Women Triumph Over Tragedy

Written by Katrina Daniel Tuesday, March 09 2010

A brutally murdered mate. A battle with breast cancer. And an abusive husband who beat his spouse so badly she had to be hospitalized. Here’s how three strong, smart, and persevering women turned those tragedies into triumphs beyond their wildest hopes.

Imaginary scene from a violent Quentin Tarantino movie: Poor white-trash couple in a beat-up old car, two little kids in tow.

Couple lures 71-year-old business executive to an abandoned parking lot, beats him, stuffs him in the trunk of his own car, wraps his head in 40 feet of duct tape, and, after he is dead, drives through three states to dump his body in a freezer.

Truth can be stranger and more brutal than fiction.

In September 2004, Jim Cockman, former chief executive of Sara Lee Foodservice, was murdered by that couple, David Edens and Jennifer Holloway, just outside Greenville, S.C

“Jim was abducted on Tuesday, Sept.14, 2004,” says his widow, Cathy. “I did not learn that Jim had been murdered until nine days later.”

The Cockmans had been married for 27 years, living all over the country as he climbed the corporate ladder to become chief executive for the huge food distributorship.

Never one to rest on someone else’s laurels, Cathy, a nurse, decided to become a foster parent for abused babies. She and Jim fostered 36 infants and toddlers in 12 years and adopted the last little girl. Their daughter, Allie, was barely 10 years old at the time of Jim’s disappearance and murder.

Cockman: Embracing life

“Each day Allie and I prayed for Jim’s safe return. Jim had taught her that God listens especially closely to the prayers of little children, and she prayed that the ‘bad people’ would let him come home. Each night she would go to his closet and stand on a stool to pick out a shirt that smelled like her Daddy to wear to bed.”

There was no safe return.

The killers had kidnapped him and run until they were finally caught and led police to his body.

Afterward, Cathy and Allie Cockman had to survive a grueling murder trial and sensational daily news stories trumpeting morbid details of Jim’s death. During one especially dramatic moment, prosecutors wheeled in the dirty refrigerator, still smudged with fingerprint residue, which had held Jim’s body for nine days.

Cathy never missed a day in court. “I remember that I wanted to see the people that had killed him. I wanted to see their evil faces. To this day, though, I have never spoken their names. To do so would make them seem human, and I have relegated them to a subhuman category.”

What gave her the strength to face her husband’s killers? Cathy says it was advice her father gave her long ago, advice she clung to at the time of Jim’s murder. “My father told me, ‘While we can’t control what happens to us, we have absolute control over how we react.’

“From the very beginning I chose to be grateful for whatever I could. Instead of dwelling on the terror of Jim’s last minutes, I chose to channel my anger towards the murderers,” she says. “They would NOT continue to hurt us.”

After Edens and Holloway were sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, Cathy took her daughter and moved to a new home. They got horses, dogs, cats. Allie joined Pony Club (a kind of Girl Scouts for horsey kids) and is a funny, smart, athletic child. Cathy later remarried a longtime family friend who was there to support her throughout the ordeal.

“I decided to embrace life,” she says. “Allie could not lose two parents. I would not allow Allie or myself to feel like victims. I felt, and continue to feel, that I need to model for Allie what one does when sadness, even tragedy, strikes.”

Bannister: Crazy prayers

Tragedy of another sort struck a young mom, Krista Bannister. She was on a girls’ fun trip in New York City. She put on a blouse she had just bought, and as she slipped the top over her arms, she felt a lump in her armpit. She was the mother of a 14-month-old baby girl. She had just had a clean medical check-up. She was only 30 years old. How could this be?

“I called my doctor who ordered a mammogram,” says Bannister. “I was in the hospital for a biopsy in less than 24 hours. I woke up in the recovery room with my surgeon leaning over my bed in her surgical cap – I knew that was not good.”

Bannister says now, “I was so shocked and in disbelief. I knew I could be strong and get through it the best I knew how. I told myself I had to do whatever possible to live for my daughter. That was all that mattered.”

Throughout eight months of intense chemotherapy and radiation, Bannister depended heavily on family, friends, and church, “I kept three-ring notebooks of all the cards and emails people sent me. I carried them with me on chemo days. I knew people that I had never met were praying for me. I received cards from total strangers telling me that they had prayed for me. That was so powerful.”

Bannister explains what she believes helped her the most. “A small group of intercessor (someone who intercedes) women from my church – they became my dear friends and helped me so much during treatment. One time I remember they prayed for my reproductive system and my ovaries. I thought that was crazy. Little did I know that two and a half years later I would have two more beautiful daughters.”

That was eight years ago. Krista Bannister is now the proud mom of three little girls. Five months ago she became executive director of the Susan G. Komen South Carolina Mountains to the Midlands Affiliate, a job she took because of the special bond she feels for other breast cancer survivors.

“The best thing about my new job is that I can look at a recently diagnosed person and say, ‘Look, I made it – you can too.’ My cancer was stage IIB, it had spread to my lymph nodes, it was a very aggressive form (triple negative), and here I am eight years later,” she says. “I tell them first that they will survive. Cancer is not the same disease it was twenty-five years ago. The other important thing is a positive attitude and a strong support system. Sometimes we don’t understand why things happen, and we may never understand, but something good can come from anything. You have to look for the positive. “

Life sure didn’t look very positive for Debra Backus and her four children when they had to live in the woods a few years ago.

After marriages to two abusive husbands, one who beat her so badly she was hospitalized with a concussion, Backus left a comfortable home, a high-income earning husband, and fled with her young children – three girls and a boy, all under the age of 10 – to seek shelter far away from her abusers.

Backus: Living in peace

Backus didn’t have any money. She didn’t have a job. She didn’t have a home, but she did have a firm belief that her children deserved to grow up in a home without fear. “I always walked on eggshells around him. The children saw the way he treated me,” she remembers.

“If I thought I didn’t deserve any better, then at least I wanted my children to know that they deserved better,” Backus says. “I had seen the children cower and avoid him. I didn’t want them to live like that.”

The turning point came after Backus had her last child, a three-pound preemie. She was still recovering from that difficult birth when, while working in her kitchen, her then-husband reached over her head and knocked her down. He never apologized, didn’t help her up. Instead he walked away; left without a word.

“After that I began to plan,” she says. She was forced to live on very little money, but her devotion to her children spurred her on. “At one time we lived in a pop-up camper in Vermont. Then we moved up, to a cabin in the woods with an outhouse. I knew that ‘this too shall pass.’ It is far less stressful to struggle financially than to fight to stay alive or to accept living in fear as a lifestyle. Your children will not care about having less, rather they will enjoy living in peace and seeing their mother smile.”

Her four children have thrived in a home without fear. Her three oldest are either in college or have graduated. Her youngest daughter is about to start college. As for Backus herself, she works at a shelter for victims of domestic violence in North Carolina where she eagerly shares her story of perseverance and peace with those who come to her.

Katrina Daniel is an award-winning journalist and broadcast reporter/anchor. She has worked in Miami, Los Angeles, New York, and as a national correspondent for several networks. She commutes between Miami and the Carolinas, writing for magazines and news organizations. She lives with one horse, four dogs, and a cat.