text: I am a white Catholic girl who was poor and got my nursing education on a scholarship for poor white people . Since 1972  graduation from one of the largest hospitals in America  as a nurse I went from working at a McDonald's in downtown Boston in 1970 to working in 1979 in Juneau with Governor Jay Hammond. Now was it far better to use " taxpayer" money and lift me out of poverty into the middle class or should I have held true to my Catholic roots and had 12 kids and live in a housing project in South Boston, MA. and spend my life collecting public benefits?  I think the taxpayers got their money's worth with me, never on public benefits, a life long tax paying career woman and I made, and still  making the world a better place than I found it.  Did you ever hear the expression "Pay it Forward"? I lived that, so do thousands of others who have been "lifted" out of poverty by those who believed in them and provided an opportunity. And, no one ever made me feel "poor".