Speaker 1: This is Lei Habib, and this is our American Stories.
Speaker 1: And we tell stories about everything here on this show,
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Speaker 1: and everything in between. And we love telling stories about
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Speaker 1: now this is the story of our eighteenth President of
Speaker 1: the United States, Ulysses S. Grant. But this story isn't
Speaker 1: about his time as commander in chief, but rather the
Speaker 1: events in his life up to that point that shaped
Speaker 1: and molded him as a man. Here's our own Monty
Speaker 1: Montgomery on the story. Ulysses S. Grant was born on
Speaker 1: April twenty seventh, eighteen twenty two, in this small town
Speaker 1: of Point Pleasant, Ohio, to parents Jesse Grant and Hannah
Speaker 1: Simpson Grant. Here's doctor John mars Lack of the Ulysses S.
Speaker 1: Grant Presidential library with more. His mother and father were
Speaker 1: very very important people in his life in different ways.
Speaker 1: His father is more or less of an abolitionist, and
Speaker 1: he also wrote for a newspaper which which leaned in
Speaker 1: an abolitionist direction, So he's very outgoing. The mother, she
Speaker 1: is a very, very shy person. She doesn't give Grant
Speaker 1: the kind of love or support that you might expect
Speaker 1: for a mother to give. The father was always a
Speaker 1: presence in his life and always told him what to do, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Grant is much more are like his mother than he
Speaker 1: is like his father. So this whole idea of Grant
Speaker 1: being a quiet person, I think you could trace back
Speaker 1: to the time when he's living at home. Grant is
Speaker 1: pretty much not interested in anything but farming, and not
Speaker 1: interested in doing much of anything else. He's certainly not
Speaker 1: one of these people who wants to follow his father
Speaker 1: and his father's footsteps, because one of the things his
Speaker 1: father did was his father worked in a tannery or
Speaker 1: owned a tannery actually, and Grant hated it. Grant loved horses.
Speaker 1: He reacted very well to horses, and he knew how
Speaker 1: to train them, he knew how to get them to do.
Speaker 1: He could do things with horses that nobody else could do.
Speaker 1: And there's a very famous story of his experience with
Speaker 1: that where he really wanted his horse and his father
Speaker 1: thought it was just the horse just wasn't worth it.
Speaker 1: He shouldn't do that. So Grant kept working on him,
Speaker 1: working on and working on him. So finally the father said, Okay,
Speaker 1: go in there, but what I want you to do
Speaker 1: is make an offer for that horse. If the neighbor
Speaker 1: who owns this horse doesn't accept the offer, then raise
Speaker 1: it up a little bit and raise it up again.
Speaker 1: And so what Grant did, actually he went to this
Speaker 1: neighbor and he said, well, my father told me that
Speaker 1: I should come and talk to you, and I should
Speaker 1: offer you this much, and if he didn't take that,
Speaker 1: I should up it a little bit, and if he
Speaker 1: didn't take that, I should finally pay pay no more
Speaker 1: than I think it was twenty five dollars. And so
Speaker 1: you have a situation where Grant actually gets what he wants,
Speaker 1: but he does it in such a way that it's
Speaker 1: something that he has to live down for the rest
Speaker 1: of the rest of his life. And while Grant was
Speaker 1: busy developing a love for horses Jesse route. Grant was
Speaker 1: busy developing a roadmap for his son's education. His father
Speaker 1: was a great believer in education, and so Grant was
Speaker 1: sent off out of town to schools where he learned,
Speaker 1: and he learned I think more about abolitionism than he
Speaker 1: learned about anything else. But he was a very, very
Speaker 1: much of a real supporter. Was the father of Grant
Speaker 1: and getting as much education as he possibly could. He
Speaker 1: was obsessed with education. He wanted his children, and particularly Grant,
Speaker 1: his you know, his most important child as he saw it,
Speaker 1: to have as much education as as possible. Here's Eddie
Speaker 1: Gringau of the ulysses As Grant Museum with more on
Speaker 1: Jesse Root Grant's drive to have his son properly educated.
Speaker 1: I think one of those important moments was his father's
Speaker 1: drive to push him to think, to read, to be educated,
Speaker 1: so to speak. This is sort of unusual at the
Speaker 1: time for Grant's upbringing. He's he was an average person.
Speaker 1: He would have been expected to take over the family farm,
Speaker 1: but his father wanted him to study, to continue to learn,
Speaker 1: and so I think this drive that his father instilled
Speaker 1: in him. Although they didn't have a great relationship it's
Speaker 1: something that Grant is going to carry through the rest
Speaker 1: of his life as he develops at West Point. And
Speaker 1: then after that he didn't want to go to West Point.
Speaker 1: His father shows up one day and basically tells him,
Speaker 1: I have secured an appointment for you to West Point.
Speaker 1: There was somebody in that town that didn't make it,
Speaker 1: flunked out, basically, and so there was an opening and
Speaker 1: Grant's father was willing to go for and Grant is like, what,
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of that typical scenario that has
Speaker 1: happened over the centuries where parents tell their child that
Speaker 1: they're going to do something or their well major in
Speaker 1: this and their child sort of says why he thought
Speaker 1: it was a terrible mistake. He would be a terrible soldier,
Speaker 1: he thought, and if he just disliked the military all
Speaker 1: his life, even when he was a famous general, he
Speaker 1: didn't particular care about this. But the reason why his
Speaker 1: father really secures his appointment from him is because jesse
Speaker 1: Rue Grant knows that West Point will be free. He
Speaker 1: won't have to pay for this education when he gets
Speaker 1: that appointment, and so you know, that's that's reason number one,
Speaker 1: and then reason number two and perhaps most important is
Speaker 1: that this education that West Point is going to provide
Speaker 1: for him will secure his future for the rest of
Speaker 1: his life. Once Grant completes that degree, he doesn't have
Speaker 1: to spend a lot of time in the military and
Speaker 1: then and then he can go and do whatever he
Speaker 1: wants with a world class education at the time, of course,
Speaker 1: and so he's going to West Point and sort of
Speaker 1: against his will, but this is this is for his future,
Speaker 1: and you know, for his benefit, so to speak. He
Speaker 1: only went because he liked traveling, and so he thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe this way I'll get to see some of the
Speaker 1: country that I ordinarily won't won't see. They did it
Speaker 1: because his father. In fact, he said, since my father
Speaker 1: said I should go, I guess I better go. I
Speaker 1: better changed about how their goal And you're listening to
Speaker 1: the story of Ulysses S. Grant, and my goodness, without
Speaker 1: his dad's influence, the world could have been changed, certainly
Speaker 1: Ulysses S. Grant's world. When we come back more of
Speaker 1: this remarkable life, the early life, the life before the
Speaker 1: life most of us know about Ulysses S. Grant. Here
Speaker 1: on our American story. Folks, if you love the great
Speaker 1: American stories, we tell and love America like we do.
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Speaker 1: our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with our
Speaker 1: American Stories, and we return with our look into Ulysses S.
Speaker 1: Grant's backstory. When we last left off, Grant's father, Jesse
Speaker 1: Root Grant had secured him an appointment at West Point,
Speaker 1: an appointment Grant would rather not have taken. And here's
Speaker 1: doctor John Marzelac with more. Grant is not a very
Speaker 1: popular figure at West Point. He doesn't make a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of friends. He is not somebody that
Speaker 1: people look up to as one of the individuals who's
Speaker 1: going to really make a difference. And everywhere they're going
Speaker 1: to say, yeah, that Grant boy when he gets when
Speaker 1: he gets in the army, he's gonna he's going to
Speaker 1: be a terrific person, et cetera, et cetera. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't it doesn't really work out. But even at West Point,
Speaker 1: he's tried to stay never read his lessons more than
Speaker 1: once because he just was bored by it. He spent
Speaker 1: most of his time reading novels more than anything else.
Speaker 1: One of the important moments I think for Grant, even
Speaker 1: even at a time where I think he's very unhappy,
Speaker 1: but he begins to develop his love for horses a
Speaker 1: little bit more into sort of a more useful skill.
Speaker 1: Grant is actually a very good horseman. He breaks several
Speaker 1: records that are going to stand for a long time
Speaker 1: at West Point. This is a skill that later, especially
Speaker 1: in the Mexican War and in the Civil War as well,
Speaker 1: are going to be are going to be important. Grant
Speaker 1: would graduate West Point in a middling position within his class,
Speaker 1: twenty first out of some forty students. But he would
Speaker 1: meet someone there who would change his life and de
Speaker 1: lead him to someone who would become very important to him.
Speaker 1: I think two of the most important things that happened
Speaker 1: to him as he met two people. One person was
Speaker 1: a fellow named Fred Dent At Dent as his roommate
Speaker 1: Dad said, look, you're you're going to be going, uh,
Speaker 1: you're going to be going to the Saint Louis area.
Speaker 1: My father and my family has a has a place there,
Speaker 1: and you're welcome to come any time. And so he
Speaker 1: does go there and he meets his future wife, Julia.
Speaker 1: Of course, Grant, like we said, comes from a very
Speaker 1: modest abolitionist family from Ohio, and Julia is the daughter
Speaker 1: of a relatively well to do plantation owner with a
Speaker 1: pretty sizable number of enslaved persons working at the plantation,
Speaker 1: and so her family is part of his slave economy.
Speaker 1: Whereas Grants is not now Julia's father, he's not very
Speaker 1: thrilled with the idea of her, you know, being courted
Speaker 1: by Grant. And Grant's father, Jesse Rue Grant, was certainly,
Speaker 1: uh not thrilled with the idea of his son courting
Speaker 1: a the daughter of a of a slave owner. Is
Speaker 1: my understanding that the Grant family, No members of the
Speaker 1: Grant family showed up to the wedding. One thing that
Speaker 1: really did draw them together. The one thing was Julia
Speaker 1: liked to horseback ride, and so they would take rides together,
Speaker 1: you know, hey on his horse and she on her
Speaker 1: horse along the plantation, and that I think helped bring
Speaker 1: them bring them together. And interestingly enough, Julia is one
Speaker 1: of the few people who thinks that Grant is going
Speaker 1: to amount to anything. Most people say, nah, he's not
Speaker 1: gonna be a good fact the father her father didn't
Speaker 1: like Grant at all and thought he was going to
Speaker 1: be He's an absolute loser. Grant would soon find himself
Speaker 1: in a more uncomfortable position than simply dealing with an
Speaker 1: unimpressed father in law. He would be shipped out to
Speaker 1: the front in the Mexican American War, and Grant went
Speaker 1: despite his personal opinion on the conflict and the fact
Speaker 1: he would be assigned to a job which he didn't like. Quartermaster,
Speaker 1: a glorify paper pusher. In the eyes of Grant, he's
Speaker 1: one of these people who believes that if you're giving
Speaker 1: an order, like with his father, if you're giving an order,
Speaker 1: you follow the order, you do what you're supposed to do,
Speaker 1: and so you have a situation or Grant numerous occasions
Speaker 1: is willing to do the quartermaster work, even though he
Speaker 1: doesn't like it, but he'll do it anyway. But yet
Speaker 1: when he gets a chance, he sneaks into battle He
Speaker 1: really learns a lot from General Sachary Taylor. He sees
Speaker 1: the way he commands streeps, the way he inspires, the
Speaker 1: way he leads his men from the front, not from
Speaker 1: the back. These moments are really important for Grant. Even
Speaker 1: though Grant opposed the Mexican War, he saw it as
Speaker 1: a as a war of aggression towards a neighboring state.
Speaker 1: He thought it was unjust. He understood that the political
Speaker 1: motivations behind it from President James K. Polk Toes initially
Speaker 1: start a war with Mexico to gain this terr toory
Speaker 1: that Mexico would refuse to sell and continue to expand
Speaker 1: west to fulfill manifest destiny. Grant finds a problem with this,
Speaker 1: but nevertheless, his time in the Mexican War really becomes
Speaker 1: this really important moment for Grant. And after the Mexican
Speaker 1: American War, Grant was sent all across the expanded United
Speaker 1: States to remote forts in order to protect settlers falling
Speaker 1: into a depression as a result of being away from
Speaker 1: home and family for so long. In fact, one of
Speaker 1: the children he doesn't even see until several years later
Speaker 1: when he shows up back at his house and Saint Louis,
Speaker 1: the child doesn't even recognize him. And what Grant was
Speaker 1: doing he was drinking during that time, and the reason
Speaker 1: he was drinking was because he missed his wife and
Speaker 1: his family so much. One could almost argue that he's
Speaker 1: self medicating himself. And this led to problems with his superiors,
Speaker 1: especially a man by the name of Robert Buchanan, who
Speaker 1: would issue him an ultimatum after finding Grant hung over
Speaker 1: on the job. Buchanan says, you can't behaved like that.
Speaker 1: We can't do though, So you have a choice. You
Speaker 1: either straight now or you resign. Add So what actually
Speaker 1: happens is is a Grant doesn't want to resign, but
Speaker 1: he has no choice. This is where these rumors really
Speaker 1: that will follow him for the rest of his life
Speaker 1: originate of him being a drunk. He was not addicted
Speaker 1: to alcohol in the same sense that an alcoholic is
Speaker 1: as supposed to, perhaps more of an abusive alcohol to
Speaker 1: alleviate some of that depression or or you know, angst
Speaker 1: that he has. That episode just made it so much
Speaker 1: more difficult for him, and he's had a battle that
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life and even to the
Speaker 1: present day. After resigning from the military, Grant would return
Speaker 1: home and return home broke. There's a couple of instances
Speaker 1: where he's such bad shape that he's got to sell
Speaker 1: firewood on the street corners of Saint Louis. And there's
Speaker 1: a very famous, famous episode where Grant and Sherman, who
Speaker 1: don't know each other all that well, meet and I
Speaker 1: think Sherman has says, well, heck of a thing for
Speaker 1: former West Pointers, isn't it Grant? And Grant just said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it is, and that was about it. So
Speaker 1: he did that, and he also had to sell a
Speaker 1: favorite watch so he could buy his family, his kids
Speaker 1: something for Christmas, So you have some of that. So
Speaker 1: there's just a number of instances where Grant tries things
Speaker 1: and usually, come to think of it, usually it has
Speaker 1: something to do with farming, and that's something he thinks
Speaker 1: he can really do well. But he doesn't do well,
Speaker 1: and with no other options, Grant would be forced to
Speaker 1: ask his father for a job. What happened was he
Speaker 1: went to his father, which was an incredibly difficult thing
Speaker 1: for him to due to go to his father and say,
Speaker 1: give me a job in your store where we sell
Speaker 1: sell these tan goods. So Grant doesn't like that. He's
Speaker 1: not involved, he doesn't do anything to do with with tanning,
Speaker 1: but he's involved in the selling, and he tours the
Speaker 1: Midwest and he sells, and the father's doing quite successfully,
Speaker 1: you know this at this particular time. So, yeah, Grant
Speaker 1: convinces his father Luca, I can't make it on my own,
Speaker 1: give me a job in the store. And he's got
Speaker 1: a brother, an older brother who's ill, and so he
Speaker 1: helps him. And it's a very very confused thing. But
Speaker 1: the result is that Grant does work for the father,
Speaker 1: and the father never lets him forget that. And so
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life, even when he's president,
Speaker 1: the father is still trying to get get stuff from
Speaker 1: Grant for some of his friends. What a rich and
Speaker 1: complicated early history. Grant going to a college he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to go to, doesn't like the military. But while
Speaker 1: there develops this craft, this skill horsemanship, by the way,
Speaker 1: that mattered if you were a soldier back in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, your ability to move and maneuver with a horse,
Speaker 1: and my goodness to drinking, well, we can understand it
Speaker 1: away from his kid. His kid didn't even recognize him
Speaker 1: when he comes back to see him and ultimately chooses
Speaker 1: to resign, knowing he won't be able to give up drinking,
Speaker 1: comes back home selling firewood on a street corner, and
Speaker 1: then in the end having to beg his dad for
Speaker 1: a job he never wanted. When we come back, more
Speaker 1: of this remarkable life story, the early life of Ulysses S. Grant.
Speaker 1: These were real life people, folks who walked around before us,
Speaker 1: with real life stories and real life heartbreak. And when
Speaker 1: we come back more of this remarkable story of Ulysses S. Grant.
Speaker 1: Here on our American stories, and we return to our
Speaker 1: American stories and our look into the life of Ulysses.
Speaker 1: Asked Grant. When we last left off Grant, he was
Speaker 1: at his lowest point. It was at this time that
Speaker 1: Grant would be given a slave by the name of
Speaker 1: William Jones. Here's Eddie Rangel with Moore on that story.
Speaker 1: His father in law gives him a or I guess
Speaker 1: gives him a slave. I guess what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 1: And Grant works alongside him, which is something that would
Speaker 1: have been frowned upon by you know, white slave owning
Speaker 1: society of the time. However, eventually, you know, even at
Speaker 1: his lowest, he realizes that well, one this is this
Speaker 1: is not for him, and so he emancipates or he
Speaker 1: frees William Jones, probably at one of his lowest times
Speaker 1: when he could really have been benefitted from the monetary
Speaker 1: value that an enslaved person could have brought him. I
Speaker 1: think it's an important part in the story of Grant
Speaker 1: because you really get to see how he evolves over time.
Speaker 1: I think it's best to say that he felt he
Speaker 1: was sort of ambivalent. He didn't really care about institution
Speaker 1: of slavery, but he also didn't speak out openly against it,
Speaker 1: at least in his early in his early years, and
Speaker 1: so he's just kind of in between there and not
Speaker 1: really caring for it and not really loving it. And
Speaker 1: so that's an important moment. While you know, before the
Speaker 1: Civil War for Grant, Julia thinks that slavery is wonderful.
Speaker 1: In fact, she even holds on the more or less
Speaker 1: holds on to a slave throughout the throughout the Civil War,
Speaker 1: where Grant comes to see that slavery is evil. And
Speaker 1: if you're going to understand why there is a civil war,
Speaker 1: you have to understand that people are fighting to defend slavery.
Speaker 1: He thought the Civil War was a terrible thing that
Speaker 1: that there, that it shouldn't happen. There's no reason to
Speaker 1: split the country apart. Slavery was not not worth doing it.
Speaker 1: Nothing was worth doing it. And the way he really
Speaker 1: got into the war, more or less he got into
Speaker 1: the war was where they had a big town meeting
Speaker 1: in Galena, and he was chosen as the person to
Speaker 1: run the town meeting simply because he was the only
Speaker 1: west Pointer that any everybody in town knew. And so
Speaker 1: the result is is that that you have you have
Speaker 1: Grant running the meeting. And then once he runs the meeting,
Speaker 1: and once he gets a company really is set up
Speaker 1: in Galena, then it doesn't much matter because they say, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's nice. But nobody wants to give Grant what
Speaker 1: he thinks he deserves because he's a west Pointer, that
Speaker 1: he that he get a regiment, until finally the governor
Speaker 1: of Illinois, Yates, Robert Yates, gives him the twenty first
Speaker 1: regiment because nobody else can make these guys tow the line,
Speaker 1: and somehow Grant can, which is an amazing thing in itself,
Speaker 1: that Grant would be the one that could step in
Speaker 1: there and get these guys in line because normally he
Speaker 1: just doesn't really doesn't really play much of a role
Speaker 1: in this sort of thing. In fact, Yates the job
Speaker 1: that Yates gives him is based on his quartermaster's skill,
Speaker 1: but in this case, he becomes the leader of the
Speaker 1: twenty first to Illinois Regiment, and soon Grant would get
Speaker 1: his first taste of battle in the American Civil War.
Speaker 1: Grant is leading this twenty first regiment, which he's straightened
Speaker 1: out pretty well, leading him into battle, but he's scared
Speaker 1: to death. In fact, he says in his memoirs how
Speaker 1: his heart kept moving into his throat and until he
Speaker 1: gets over this hill and he's expecting to find the
Speaker 1: Confederates ready to clean his clock, and they don't. They're
Speaker 1: they're gone. And he comes to the conclusion, you know,
Speaker 1: these guys are afraid of me as I am of them,
Speaker 1: And this is something he never forgets for the rest
Speaker 1: of the Civil War. I think one of the big
Speaker 1: things that you have to understand is is that Grant
Speaker 1: understood that the people he was fighting were just human beings.
Speaker 1: They were some of the people he had met before.
Speaker 1: There were some people that they were going to meet
Speaker 1: later on. But he came to understand that Robert E. Lee,
Speaker 1: for example, who he had met the league, wouldn't wouldn't
Speaker 1: admit that he met him, but he didn't meet him
Speaker 1: during the during the Mexican American War, that Lee was
Speaker 1: no superman. He was just Rember. The famous statement he says,
Speaker 1: where somebody is worried about well that's Grant. What's Lee
Speaker 1: going to do? And Grant says, look, don't worry about Lee.
Speaker 1: You worry about yourself. You do what you keep indicating
Speaker 1: that he's going to do a triple somersault and land
Speaker 1: behind our lines. It's just not going to happen. I
Speaker 1: know this guy, He's just another human being. And the
Speaker 1: other secondly that these are fellow Americans that you're fighting against.
Speaker 1: Grant's demeanor was more like his mother as opposed to
Speaker 1: his father. He was a calm individual. He didn't really
Speaker 1: show a lot of emotion. And so if you take
Speaker 1: his Mexican War experience, learning from Taylor, learning from Scott,
Speaker 1: his own demeanor, you really see a very calm, calculated
Speaker 1: individual in battles. He's also going back to his earlier
Speaker 1: time when he's willing to act whether or not he
Speaker 1: has the power to do it. He's just going to
Speaker 1: do it. The whole ideas you keep moving forward, you
Speaker 1: keep moving forward. If you're going this way and you're stop,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, keep going, keep going, keep going. And that's
Speaker 1: what Lincoln goes to believe. And after winning countless victory,
Speaker 1: after countless victory in the West, Lincoln would promote Grant
Speaker 1: to general. When Grant is promoted and he's recalled back
Speaker 1: to Washington, you know, no one really knows him. He's
Speaker 1: sort of quietly been fighting in the West, just whipping
Speaker 1: the rebel, so to speak. But he comes back to
Speaker 1: Washington and when he checks into the hotel with his son,
Speaker 1: they basically put him up in an attic. You know, Grant, again,
Speaker 1: his personality was not flashy. He didn't he didn't really
Speaker 1: like a tension or anything like that. He was never
Speaker 1: known to be, you know, have his uniform super clean
Speaker 1: or anything. And so he just goes along with it
Speaker 1: until the clerk after a few minutes, realizes who he
Speaker 1: is because they had read about him, and certainly they
Speaker 1: could see pictures of him, but they weren't accurate to
Speaker 1: what Grant looked like. He sees that you, as Grant
Speaker 1: has signed in and he realizes the mistake he's made,
Speaker 1: and so he very quickly puts the hotel staff to
Speaker 1: I believe, get a guest out of their room so
Speaker 1: the General Grant can have a room. And then certainly
Speaker 1: when he goes to the White House to meet President Lincoln,
Speaker 1: you know it's full of people. And so here it
Speaker 1: is again shy Grant walking in into this room full
Speaker 1: of high society Washington people. I don't want to say
Speaker 1: he shrinks in the moment, but he's certainly taken by
Speaker 1: the moment of Lincoln sort of presenting him to all
Speaker 1: these Washington elite. And at the end of the war
Speaker 1: and after seeing so much bloodshed, Grant would show humility
Speaker 1: and respect to his former enemies Appomattox, allowing them to
Speaker 1: keep their guns and horses provided they simply return home.
Speaker 1: He pretty much follows what Lincoln has said. Lincoln kept saying,
Speaker 1: let him off easy, let them off easy. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that happens at Appomattox is they get
Speaker 1: together and Grant is willing to give lee and give
Speaker 1: the Confederates and treat them fairly. And what he does is,
Speaker 1: we're not going to put it to you Confederates, we're
Speaker 1: going to let you off easy, which Lincoln agrees with
Speaker 1: and other Americans agree with, because after all, these are
Speaker 1: all Americans. And great job to Monty Montgomery for putting
Speaker 1: that together in his special thanks to the Ulysses S.
Speaker 1: Grant Presidential Library in Starkville, Mississippi for their contributions to
Speaker 1: this piece. And what an American story. What a turnaround
Speaker 1: from selling wood on a street corner, begging his dad
Speaker 1: for a job as a grown man, to only a
Speaker 1: couple of years later leading the US Army in the
Speaker 1: Civil War, and in the end becoming a US president.
Speaker 1: Just remarkable. And my goodness is charged always be moving
Speaker 1: forward and to take action. Well, this is why Lincoln
Speaker 1: finally put him in command, because he was just willing
Speaker 1: to fight. And also what he said about all your
Speaker 1: enemy or something that you might hear, and perhaps his
Speaker 1: greatest insight as a commander. They feared us as much
Speaker 1: as we feared them. The life of us Grant. Here
Speaker 1: on our American story, and we continue with our American stories.
Speaker 1: Up next, the story of Mike Olbinski, an Arizona based
Speaker 1: photographer that takes family photos, shoots weddings, and also chases
Speaker 1: storm Here's Mike with how he got into this unique
Speaker 1: line of work. All I know is I've loved weather
Speaker 1: my entire life. I know that there's a moment where
Speaker 1: a lightning bolt hit behind her house and I was
Speaker 1: outside in the patty with my dad watching the storm,
Speaker 1: and a lightning bolt hit probably like a hundred feet away,
Speaker 1: a couple hundred feet away, and I was like seven
Speaker 1: or eight, and I just remember it still vividly, like
Speaker 1: it was so bright and intense I be. I don't
Speaker 1: even know if I remember the sound of thunder. All
Speaker 1: I remember because I couldn't see anything for I felt
Speaker 1: like five ten seconds. It was so bright, and that
Speaker 1: always stuck with me, and that came back to me.
Speaker 1: That memory came back to me when I heard some
Speaker 1: other storm chasers talking about why they loved chasing tornadoes.
Speaker 1: And when they were little kids, their trailer park with
Speaker 1: their with their parents owned got hit by a tornado
Speaker 1: and their mom, they said, anyway, got sucked out a
Speaker 1: window and then came back in and then jumped on
Speaker 1: top of her two boys and was holding them down
Speaker 1: on the couch or the floor to make sure you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't nothing happen to them. And then those boys
Speaker 1: grew up into teenagers and all they want to do
Speaker 1: was chase tornadoes. They were fascinated with them. So I
Speaker 1: was like, so that's like a little origin story kind
Speaker 1: of a thing that they had, and I'm like, maybe
Speaker 1: this was mine because when I was getting into photography,
Speaker 1: it was lightning is what I wanted to shoot. That.
Speaker 1: That was what I was looking at online, seeing people
Speaker 1: take these pictures of lightning in and I'm like, how
Speaker 1: do you do that? I want to do that. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: And so that's really what kind of drew me to
Speaker 1: I think photography in the first place. But but even
Speaker 1: after you know, kind of figuring that out once I
Speaker 1: was into it, I was looking back at old photos
Speaker 1: of mine from high school and later, and I had
Speaker 1: a photo from high school of a really you know,
Speaker 1: kind of crazy severe storm and I couldn't I guess
Speaker 1: at the time, I couldn't help it. I ran outside
Speaker 1: with a camera and took a picture of the storm.
Speaker 1: And but that was, you know, when I was like
Speaker 1: sixteen or something, and so I think that's always been there.
Speaker 1: I just didn't ever realize that was anything I could do.
Speaker 1: So I was just staring at lightning photos. Couldn't believe
Speaker 1: people could take those pictures, and I want to learn
Speaker 1: how to do that. Around the same time, my daughter
Speaker 1: was born. She's almost thirteen now, and all I, of
Speaker 1: course want to do is take pictures of her. And
Speaker 1: you know, I had a little dinky point and shoot
Speaker 1: camera that could do really close up macro mode, and
Speaker 1: so when she was a little baby, I'm just sitting
Speaker 1: there taking really close ups up her face in her hands,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, man, I really like business is fun.
Speaker 1: And and then I tried to use that and get
Speaker 1: picture of lightning and I captured somehow with this dumb
Speaker 1: camera this amazing lightning strike right by my house. And
Speaker 1: I was like, holy crap, I want to do this.
Speaker 1: This is amazing, but I can't do it with this camera.
Speaker 1: I need a better camera. And I went home that
Speaker 1: night and told my wife Gina, I need a real
Speaker 1: camera can do long exposures. This you know, point and
Speaker 1: click thing is no good for me. And she was like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, let's do it. And we sold all
Speaker 1: our DVD like box sets of DVDs we had at
Speaker 1: the time that we really weren't watching, but they actually
Speaker 1: sold for good money back then on eBay was surprising
Speaker 1: and made like five or six hundred bucks, bought my
Speaker 1: first real camera, and then from there it was you know,
Speaker 1: taking pictures of my daughter with a better camera, better lenses,
Speaker 1: doing you know, you know, cooler stuff with it, and
Speaker 1: then getting a little bit better where friends are like, hey,
Speaker 1: can you just take a you know, Christmas card picture
Speaker 1: for us, which is like the old story that always
Speaker 1: happens when people get a camera. And then I started,
Speaker 1: you know, taking pictures of storms, and so it kind
Speaker 1: of all kind of happened at the same time, and I,
Speaker 1: you know, I shoot weddings and family stuff now on
Speaker 1: top of doing the storms, and so I still am
Speaker 1: doing the same thing. I never decided really anything. It
Speaker 1: was just more of I want to chase these storms
Speaker 1: and capture these images. And back in the day, I
Speaker 1: was watching storm Chasers on Discovery Channel, and that was
Speaker 1: a big kind of inspiration because I didn't even know
Speaker 1: people really did that until I was watching that, and
Speaker 1: I was just blown away. I'm like, Wow, there's people
Speaker 1: out there that I like this as much as me,
Speaker 1: and then they drive thousands of miles to chase it.
Speaker 1: And at that time I would have been just waiting
Speaker 1: for storms around my house. I'm like, wow, I have
Speaker 1: a better camera, and now I can actually drive out
Speaker 1: and try to get closer to storms that are that
Speaker 1: aren't right here and increase my odds of getting good
Speaker 1: pictures and good lightning photos. And that's really kind of
Speaker 1: how it started. It just slowly grew, you know, I
Speaker 1: just would start going chasing, and then it also my
Speaker 1: daughter was also kind of part of it, because you know,
Speaker 1: I was starting to go out a lot, and so,
Speaker 1: you know, to kind of justify me being gone all
Speaker 1: the time, I would take Lila with me. She was
Speaker 1: a year and a half. She'd watch movies in the
Speaker 1: back and give my wife a break at night, and
Speaker 1: it was kind of my way to be able to
Speaker 1: get out a little more. So we kind of started
Speaker 1: doing that together, and then every you know, every summer,
Speaker 1: it was just kind of driving more and more around Arizona.
Speaker 1: And then at some point I decided I'm going to
Speaker 1: go try to chase you know, a super sellar tornado
Speaker 1: out in the planes and went out for one day
Speaker 1: in like two thousand and nine or two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: and it was a horrible bust and then you know,
Speaker 1: a couple days the next year, a couple of days
Speaker 1: the year after, and then it just all slowly grew.
Speaker 1: But probably I would say if there was ever like
Speaker 1: a conscious decision was in twenty eleven and July fifth,
Speaker 1: actually twenty eleven, I time lapsed and it was like
Speaker 1: my third ever time laps. I was just practicing kind of,
Speaker 1: but there's this monumental apocalyptic wall of dust coming into
Speaker 1: Phoenix was like nothing I'd ever seen before. And then
Speaker 1: I posted that online like it within an hour or two,
Speaker 1: and then it went viral, was all across the world,
Speaker 1: on all the new stations everything. At that moment, I
Speaker 1: remember thinking, man, I really love doing this, and people
Speaker 1: and then people ended up licensing that video for commercials
Speaker 1: and all the stuff, and I'm like, man, I love
Speaker 1: doing this and I would do it for free, but
Speaker 1: here's people paying me for it. And so there was
Speaker 1: a decision there that I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep doing this time laps thing and seeing what
Speaker 1: kind of footage I can get and then seeing what
Speaker 1: comes of it. And so I just kept doing that
Speaker 1: and then slowly, you know, people would see some of
Speaker 1: the things and license it. In twenty thirteen, I had
Speaker 1: another good one go viral, and that's been licensed and
Speaker 1: still licensed to this day. And so it was kind
Speaker 1: of like confirmation that I had made the right decision.
Speaker 1: But then I also started putting all these time laps
Speaker 1: clips I shot. I started putting them to music and
Speaker 1: making little short films out of them. You know. They
Speaker 1: started off kind of crap, be in my opinion, but
Speaker 1: I did my best. But as time went on, they
Speaker 1: got better and better, and they would get they were
Speaker 1: more popular that people hadn't really seen that as much.
Speaker 1: That they would get staff picks on Vimeo, they would
Speaker 1: get shared on a bunch of blogs all over I
Speaker 1: get them in film festivals and things like that. So
Speaker 1: I think a lot of that stuff has just been
Speaker 1: kind of a progression of just continued kind of my
Speaker 1: passion for it is what really drives me. It's almost
Speaker 1: like an addiction. So I never kind of quit. I
Speaker 1: just keep going and going and going. And when I'm
Speaker 1: out chasing, I never it's hard for me to ever stop,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, if I'm by myself and there's
Speaker 1: lightning or something, I will just keep chasing, you know.
Speaker 1: And other if there's people with me, I'm like, we
Speaker 1: probably gotta go to hotel. Everyone's tired and stuff. But
Speaker 1: but for me, I just go to the ends of
Speaker 1: the earth kind of thing. And and so I I think,
Speaker 1: you know, however, my story has been it's been one
Speaker 1: of just being passionate and dedicated to what I do
Speaker 1: and kind of just continually proving that all the time.
Speaker 1: You know, I just every year it's keep chasing, keep
Speaker 1: getting footage, putting these films out, and kind of being
Speaker 1: consistent with it. And so yeah, at some point, you know,
Speaker 1: I had I have a book published on Amazon, and
Speaker 1: then I got I want to emmy with the local
Speaker 1: news station here that used my footage about five six
Speaker 1: years ago. So I got that emmy, so they verified,
Speaker 1: you know, being on Twitter and Instagram and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, was kind of a result of that. It's
Speaker 1: been about ten to eleven years now where just trying
Speaker 1: to be you know, really consistent, and it's been and
Speaker 1: as and as I've grown, you know, myself in my
Speaker 1: photography and the timelot stuff, people around the world will
Speaker 1: have kind of known me for this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Like the BBC National Geographicum they come to me for
Speaker 1: things where this year, people are, you know, they're trying
Speaker 1: to get footage for a show, and so I'm like
Speaker 1: a forecaster for them where I'm guiding a TV production
Speaker 1: and I was kind of a guide, a forecaster, and
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, Pearl Jam license a bunch
Speaker 1: of clips from the stock footage place I use and
Speaker 1: have all like a ton of my footage in it,
Speaker 1: and then they did a preview a little sneak trailer
Speaker 1: for it where they were all on stage playing in
Speaker 1: the background was just my lightning time laps flashing behind
Speaker 1: Pearl Jam. And I'm sitting there just going like, this
Speaker 1: isn't that surprising, but it's also insanely surprising, and I
Speaker 1: just can't believe it. And I'm really really, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of humbled and blown away that this ever happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, all I really did was want to just
Speaker 1: chase storms and take pictures and I just love it
Speaker 1: that much, and somehow this has happened. And a great
Speaker 1: job on the production by our team who really combined
Speaker 1: their efforts Madison, Faith and Robbie. And a special thanks
Speaker 1: to Mike Olbinsky, and again you heard it from him.
Speaker 1: He does take pictures of weddings and family photos, and
Speaker 1: he loves doing it. But the real thing he loves,
Speaker 1: the passion, is the chase, and the chase of storms.
Speaker 1: Lightning drew him to photography, storms pulled him in all
Speaker 1: the way. The story of Mike Obinski. Like so many Americans,
Speaker 1: their passion becomes their business. Their business is their passion.
Speaker 1: His story here on our American Stories.