Speaker 1: Yeah, didn't you tell me there was a story where
Speaker 1: someone came up to you and said, hey, are you
Speaker 1: Jackie from Heavyweight? And you said, no, is that true?
Speaker 2: Yes, I've denied it.
Speaker 3: I think it's true.
Speaker 1: Why why would you deny it? If people I never
Speaker 1: I try not to lie in my life.
Speaker 4: There's nothing you lie about.
Speaker 1: If I don't have to.
Speaker 2: In which situations would you lie?
Speaker 5: Hmm?
Speaker 1: I guess when you make your famous couscous and cutlets
Speaker 1: and you say, Johnny, do you like it? And I say, mm, yes,
Speaker 1: very much? So I love it. I'm so delicious. Oh
Speaker 1: it's so good. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm not going to wash my mouth for a week.
Speaker 1: Sound familiar Jackie Cohen from Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein
Speaker 1: and this is Heavyweight Today's episode Dan right after the break.
Speaker 3: Hey Dan, Hey, Jonathan, how are you?
Speaker 1: Dan is a serious journalist, like national security correspondent. Serious.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I'm just trying to turn off my phone so
Speaker 3: it doesn't be.
Speaker 1: Turning off your phone during an interview serious journalism. Actually
Speaker 1: I should do the same thing. Dan is a friend
Speaker 1: whom I've known for years, but conversation can still sometimes
Speaker 1: feel like a game of chess. You're looking well, thank
Speaker 1: you arrested. Likewise, good of you to say check and mate.
Speaker 1: Given what a serious journalist Dan is, I'm surprised he's
Speaker 1: come to me for help. But then his crisis is
Speaker 1: not one of national security. His is a crisis of
Speaker 1: the heart, and that is an area in which my
Speaker 1: journalism excels. Dan's story all begins in the summer of
Speaker 1: two thousand and three, the night he and his wife, Nancy,
Speaker 1: first met.
Speaker 3: At a dinner party hosted by this American diplomat in Jerusalem,
Speaker 3: and Nancy got to the dinner late because she was
Speaker 3: out on a date that night.
Speaker 4: A terrible date. I went to see X Men two,
Speaker 4: which was unfortunate all the way around.
Speaker 1: This is Nancy, also a friend whom I've known for years,
Speaker 1: and also a serious journalist for the podcast serial in
Speaker 1: This American Life.
Speaker 4: And I wasn't even going to go to this party
Speaker 4: and just thought, oh, for Christ's sake, why am I
Speaker 4: going to this?
Speaker 1: But then she met Dan.
Speaker 3: He was quiet.
Speaker 4: I noticed that he was just kind of watching and
Speaker 4: not being rambunctious. You know, there's a lot of sort
Speaker 4: of false hilarity at parties and that was not something
Speaker 4: he was engaging in.
Speaker 1: A week later, Dan and Nancy went out on a
Speaker 1: date at an Italian restaurant in downtown Jerusalem.
Speaker 3: You know, it's July, it was warm. She was wearing
Speaker 3: a tak top. I remember I ordered ravioli and a
Speaker 3: beer and she ordered a burger and a whiskey.
Speaker 4: Because I don't know, that's the kind of hard drinking,
Speaker 4: hard eating gal I was.
Speaker 1: Nancy says she'd been on a lot of first dates
Speaker 1: and rarely got her hopes up. She was wary anticipating
Speaker 1: the moment, say, when Dan would ask her to see
Speaker 1: X Men three. Still, something about Dan drew her in.
Speaker 4: I remember him saying very early on that he was
Speaker 4: separated and that he had two kids, and I could
Speaker 4: see that he was kind of bracing for that to
Speaker 4: be a deal breaker for me, and I didn't feel
Speaker 4: that way at all. On the contrary, I felt interested
Speaker 4: and excited and yeah, you're a whole person with a
Speaker 4: whole person's complications. It was nice, it was fun, but
Speaker 4: then something strange happened. Do you want to jump in with.
Speaker 3: A question.
Speaker 1: Serious journalism. This must be frustrating for you. You must feel
Speaker 1: like I could do both sides of this. What do
Speaker 1: I need this tarp before? But yes, indeed, like what happened.
Speaker 3: We're still just in the stage where we're getting the
Speaker 3: main facts. Where are you from? What are you doing
Speaker 3: here so far from home? And a woman who was
Speaker 3: sitting with her husband at the table right next to us,
Speaker 3: leaned in towards us and said, hey, you know, excuse me,
Speaker 3: sorry for interrupting, but I think I know your father. Dan.
Speaker 1: It chaired with Nancy that his dad lived in California
Speaker 1: and helped invent the breakfast cereal cap'n Crunch. Hearing these details,
Speaker 1: the woman realized the connection.
Speaker 4: She said, that's so funny. He's our friend. We live
Speaker 4: next to him.
Speaker 3: He throws these great parties. He and his wife are
Speaker 3: very generous philanthropists in the community.
Speaker 4: You know, I can't believe it, of all the people
Speaker 4: to be next to. And it'll be so great when
Speaker 4: we tell him we ran into you. And they went
Speaker 4: back to their dinner. We went back to ours, and
Speaker 4: Dan looked sort of startled.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just the surprise of being recognized by
Speaker 1: a stranger seventy five hundred miles from home.
Speaker 3: It was also surprising for another reason, which is that
Speaker 3: I don't know my father. I have not had contact
Speaker 3: with my father since I was very young.
Speaker 4: And Dan was very quiet and he said, I actually
Speaker 4: don't know my father at all. It was basically like
Speaker 4: our date was kind of split into two parts, and
Speaker 4: the first part happened before that moment with a couple
Speaker 4: next to us, and the second part happened afterward. It
Speaker 4: just turned into a completely different conversation that was like,
Speaker 4: here's the.
Speaker 1: Deal, here was the deal, leaning in so that the
Speaker 1: couple wouldn't hear. Dan explained that his parents split up
Speaker 1: when he was five. It was a very acrimonious divorce,
Speaker 1: and afterwards his father essentially disappeared from his and his
Speaker 1: sister's life. Their mother struggled to raise the two kids
Speaker 1: on her own. In life with Dan's mother wasn't easy.
Speaker 1: She was a Holocaust survivor, and Dan says she carried
Speaker 1: the trauma of those years for the rest of her life.
Speaker 4: And because he told that whole story, I then ended
Speaker 4: up telling the whole complicated story of my own, my
Speaker 4: own parents' divorce.
Speaker 3: You know, suddenly we were talking about things that were real.
Speaker 3: It created this intimacy that, you know, so you can
Speaker 3: go on five days and not get to that.
Speaker 1: Back at the neighboring table, the couple paid the check
Speaker 1: and got up to leave, but before they did, the
Speaker 1: woman came over once more.
Speaker 3: And said, Hey, do you mind if I take a
Speaker 3: photo of you two?
Speaker 4: This will be so funny. Let's take a picture of
Speaker 4: you and we'll send it to your father.
Speaker 3: And Nancy and I kind of looked at each other.
Speaker 3: It was this look of Okay, this is weird, but.
Speaker 4: Why not, and we kind of leaned.
Speaker 3: In, I think, and maybe even I put my arm
Speaker 3: around Nancy and.
Speaker 4: They took this picture.
Speaker 1: Dan and Nancy posed frozen smiles, hiding their real smiles
Speaker 1: at the fact that this woman adjusting her camera knew
Speaker 1: nothing of what they knew.
Speaker 4: It was pretty funny. I think at some point they
Speaker 4: even said, like, we didn't even know he had a son,
Speaker 4: and I was like, oh, lady, you have no idea.
Speaker 4: It was like we had an experience together right right,
Speaker 4: You know, we had this inside joke already.
Speaker 1: After the photo, things moved quickly.
Speaker 3: I think I gave Nancy the key to my apartment
Speaker 3: within two weeks of that date.
Speaker 4: The photo was a chance, you know, it gave us
Speaker 4: a chance to both kind of take the first big
Speaker 4: leap of our relationship.
Speaker 1: Would you say that the woman sitting beside you was
Speaker 1: sort of like a cherub, but rather than carrying a
Speaker 1: bow and arrow, she was holding a camera. Would you
Speaker 1: say that? Would you say that, Nancy?
Speaker 4: I wouldn't say that, but I would support your saying.
Speaker 1: That, And with Nancy's full support behind me, I will
Speaker 1: say that because Dan and Nancy have now been together
Speaker 1: for nineteen years.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know Nancy, so you know how lovely
Speaker 3: she is and funny and warm and all that was
Speaker 3: on display right away that evening, and I fell in
Speaker 3: love with her at that dinner.
Speaker 1: And that first spark was captured in the photo. Because
Speaker 1: of crashed hard drives, Dan and Nancy have lost the
Speaker 1: photos from the beginning of their relationship. So while those
Speaker 1: photos have certainly gone, the first photo, the most important photo,
Speaker 1: might not be, and so Dan has come to me
Speaker 1: to find it. But here's the catch. If the woman
Speaker 1: with the camera kept her promise, then the photo is
Speaker 1: in the hands of Dan's father, and I am.
Speaker 3: Not particularly interested in trying to reach out to my
Speaker 3: father directly or indirectly. In other words, This is what
Speaker 3: might make it more tricky if he has the photo.
Speaker 3: I don't want to go that road.
Speaker 1: It's been about fifty years since Dan's father walked out
Speaker 1: on the family. Dan isn't looking to make contact now.
Speaker 1: But I can't help thinking that as much as Dan
Speaker 1: wants a photo, some part of him must also be
Speaker 1: wanting something more from his dad. The strange symmetry is
Speaker 1: hard to ignore. The thing Dan wants most is in
Speaker 1: the hands of the person he wants to talk to least.
Speaker 1: But Dan is adamant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the mission here is not let's reach out to
Speaker 3: him and get to know him. I really just want
Speaker 3: the photo.
Speaker 1: Are you saying sometimes a photo is just a photo exactly?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think it's just a photograph.
Speaker 4: No, But I don't think I can know everything that
Speaker 4: it means to him necessarily. I think it's hard to
Speaker 4: want anything from a parent who has been so thoroughly absent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so thoroughly.
Speaker 1: Derelict. Does he remember anything about his father?
Speaker 4: I'm hesitating. You know, this is small, but it's personal.
Speaker 1: It's a sad memory.
Speaker 4: I mean to me, it's sad, Okay, to me, it's sad.
Speaker 4: He told me he remembered his father rubbing his back.
Speaker 4: I rub his back a lot.
Speaker 1: With Dan's father in the no fly zone. It leaves
Speaker 1: only one person who might have a copy of the photo,
Speaker 1: the woman with the camera. Do you remember what she
Speaker 1: looked like?
Speaker 3: I think she had curly brown hair, and I can
Speaker 3: get Nancy's take on this as.
Speaker 4: Well, dark hair like not really a beehive, but sort
Speaker 4: of up and kind of pin curlsy or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think maybe she said something about the Jewish community,
Speaker 3: so I wouldn't be surprised if they're active in the
Speaker 3: Jewish community there.
Speaker 1: I look at the notes I've been taking, an older
Speaker 1: possibly Jewish woman from California who, when traveling to Israel
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three, maybe wore her hair in
Speaker 1: a beehive. I mean, this is really this isn't really
Speaker 1: not a lot, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to be hard finding her as a
Speaker 3: big obstacle. And then eighteen years later, does she have
Speaker 3: this photo lying around?
Speaker 1: I begin my search for the woman with the camera
Speaker 1: where it all began. Buck Facacia Bar, the restaurant in
Speaker 1: Jerusalem where Dan and Nancy had their first date. Wielding
Speaker 1: what's left of my bar Mitzvalessen language skills. My plan
Speaker 1: is to endear myself to the Fakacia bar staff uh shalom.
Speaker 1: Is there a manager maybe on second Slussia? Hello shalom? Hello,
Speaker 1: how could I have you? I tell the manager about
Speaker 1: my two friends who had their first date at his restaurant, yes,
Speaker 1: eighteen years ago. Oh nice, Yeah, And encouraged by his interest,
Speaker 1: I explained the whole story, how I'm trying to find
Speaker 1: the woman with a camera, and how maybe he has
Speaker 1: her credit card receipt on file. Luckily, Dan and Nancy
Speaker 1: remember the exact day of their date, July first, two
Speaker 1: thousand and three. So yeah, you could go back to
Speaker 1: the computer just type in two thousand and three.
Speaker 3: Oh man, we're not so much technology, you know.
Speaker 1: It's no shating like seven eight computer, different computers, you know,
Speaker 1: so nothing you could do in other words, no nothing nothing, Okay,
Speaker 1: thank you for taking the time to your shalom.
Speaker 3: Hello.
Speaker 1: So I try something else. Since the woman was a
Speaker 1: neighbor of Dan's father, I look up his address and
Speaker 1: contact the county assessor's office. I request historical records of
Speaker 1: property owners in his town from two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that like the catchy bar. They
Speaker 1: aren't very technology and don't keep data dating back that far.
Speaker 1: Unable to find a list of past neighbors, I decide
Speaker 1: to try calling present ones. Maybe the woman with the
Speaker 1: camera is still living in the same neighborhood as she
Speaker 1: was in two thousand and three, or at the very least,
Speaker 1: maybe someone who knows her does. My producer Stevie and
Speaker 1: I turned to the white pages and start phoning Hello. Hello,
Speaker 1: my name is Jonathan Goldstein. The reason I'm phoning is
Speaker 1: I do a pot. Are you familiar with podcasts?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: I don't have time for anything.
Speaker 5: I just not enough to thank you.
Speaker 1: I'll get to the point, ma'am. Hello. The neighbors rarely
Speaker 1: let me get to the point, and even when they do,
Speaker 1: I mostly met with one of two reactions pity.
Speaker 3: Good look.
Speaker 1: Or non pity.
Speaker 5: I haven't photographed anybody.
Speaker 2: I've been in the little bar.
Speaker 6: I know nothing about what you're talking about, so you're
Speaker 6: pointless coming here and talking to mean thank you?
Speaker 2: Bye?
Speaker 5: All right?
Speaker 1: Well, did you say I've never been to a noodle bar?
Speaker 6: Uh huh?
Speaker 1: All right, we can cross that one off the list.
Speaker 1: After dozens of calls to random strangers, I begin to
Speaker 1: lose hope. But since Dan thought the woman with the
Speaker 1: camera might have known as father through the Jewish community,
Speaker 1: I phone every synagogue within an hour's drive of Dan's
Speaker 1: father's neighborhood. I get the rabbis to include a call
Speaker 1: out and their e newsletters. It doesn't yield a thing.
Speaker 1: With the futility of finding a nameless woman with an
Speaker 1: indeterminate address, I reach back out to Dan. It seems
Speaker 1: as though it might be impossible without you know, in
Speaker 1: some way it kind of connecting to your father.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Nancy and I talked a bit about it.
Speaker 1: Perhaps anticipating the shortcomings of my journalisming, Nancy devised a strategy.
Speaker 1: Dan's fear is that his dad will think this is
Speaker 1: an attempt to reconcile, to reconnect.
Speaker 4: And so what I said was Jonathan could just call
Speaker 4: him and say no, no, no, no no no, I'm
Speaker 4: just here for the photo. If you could just give
Speaker 4: us the photo, that's all I want.
Speaker 1: Dan is comfortable with this approach, but before giving me
Speaker 1: the green light, he says, there's one last person I
Speaker 1: need to call.
Speaker 2: I mean, we share a lot and we probably did
Speaker 2: actually raise one another.
Speaker 1: This is Abby, Dan's older sister. Given the difficulty of
Speaker 1: their childhood, they've always sort of been a team of two,
Speaker 1: so Dan wants to make sure she's okay with my
Speaker 1: contacting their father. Abby tells me that over the years,
Speaker 1: she and Dan have reached out to their father a
Speaker 1: number of times, almost always to no response. The last
Speaker 1: time for Dan was twenty years ago, when he was
Speaker 1: in his mid thirties. For Abby, it was March of
Speaker 1: last year. Dan and Abbey's mother had just died, and
Speaker 1: Abby was going through her mom's belongings when she found
Speaker 1: some photos of her parents taken early in their relationship,
Speaker 1: and they were happy pictures.
Speaker 2: They were pictures of love and you know, and passion.
Speaker 2: And so I wrote to him and I said, I've
Speaker 2: been going through these pictures and I seen lots of
Speaker 2: beautiful pictures of you and my mom, and I just
Speaker 2: wanted you to know that my mom has passed and
Speaker 2: it looks like there were times that were also beautiful.
Speaker 2: And then I ended by saying I have a beautiful family,
Speaker 2: and I'm very lucky, and Danny is lucky.
Speaker 1: Abby sent the letter not expecting to hear back, but
Speaker 1: about two weeks later, her father answered, and he said.
Speaker 2: Something to the fact of we weren't happy, and he
Speaker 2: said family is very important. But he didn't you know,
Speaker 2: he didn't say anything about my children, or he didn't
Speaker 2: say anything about even my loss. I mean, he didn't
Speaker 2: have the you know, the I guess the depths, the
Speaker 2: emotional depths.
Speaker 1: Which is why she doesn't see the point in asking
Speaker 1: her father for help, even though we're only asking for
Speaker 1: the kind of small effort you'd expect anyone to make.
Speaker 2: If I have a photo, you'll call me up and
Speaker 2: you'll say, Abby, do you have the photo? And I'll say,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this is so difficult. But ultimately I'll
Speaker 2: look for it and then he will sense that I
Speaker 2: care enough to look. But we're not going to get
Speaker 2: that from her father. He doesn't care enough.
Speaker 1: And no matter how old you are or what you
Speaker 1: might say to the contrary, that hurts.
Speaker 2: If you look at us, you think, oh, those two
Speaker 2: are just regular people. But I don't think we are
Speaker 2: a regular I think deep inside, we're still researching and
Speaker 2: we're trying to understand, like why why would a parent
Speaker 2: not want contact with us? And nobody's going to give
Speaker 2: us that answer. So it's really.
Speaker 1: Painful in the end, even though Abby is skeptical her
Speaker 1: father will help. She gives me your blessing to try.
Speaker 6: I mean, if that's.
Speaker 2: What Danny feels like is the right thing to do,
Speaker 2: then I would support that. I want that photo. I
Speaker 2: want that photo for Danny, but not at the price
Speaker 2: of him being hurt. I don't think the photo is
Speaker 2: worth not.
Speaker 1: Dan's father is my last chance to score the photo,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to blow it, which is why
Speaker 1: I've been putting off the call. I don't want him
Speaker 1: to hang up on me, and from what Abby told me,
Speaker 1: it seems like there's a definite chance he might. But
Speaker 1: on a Monday afternoon, a few days after speaking with Abby,
Speaker 1: I pick up the phone. Dan's father is in his
Speaker 1: late eighties, but he still works. When I phone his office,
Speaker 1: a friendly woman tells me he's hard of hearing, and
Speaker 1: then she gives me a cell phone number. After three rings,
Speaker 1: Dan's father picks up.
Speaker 3: Hello.
Speaker 1: He says, Hello, I say loudly, but not too loudly.
Speaker 1: I hope it's okay that I'm calling you on your
Speaker 1: cell phone. Well, I don't know what you're calling about,
Speaker 1: he says. For the next two minutes, they nervously explain
Speaker 1: about Ficacia bar about how twenty years ago his neighbor
Speaker 1: took a photograph of his son, and how I'm now
Speaker 1: looking for that photograph. When I'm done, I'm met by
Speaker 1: a silence that feels long enough to make me wonder
Speaker 1: whether he'd hung up somewhere around my explanation of what
Speaker 1: a podcast is. Finally, he says, so you're asking me
Speaker 1: if I have this photograph. Yes, yes, I say, Dan's
Speaker 1: father lets loose a laugh, not a mean laugh, like
Speaker 1: and you think I'm going to help you with this.
Speaker 1: It's free and amused, sounding a hearty and vigorous laugh.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what to make of it. Dan's father
Speaker 1: says he has no memory of any photo, but he
Speaker 1: does remember the incident, being told by his neighbor that
Speaker 1: she'd seen Dan. He tells me she since moved away
Speaker 1: and he doesn't remember her name, but that he'll look
Speaker 1: for it try and reach me tomorrow. He says. When
Speaker 1: I pick up the phone to call Dan's dad a
Speaker 1: second time, I'm pretty sure I'll get blown off, that
Speaker 1: he'll screen my call or maybe tell me sorry I
Speaker 1: couldn't find her. But just as he'd promised, Dan's father
Speaker 1: looked for his old neighbor's name and found it. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you her name, he says. But that's all I know.
Speaker 1: I haven't spoken with her, so if you can find her,
Speaker 1: you can ask her directly. I ask him if he
Speaker 1: remembers anything more about the conversation years ago when she
Speaker 1: told him she'd seen Dan. Was he surprised, you know?
Speaker 1: He says, I was honest with you. I got you
Speaker 1: the name of the person. That's all I can do.
Speaker 1: All right, Yes, yes, I say, sensing. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: so much, and have a good day you too, he says. Bye.
Speaker 1: When I get off the phone with Dan's dad, I
Speaker 1: look at my notes where I've written down the name
Speaker 1: of the woman with the camera, and that name is Deborah.
Speaker 1: Once I have Deborah's name, it's not hard to find her.
Speaker 1: She still lives in California. At first phone debraah a
Speaker 1: few days ago. She was on her way out and
Speaker 1: asked if I could call her back on Thursday.
Speaker 5: Very nice timing.
Speaker 1: Oh good good, I'm glad I caught you. It turns out,
Speaker 1: Deborah remembers clearly the night she and her late husband
Speaker 1: ate at Facacia Bar, seated next to Dan and.
Speaker 5: Nancy, I'm a terrible eavesdropper. I just can't help it
Speaker 5: because I love people's stories. Yeah, and I said to
Speaker 5: my husband, I'm betting first date. And he said something
Speaker 5: to me like stop it.
Speaker 1: But Deborah couldn't stop it. She kept listening for what
Speaker 1: Dan would say.
Speaker 3: Next.
Speaker 5: He said, my father invented the flavor for Captain Crunch.
Speaker 5: Huh so much. Okay, there can't be two of those
Speaker 5: people in the world. You know. My recollection is that
Speaker 5: we printed a copy of the picture and took it
Speaker 5: to give his.
Speaker 1: Father, despite Dan's father not remembering any photograph. In Debra's telling,
Speaker 1: she did show it to him.
Speaker 5: But my heart memory is that he didn't really want it,
Speaker 5: which was, you know, made me really sad.
Speaker 1: It turns out Debra snapped the photo knowing more than
Speaker 1: Dan and Nancy imagined. She knew Dan's father had remarried,
Speaker 1: and she knew he was estranged from his old family,
Speaker 1: but a photo of his son seemed like something that
Speaker 1: might warm him. Deborah was a second wife and had
Speaker 1: seen her fair share of difficult family dynamics.
Speaker 5: And my husband went through periods of being estranged from
Speaker 5: his son, and one time someone came up to us
Speaker 5: in a restaurant and said, oh, you must be Jeffrey's father,
Speaker 5: and Russell was tickled. You know, he's still his son,
Speaker 5: so you know, I don't know. What we hoped was
Speaker 5: the charming story of a sweet coincidence received a very
Speaker 5: still reception, if you know what I mean, Yeah, these
Speaker 5: stories of estrangement. I think one of the hardest things.
Speaker 5: One of the hardest things is that we think we're alone.
Speaker 1: For years, Deborah worked at a healing center, helping residents
Speaker 1: there as they approached end of life. One day at
Speaker 1: a volunteers meeting, someone told the story of an elderly
Speaker 1: estrangement from their children.
Speaker 5: And pretty much everyone around the table had some variation
Speaker 5: of estrangement from someone that they thought they'd been very
Speaker 5: close to who was suddenly gone from their lives, and
Speaker 5: it was just very quite. The word is liberating to
Speaker 5: know that this is a human condition that we don't
Speaker 5: talk about much. There are some relationships that you just
Speaker 5: kind of, I don't know, on a cellular level, that
Speaker 5: you that you long for even if you know you
Speaker 5: can't have them. So when you talk to Dan again,
Speaker 5: tell me it's not alone.
Speaker 1: Deborah says that as requested, She did a search for
Speaker 1: the photo and.
Speaker 3: I found it.
Speaker 5: I found it.
Speaker 1: You believe it.
Speaker 5: I found it.
Speaker 1: Deborah had cared enough to look.
Speaker 5: Hi.
Speaker 3: Hi, Hello. So the.
Speaker 1: Long and short of it is, we found the photo.
Speaker 1: Get the fuck out?
Speaker 3: Wow? What come on?
Speaker 1: Yeah? We found it?
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Okay, I did not expect you to say that at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I didn't think. I didn't think we would.
Speaker 3: Frankly, how the fuck did you do this? How did
Speaker 3: you pull it off?
Speaker 1: I tell Dan and Nancy about Deborah, who for almost
Speaker 1: twenty years held onto the photograph of an estranged son
Speaker 1: of an old neighbor. Deborah says she kept it because
Speaker 1: she was touched that Dan, who must have held such
Speaker 1: anger towards this father, had still been so gracious with her.
Speaker 4: So that that changes my sense of what was happening,
Speaker 4: because I thought I remembered her having said I didn't
Speaker 4: know he had a son, that she really had no idea.
Speaker 1: But Deborah did have an idea. So while running into
Speaker 1: Deborah was pure luck, her snapping of the photograph hadn't been.
Speaker 1: It was well intentioned.
Speaker 3: God bless this lady.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 4: I know, Yeah, I fe feel very warm towards Deborah.
Speaker 1: Of course, Dan wants to know how I found Deborah
Speaker 1: in the first place. I ended up calling your father
Speaker 1: to ask, which brings me to his father, who answered
Speaker 1: my call.
Speaker 3: I find it very surprising. I mean, he has never
Speaker 3: been responsive to communications with my sister and I, so yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm surprised.
Speaker 1: I will also say that I talked to to Abby
Speaker 1: just a few days ago and I told her about
Speaker 1: the whole thing.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm so surprised. I'm so surprised that he
Speaker 6: went to look for the name. I didn't think it
Speaker 6: was possible. I thought he wouldn't bother Maybe for just
Speaker 6: a brief moment, he recognized a need.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, like you see though at the
Speaker 1: same time, like it's small.
Speaker 6: It's significant. Hmmm, it means something I don't know, in
Speaker 6: a Hollywood dream movie. He did it for Danny and
Speaker 6: he thought about it and he imagined him. But I'm
Speaker 6: not so sure this is a Hollywood moment. Yeah, but
Speaker 6: maybe he did see Danny in this.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you make of that.
Speaker 4: That's his I'm not buying it face.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know. Maybe I don't. She's
Speaker 3: she might be a little more charitable about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's been decades of radio silence from Dan's father,
Speaker 1: and in that time Dan has come to wonder less
Speaker 1: about how someone could do that to a son and
Speaker 1: more about how someone could do that to himself.
Speaker 3: I feel intuitively that this must plague my father. I
Speaker 3: kind of think that to turn away from, you know,
Speaker 3: a five year old and a seven year old and
Speaker 3: just cut yourself off requires really sort of emptying out
Speaker 3: your heart. And it is just baffling to me that
Speaker 3: still at this age, he wouldn't figure out how to
Speaker 3: do something about it for his own good so that
Speaker 3: he doesn't take this with him.
Speaker 1: Dan says that when he split up with his first wife,
Speaker 1: his son was the same age as he was when
Speaker 1: his parents divorced. Dan wanted to do things differently.
Speaker 3: I was just very conscious of doing everything we needed
Speaker 3: to do to be a presence in his life, for
Speaker 3: both his mom and for me to be always a
Speaker 3: presence in his life. And we did crazy, crazy things.
Speaker 1: Crazy things like multiple transatlantic moves from Israel to the
Speaker 1: US and back, all five of them, Dan, his ex wife,
Speaker 1: his two kids, and Nancy. Things like living in neighboring
Speaker 1: towns as the kids grew up celebrating Thanksgiving as one
Speaker 1: big family. It wasn't always easy.
Speaker 3: But in every way I can explain or think of,
Speaker 3: it has made a difference. And it was very conscious
Speaker 3: and very much a kind of a reaction to the
Speaker 3: way that he went about things. They went about things,
Speaker 3: And just.
Speaker 4: To say, there were a lot of things I loved,
Speaker 4: and I knew that I loved about Danny, but his
Speaker 4: relationship with his children was at the center of it.
Speaker 4: And his ex wife Tommy, we're all kind of in
Speaker 4: a big, big stew together. We have been the whole time.
Speaker 4: And she's been game for the weirdness too.
Speaker 3: Shout out to my ex she's pretty great.
Speaker 1: They don't normally do shout out. It's not that kind
Speaker 1: of radio show, but serious journalism. Do you want to
Speaker 1: see the photo?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes I would, Jonathan, I'd like to see the photo.
Speaker 1: Before our conversation. I had it framed and wrapped.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Oh Jesus, my god, this is so
Speaker 3: much better than I thought even, Oh my god.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: In the photo, Dan and Nancy are sitting next to
Speaker 1: each other at a round wooden table. Dan's body is
Speaker 1: angled towards Nancy, Nancy smiling and leaning towards Dan.
Speaker 3: Look at you, Jesus Christ. Nancy. Oh my god, man, wow,
Speaker 3: I totally remembered that tank top. It's smile.
Speaker 1: Dan is often so serious, but in the photo he's
Speaker 1: smiling so wide you can see all his teeth. He
Speaker 1: looks unencumbered at ease.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, it's it's sort of remarkably not awkward.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we just look very relaxed.
Speaker 3: We look awesome.
Speaker 1: I guess sometimes a photo is just a photo, or
Speaker 1: in this case, a really great photo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Nancy, I oh my god, you just you look
Speaker 3: fucking adorable. You marry me all over I would marry
Speaker 3: you all over again.
Speaker 1: Dan's daughter is getting married this summer in Israel, and
Speaker 1: Dan and Nancy will be there, along with Dan's son,
Speaker 1: his ex wife Tommy. Shout out to his ex wife Tommy,
Speaker 1: and his sister Abby two, who just recently became a grandmother.
Speaker 1: Dan says whenever he visits there's always a lot of
Speaker 1: requests for stuff from America, but along with the Sephora
Speaker 1: makeup and Adida sneakers, he'll be bringing the photo to
Speaker 1: share with his whole family. Now that the Fernituers returned.
Speaker 4: To its goodwill home, now that the last month's rant
Speaker 4: is scheming with.
Speaker 1: The damnage, take this moment.
Speaker 5: To do so, if we meant it, if we.
Speaker 1: Talk but felt around for far too from pas it accidentally.
Speaker 1: This episode of Heavyweight was produced by supervising producer Stevie
Speaker 1: Lane and me Jonathan Goldstein, along with Moheiney mcgauker. Our
Speaker 1: senior producer is Khalila Holt. Production help from Damiano Marquetti.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg, Caitlin Kenny, Phoebe Flanagan,
Speaker 1: and Jackie Cohen. Nancy Updike, who you heard in this episode,
Speaker 1: is coming out with a new series called We Were Three,
Speaker 1: which drops on October thirteenth from Serial Productions. Bobby Lord
Speaker 1: mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson,
Speaker 1: Michael Hurst, and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be
Speaker 1: found on our website, Gimbletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight. Our
Speaker 1: theme song is by The Weaker Thans courtesy of Epitaph Records.
Speaker 1: Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email us at
Speaker 1: Heavyweight at gimletmedia dot com. We'll be back with a
Speaker 1: new episode next week