EP213: Wilber and the Empty Nester and The Tone Deaf, Bad Poet Who Wrote The National Anthem
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 11 March 2022
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Paul, a listener from Minneapolis, MN, share his story of. Francis “Frank” Scott Key was not someone you would have picked to write our national anthem… but he did and right after one of America’s great military victories. Marc Leepson, author of What So Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key, A Life, brings us the story of the man who wrote the National Anthem of the United States of America.
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Time Codes:
00:00 - Wilber and the Empty Nester
23:00 - The Tone Deaf, Bad Poet Who Wrote The National Anthem
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, from the arts to sports and from business to history, and everything in between, including your stories. |
| 0:20.9 | Send them to our American Stories.com. |
| 0:23.8 | There are our favorite stories, and proof of that is our next story. |
| 0:27.5 | By Paul in Minneapolis, Minnesota. |
| 0:30.6 | Let's take a listen to Paul's story, Wilbur and the Empty Nestor. |
| 0:36.5 | I met Wilbur in the senior home because I was bored. |
| 0:39.3 | Like a lot of 50-something guys my age, I'm a man in transition. |
| 0:43.3 | The kids have grown up and moved out. |
| 0:45.3 | It's just the two of us again, Cindy and I. |
| 0:48.3 | I'm missing the rush of activity that used to clog our house |
| 0:51.3 | and hustle us on to the fields, the ice rinks, and |
| 0:55.0 | the gymnasiums that our kids and all their teammates used to inhabit. There must be something |
| 1:00.0 | more I can do, I heard myself saying. I wanted to be more involved, more engaging, more invested. |
| 1:08.0 | Volunteering seemed like the right fit for me. So one day I drove to the |
| 1:13.3 | senior home near my home in Shacapie, Minnesota. There was nothing formal about it. |
| 1:18.3 | The staff allowed me to come once or twice a week. I didn't visit the residents in |
| 1:22.3 | their rooms, but I hung out in the activity room and the cafeteria. I tried to meet |
| 1:27.4 | some other lonely people. |
| 1:29.3 | In other words, people like me, who needed new activities and new friends. |
| 1:34.3 | Some were easy, some were tough. |
| 1:37.3 | Wilbur was one of the hard ones. |
| 1:39.3 | He was 89 years old back then. |
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