High Achievers

Linda Armstrong Kelly tells a quintessentially American tale: Through relentless energy and optimism, she raised the baby she conceived at age 16 into a man who amazed the world.

That son, of course, is seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong.

Kelly will share her life story Monday at the YWCA’s annual Women of Achievement Benefit Luncheon at the Spokane Convention Center. During the event, five local women will be honored.

Last year Kelly’s book, “No Mountain High Enough: Raising Lance, Raising Me,” (Broadway Books), written with Joni Rodgers, was published. In it, she describes her mom’s-eye-view of her son’s astonishing trajectory.

“What can I say,” she writes. “I believe in the power of being cheered on.”

Kelly, the daughter of a single, working mother, grew up in the Dallas projects in the 1960s. They lived out of boxes because they moved so often. After Kelly became pregnant at age 16, she married Lance’s father, but the marriage was an abusive one that soon ended.

After earning a GED, she began taking office jobs and working overtime on Saturdays shredding paper to earn extra money. She never went to college, and she remembers well the loneliness and shame of those early days.

Nonetheless, she writes, “From every negative, I am determined to extract a positive. I look for the diamond in the Dumpster, the blessing in the bummer.”

Her son’s energy propelled him from one sport to the next, starting with BMX bike racing at age 8. As he grew up, every Saturday morning he and his mom would be out the door at 7 a.m. to head to another sporting event.

“I always say, ‘He didn’t get where he is by sitting on the couch eating potato chips,’ ” Kelly says.

Even now, her famous athlete son retired and raising his own children, she rarely ever sleeps in on a Saturday morning. “I always believe the early bird gets the worm,” she says.

Kelly says her own mother gave her “the gift of survivorship.”

“It’s learning to survive and realizing that change is constant,” she says. “That’s a real important concept for people to grasp.”

Kelly survived two more difficult marriages, earned a real estate license, and spent 15 years with Ericsson Microelectronics as a global account manager. She underwent therapy, discovering “you have to love yourself before you can love others.” And she helped her son fight his famous battle against testicular cancer.

These days she lives in Plano, Texas. She’s now 52. Since her book came out last year, she’s been pursuing a speaking career. This year she’ll appear at more than 29 speaking engagements across the country.

She lives about 3 1/2 hours away from her son’s Austin, Texas, home, and they get together as often as they can.