II. LOU Her full name was Shirley Lucille Hardin, Lou for short. She was the daughter of Herbert Sidney Hardin and Shirley Lucille Jackson. Lou was born in 1919 in San Francisco, California. Lou's childhood was very unstable due to the fact that her mother was only nineteen when she had Lou. Her mother, Shirley, was known as a 1920s flapper girl, who was similar to an exotic dancer at the time. Flappers cut their hair, smoked, drank and treated sex very casually. Herbert disappeared shortly after Lou's birth and her mother gave her to her mother, Shirley Lucille Jackson, to care for and raise. Early reports of Lou's first marriage to Cleon Morgan Cox II, or Red, said Lou was a horrible mother to her two sons Cleon and George. Shortly after Lou's divorce from Red, around the same time, she met Howard's father, Rodney. The next year, 1955, Rodney proposed to Lou and they all moved under the same house together. With Lou's previous marriage, she was more financially stable than the Dully family, which seems to bother Rodney. “A woman should not be the bread winner in the family.” Rodney soon took on several jobs to become more financially stable and better support his family. In addition to teaching at an elementary school, he worked as a film processor at Eastman Kodak, as a controller at Whitecliff Market, and finally as a border guard for the same elementary school where he teaches. He also joined the National Guard and took military classes on weekends. Rodney's attitude and relationship with his children began to deteriorate. Rodney was never home and when he was home he didn't want to be disturbed. If the children woke him up they would be punished for it. Lou also ran a tight ship and kept the... middle of the paper... very well. FOR various reasons both brothers were caught fighting each other at school over petty drama. Howard also began stealing items from local convenience stores and was caught most of the time. One of the deals he made with the police and his parents was that he would be given a paper trail and would have to hand over the San Francisco Examiner, until he paid back all the money he stole from the newsstand. Around 1958, Lou was determined to find out Howard's problem. She began classes at Foothill College in Mountain View, where she became a medical assistant. Lou's personal diagnosis of Howard was that something was wrong with his brain. That fall Lou took Howard to several psychiatrists and they all said Howard's behavior was normal. A psychiatrist told Lou that he could benefit from some medical treatment. Lou was subsequently referred to Dr. Walter Freeman.