This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

Father Stew is a motion picture starring Mark Wahlberg, who plays Father

Stu and Mel Gibson. It's based on the true life story of Father Stuart Long, the Golden

Gloves heavyweight boxing champion turned Catholic priest. Warburg first heard about Father

Stu's story while out to dinner with two priests, and he, a devout

Catholic, put his own money into financing this film.

Walberg intentionally gained 30 pounds in six weeks to portray Long in the film, eating

up to 7,000 calories a day.

Sounds like fun.

We'd like to thank the Diocese of Helena, Montana, for providing

the footage you were about to hear of Father Stuart Long himself sharing his story with us.

Let's take a listen.

I was born out in Harborview Hospital in Seattle, and then my dad was discharged for the Navy,

so they came back to Helena. And I grew up there, and we to go and hike around in the hills and there were all kinds of abandoned mine shafts. And you're not supposed to go in there, but we sneak around in there. Oh, it was just an adventure. And I really enjoyed that when I was a young man. And we used to get in trouble. We had apple trees in our yard.

We'd sit up on the roof of our house. When the tour train, we'd throw apples at the people

on the tour tree. They didn't like that so much. When you're a kid, it's funny what you think.

When I went to, I attended Central School. We lived up on the south end of Helena, and I looked at the kids, man, that building is so big. It's got to be shorter to cut through the middle and then to walk around it. So I'd walk through there, and there's this grumpy old guy, and he'd always see me in there. He'd start chasing, you damn kids. And he'd come running after us, you know. It was like, eh-h. It was like a gang, we'd run off.

And I did it probably about, you know,

10 times come in my life. And sometimes you come up and you open the door and he'd be standing there with his arms, folded across the chest, and you'd say, out, he wouldn't let us in there. Sometimes you get in there and he'd chase you. Other times he'd be busy talking to people,

and he'd just kind of shake his head at us.

And then I guess I kind of shake his head at us.

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