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By Root 1004 0

and peace activism. It was through their liner notes that I discovered Amnesty International and leverging art and pop culture to protest human rights abuses. When The Joshua Tree came out toward the end of my freshman year, I was captivated along with the rest of the world. But I also discovered a tangential personal connection to the band. Rolling Stone magazine put U2 on the cover that week, and it was noted in an interview with the band that they were fans of my mother and sister. In particular, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. said he was digging the Judds’ music, playing “Rockin’ with the Rhythm of the Rain” in his car. I was instantly extremely cool around the Kappa Kappa Gamma house.

I traveled to France the summer after my sophomore year with some classmates and a professor to spend six weeks immersed in language, culture, and history, then stayed on “to find myself,” as I told my mother. When I found out that U2 would be playing the Hippodrome de Vincennes, I introduced myself to U2’s management as Wynonna’s little sister, and they kindly gave me a backstage pass. Even though I was comfortable in that milieu from my upbringing, I was swollen with excitement at being backstage. I was nineteen years old and on my own, and Bono, Larry Mullen, all the band members, their spouses, and the crew embraced me. I look back now and can only thank God for putting these people, who have had such a defining, spiritual impact on me, into my life at such an impressionable age. At President Obama’s inauguration, Larry’s wife got to reminiscing about what a little girl I was when she met me. That the same girl had since grown up to host the Inaugural Purple Ball and embrace the world is, in part, a testament to my friendship with the U2 family.

My sense of fairness—or more accurately, unfairness—was being keenly developed, both in and outside the classroom, equipping and motivating me for the life of service I now love and that gives my every day such purpose. And it has, without ever having been my intention, helped heal the wounds of my own childhood.

As much as I loved college, I was a somewhat erratic student, and still given to spells of depression. More than once, I would petition to take advanced classes, even graduate level, and then drop them. I overloaded my schedule, racking up 143 hours in four years, taking four minors and a separate honors curriculum. After my initial experiment with communal living at the sorority house, I managed to convert a tiny janitor’s closet, complete with a deep sink for mops and pails, into a single bedroom. By my senior year I was isolating myself a lot in an off campus apartment I’d unwisely rented. I spent more and more time with a sorority sister I loved, who could be just as socially withdrawn. Once, we decided to throw a party. We decorated my apartment, stocked the bar, and waited. At about eight p.m., we realized that neither of us had invited anyone. We spent the evening playing cards and went to bed early.

In the spring of 1990, I attended my honor’s program graduation ceremony, which was held separately from the big class graduation on campus, at a beautiful club for the horsey crowd outside of Lexington. I drove out there alone under a full moon and never thought it was odd that I had no guests in attendance. I was surprised to see the other kids’ families at the ceremony. I accepted my honors certificate to the polite applause of a crowd of strangers. Then I packed up and drove home to Tennessee, restless and preoccupied with what to do next with my life.

For a time when I was in college I had briefly considered Christian missionary work, knowing I wanted to travel the world and be useful. But I was deeply uncomfortable with the idea that indigenous people were “doing it wrong” and that I would be there to help them “get it right.” The Peace Corps seemed like a better fit. I applied and was accepted during my senior year of college, in 1990, and dreamed of going to graduate school in anthropology afterward. But soon I was torn between spending the next two years of my life in