Speaker 1: By Bill Cunningham, the Great America and one of the
Speaker 1: persons in big time media. I've had the pleasure of
Speaker 1: meeting is Leland Vitters spent years and years with a
Speaker 1: Fox News in the Middle East and then came back
Speaker 1: News Nation has been an anchor there for several years
Speaker 1: and the evening Monday through Friday.
Speaker 2: And I did not know.
Speaker 1: I had the good fortune of meeting Leland Vivertert and
Speaker 1: his family in Naples about a year or two ago,
Speaker 1: and his new bride and now they're married, and I thought,
Speaker 1: what a wonderful family. Had no idea that Leland Verdert
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with autism at a rather young age, but
Speaker 1: to not discover it himself to it was eighteen or
Speaker 1: nineteen years old. He just turned forty three years old,
Speaker 1: a relatively young man. And the book is out, which
Speaker 1: is fabulous, is called Born Lucky, which I read last week,
Speaker 1: is two times sell out on Amazon. It's in his
Speaker 1: third printing. And if you have a friend, a family member,
Speaker 1: a grandson, a daughter, or anyone in conducted in your
Speaker 1: life that has a disability, this is the book that
Speaker 1: you must read. It's called Born Lucky, and Leland's nickname
Speaker 1: is Lucky and just looking at the cover of the
Speaker 1: book with his dad and Leland when he was about
Speaker 1: I guess about a year old. It's just a wonderful
Speaker 1: picture of love between a father and a son. And
Speaker 1: Leland Veder, welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show. And normally, Leland,
Speaker 1: we deal with politics, what's happening with the doings in
Speaker 1: Washington politically, who's up, who's down. But I want to
Speaker 1: spend most of this time with you on the book
Speaker 1: Born Lucky, and I want to jump ahead, which is
Speaker 1: not the normal thing for me. On page one sixty six,
Speaker 1: I made a note and uh, it says on it
Speaker 1: this is when you're in the Middle East in Jerusalem quote.
Speaker 2: Then came the real shock.
Speaker 1: A month and a half into my time in Israel,
Speaker 1: my dad had a heart attack. Because it was jam Kipoor.
Speaker 1: The country had effectively been shut down. I couldn't get
Speaker 1: a flight home. I was stuck, helpless, relying on second
Speaker 1: hand updates from mom. I finally saw my dad briefly
Speaker 1: in November and Florida, and when I took my first home.
Speaker 1: Lead was there at that point jumping ahead A complete
Speaker 1: sense on your part of failing in a sense to
Speaker 1: be the son that you should have been your father
Speaker 1: because of your job.
Speaker 3: Wow, we went deep quick, Bill. So yeah.
Speaker 4: I think when I was there in Israel, realizing that
Speaker 4: I couldn't be there for him the way he had
Speaker 4: been there for me for fifteen years every day when
Speaker 4: I got home from school, putting me back together, it
Speaker 4: was really difficult to sit there in Jerusalem and not
Speaker 4: know and not be able to get home. So absolutely,
Speaker 4: and I think what you're picking up on in why
Speaker 4: I felt that way is the absolute devotion that Dad
Speaker 4: had to me, to the point that he didn't tell
Speaker 4: anybody about my diagnosis. He didn't tell me until I
Speaker 4: was in my twenties. He didn't tell any therapist, he
Speaker 4: didn't tell any principally, didn't tell teacher.
Speaker 3: He went on a one man mission.
Speaker 4: Supported unbelievably by my mother, to adapt me to the
Speaker 4: world rather than the world to me. And I think
Speaker 4: there's so many parents who are told right now, look,
Speaker 4: you know, we're going to give your kid all these accommodations.
Speaker 4: It's going to make LIFs great, it's going to make
Speaker 4: life easier, on and on and on. And what Dad
Speaker 4: said was that if Lucky doesn't understand how to be
Speaker 4: in the real world now, He's not going to understand later.
Speaker 4: So this was his driving force was to adapt me
Speaker 4: to the world and rather than try to take the
Speaker 4: adversity away, hold my hand through that adversity.
Speaker 1: Did you feel you should have known this when you
Speaker 1: were fifteen? And the book relays terrible bullying that you
Speaker 1: went through. You didn't fit in, it was awkward, you
Speaker 1: were beat upon, it was terrible in school. Your father
Speaker 1: would at the end of the day, you'd go home
Speaker 1: and he had to put you back together. Did you
Speaker 1: feel your dad should have told you early that you
Speaker 1: had autism?
Speaker 4: You know, Bill, No, And here's why. This whole idea
Speaker 4: from my father was that I don't want anyone to
Speaker 4: define you by a diagnosis, and I don't want you
Speaker 4: to define yourself by the diagnosis, and.
Speaker 3: I don't want you to use it as an excuse ever.
Speaker 4: And I think that was a very powerful, powerful feeling
Speaker 4: that my dad instilled in me.
Speaker 3: So, you know, I am just so grateful to him.
Speaker 4: And I think this book, I think Born Lucky, and
Speaker 4: the reason it's getting the response it's getting online and
Speaker 4: on social media, and as you pointed, out, sold out
Speaker 4: twice on Amazon. I don't want any of your listeners
Speaker 4: to get in a car accident. But when you get
Speaker 4: to wherever you're going, go to Amazon and order it
Speaker 4: now before it sells out again. If you want to
Speaker 4: read it is because this is hope for every parent
Speaker 4: of a kid who's having a hard time. It doesn't
Speaker 4: matter if it's autism or ADHD or anxiety or difficulties
Speaker 4: with bullying, whoever it is. This is proof of what
Speaker 4: parents can do for their kid to really help them grow, develop,
Speaker 4: be confident, understand how they can take on the world,
Speaker 4: get through the bullying, all of the things that are
Speaker 4: challenges that the experts don't ever tell parents.
Speaker 3: This is what you can.
Speaker 2: Do growing up.
Speaker 1: You say, there were little signs that I was different.
Speaker 1: I felt I was different. I didn't speak until I
Speaker 1: was three years old, not a word. At some point
Speaker 1: a teacher said to your mom and dad, quote, you
Speaker 1: need to have Lucky evaluated. Did your parents have an inkling?
Speaker 1: But we're talking about the mid to late nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Autism then isn't as aware as autism today in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. How did that information hit your mom and dad?
Speaker 1: You were probably too young to realize that you have
Speaker 1: to get to lucky that you evaluated.
Speaker 2: How did your mom and dad real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was five years old.
Speaker 4: They took me to one of those little medical office
Speaker 4: buildings and sent me off to the testing with some woman.
Speaker 4: And they're sitting there, you know, a little waiting room
Speaker 4: with the old magazines and the stale coffee. And the
Speaker 4: woman comes back, brings my parents into a conference room
Speaker 4: and says, look, there is a lot going on in
Speaker 4: his head and we don't really understand it.
Speaker 3: So major behavioral issues.
Speaker 4: You know, if a kid would touch me in the lunchline,
Speaker 4: I'd turn around and slug them, and couldn't wear certain
Speaker 4: clothes because the sensory issues and all sort of the
Speaker 4: classic signs of what we now know to be autism
Speaker 4: didn't speak.
Speaker 3: Till I was three. It's completely unable.
Speaker 4: To understand any kind of social cues or social emotion,
Speaker 4: human interaction.
Speaker 3: And then there were big learning disabilities.
Speaker 4: Right, So I had an IQ test, two halves of
Speaker 4: an IQ test. A twenty point spread between the two
Speaker 4: halves is a learning disability. I had a seventy point spread.
Speaker 4: They'd never seen anything like it. And if you could
Speaker 4: measure my emotional intelligence by EQ, it would have been
Speaker 4: near freezing. So this is when the woman says to
Speaker 4: my dad, we don't really understand what's going on inside
Speaker 4: his head and there's not much you can do about it.
Speaker 3: And my dad goes, is there.
Speaker 4: Anything we can do anything? And she said no, generally not.
Speaker 4: So this is the story of what mom and dad
Speaker 4: did and what dad did after that.
Speaker 3: And you know, Bill, you made a great point. You
Speaker 3: and I had lunch together down in Naples.
Speaker 4: My dad was there, and you said, you know, you
Speaker 4: wish you'd known. He didn't tell anybody, and he's been
Speaker 4: very reluctant to tell this story. When we wrote More
Speaker 4: and Lucky, I was interviewing him, and every story we got.
Speaker 3: To he would say, do we really want to tell
Speaker 3: that story?
Speaker 4: And I'd say, try to talk him through it and
Speaker 4: why it was important.
Speaker 3: And finally I made a deal with it. I said, book,
Speaker 3: I said, we can't do this.
Speaker 4: You're going to be completely candid and open with me.
Speaker 4: I'm going to write the manuscript and if you don't
Speaker 4: like it, I won't turn it.
Speaker 3: In, Okay, And I don't really I didn't really have.
Speaker 4: A plan if he said no, but anyway, I gave
Speaker 4: him a manuscript and he read it and he goes,
Speaker 4: I don't know, this is.
Speaker 3: Really way too personal. You know, these are these are
Speaker 3: the worst parts of your life.
Speaker 4: Now you never well anybody, you can go to therapy.
Speaker 4: Now you're going to go to therapy on national television. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: let me ask it this way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, please go ahead.
Speaker 4: If if if in that waiting room when I was diagnosed,
Speaker 4: that little office, rather than the woman saying there's nothing
Speaker 4: you could do, she handed you born Lucky, she handed
Speaker 4: you this book. What would you have done? He said, Well,
Speaker 4: I would have read it every week.
Speaker 3: He said.
Speaker 4: I can't tell you how much I would have paid
Speaker 4: for that book, because it would have given me hope
Speaker 4: that I could make a real difference in your life.
Speaker 1: Did your mom and dad feel as if they failed
Speaker 1: you by producing a child with this profound disability? Did
Speaker 1: they feel like, what did we do wrong?
Speaker 4: It's a great question. I don't think they ever felt
Speaker 4: that way. I think certainly now with the debate around autism,
Speaker 4: it's so important for parents to know it's not their
Speaker 4: fault and that that's really, I think, such an important
Speaker 4: message and one that really needs to be said over
Speaker 4: and over and over again. No parent would wish this
Speaker 4: on their child. No parent wants their child to have
Speaker 4: a hard time. And you know, I think it's so
Speaker 4: wonderful now that we are beginning to have an honest
Speaker 4: conversation about the cause of autism and why. As you
Speaker 4: pointed out, when I was diagnosed with what we now
Speaker 4: know to be autism, it was one in a thousand
Speaker 4: or one in fifteen hundred kids, and now it's one
Speaker 4: in thirty one, three times that for boys higher in
Speaker 4: poor minority community, and finally we're having an honest conversation
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 1: George Weyll and A four which says Leland's story is
Speaker 1: one of adventure, exploration and discovery first and foremost, from
Speaker 1: beginning to enads about the mountain moving power of parental love.
Speaker 1: I can only think of the millions and millions of
Speaker 1: kids that are now in their mid forties as you are,
Speaker 1: and going through the bullying in school they're going through
Speaker 1: right now, that go through a living hell because they
Speaker 1: did not have your parents. They had normal parents that said,
Speaker 1: you know what, we're going to get him some help
Speaker 1: and the ups and downs of life. And I can't
Speaker 1: imagine having Lucky. That is you Leland Vitter, coming home
Speaker 1: from school beaten, bloodied in a sense psychologically, sometimes physically,
Speaker 1: and your mom and dad puts you back together, then
Speaker 1: send you back to school. At some point when when
Speaker 1: you were ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, you probably had the
Speaker 1: ability to say, no, I'm not going back to school.
Speaker 2: I can't take it anymore.
Speaker 1: You can you relate to an autistic kid right now
Speaker 1: who's thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. It doesn't want to confrom live,
Speaker 1: It doesn't want to confront life.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 4: I didn't a lot of times, and my dad would
Speaker 4: sit there, you know, Bill, one of the stories in
Speaker 4: Born Lucky.
Speaker 3: I'm in eighth grade art class and there's art, art
Speaker 3: on the walls. Whatever. It's none of this are going
Speaker 3: to be Picassia, right, But this art teacher.
Speaker 4: Didn't like me very much, and he's send in form
Speaker 4: of the entire class. You know, if I was, if
Speaker 4: my age the line from him was in front of
Speaker 4: the entire class, if my dog was as ugly as
Speaker 4: you Vitter, I would shave its rear end and make
Speaker 4: it walk.
Speaker 3: Backwards from the entire class. Oo.
Speaker 4: Imagine what that does to a kid. So I walked
Speaker 4: home that night, and my dad was waiting for me
Speaker 4: at the end of the driveway, as he always was,
Speaker 4: and he says, you know what happened today? And I said,
Speaker 4: I was just you know, humiliated, and just you know.
Speaker 3: This is awful.
Speaker 4: And he would sit with me for a couple of
Speaker 4: hours every night, listening to me, letting me take out
Speaker 4: my frustrations and my anger and my difficulty. And he
Speaker 4: would then leave my room as I had cried and
Speaker 4: yelled and everything else, and he would go downstairs and oftentimes,
Speaker 4: and we now know this as we wrote the book,
Speaker 4: or I know it now, he would sit there in
Speaker 4: the living room by himself and cry in the dark.
Speaker 4: And the next morning, no, he would get me up
Speaker 4: and he would take me back to school, because he said,
Speaker 4: the only way for you to get through this and
Speaker 4: to know that you can operate in the real world
Speaker 4: is to face this adversity head on and to learn
Speaker 4: how to adapt and overcome.
Speaker 3: Now, what he didn't say to me is that middle
Speaker 3: school is.
Speaker 5: Great training for a Washington newsroom. But it is, Uh,
Speaker 5: let's go back to this. So a teacher said to you,
Speaker 5: leyland vitterat you're so ugly if I had a dog,
Speaker 5: I would shave his butt and make the dog walk backwards.
Speaker 3: That had to be He didn't say, bud, but yes.
Speaker 1: Yes, devastating, devastating, And your father said, did their father
Speaker 1: confront that teacher? I can't imagine the rage your dad
Speaker 1: and your mom, Carol must have felt when a teacher
Speaker 1: says that to you.
Speaker 2: Did did they confront him or not? Or her?
Speaker 3: The school?
Speaker 4: The school did and he ended up apologizing didn't didn't
Speaker 4: give me a lot of good because you know, it
Speaker 4: was clear, and really we put it in the book.
Speaker 4: Was it was illustrative of that. It wasn't just the kids,
Speaker 4: it was the adults, right.
Speaker 3: It was the.
Speaker 4: Principal who called my parents in two weeks into my
Speaker 4: time in this new school. I'd already been taken out
Speaker 4: of two schools because things had been so bad, and
Speaker 4: they call my parents in and sit them down and said,
Speaker 4: you know what, everybody at this school thinks, Lucky's really weird.
Speaker 4: And then the woman followed up and frankly, I do too.
Speaker 4: So two arrows through my parents' hearts, and it was
Speaker 4: illustrative of both how different I was right as a kid,
Speaker 4: and also what they were facing and how isolated my
Speaker 4: parents felt, and obviously how isolated and alone so many
Speaker 4: families feel. You know, Bill, the reason Born Lucky's doing
Speaker 4: so well, if you want to call it that, there's
Speaker 4: so much interest isn't be to the me. It is
Speaker 4: my story, but it's not about me. It's about giving
Speaker 4: this hope to parents who for so long have been
Speaker 4: told there's no hope and things are hopeless.
Speaker 2: Well, what do you owe your mom and dad?
Speaker 4: Well, I think the answer is a lot, obviously. And
Speaker 4: the reason Bill, one of them that I wanted to
Speaker 4: write this book.
Speaker 3: Now is to say thank you, because you know, my
Speaker 3: dad's getting older.
Speaker 4: He's seventy nine, I think seventy eight, and it was
Speaker 4: only fair I thought to let him know that I
Speaker 4: understood the sacrifices made and just how grateful I am
Speaker 4: to him.
Speaker 3: And how grateful I am to my mom.
Speaker 4: You know, Dad wrote the afterward, which I think is
Speaker 4: the best part.
Speaker 3: The second best part is George Will's forward.
Speaker 4: And I'm the two hundred and forty pages in the middle.
Speaker 4: But Dad wrote the afterward, and if he rightly pays,
Speaker 4: you know, homage to my mother and says she is
Speaker 4: the real hero here for keeping not only lucky together.
Speaker 3: But him. My dad threw all this. You know, this
Speaker 3: was a whole family affair.
Speaker 4: And we talked about how hard it is for siblings
Speaker 4: in this position. Or my little sister who was in kindergarten.
Speaker 4: You read this, Bill, I would in fifth grade walk
Speaker 4: to her classroom and pick her up, and we both.
Speaker 3: Went to the same school and then walk home through
Speaker 3: the woods.
Speaker 4: And we would get to the back of the p
Speaker 4: fields at this school. And she said that her first
Speaker 4: memory of her brother, she was in kindergarten with me,
Speaker 4: every time, getting into those woods and starting to cry
Speaker 4: and walking her home and her holding my hand. So
Speaker 4: it shows the cruelty of growing up in what it's like.
Speaker 4: And I think Bill, you picked up on this is
Speaker 4: that we made a conscious decision in the book. We
Speaker 4: didn't use the names of anybody who was mean to me, right,
Speaker 4: and we use the names of everybody who is nice,
Speaker 4: because it's a lesson not just the parents but to
Speaker 4: everybody of what a difference people can make in the
Speaker 4: life of a kid who's having a hard time.
Speaker 1: Leyland Vetter, how do you process the meanderings of the
Speaker 1: Department of Health and Human Services Trump administration to find
Speaker 1: the causes of autism. Since you have it, do you
Speaker 1: have more interest? Do you think it is? Tyler and all?
Speaker 1: What do you think? I mean, you don't know because
Speaker 1: you're a news will.
Speaker 3: Yeah, here you go.
Speaker 4: Okay, guess what, Bill, I don't have a medical degree.
Speaker 4: I'm not a doctor, and I am not a scientist,
Speaker 4: and I have the chemistry degrees to prove chemistry grades
Speaker 4: to prove it. Okay, So I'm not going to talk
Speaker 4: about dosing of tailano, and I shouldn't because I don't
Speaker 4: have an expertise in it. What I will say, and
Speaker 4: what I think is so important to say, is thank
Speaker 4: god we are having this conversation now, and it really
Speaker 4: frosts me that there are people who would rather score
Speaker 4: political points than help solve the scientific question of our time.
Speaker 4: And I have said this before, which is you I
Speaker 4: really want.
Speaker 3: To say to these people, do you really hate Trump?
Speaker 3: Would you really rather score political points.
Speaker 4: On Trump more than you love our kids? Because I
Speaker 4: grew up with autism, I know what it's like. I
Speaker 4: know the hell that millions of kids and millions of
Speaker 4: families are going through. And if we can find an
Speaker 4: answer to this problem, it will be a wonderful and
Speaker 4: miraculous thing.
Speaker 2: One out of every thirty one.
Speaker 1: And I want to end this by referencing on page
Speaker 1: two forty two what your dad's advice to others would be.
Speaker 1: I really do not know what was ahead, who could help,
Speaker 1: or if the verdict would be just give up.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: The purpose of this book is to offer hope, real hope.
Speaker 1: Here are the principles I wrote down for myself when
Speaker 1: Lucky that You was diagnosed. One, have no expectations in
Speaker 1: the future. Two, under no circumstances, let your child feel
Speaker 1: they've ever disappointed you, ever under any circumstances. Three you
Speaker 1: are the depository of their hurt, their frustration, and their humiliation.
Speaker 1: And four tell them that they have the right stuff
Speaker 1: for life. That the currency of high school, et cetera,
Speaker 1: is not the currency of life. There are many more
Speaker 1: years after six years of junior high and high school.
Speaker 1: And I read it last week. I'm gonna save it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna, with your permission, play this interview in a
Speaker 1: few months. Nothing's going to change by between now and then.
Speaker 1: But the book is out. It's called Born Lucky. The
Speaker 1: picture on the cover is enough to get one to
Speaker 1: read it and around Leland Vetter. I watch many nights
Speaker 1: on News Nation, and it's amazing your life, the most
Speaker 1: amazing part of you as your mom and dad. But Leland,
Speaker 1: we got to run once again. We'll do it again.
Speaker 1: And God bless you and thank you. Give a big
Speaker 1: hug to your dad and a kiss for your mother
Speaker 1: for me, because they're very very special people.
Speaker 2: They'll be in the arms of God Almighty.
Speaker 3: They will.
Speaker 2: Bill, Thank you, God bless you, Leland Vetter, News Nation. Wow,
Speaker 2: what a story.
Speaker 1: Get the book Born Lucky, Bill Cunningham seven hundred WW