved sports and was good at it. She majored in art.
"Nobody knew what I would do when I got there which made sense because I never knew..."
At 16 she had the first of nine knee operations. She learned the magic of pain pills and worked at a hospital and used her "keen, intellectual, alcoholic mind" to get what she needed and not get caught.
She decided at 21 to become a nurse because what she was, was not enough. Within a few months she knew she was in big trouble on many levels. She flunked out the first year. She went back home a looser and hit the bars.
"Lookin' for love in all the wrong places...most of them drunk like I was."
For fourteen years she was on pills and shots prescribed by doctors- some not so reputable.
In sobriety, she has been going to college, joined Al-Anon and OA, quit smoking, has a granddaughter and is infatuated with Rosemary Clooney.