Ingrid Croce, San Diego Women's Hall of Fame, 2012

my dad told me I could do anything, but I somehow translated that into I could do anything and I've been trying to do that since I was born in Philadelphia. He had a twin sister, Phyllis, she had a round face, beautiful curly hair and she came. On the other hand, I liked painting my nails and making accessories, I was kind of a tomboy and I was into sports and art, and you know, hanging from bars, breaking bones and doing all kinds of things. I met Jim Croce at a hootenanny, he asked me. Could you sing with me and I said and I didn't really know who he was and I thought he was really cute and I thought, well yeah I'll sing with you and it was an instant match and we both started. singing, writing songs together and that's how we met and a few years later we got married again.

Jim went on tour and really didn't stop for almost two years. He said, you know I have to move, we have to move to California, we went to San Francisco and Los Angeles and I just fell in love with San Diego. He left that weekend, it was the best weekend we've had in a long time and when his plane crashed, I was really devastated, I had no idea how. I was going to survive like I was going to raise my own son. I think what really kept me going was that I had to get up and make breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I wanted to do something that I could do very well at something that I was already intuitively strong at if I had come here to the corner of 5th and F where my friend had asked me to meet her and she said I have a store open if you are. interested and I came to this corner and it turned out to be the same corner where Jim Croce and I had spent our last night together and I thought this is what it must be. I think you have to trust your instinct, you have to feel. and if you don't feel it, you know, a lot of times people tell me, well, I'm in my head, so I can't feel it and you know, maybe it's Transcendental Meditation, maybe it's yoga, maybe it's someone giving you a good Kick ass you know, but you have to get out of your head to get the feeling that what's real will make you happy, so I guess my six words would be: row, row, row your boat happily, just do it and do it with a smile and the great life life can be life can be anything you want it to be you know you can't ask for anything better than that