Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio Icarus. Sons.
Speaker 1: Sons are roped to fathers. Fathers. Well, are we sure
Speaker 1: they're tied to sons? Sons need fathers fathers. Sons take
Speaker 1: years from fathers. Honest fathers. Know this picture an hourglass,
Speaker 1: two globes, one filled, the other empty. Now in your mind,
Speaker 1: turn it over. The top of the globe, the father,
Speaker 1: the grains of sand, his years. The bottom of the globe.
Speaker 1: That's the son. See the years slipping away from the father,
Speaker 1: filling up the son. Father's flow into sons. Think of Icarus.
Speaker 1: Father and son exist on an isle. At some point.
Speaker 1: The father longs to escape and the son he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be left behind, abandoned. And fathers they always
Speaker 1: have plans. What sons should remember that the plans of
Speaker 1: their fathers often have holes. A father is no shield
Speaker 1: for a son. That's Michael Haney reading a passage from
Speaker 1: his Beautiful book after visiting Friends. A Son's story. What
Speaker 1: happens when a boy loses his father at a tender age,
Speaker 1: an age so young that he hardly remembers him, and
Speaker 1: that boy grows up to become a journalist digging for
Speaker 1: answers to questions he's always had about the nature of
Speaker 1: his father's death, questions that have formed him, questions that
Speaker 1: beg for answers. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets,
Speaker 1: the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves.
Speaker 1: I feel like I remember nothing before a and that
Speaker 1: was the morning, shortly after I turned six years old,
Speaker 1: that I learned my father was dead, and h up
Speaker 1: until then, I think. I mean as I say, I
Speaker 1: don't remember much, but I don't have reason to remember
Speaker 1: anything bad. It was a pretty pleasant childhood, I think
Speaker 1: I was. I just turned six. I have had an
Speaker 1: older brother, Chris, who was eight. My mother was thirty
Speaker 1: three at the time, my father was thirty five, and
Speaker 1: we were living in a suburb of Chicago, right on
Speaker 1: the border of Chicago, out near the Airport O'Hare. And
Speaker 1: it was I think, probably pleasant by all accounts and um,
Speaker 1: but you know, it was that formative moment which I
Speaker 1: think has defined my life, when that was my father's death.
Speaker 1: When you say that you have no memories before that moment,
Speaker 1: do you really mean no memories like I would say,
Speaker 1: in the excavation and looking back over my life, I
Speaker 1: would see when I was when I was working on
Speaker 1: searching for this story. I would remember moments where I
Speaker 1: would be sort of flipping through photo album from you
Speaker 1: know that my mother had kept and I could remember, Oh,
Speaker 1: that was Christmas when I was four, or that I
Speaker 1: think I remember taking that trip. But you know, I
Speaker 1: think also developmentally from what I've known in my time
Speaker 1: spending a lot of time on the couch, is children
Speaker 1: often don't remember much until age five. Really there's a reason,
Speaker 1: and they sort of developed and sort of that's when
Speaker 1: kindergarten begins, and that's when one sort of memory sort
Speaker 1: of locks in. And so um, I shouldn't certainly don't
Speaker 1: mean to be dramatic and say I don't remember much,
Speaker 1: but I really it's was as though that was when,
Speaker 1: you know, the curtain went up on my life. So
Speaker 1: tell me about that moment, what you remember. My brother
Speaker 1: and I shared a small bedroom in a small house
Speaker 1: sort of row house townhouse, and my father was a
Speaker 1: newspaper editor. He worked what was called the lobster shift,
Speaker 1: which meant you worked from six pm until three am
Speaker 1: closing the morning edition. And my brother and I shared
Speaker 1: this room, and I was in kindergarten and my brother
Speaker 1: was in second grade. So it was very common that
Speaker 1: we would wake up and come downstairs for breakfast, and
Speaker 1: my father would be there already, having just come home,
Speaker 1: and he would wait up for us at breakfast and
Speaker 1: then usually sort of go to sleep. But it was
Speaker 1: a beautiful sunny morning. I remember it because the sun
Speaker 1: was kind of searing the edges of the shade that
Speaker 1: was drawn in our bedroom. And our mother came in
Speaker 1: to wake us up, and I always remember she was
Speaker 1: just very happy. And as she was waking us up,
Speaker 1: we slept in these twin beds side by side. The
Speaker 1: doorbell rang, which was unusual. My mother went to the
Speaker 1: shade and in our bedroom and she raised the shade,
Speaker 1: and she remember standing on my brother's bed with him
Speaker 1: with my mother and looking down and seeing my grandparents,
Speaker 1: my mother's parents, and my father's brother on the back porch.
Speaker 1: And the next thing I remember is my mother had
Speaker 1: gone downstairs, and my brother and I standing on the
Speaker 1: top of the staircase and we could hear her crying,
Speaker 1: and my brother and I went downstairs, stood on the
Speaker 1: edge of the kitchen and I and my uncle turning
Speaker 1: to my mother, who was sitting on the chair and saying,
Speaker 1: the boys are here. And at that point she pulled
Speaker 1: us together and said, your father's dead. And that was
Speaker 1: the morning. Describe your father for me. Describe him as
Speaker 1: you remember him in you know, in the brief time
Speaker 1: that you had with him. I don't think you answer
Speaker 1: for asked me that question. I have two memories. One
Speaker 1: is I remember he loved to wrestle with my brother
Speaker 1: and me, And by that I mean I can remember
Speaker 1: after dinner on the living room floor just doing what
Speaker 1: a father does, who's letting two boys sort of crawl
Speaker 1: over him and, you know, sort of test your strength
Speaker 1: against him. And I also remember, you know, after dinner,
Speaker 1: he would be at the table and he'd usually often
Speaker 1: have happen some of him holding up a palm for
Speaker 1: each of us, my brother and myself, sitting in his
Speaker 1: kitchen chair. Yeah, and one poem in front of my brother,
Speaker 1: one palm in front of me, and each of us
Speaker 1: making little fists and sort of punching at his open palm,
Speaker 1: and him sort of exaggerated like, oh, it's so strong,
Speaker 1: you guys are so strong. I also remember him teaching
Speaker 1: me to write a two wheel blake. So I remember
Speaker 1: those things, small moments like that, vivid, you know, concrete,
Speaker 1: But I don't remember any words. And how about your
Speaker 1: mother from that time? I mean with your mother, you
Speaker 1: have a before and you haven't after your father, you
Speaker 1: only have a before. Two memories, I'd say have ur
Speaker 1: I was. I was also a boy who seems to
Speaker 1: have gotten into a number of scrapes. By that, I
Speaker 1: mean I once knocks to teeth out. They had to
Speaker 1: take me to a hospital for stitches. I once fell
Speaker 1: and sort of cut my head open. And it seems
Speaker 1: like my my memories of my mother were always kind
Speaker 1: of scooping me up and take me to the hospital
Speaker 1: for stitches and um. But I again, I don't really
Speaker 1: I don't remember words. I couldn't tell you anything that
Speaker 1: they ever really said to me until that morning. And
Speaker 1: you do remember the words from that morning. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting too that what have you remember the weather? Because
Speaker 1: I have this theory about trauma and the weather and memory,
Speaker 1: and there's just something about or even I mean for me,
Speaker 1: like what I was wearing in woman's like that, or
Speaker 1: everything becomes very very vivid in a in a kind
Speaker 1: of sensory way and just becomes sort of imprinted. You're
Speaker 1: exactly right, and and forever I've not like the Spring
Speaker 1: and which is married now, but when I used to date,
Speaker 1: and I'll be like, oh my god, Spring, it's so fun.
Speaker 1: It's as I could never pinpoint why I would sink
Speaker 1: into some kind of depression worse than usual in springtime.
Speaker 1: And I think it's some deep vibration that it's just there.
Speaker 1: You then you and your brother and your mother go
Speaker 1: on with your lives and she's now a single mom,
Speaker 1: and you and your brother are growing up without a dad.
Speaker 1: What did you as you were growing up understand about
Speaker 1: your father's death? We were told that he had been
Speaker 1: working late, as he always does, and that he when
Speaker 1: he had left the office of the newspaper was walking
Speaker 1: to his car and had a heart attack and died
Speaker 1: on the street and some police found him, and that's
Speaker 1: what happened to him. And in those years of your
Speaker 1: childhood and being a teenager, how did that sit with you?
Speaker 1: Did you question that story at all? All the time?
Speaker 1: And I think this is what if you've had traum,
Speaker 1: you will understand it. If and if you haven't, maybe
Speaker 1: you will too. But seven, eight nine years old idea
Speaker 1: and I just you know, you will tell me again, mom,
Speaker 1: what happened? Right? And I think this is even informed
Speaker 1: by the basic watching TV shows when you're a kid
Speaker 1: and you see how the police work, and beginning with
Speaker 1: i'd say, but I don't understand why did Uncle Dick
Speaker 1: come and tell us? Why didn't the police come and
Speaker 1: tell us? Because that's what happens in the TV shows.
Speaker 1: My mom would say, Oh, I don't know, that's just
Speaker 1: the way it was. I mean, I you know, she
Speaker 1: was not I think, actively deceiving me. It's just like, well,
Speaker 1: that's just she didn't think either, But it was it
Speaker 1: just I think part of it was I would hear like, well,
Speaker 1: he died on the street, and I would just, being
Speaker 1: like I said, eight nine, ten years old, I would
Speaker 1: just lay in bed a night and picture him dead
Speaker 1: on a street in Chicago and the police finding him,
Speaker 1: and then okay, so then why do they call Uncle Dick?
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't they call the house? And beginning at that age,
Speaker 1: it's just then square with me. I think about it
Speaker 1: all the time, and yet my house was a house
Speaker 1: of enormous silence, and so I never really asked my
Speaker 1: mother that much whim. Every so often I'd find the
Speaker 1: courage to ask her, why do you think? Or why
Speaker 1: what about this? But I lived in such through the
Speaker 1: mind of a child I see now who suffered trauma.
Speaker 1: I lived with great fear that if I upset her,
Speaker 1: I could lose her too. I would believe it. So
Speaker 1: I kept a lot of these questions to myself, and
Speaker 1: I would just work them over in my own mind,
Speaker 1: even though I was desperate to ask her. Someone what
Speaker 1: they might know what I never did. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: In that enormous silence that so often surrounds trauma, a
Speaker 1: child's mind plays tricks. I think this happens to all
Speaker 1: of us who have experienced a cleaving loss, but particularly
Speaker 1: a young child who has no tools, no way to deal.
Speaker 1: And so Michael is ever vigilant. His magical thinking tells
Speaker 1: him that loss begets loss, tragedy, tragedy. He can control
Speaker 1: the world and keep his mother, his brother, and himself
Speaker 1: safe if he stays watchful but silent. You grow up
Speaker 1: and become a journalist. In a way, even the questions
Speaker 1: the wise that you were asking as a child were
Speaker 1: the questions of someone who might grow up and become
Speaker 1: a journalist. Need to drill down, need to know, need
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of the story. I know
Speaker 1: there's a part of me that made the decision to
Speaker 1: live out his life. Because what you have to understand
Speaker 1: is my father kept these meticulous scrap books from the
Speaker 1: time he was probably in kindergarten, and they go from
Speaker 1: kindergarten through college through grad school. And they were really
Speaker 1: all I had of him. And they were kept in
Speaker 1: the bottom of this bookcase. And I discovered them when
Speaker 1: I was a boy, and I would always wait until
Speaker 1: my mother was out of the house and then I
Speaker 1: would go to them, and to me, they were this
Speaker 1: almost like I hope I'm using this story away with
Speaker 1: like this talmudic kind of documented to all these evidence
Speaker 1: to piece together a life. I would see this boy
Speaker 1: growing up, everything from report cards to mother's day cards
Speaker 1: he made for his mother when he was eight, to
Speaker 1: seeing him writing stories for the high school newspaper and
Speaker 1: reading them. And I thought, and so when you ask
Speaker 1: earlier about what was his voice, I don't. I never
Speaker 1: heard his voice, but I could see this voice being
Speaker 1: made manifest and watching and grow. In Grimar school, I
Speaker 1: had teachers who recognized my ability to write, so you know,
Speaker 1: as I got older and well, I know how to write.
Speaker 1: And so I think it's sort of my sense of
Speaker 1: self was meeting this what I thought was an unrealized
Speaker 1: self of his life, and I thought, well, maybe I
Speaker 1: can remember thinking I'm going to fulfill his unfulfilled life
Speaker 1: and I'm going to make myself known as the son
Speaker 1: of Bob Hainey. So there's a large part of that
Speaker 1: that I see. But I also wonder maybe I was
Speaker 1: supposed to do something else. Well, I was shaped by
Speaker 1: our experiences. I mean, that's and we're shaped by our losses.
Speaker 1: And you know, I often say, you know, you change
Speaker 1: one thing, then everything changes. It's so unusual that he
Speaker 1: kept these scrap books for a man, first of all,
Speaker 1: and he strikes me as something much more common that
Speaker 1: girls would do. Then boys are also the parents would
Speaker 1: do for their children, as opposed to actually documenting his life,
Speaker 1: you know, piecing that together. I mean, it's it's sentimental
Speaker 1: to say as if he almost knew that, you know,
Speaker 1: that he was leaving something behind so that you could
Speaker 1: understand or track him through his own life up until
Speaker 1: that point. What did it look like? What did the
Speaker 1: what did the scrap books look like? They're you know,
Speaker 1: Depression era and sort of big portfolios with string holding
Speaker 1: them together. And the pages are that thick rough almost
Speaker 1: like now it's all faded rough paper and hoot of
Speaker 1: glue down. And you know, you can see them being
Speaker 1: bought at the five and dime store and um out
Speaker 1: in Nebraska where he grew up. And and you know,
Speaker 1: I wonder what he was thinking, this, this desire to
Speaker 1: document his life, you know, to preserve his life. One
Speaker 1: thing that's really interesting is there are some letters that
Speaker 1: he wrote two girl friends or a girl, a girl
Speaker 1: or two that he had a crush on in high school.
Speaker 1: And I don't know why I have had them, but
Speaker 1: I remember reading them, and I remember they were filled
Speaker 1: with such yearning and also such vulnerability and even self doubt.
Speaker 1: And I'm just thinking that when you're ask again about voice,
Speaker 1: I remember his voice. No, but I remember that voice,
Speaker 1: and that voice voice, remember imitating it. I'm imitating it
Speaker 1: with when I started to be fifteen sixteen, and he
Speaker 1: was very vulnerable and kind and very like me. He
Speaker 1: was over sensitive. And you know this one someone told
Speaker 1: me when I was reporting the story, is he was
Speaker 1: so hard on himself and but wait a minute, that's me,
Speaker 1: you know, And again is it did I have that
Speaker 1: in me? Or did I see his voice and start
Speaker 1: to then invalidate it. I don't know, but he was.
Speaker 1: He was a very vulnerable boy, teenager and yet very smart.
Speaker 1: But I think, very hard on himself. Interesting because you
Speaker 1: you spent your life, most of your life not knowing him,
Speaker 1: and yet what you're describing as something that many people
Speaker 1: never know about their parents. So how old were you
Speaker 1: when you've found the obituaries of your father. I was
Speaker 1: seventeen eighteen in high school and I had to write
Speaker 1: a term paper and I was doing research on microfilm,
Speaker 1: and I just had the thought that, you know, he
Speaker 1: was a journalist and he was prominent. I wonder what
Speaker 1: the newspapers wrote about him, what the open where he said.
Speaker 1: There were four newspapers that wrote up the obituary about him.
Speaker 1: Two had just a story that he, you know, had
Speaker 1: died and there was but then two of them had
Speaker 1: this detail in them and said he had died after
Speaker 1: visiting friends on the thirty block of North Pine Grove
Speaker 1: in Chicago. And I can remember sitting there reading, well,
Speaker 1: that's weird. Number one, come if I he has friends
Speaker 1: up there there and he was visiting them. That none
Speaker 1: of these friends ever said to me, G Mike, I
Speaker 1: saw your dad just before he died. I want you
Speaker 1: to know he said this about you, or like there
Speaker 1: was never any friends who raised their hand for that night.
Speaker 1: Number Two, that we knew, no one as far as
Speaker 1: I knew, who lived in that area of Chicago. Number three,
Speaker 1: that area Chicago is nowhere even remotely island the way home,
Speaker 1: that he wouldn't have him taken. But this sugar went
Speaker 1: down my spine that I had found something forbidden that
Speaker 1: I probably should not be reading. And though I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask my mother and show her what I just found,
Speaker 1: I made copies of the micro film and I took
Speaker 1: him home and I just hid them in a box
Speaker 1: under my bed. And that was when I was seventeen
Speaker 1: eighteen and kind of moved on. But still there was
Speaker 1: that knock on the door all the time when you're
Speaker 1: sitting there thinking, and that knoxing you really should be
Speaker 1: looking at me, Yeah, I mean it's for forbidden, and
Speaker 1: also confirming of something, yeah, and confirming ten twelve years
Speaker 1: of suspicion. So then you go off to college and
Speaker 1: you start living your life, and at what point does
Speaker 1: that knocking get louder? The knocking gets louder. Just about
Speaker 1: the time I was thirty three thirty four, starting to
Speaker 1: crest towards the age my father was when he died,
Speaker 1: and I had again. It might not sound believable to
Speaker 1: some people, but if you've had trauma, you would understand.
Speaker 1: From the time I was seven eight nine, I really
Speaker 1: was confirmed in my belief that I would not outlive him,
Speaker 1: and that it was even a reason why I did
Speaker 1: not I want to get married, and if I did
Speaker 1: get married, I was not going to have children because
Speaker 1: I did not want to die on them, and what
Speaker 1: was the point. So really, as I m started to
Speaker 1: cress towards the age he died, which was thirty five,
Speaker 1: I sort of really went into a an emotional crisis.
Speaker 1: And I was seeing a doctor, you know, intensive kind
Speaker 1: of analysis. And when I sort of started seeing I
Speaker 1: mean she said, well, you're basically having a functioning breakdown.
Speaker 1: I was able to go on with things Monday through Friday,
Speaker 1: but you know, and at nights and then at home.
Speaker 1: I sort of really that that year, So leading up
Speaker 1: to it was really very difficult, and I think what
Speaker 1: made me think is I just have to find this answer,
Speaker 1: and that's what really traveled me toward it. It should
Speaker 1: be said too, that you were a very successful working
Speaker 1: writer and journalist during this time that you were functioning
Speaker 1: in that, you know, nine to five during the week way,
Speaker 1: which I think that really bears saying and also talking
Speaker 1: about a little bit, because I think it's true of
Speaker 1: so many people, um that there is a way in
Speaker 1: which you can kind of have a place in the
Speaker 1: world in which, you know, for many people into their
Speaker 1: work lives where outwardly everything seems perfectly fine. I would
Speaker 1: imagine that your colleagues and the people that you were
Speaker 1: working with had no idea that you were having this
Speaker 1: kind of functioning breakdown. Yeah, and I think you know,
Speaker 1: from what we know about trauma, I mean that people
Speaker 1: survived trauma and you have no idea whether it's something
Speaker 1: some PTSD in combat or you know, we've read about
Speaker 1: people who survived Nazi camps, or you know, people who
Speaker 1: survived horrible sexual trauma. You know, you you you learn
Speaker 1: to compartmentalize, right, You learned to get on with your
Speaker 1: life and you you want you that is all part
Speaker 1: of the moving forward or not letting this thing define
Speaker 1: you or destroy you. However, it's going to always keep
Speaker 1: knocking on that door unless one sits down with it
Speaker 1: and really answers to it and ask it asked for answers.
Speaker 1: So I think it did. As I've said. It's I've
Speaker 1: been not confronting those suspicions and going in search of
Speaker 1: the answers that I needed to at least make a
Speaker 1: run for if I was going to be complete. I
Speaker 1: was incomplete. So Michael commences the search he's been putting
Speaker 1: off in some ways all his life. He begins with
Speaker 1: his mother. He tells her he wants to write about
Speaker 1: his dad and get in touch with the old circle
Speaker 1: of newspaper guys who would have known him and worked
Speaker 1: with him. It wasn't only about getting to the bottom
Speaker 1: of what had happened on that April night in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: He wanted to know the man he had lost. He
Speaker 1: wanted to learn more about Bob Hainey's boyhood and how
Speaker 1: he left the small dustbowl town in Nebraska where he
Speaker 1: had been raised and found the means and ambition to
Speaker 1: get himself to Chicago. Fundamentally, Michael was asking the questions
Speaker 1: that lead to the answer of how he came to be.
Speaker 1: Imagine a world of older, perhaps now retired, newspaper men.
Speaker 1: A tough breed, these men, and they were mostly men
Speaker 1: who reported on the streets of Chicago then drank away
Speaker 1: their cares at the local watering hole. There's a tight
Speaker 1: bond among journalists who work shoulder to shoulder at the
Speaker 1: same paper. They stick together, look out for one another
Speaker 1: her So when Michael begins to report the story, he's
Speaker 1: met with a range of reactions. Mostly he's being stonewalled.
Speaker 1: Some of these guys are willing to meet up with him,
Speaker 1: talk with him, but when it comes to the night
Speaker 1: of his father's death, he gets nothing. And remember Michael
Speaker 1: is a seasoned reporter himself, one of the best. He
Speaker 1: has all these skills, this background as a journalist, but
Speaker 1: he's not getting answers. This goes on for a good
Speaker 1: solid year, but eventually he gets a couple of breaks
Speaker 1: he never could have imagined. In the essential basic reporting
Speaker 1: of what I was doing, I was led to two
Speaker 1: women who changed my life and change the trajectory of
Speaker 1: my life and made my story possible. One was a
Speaker 1: woman named jan who worked at the Morgue in Chicago,
Speaker 1: and another was Lynn, who worked at the hospital my
Speaker 1: father was body was taken after he died, and they
Speaker 1: were both working at two of the grimmest places you
Speaker 1: might imagine. Jan in the Morgue. Literally, like when I
Speaker 1: first met her, I always say, like, there she was
Speaker 1: in this sort of behind this plexiglass window where she's
Speaker 1: got her whole job is to encounter people who were
Speaker 1: coming to claim bodies of loved ones. That was her
Speaker 1: eight hour day job. And I walked up to her
Speaker 1: and talked through a little hole and looked down, and
Speaker 1: she's got two bibles open, side by side, And I said,
Speaker 1: the journalist to me, I said, that's interesting. Why do
Speaker 1: you have two bibles? And she said, Old Testament, New Testament.
Speaker 1: You've got to know what was fore told and what
Speaker 1: was delivered. And she was, as I said, worked in
Speaker 1: one of the grimmest places in the world, but filled
Speaker 1: me with such life and optimism and made a profound
Speaker 1: difference in my life. And she's the one who then suggested,
Speaker 1: so do you need to go to the hospital. You
Speaker 1: need to find the records. But I went to the
Speaker 1: hospital where he was taken, and I went down to
Speaker 1: the records room, which is as I say, paper is
Speaker 1: like water. It seeks its own level, which is usually
Speaker 1: in a basement. And I found this woman Lynn, and
Speaker 1: I just told her what I needed. She looked, shouldn't
Speaker 1: have it. And about a year and a half went
Speaker 1: by where I had I didn't have any answers, and
Speaker 1: I just sort of put aside the search. I got
Speaker 1: a call one day from Lynn and she said, is
Speaker 1: this Michael. I said yeah, She said, this is Lynn.
Speaker 1: Do you remember me. I said yes, I do, and
Speaker 1: she said, you know, I just couldn't stop thinking about you.
Speaker 1: And I thought, it's a terrible thing that you don't
Speaker 1: have answers. And she said, you know, I always felt
Speaker 1: bad I couldn't find those records because I knew they
Speaker 1: had to be here. And she said, so today I
Speaker 1: went to the cabinet. I pulled out the filing cabinet,
Speaker 1: pulled every drawer out, and there was your father's record
Speaker 1: that had fallen on the bottom, and they have it.
Speaker 1: I can't make that up. These two women, Jan and
Speaker 1: Lynn appear almost as angels in Michael's search. What's remarkable
Speaker 1: is that each of them, instead of just doing their jobs,
Speaker 1: and saying nope, sorry, no information available here. Each of
Speaker 1: them keeps thinking about his story. Years go by from
Speaker 1: the time Michael first meets them in the morgue, in
Speaker 1: the hospital, places where people are often inured to the
Speaker 1: suffering of others simply by overexposure, but each of them
Speaker 1: keeps thinking, or in Jan's case, praying. She called me,
Speaker 1: how is at work? As in my office? And this
Speaker 1: is you know, four or five years into this search
Speaker 1: and I was working on the story, had discovered certain
Speaker 1: truth that I was afraid to then bring to my mother.
Speaker 1: And I got a phone called day and I hadn't
Speaker 1: talked to Jan probably in three or four years, and
Speaker 1: she and she said, I was hearing you in my
Speaker 1: prayers and you need help. And again people think I'm
Speaker 1: making this up, but I'm not. And this is what
Speaker 1: life will bring to you if you put yourself in
Speaker 1: on a path sometimes and she said, you have a choice,
Speaker 1: She said, I can you have seen you. You've just
Speaker 1: kind of popped open the lid. You're coming out of
Speaker 1: the box, I mean, and to me, it's it's it
Speaker 1: was almost like I was coming out of a coffin.
Speaker 1: And she said, now, what's your choice? You're gonna throw
Speaker 1: that lid off, or you're gonna let a close on you.
Speaker 1: How she divined that and knew that at the time,
Speaker 1: but it was this exhortation, this, and I can't account
Speaker 1: for it, but there it is. Right. So when Lynn
Speaker 1: found the hospital records, there was a name associated with
Speaker 1: your father's hospital records, which was a name that you
Speaker 1: didn't know. It was no friend I've ever heard of,
Speaker 1: so the name of a woman and gave her address.
Speaker 1: I quickly looked her up on Google, and I had
Speaker 1: discovered that she had died about a year before. So
Speaker 1: I was personally for my own search crest fall and
Speaker 1: I was, but also just wondering what was this woman's life.
Speaker 1: I found some obituary. She had been working at a
Speaker 1: paper with my father and then left shortly there after
Speaker 1: and moved to San Francisco. She was young at the time.
Speaker 1: My father was thirty four or five. She was in
Speaker 1: her late twenties. And then I found another person another,
Speaker 1: a person that my mother didn't know. It had been
Speaker 1: a colleague of my father's, guy named Tom Moffatt. I
Speaker 1: called him up one night and he said, oh, let
Speaker 1: me call you tomorrow. Called them back and the reason
Speaker 1: he put me off, as he told me later, he
Speaker 1: just had a couple of beers and he was afraid
Speaker 1: he was going to spill something. But I guess the
Speaker 1: night gave him a time, a chance to reflect. And
Speaker 1: what he said to me, he said, I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you something, and I'm gonna tell you this because
Speaker 1: when I was a kid growing up, he said, my
Speaker 1: mother went away. And he said I was about fourteen,
Speaker 1: and he said, when she went away, you know in
Speaker 1: quotation marks, he said, I always thought she didn't love me.
Speaker 1: And when I found out later was she had suffered
Speaker 1: a nervous breakdown, going to various facilities. And he said,
Speaker 1: with my father, and tell me the truth. And he said,
Speaker 1: lo and bold. Decades later, I had my own bouts
Speaker 1: with you know, and who knows again, like again, now
Speaker 1: these echoes happened in our lives. Was it because it
Speaker 1: was in him or was it just echoing off of her?
Speaker 1: And he said, so, I think he deserved to know
Speaker 1: the truth. And he said, I was the guy who
Speaker 1: is your dad's alibi, And he told me the truth
Speaker 1: of what happened that night. My father was seeing this woman,
Speaker 1: her name is Bobby, was Bobby, and he died in
Speaker 1: bed at her apartment, and she was young. She was
Speaker 1: clearly that's a horrible situation to be in. She called
Speaker 1: my uncle, who was a newspaper editor and at another
Speaker 1: paper in town. He was a very executive veditor of
Speaker 1: the Chicago Today slash Chicago American. So she called him
Speaker 1: just as she was also calling the police, and he
Speaker 1: showed up with the police. From what I understand, he
Speaker 1: basically got the cops to agree. Listen, this guy had
Speaker 1: two young boys at home, a young wife, can't wait.
Speaker 1: Degree that he died on the street, and that can
Speaker 1: be our story, which my uncle was very close to
Speaker 1: pulling that off. He comes over, he knocks on the door,
Speaker 1: He gets to the newspapers not to print that story.
Speaker 1: But two of the newspapers whoever was writing that obituary
Speaker 1: didn't get the phone call to take that out, so
Speaker 1: that's how it slipped in. Otherwise he would have had
Speaker 1: the perfect cover up, and you know, he would have
Speaker 1: protected quote unquote all of us. But you've got a
Speaker 1: six year old boy saying that doesn't add up, and
Speaker 1: then when you're thirty five thirty six years going in
Speaker 1: search of that, there's a moment in your conversation with
Speaker 1: Tom Moffitt where you're you're saying to him, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of incredulously, like that was altering the scene of
Speaker 1: a crime, I mean, and he says to you, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a crime, it was a tragedy. I found this
Speaker 1: one of the most powerful parts of your book. The
Speaker 1: idea that you know when things happen is at least
Speaker 1: as important as what happens or changes alters what happens. Right, So, Um,
Speaker 1: you know the idea that just a minute in either
Speaker 1: direction and it would have been the simple tragedy. If
Speaker 1: he had been having a drink in the bar before
Speaker 1: he went over to Bobby's, and he had had his
Speaker 1: massive coronary, then then it would have been that would
Speaker 1: have been the story, and you would never have known
Speaker 1: about Bobby. Um. He could have spent the evening with
Speaker 1: Bobby as he had done many times before, and then
Speaker 1: left and started to go home, and then once again
Speaker 1: it would have been the quote unquote simple tragedy. And
Speaker 1: yet all that still would have been the case. Your father,
Speaker 1: your young father was having a long affair with with
Speaker 1: a young woman that he worked with, and that would
Speaker 1: still have been the case um, and so that would
Speaker 1: also have been somehow woven into the sort of d
Speaker 1: in a of you know, the fabric of of his absence,
Speaker 1: that it would have been even more elusive. Yeah, those
Speaker 1: vibrations I call them those ripples across the years. That's
Speaker 1: why these stories resonated, because there whether the cheers or
Speaker 1: mine or other people that have written stories or just
Speaker 1: live these stories, it's something in your soul picks up
Speaker 1: those vibrations and says, MS isn't And if you're tuned
Speaker 1: to it, there it is. But yeah, well amenute. Either way,
Speaker 1: it's a different life, right, it's a different story. So
Speaker 1: now Michael knows he has the answer to the question
Speaker 1: that's been haunting him. So now there's knowledge. But with
Speaker 1: this knowledge comes a whole new layer of complexity. So
Speaker 1: often when we finally discover a secret, we then feel
Speaker 1: the burden of that secret. In effect, we become the
Speaker 1: secret keepers, because now what does Michael do about his mom?
Speaker 1: It was a great relief obviously that I had hunch
Speaker 1: or that feeling was confirmed and that I wasn't wrong
Speaker 1: for feeling all those thoughts and suspicions, But it was
Speaker 1: a horrible burden immediately. And as I said earlier, if
Speaker 1: I looked at my childhood, one thing I always lived
Speaker 1: in fear of was being either cast out or made
Speaker 1: an orphan. And by that I mean losing my mother's love,
Speaker 1: either through something I did to anger her, which I
Speaker 1: know as her childlike you're going to be cast out,
Speaker 1: You're gonna lose that love, or you know, I would
Speaker 1: lose her. And so when I come into ownership of
Speaker 1: this secret my father is a secret I've basically froze.
Speaker 1: And for a good year I just thought, I can't
Speaker 1: write this story. I can't share it. I don't know
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do now. Because I couldn't bring it
Speaker 1: to her. I knew if I, you know, to complete
Speaker 1: the story, I need to tell her what I have
Speaker 1: found at least have her permission to share our family story.
Speaker 1: And it's the story that involves her is our tragedy.
Speaker 1: And this was where you received the call from jam
Speaker 1: saying I've been I've been praying, even in my prayers,
Speaker 1: and are you going to just close this. I can
Speaker 1: see your I can feel your distress. I can feel
Speaker 1: that something stopped you wort on this book almost ten years.
Speaker 1: And when I started it. I was a single man.
Speaker 1: By the time this period had come, I was with
Speaker 1: my now wife Brook and I'd have would have long
Speaker 1: discussions with her and she would say, you have to
Speaker 1: tell her. I said, what I'm going to destroy her life?
Speaker 1: And she said, all women know, they know. I said,
Speaker 1: what happens if you know? I just said, it's not
Speaker 1: just trusted. When I was on this search, I came
Speaker 1: to everyone and every encounter with not with anger, but
Speaker 1: with love and being like whatever this person says that
Speaker 1: I'm gonna learn something, and my anger about what happened
Speaker 1: is that's past. But if I can navigate my love
Speaker 1: and navigate with you know, the search for the truth
Speaker 1: and not hurting some people, that's what I always tried
Speaker 1: to do, and especially then bringing it to my mother,
Speaker 1: that's what I had to do. So tell me about
Speaker 1: going to pizza with your mother, went home and it's
Speaker 1: just Chicago and one to her favorite Italian place, and
Speaker 1: you know, that's when I said, I have to tell
Speaker 1: you what I found. And and it was a very stoic.
Speaker 1: So I keep saying silent, stoic and unemotional. And you
Speaker 1: can't underestimate her strength. As I've said, before actually is
Speaker 1: thirty three, h no husband, two young children, no money,
Speaker 1: and she did it. So I told her, and she
Speaker 1: really didn't flinch. You know, you're not a flinching person.
Speaker 1: I was so concerned that she was going to think
Speaker 1: I was tearing him down. Instead, she listened and did
Speaker 1: not argue with me. You write something really beautiful at
Speaker 1: the very end of your book, which is your mother
Speaker 1: is recounting something that a friend of hers said about
Speaker 1: your father. She said she felt Dad always was of
Speaker 1: two worlds. He was smart and funny and sensitive and kind,
Speaker 1: but there was a dark, melancholic side. She said, I
Speaker 1: don't think living in this world was easy for your father.
Speaker 1: My mother says, well, this world is all we have.
Speaker 1: She goes silence, and in that moment I see her anew.
Speaker 1: I realized, here I am a son who went looking
Speaker 1: for his father and found his mother. After I finished
Speaker 1: writing a draft of the book and sold it, you know,
Speaker 1: I went home and gave my mother a draft of
Speaker 1: the book because I wanted her to read it before
Speaker 1: I published it, and flew home on a Saturday, put
Speaker 1: the manuscript on the kitchen table. My mother, being my mother,
Speaker 1: said well, I'm not going to read it while you're here,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, I don't want you to read
Speaker 1: it while I'm here. So we spent the day together.
Speaker 1: Flew back home to New York. Two days later, as
Speaker 1: at work, the phone rang, Ah, it is my mother,
Speaker 1: and she said, I just finished reading the book and
Speaker 1: then she started to cry. My heart sank. I was convinced,
Speaker 1: this is the moment I'm cast out, this is the
Speaker 1: moment I've actually broken it. And I said, why are
Speaker 1: you crying? And she said, because it's the most beautiful
Speaker 1: gift you could have ever given me. I said, what
Speaker 1: do you mean? She said, you know, for forty years,
Speaker 1: I've pushed these questions down, so far down that I
Speaker 1: had forgotten about them. But they were always there, and
Speaker 1: now I see that you've These are the answers I
Speaker 1: needed and I should have looked for. And I'm sorry
Speaker 1: that that I wasn't there. Some weeks after this, and
Speaker 1: this is after the manuscript, she would call me every
Speaker 1: so often with something she had just remembered or the
Speaker 1: question she had. For instance, she called me one day
Speaker 1: and she said, you know, I was doing the wash
Speaker 1: this morning, and I know you're gonna think this is strange.
Speaker 1: But I just had this flash of something I remembered.
Speaker 1: I said, what's that actually? Like, I remember one morning
Speaker 1: doing the wash and putting Dad's shirt into the machine
Speaker 1: and I saw lipstick on his collar and I said, well,
Speaker 1: what did you do? And she said, I pushed it under,
Speaker 1: just put it in there, close the lid. I said,
Speaker 1: you did, She said, Michael, you were four or five
Speaker 1: Christmas six or eight. I said, like, if I had
Speaker 1: contemplated that, my world would have fallen apart. I couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. I just had to go on, and I
Speaker 1: made that decision. A few weeks later, she called me
Speaker 1: up and she said, can I ask you a question?
Speaker 1: I said what she said? Do you think if I
Speaker 1: had been a better wife, he would still be here?
Speaker 1: This wouldn't have happened. And again my heart just sank
Speaker 1: because I can only imagine the sadness of that and
Speaker 1: where that's coming from. But I also saw who I
Speaker 1: was as a son decades later on the other side,
Speaker 1: and I could do something that I could do now,
Speaker 1: which was to put my arms around her. And I said,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said that, because I can tell you no,
Speaker 1: I said, Mom, that's like saying if I had been
Speaker 1: a better son, maybe he wouldn't have done that. They said,
Speaker 1: you know what, he made his choices, and they make
Speaker 1: me sad. We'll never know why he made those choices,
Speaker 1: but it's not a comment on who you are, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't what we are still as a family and
Speaker 1: that we remain as a family, and I think the
Speaker 1: journey brought us closer together the way we hadn't been.
Speaker 1: Many thanks to Michael Haney for trusting me with his story.
Speaker 1: You can find out more about his book after visiting
Speaker 1: Friends a Son's Story by following him on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Michael Haney. That's at Michael Haney. Family Secrets is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Media production. Dylan Fagin is a supervising producer.
Speaker 1: Sir and Julie Douglas and beth Ann Macaluso are the
Speaker 1: executive producers. If you have a family secret you'd like
Speaker 1: to share, you can get in touch with us at
Speaker 1: listener mail at Family Secrets Podcast dot com. You can
Speaker 1: also find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder and Facebook
Speaker 1: at Family Secrets Pod and Twitter at Family Secrets Pod.
Speaker 1: For more about my book Inheritance, visit Danny Shapiro dot
Speaker 1: com for more podcasts. For my heart radio, visit the
Speaker 1: I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.