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- [00:00]
Sarah Austin Janess
As we approach the end of the year, I'm thinking about the next. Next year is the year I finally make my Spanish better than my 9 year olds. Rosetta Stone is the most trusted language learning program available on desktop or as an app. And it truly immerses you in the language that you want to learn. I can't wait to use Rosetta Stone and finally speak better than my 9 year old who's been learning Spanish in his own way. Rosetta Stone is the trusted expert for 30 years with millions of users and 25 languages offered speaking Spanish, French, Italian, German, Korean, I could go on fast language acquisition. Rosetta Stone immerses you in many ways. There are no English translations, so you can really learn to speak, listen and think in that language. Start the new year off with a resolution you can reach today. The Moth listeners can take advantage of this Rosetta Stones lifetime membership for 50% off, visit rosettastone.com moth that's 50% off. Unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your Life. Redeem your 50% off at rosettastone.com moth today from PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. Hi, I'm Sarah Austin Janess from the Moth, and I'll be your host this time. At the Moth, people tell true stories from their lives. Storytellers of all kinds stand on stage without notes in bars, clubs and theaters, and they tell these stories to audiences all around the country. We take the best stories from these nights and we share them here with you. This hour we have five stories. First up, Richard Price. Richard is a writer. His works include Clockers and and episodes of the TV series the Wire. We asked him how telling a story is different from the writing he does.
- [01:57]
Richard Price
It's like your body's your pen and your voice is your pen. What makes it scary for me is that you don't have anything in front of your nose to hide behind. You got to get up there and, you know, you just can't recite. You know, you just got to get into it and you got to tell a story like, you know, there's an invisible campfire.
- [02:18]
Sarah Austin Janess
Here's Richard live at the mall.
- [02:28]
Richard Price
My grandmother was five foot tall and 300 pounds, and she basically spent much of her life unloved and despite her size, feeling utterly invisible. She grew up. She was born in Harlem in 1902, which is when Jews on the Lower east side had two quarters to rub together. At the end of the week, they moved up to Harlem because there was a little more air between the buildings and the Infant mortality rate went down a little bit. And she found my grandfather, and she was sort of like a roommate. Her father was a furrier and had a little bit of money. And she found my grandfather, who was basically a thug. Dropped out of school in eighth grade for punching out his gym teacher at DeWitt Clinton. Drove a truck, was a union headbreaker, was in and out of jail, had a tattoo which is, you know, holy cow. And they got married on April 23, 1923, at about 10:30 in the morning. And as of about noon, they started hating on each other for 50 years until she died. She had two kids, one of which was my mother. And I was born in 1949, and I was born with mild cerebral palsy. So she and I got on like gangbusters. And she was my most loving relative, not to diss my nuclear family, but every time I would go to the South Bronx, into this tenement where she lived, it was like, you know, parole or reprieve or whatever. And our typical days would start out. I'd get in her bed with about a thousand baseball cards, and she'd cover up the player and the position and the team, and I would have. And I would go. Chico Carrasquale, second base, Chicago White Sox. Okay, next. Sandy Koufax, pitcher, Brooklyn Dodgers. Next. You know, I just, you know. Don Mossey, pitcher, Cleveland Indians. And we'd get out of bed, and the day consisted of four things. Looking out the window and being horrified by what we saw. Going to triple monster movies. Coming home, watching roller derby and then professional wrestling and then Zacher Lee shock theater, which is horror movies. I actually learned how to tell stories from my grandmother. My grandfather on the other side was an actual poet, but his poems were all symbolic, in fact, guttering candles. But she would sit there on the third floor window in this beach chair that was chrome and vinyl strips on the third floor, and look down on Vyse Avenue and 172nd street, and this is 1955. And the radio would be playing WEVD, Foreign Language Radio. And it'd be just like Yiddish, like, halacha, alacha. Halacha alacha. Every once in a while I'd hear President Eisenhower or John Foster Dulles, you know, and she'd be looking out the window and she had something to say about everybody. So, like, there'd be some Maynard G. Krebs looking, you know, junkie walking down the street, and she'd go, look at that guy. It's like he's a junkie. Every time he sticks a needle in his arm. It's like sticking a needle in his mother's heart. She comes to me, Mrs. Rosenbaum, what should I do? What should I do, Richard? What do I tell her? What do I tell her? And I'm five years old and, you know, and then we'd sort of like pack these giant valises to go to the movies. And in the valises would be peaches, plums, nectarines. I didn't think they had ugly fruit then, but, you know, grapefruits, pineapples. There'd be, like, carcasses of chicken and turkey from the night before. There'd be a thermos of coffee, a thermos of chocolate milk. It's like we were going to the desert, you know. And so we'd go to the Simpson or the Freeman. We'd see the attack of the giant leeches, the attack of the 50 foot, the attack of everything. And we, you know, she'd sit there and she'd eat and she'd talk to the screen. And she was the only person over 15 years old. This is a Saturday matinee, you know. And I remember at one point we were watching Rodan, which is this Japanese horror movie where a terror aflame, breathing pterodactyl is like torching Tokyo. And at the end of the movie, you know, the Japanese army's got flamethrowers, and they burn up Rodan. And my grandmother screams out, good for you, you bastard. How do you like it? You know? You know? You know. And then we go home, then we watch roller derby. And roller derby consists of a bunch of women on rollerblades going around in a circle, like, slamming the shit out of each other with elbows. And everybody's nickname was Tuffy. And I didn't get it, and I don't get it, and I don't have enough time. But her true love, and our true love was professional wrestling. And we'd watch it on tv. And my grandmother liked screaming at Rodan. Would get down and wrestle on the floor with the wrestlers on tv. The great show is Bedlam from Boston. And one of her favorite wrestlers was a freak, a guy named the French Angel. And the French angel had acromegaly, which is giantism, you see, Andre the Giant, I guess, had it, too, where, you know, it's a glandular disorder where your face completely grows out of proportion and your hands grow out of proportion. It doesn't make you big and strong. It just makes things out of proportion and big. And because you're ugly, you're cast as a villain. My grandmother didn't like villains, but she liked the French angel. I guess she identified with him. And she would tell me things about the French angel when he was wrestling. Like he could speak 732 languages and he was an international chess champion. And he graduated from the Sorbonne. I don't know where she came up with this shit. And then I remember one time she told me this story about him. She said that he was such a good hearted soul. I mean, she was so into the beauty in the beast. That was her thing. She said he was such a good hearted soul and he felt bad for lepers. So he went on a wrestling tour of all the leper colonies in the world. And then she would. And she would be starting to cry, and then I'd be starting to cry, and then she'd say, he was. He had such a kind heart. He would wrestle for the lepers. And the lepers were so grateful, but they couldn't touch him because they had leprosy. So they would bend down and kiss his shadow. And we'd both be like, sobbing like crazy. And it wasn't until years later I'd say, who the fuck was he wrestling? It's like, wait a minute. He was just wrestling him, you know, throwing himself down, getting himself in the head. Anyways, all right, so that was the French angel. And that was like tv. I never met him personally. However, I did go to a live wrestling match with my grandmother in Peekskill, New York, in about 1955, when I was about 4 years old. And it was in the middle of a Titanic summer heat wave. And it was in a tent, so it was about 120 degrees. And my grandmother was the type of a woman that was known in wrestling circles as a hat pin Mary. And a hat pin Mary was usually like a woman who looked like my grandmother, who would take one of those hat pins that, you know, long pins that would have like that Bakelite amber colored thing with the thumb depression, and she would hide it and sit on the aisle. And whenever a villain would come down the aisle, she would jab him in the ass. Now, and my grandmother was a Hap and Mary, but she had me on her lap, which is pretty tricky given the convexity of the physics there. And it was really every. It was sweltering and it was packed, and it was like everybody was going, like, melting. And, you know, you hope that the villain's gonna come down your aisle, because if the good guy comes down your aisle, it's a waste. But she got one of the bad guys. And his name was Carl Von Hess and he had like a Bismarck goatee and he had jackboots with iron crosses. And he always goose stepped down the aisle and he always wrestled a guy named Abe six Million Jacobs. And always, you know, and got him in the hangman's noose, that was his favorite hole. And we were getting Carl Von Hess the Nazi coming down the aisle and my grandmother just couldn't wait. And I'm five and he's coming down the aisle. My grandmother takes this hat pin and whams him in the ass. This guy went up in the air about 12ft, came down holding his ass and said, cock sucker, you know, with a Brooklyn accent. And it was the first profanity I've ever heard in my entire life. I had no idea what it meant, but it sounded really bad. And the guy's looking, looking around and my grandmother's got, you know, the hat pin behind her back, you know, and he's going down to, you know, he's going down to the ring like, you know, like this. And Abe Jacobs beat him that night. I think it was one of the few times that Abe Jacobs beat Carl Von Hess. And they're probably best friends in real life and so that's cool. Then the next match featured a villain named Nature Boy Buddy Rogers, who later became the world wrestling champion of 1960. And I remember passing a note at my bar mitzvah, Buddy Rogers beat Pat O'Connor. Anyways, Nature Boy Buddy Rogers started coming downhill. Now Nature Boy was like this exaggerated caricature of masculinity. He had platinum pompadoured hair. He had a chest that went out like Mamie Van Doren. He wore a one shoulder leopard skin toga and snow white boots. And he would just come down the aisle like this. And I mean, my grandmother looked at him, this poor woman, and she was like all eyeballs. And she had the hat pin, but she was kind of paralyzed by his appearance. And as he was walking down the aisle, all these people in the audience had seen my grandmother jab Carl Von Hess. And they started chanting, stick them, stick them, stick them, stick them, stick them, stick them. And my grandmother was like Jackie Gleason, like ham Nahumina hom. She couldn't move. And Nature Boy started hearing this chanting, stick em. And he started looking around and he saw my grandmother with the hat pin in her hand. And he went up to her and up to me. And his chest was so big that you could only see his eyes, you know, because his pectorals like rose over his mouth and nose. And he just stood there like this, like, go ahead. And at one point, when he realized he wasn't gonna do anything, he bowed down, he took her hand with the hat pin and he kicked, kissed her hand and said, madame, at which point I fell off her lap. I remember that. And I was picking my nose, so my finger went right through my forehead. But. And my grandmother was just like, speechless for the rest of, like, her life, basically. And he went into the ring and did his thing, probably, you know, figure four leg, vine or whatever. And anyways, this 1955, 1968, I go off to college. And in that year of 1968, any provincial working class white kid goes to college in September, comes back November, fully converted, argumentative, and realizes his whole family of working class schmoes has basically turned into Mississippi lynchers. And all you do is scream and cry and yell at your family for being morons and being racists. And it was called the generation gap. You know, we haven't heard that word in a long time. Just heard the gap, you know. And I just remember one of the last times I spoke to my grandmother before she died. I was sitting in a room with her and I was just screaming at her, telling her what a racist she was. And she was crying and I was crying just like. And we both got exhausted, you know, from crying and yelling at each other. And she turned on the TV and it was wrestling. And she just looked in this distant way and she said, I wonder how the nature boy's doing. He was such a nice fellow. Thank you.
- [15:31]
Sarah Austin Janess
That was Richard Price. One of Richard's stories is included in our book called the 50 True Stories. In a moment, we'll be back with three stories, all of them from our Moth Shop community education programs. A high schooler decides what she doesn't want to be when she grows up. A nurse has a bumpy ride on a gurney while trying to save a patient's life. And a wrongfully imprisoned man gets a mysterious letter.
- [16:05]
Merliksey Ventura
The Moth Radio Hour is brought to you by Crown Publishing presenting the Moth's new story collection, Occasional Magic, featuring contributions from Moth storytellers Meg Wolitzer, Adam Gopnik, Krista Tippett, Andrew Solomon, Roseanne Cash, Ophira Eisenberg and Wang Ping. Learn more@themoth.org.
- [16:26]
Lydia Velez
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange.
- [16:34]
Sarah Austin Janess
PRX.org we all take supplements, or at least we know we should. But why are so many supplement Companies charging ridiculous prices for products that really aren't that special. It's frustrating and frankly unacceptable. That's why I want to introduce you to LiveGood, a brand that's turning the supplement industry on its head. Livegood believes that everyone deserves access to high quality supplements without the insane markups. They offer premium products formulated by an industry leading team of natural health experts and they cut out the middleman to sell them at the lowest prices anywhere. I'm excited to try their organic coffee. I chose this because it includes fiber and mushrooms to ease stress, reduce caffeine and support my overall health. It'll be a game changer for me. They also have organic super greens, multivitamins, collagen, protein powder, creatine, detox hormone products, skin care products. All highest quality products at prices people can actually afford. Ready to make the switch and start saving? We'll make it even easier for you. Use our link and you can save an additional 10% off your first order on top of the already lowest prices. Just go to livegood.com moth to take 10% on your first order. That's livegood.com moth don't miss out on this opportunity to invest in your health without overspending. This is the Moth Radio hour from prx. I'm Sarah Austin. Janess. Next up, three stories from our Moth Shop program. In Moth Shop, we teach high school students and adults in underserved community groups to tell their stories. Check themoth.org to learn more. First up, a story from our high school series. Merliksey Ventura was a rising senior at Beacon High School in New York when she told this story. Here's Merlikse live at the mall.
- [18:40]
Merliksey Ventura
Okay, so as a kid, everyone always asks you, what do you want to be when you grow up? And some of us said ballerinas or we said astronauts or superheroes. But me, I always wanted to be in medicine. At six years old, I got this book called Animals A through Z. And I instantly decided I wanted to be a vet. But, you know, as I grew older, I realized I've never had a pet ever. I mean, I had a cat once, but she doesn't really count. And so I decided to go with this idea of being a doctor. And so now when everyone would ask me, oh, what do you want to be when you grow up? I would say, I'm going to be a doctor. And it made me feel so sad, safe and so secure. Like I had this set path. So I started to give up my Saturdays and my entire month of July to be a part of this program called the Lang youth medical program. And so two years into the program, I started my first internship. And they hand me this huge list. And on the list is all the opportunities that I could choose from to intern in the hospital. And I'd go straight to P, because I knew I wanted to be in pediatrics, and I picked the first one. Pediatrics oncology. And so I walk into my internship on July 1st, and I walk in with my white coat and my black slacks, and I sit in this tiny room for a meeting. And it's my first info meeting. And probably until three seconds before my mentor walks in, I didn't know what pediatrics oncology was. And so pediatrics oncology is the division of the hospital that deals with children who have cancer. And so she walks in with this manual that's probably this thick of rules and regulations that I needed to know because I was in this division. And she looks at me and she tells me all the rules, and I kind of just soak those in because I know there are things that I actually have to do. And so at the end of the meeting, she tells me. She's like, oh, and one last thing. You're not supposed to keep in contact with these patients. And I kind of just brushed that one off because I was like, okay, so doctors don't keep in contact with their patients, so I'm going to try and not keep in contact with mine. And it's going to. It's going to go great. So I head out and start to do my rounds, and I take all the best video games and all the best board games and cards because, you know, I want to be the fun intern who gets to play with everyone. And I start to do my rounds, but then I get to this room, and on this door, there's this big pink sign with glitter all over it that says ivana's room. And I get so excited because when I was six years old, I had this pink. Big pink sign on my door that said merliksey's room in glitter. So I knew there was a spunky little girl in there who was just like me. So I run in and I push back the curtain, and this little girl runs up to me with her curly short hair and her pink glasses and says, hi, I'm Ivana. What's your name? And my name's Merliksey. So I was just like, merliksey, and she didn't get it, so I just left it alone. And she asks me, what do you do? And so I told her I'm. I do everything. So I became the everything nurse. And I went back every single day. I went back for four weeks. And you're not supposed to do that. That's not the point of this internship. You're supposed to visit different patients every day for three hours. You see someone different. But I felt the need to stay with her because she was such a little girl in such an adult situation. And I felt like she didn't have the freedom to be a child. She was constantly having her vital signs checked, and she was constantly learning on her own teddy bears what they were going to do to her in her surgery. And I felt the need to just be there for her and be the person who kept her a kid. So as time progressed, I started to fall in love with the way that she lined up her animals in front of her windowsill in size, place, order. And I fell in love with the way that she kept a calendar underneath her television that marked off the days until her surgery. And I fell in love with the way that we watch Tangled every single day. And it's the story about this princess who has to cut off her hair to save herself. And so one day, I walk into the room, and Ivana's not in the bathroom, and she's not in her bed. So I run out and find her nurse, and I'm like, where's Ivana? And she looks at me like I'm a little crazy because it was the day of her surgery. And I have this shadow of questions going through my head, like, is she gonna have her pajamas? Is she gonna have her favorite teddy bear? Is she gonna have her ice chips? And then I instantly become so angry at myself because I know I feel so helpless. And in a situation when I'm supposed to be helping her, I feel helpless. So the next day, when Ivana's okay to play, I walk in and I see her playing with all her different wigs that she had just gotten because she had lost all of her hair in the surgery. And she's wearing this red wig. And she walks up to me and hands me one of my own. And I realize I don't want to be a doctor. I don't want to have to walk into someone's life and have to walk away. I don't want to wear this white coat. I'd rather wear a red wig. Thank you.
- [23:56]
Sarah Austin Janess
That was Marlikse Ventura. Marlikse told that story in front of her classmates at an all school assembly. She still doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up, but she has some time to figure it out. Lydia Velez is up next. We met her at a moth shop. We taught for the nurses at Montefiore Medical center in the Bronx. And the participants told their stories in honor of National Nurses Week. Here's Lydia.
- [24:27]
Ricky Johnson
I'm at the nurse's station on 8 South, and I'm looking at my computer, and I'm getting my assignment for the day, and just my normal routine, when from the corner from 8:41, here comes Amanda, running practically. And she comes, and she looks frantic and she looks scared. I've never seen that in nine years as a nurse. Like, what's the matter, Amanda? You have to come. You have to come. What do you mean? You know that patient, that patient with that tube? And I'm thinking to myself, okay, she's never seen a feeding tube, a peg tube. It's a bigger incision than usual. But, you know, she's nervous. So I'm like, it's okay. I took report. I saw it. It's like, no, no, no, you have to come. So I said, okay, let me listen. She does look frantic. She looks sweaty. She looks. I said, okay, let me go. I go into the room, and she starts unveiling the patient, removing gowns and everything and the dressing. And here's something bulging. And all of a sudden, I'm thinking of a fetus in a mother's womb that's just moving, all this motion. And I'm looking at the motion, and I'm like, oh. When in front of my eyes, out comes out the intestines, and I'm thinking, oh, my God, what to do? Nine years as a nurse, I've never been prepared for this. They don't train you how to do this. I go by the books. I do everything by the books. And I'm like, what am I gonna do? I'm looking at his vital signs. They're stable. Looks good. Blood pressure looks good. I tell him, you're gonna be okay. Meanwhile, everything's starting to pop out wormy, like they're coming through. So I jump onto the bed. That's the other thing that I decided to do. I jump onto the bed. They don't tell you to jump on a bed. And I straddle myself over the patient. And here I am holding the intestines down. I'm looking at him. You're gonna be fine. You're gonna be fine. I said, amanda, get me some sailing. What's sailing? Are you kidding? Call a code. Hit that blue button. Call a code. Help Everybody starts running in and racing in, and here comes this fabulous team. What do you need? Sailing. Sailing. Lots of sailing. They start pouring a lot of saline. I'm drenched. I'm wet. They're all looking at his vital signs. Blood pressure starts dropping a little bit. He's 82 years old. He's stable, but because he can't eat, he has this tube. So now there's no tube. So they prepared an operating room. So they tell me, lydia, you cannot move. We're going to move the bed, the patient and you. And I'm like, what? So I'm straddle over the patient. Okay, these are my intestines, and I'm soaking wet. Saline's being poured, more saline, G. And all of a sudden, I feel the bed's being moved and I'm, you know, the motion and everything is back when they're like, don't get off. Don't get off. Are you kidding? I can't. Trying to save this life. I get onto the elevator. Everything opens. Fine, go into the elevator. Everything's backwards. It will you in backwards. I get to the third floor, the operating room, and I feel like the doors went. They opened these doors, and in front of me, there was a lot of people prepared for this emergency. They had gowns and gloves and masks, and I had no gloves on throughout the whole time, secretion and fluids. And I'm looking at them. Here comes this intern. I think he's an intern. He stands next to me. He says, you're gonna jump off. As I'm gonna jump on, I'm like, are you kidding? These are my intestines. I'm looking at him like, really? He's like, yeah, really. So I jump off, and I felt like I was a gymnastics star at that moment. I jumped off. He jumped on. And I felt like going, ta da. Because it was an event. I was soaking wet. I looked down, soaking wet. Here are people ready to help me change into paper gowns. Later on, I go up, I get changed. About maybe three, four hours later, I wanted to see this patient because I really worried, and I really wanted to save this life. So I go to the ICU room, and I go in there, and I felt like this hero, this fearless person. Lydia, come. Come in. Yeah, here's the patient. So they showed me where the patient's at. He made it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'm hearing thank you throughout. And I saw him, and he was on a respirator. He looked comfortable. He looked good. And I said, wow. After this I could do anything, and I did after that. That was like that moment in time that I became fearless. I did all these things to try to save this life, and it made me feel more powerful. And a week later, our manager calls us into a meeting and she's thanking everybody, thanking everybody, and she was thanking me. She also thanked me for listening to that story. Should I have not listened to that student? Like many people will say, she doesn't know. I know I've been here. But I'm glad I listened because the experience was wild. Thank you.
- [29:27]
Sarah Austin Janess
That was Lydia Velez. Lydia has been working as a registered nurse for 26 years. She's now the nurse manager of the medical Surgical unit at Montepue. Our third moth shop story is from Ricky Johnson. Ricky was sentenced to life in prison for a crime he didn't commit. He was exonerated in 2008 after serving 25 years thanks to the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to freeing wrongfully convicted men and women. With help from DNA testing, Moth shop coaches work with these former prisoners to help them craft these stories. The one you're about to hear was told at an Innocence Project conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, in front of over 300 exonerees and criminal justice professionals. Here's Ricky Johnson live at the mall.
- [30:26]
Tim King
It's 2008 Omen Angola State Penitentiary for a crime I didn't commit. Had been there for 24 years. I was convicted for aggravated rape and I was exonerated. Well, one day I was coming in from work, went through the dormitory, stopped by there and picked up my mail. I looked at it, read it. It says, lakeisha Butts. I'm saying, who is Lakesha Butts? I don't know lakeisha Butts. And I see, I opened it up and it started off like this. It said, Dear Mr. Ricky Johnson, my name is Lakeisha Butts. I'm looking for my father. I haven't saw him since I was a baby. She said, now, my uncle told me that he was in prison in Louisiana for a crime he didn't commit. I've been searching for my father for X amount of years. And you was the owner, Ricky Johnson, in Louisiana State Penitentiary. Now, if you think I'm some kind of freak or something, just looking to write a prisoner, that's not so. I'm trying to find my father. So if you will write me back and let me know, she said, and only my father would know these questions. You answer these questions and I know you my father, okay? She asked me. She said, my father gave Me, a nickname. What is it? My father had a brother that passed away while he's in prison. What's his name? My father and my grandfather were real good friends. What's his name? And she went on asking question. What about this? What is this? What is this? What is this? I said, okay. I put the letter down. Now. Ever since I've been in prison, I've been thinking about my baby girl. She was two years old when I left. Her mother got married a year after I was gone. And so she married a guy in the military. So they traveled all over the world. I didn't know where she was. Now. This is my baby girl. We used to ride in the car. She stand up in the car seat, holding me around my neck. We did things together when she was just a little girl. I haven't saw her since she was 2 years old. I put the letter down and I walked on. She touched me that time. I went and talked to one of my partners about it. I said, man, I think I found my baby girl. He said, okay. I went back and got the letter. Now in Angola State Penitentiary, the bloody prison of the nation, you can't have no feelings for nobody. My mother passed away and I went to her funeral. And I couldn't cry. In this little letter from my baby, she touched me. That's the first time I realized I had prayer feeling in prison. Cause she really touched me. That's my baby. Okay. I wrote her back. I answered questions. Yes, this is. Your name is Kesalisa. I gave you a nickname, Kisa Lisa. My brother name Michael. Or your daddy name. This and all that. There. I answer all that. I was planning on just answering the question. But when I got through, I hadn't wrote a little magazine. So I folded it up. Had to get about 3, 4 stamps to slam across. One stamp wasn't gonna do it. I had to get about three or four stamps slamming it in the mail. You know, I'm waiting. Okay, I get a letter back, a magazine about that thick. And I open it up, and first thing she said was, dad, I found you. You know, Dad, I found you. How can I get you out of there? Here's my phone number. Call me, you know, and all that stuff like that there. Okay, Now. I said, man, I found my baby. This must be the happiest day of my life. But it wasn't the happiest day of my life until the innocent project exonerated me in 2008. And we went to Baton Rouge, had a press conference, and I met my Daughter for the first time since she was a little baby. She was 30 some years old then. And I hugged her. She hugged me and she said, daddy, now my life is complete. I got you. Yeah.
- [35:59]
Sarah Austin Janess
That was Ricky Johnson. After his daughter lakeisha found Ricky in Angola state penitentiary in Louisiana, she joined forces with the Innocence project and worked tight until he was exonerated a few months later. Ricky saw lakeisha for the first time in 25 years the day he was set free. And he said hugging her made his life complete. After the story, I sat down to talk to Ricky. Can you tell us a little bit about your case?
- [36:26]
Tim King
I was arrested for aggravated rape charge, a crime that really embarrassed me and really, you know, I could never feel being arrested for a rape charge by me having daughters myself. And so I was arrested, went to trial. They offered me 10 years. And I told this return I could. I couldn't say I did something I didn't do. I don't care if they ever gave me one year, I wouldn't have took it because I'm not going to say I did something I didn't do. So I ended up with a life sentence.
- [37:11]
Sarah Austin Janess
Did lakeisha then call the Innocence Project and help them and work with them to exonerate you?
- [37:18]
Tim King
She. When we connected, she went straight to work. She did get in touch with innocent projects, and she tried to. She tried to do what she could do to get her father home. Because from the beginning, she told me that I was the missing link from her life. And her life wasn't going to be complete until we got together. And so she did do that. Yes, she did.
- [37:48]
Sarah Austin Janess
To hear more of my interview with Ricky Johnson, go to themoth.org Coming up, our final story. A type a educator with plans to one day be the president of the United States meets a young boy who desperately needs a father.
- [38:37]
Lydia Velez
The Moth radio hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange prx.org.
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Sarah Austin Janess
This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Sarah Austin. Janess from the Moth. Our final storyteller is Tim King. Tim told the story with us in Los Angeles at an evening called A More Perfect Stories of prejudice and power. Here's Tim King.
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G
I'm an educator. I had a student once who had to give a big speech in front of a bunch of people. And I asked him if he had it written down. And he looked at me and he said, no, Mr. King, I'mma do it acapella. He meant extemporaneously, of course. And I'M a guy that writes things down. But the folks of the moth insist that you don't write this story down. And so today you are going to hear a story from me. And I'm a do it all acapell. I had this really, really, really great childhood. I grew up in a wonderful home with both my parents. And they gave me every single thing I could ever imagine. It was, you know, really elaborate holidays and great vacations and just everything. They wanted to expose me to the world. I mean, they had me out there showing horses, you know, riding horseback riding. I was the only brother at the stable out there riding a horse. That's what I was doing when I was 10 years old. They wanted to make sure that I knew the world was my oyster and I could be or do anything I wanted. It was a really, really nice, perfect upbringing. And you know, they had a plan in mind when they gave me this upbringing. And that plan was for me to go to college, then go to law school and go off and get a really good job. And the really good job in my parents mind was for me to be President of the United States. That's right. The guy who was Barack Obama before he was Barack Obama is standing here before you right now. I was supposed to be the first black president of the United States. That was the plan. And so I bought in this plan. It was a good plan, right? Who doesn't want to be president? So I went off to college, majored in international affairs, went off to law school after that and graduated from law school and then had this opportunity to run an inner city school in the city of Chicago. And while being an educator or taking that road wasn't really part of the plan, I realized that it could really help me when I started pursuing this political career. I mean, who's not going to vote for the guy who stands there in the ad with his hands on his hips looking like superman in front of the classroom of kids. You know, vote Tim King. He changes the world. He educates kids. So I figured, okay, I'll take this job and you know, maybe it'll lead me to some other things that follow along with the plan. One day I was walking into the school. It was pretty early, around 7, 7:30 in the. And I unlocked the door and there was a kid sitting outside waiting to get in. His name was Keith. I said, you know, what are you doing? He's like, oh, I'm working here painting during the summer. Okay, so come on in. And Keith certainly was painting with a bunch of the other Students at the school that summer. He would stay really late the next day, showed up very early, stayed really late. And the summer eventually melted into the school year and Keith was still coming to school really, really early and staying at school really, really late. And I just figured, okay, this guy just likes school. Although I didn't understand how anyone could like school that much. But I started kind of keeping an eye on him, you know, because there was something up with this young man. And eventually he started talking to me and having conversations throughout the course of the day. He'd stop by my office and say what was up. You know, he talked to me after school. And then he started, you know, doing things like asking me if he could borrow a couple bucks and I'd give him the money. I really didn't pay much attention to the reasons why he needed the money. In fact, I really wasn't all that interested in knowing because I didn't really want to, you know, that much, right? I just, here's the money, you stay in your world, it's cool, I'm in mine. You go right ahead with your business. Step by step, though, I started asking for more money more frequently. He started hanging out in my office a bit more. He started talking to me more, coming out of his shell. And I was coming out of my shell a bit with him. And one day I asked him what did he need this money for? And he said, I've got to go do my laundry. And I thought, this kid's lying. I mean, what, what, you know, 15 year old has to go and do his laundry, Needs money to go and do his laundry. But I gave him the money anyway and, you know, just said, okay, you know, go do what you have to do. One night I got a call from Keith and he was in hysterics. And he asked me if I would help him if I come get him from his house. And I said, sure, you know, what's, what's going on? What's wrong? And he said, my mom just died. So I go over to his house, and it's not a house, it's an apartment over a liquor store. And I walk in, it's pitch black in the apartment. Just the light from the street lamps coming in the window. And I see from that light, I see garbage bags, some bags with garbage in them and other bags with his stuff in them. No lights? No, not because he had turned off the lights, but because the electricity was off. There was no power in this apartment, and it was cold, and he was just in hysterics because his mother had just died. She had been battling, unbeknownst to me, drug addiction. And she lost that battle, and the drugs won, and she died. And so we grabbed Keith's stuff and the garbage bags, put them in my car. And then I was faced with, well, where do we go? So I said to him, you know, you got a friend you can stay with? And he said, sure. And we drop him off at a friend's house. And I went back home to my house. The next day, Keith was at school, and we talked and tried to work through where he was going to live and. And we found another place for him to stay temporarily. And then I started getting closer to Keith. We started talking more obviously. This kind of experience brings people together. And so we would go out. I'd take him out to eat after school, or we would go to the movies, or we'd go to a basketball game or something like that. And every time after, we'd go to dinner or go to the game, I would drop him off at someone else's house and I would go home to mine. One day, Keith and I were sitting in the car after we had gone out or something, and we were trying to work through where he was going to go. And, you know, he just looked at me and he said, why can't I just live with you? Why can't you be my dad? And in that moment, I thought, are you crazy? Of course you can't live with me. Of course I can't be your dad. You don't fit into this plan. I'm going to be the first black president of the United States. You can't move in with me. I had put Keith in this box, this box that said, poor black boy inside, handle with care. And I put that box far away from me. I didn't allow myself to get close to that box, to get close to Keith. All of that went through my head in a matter of seconds, quite literally. And when I came out of this kind of fog and he was still sitting there in the car, looking at me, asking if he could live with me, asking if I could be his dad. And I looked at him and I said, yes. Yes, you can live with me. Yes, I will be your dad. And at that moment, I changed. I felt right. I just felt right. Now. What I should have felt was terrified. Because when Keith moved into my house, it wasn't like, you know, one elephant coming through. It was a herd of elephants. He took over. As a matter of fact, when I met Keith and he moved in, I Had a full head of hair. We're talking giant afro from the 60s, 70s afro, you know what I'm saying? He ran it all the way. It was really, really, really hard living with him. He had been used to living by himself, living on his own. I had been used to living by myself, living on my own. He, while living a life that was like an adult as a child, he all of a sudden had an opportunity to be a kid again. And I had lived this life like a kid with a bank account, and all of a sudden, I had to be an adult. Keith and I managed to make it through our time living together. He calls me dad. I refer to him as my son. He graduated from high school and he went on to Georgetown university, my alma mater. He graduated from Georgetown, moved back home to Chicago, and right now, this very moment, he works with me at a network of charter public high schools that I started called Urban Prep. He's a teacher. I started Urban prep because I wanted to make sure that all the Keiths in the world were taken care of. He works at Urban prep because he wants to be a part of changing lives. Like his life was changed when Keith and I lived together to this very day. What I wanted to do was make sure that he had a life that was filled with love, the life I had when I was growing up. People always say to me, oh, Tim, you changed Keith's life. And I say to them, he changed mine. As we walked down that road of him going from being a boy to becoming a man, while I was helping him grow from boyhood to manhood, he was helping me grow. He was helping me become a better man. A little while ago, I got a text message from Keith. And the text message read, our family's at the basketball game. Where are you? You should be here. And I smiled because Keith was berating me. And then I got a little teary because as I looked down at that text message, I realized that Keith had written, our family. Our family. Thank you.
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Sarah Austin Janess
That was Tim King. Tim is the CEO of Urban prep, an all boys charter high school in Chicago. The school has 100% college acceptance rate. And Tim King's son now has a son of his own. To hear any of the stories you've heard on this hour, go to themoth.org where you can stream the stories for free and send a link to your friends and family. While you're there, you can pitch us your story@themoth.org Record it right on our site, or call 877-799-MOTH that's 877-799-6684. The best pitches are developed for Moth shows all around the country. That's it for the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story for from the Moth.
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Lydia Velez
Your host this hour was Sarah Austin. Janess Sarah also directed the stories in the show along with Katherine Burns, Katherine McCarthy and Larry Rosen. The rest of the Moth directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson and Meg Bowles. Production support from Jenna Weiss Berman and Brandon Echter. Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Moth events are recorded by Argo Studios in New York City supervised by Paul Ruest. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Nigel Kennedy and The Croak Band, Dr. John and Bill Frizzell. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by the public radio exchange. Prx.org for more about our podcast, for information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.