He Believed His Father Was Dead Until One Phone Call
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Ron Brown grew up in Chicago and lost contact with his father at a young age. Over time, the absence became permanent, and he eventually came to believe his father had died.
But after Ron appeared on Family Feud and introduced himself on air, his father, who was still alive and watching, recognized him. He followed the details shared during the episode and began making calls until he was able to track him down.
Ron Brown joins us to talk about that call and what happened after they reconnected.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.3 | This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything |
| 0:19.6 | here on this show, from the arts to sports |
| 0:21.4 | and from business to history, and everything in between, including your stories. Send them to |
| 0:26.7 | OurAmericanstories.com. That's our Americanstories.com. They're some of our favorites. |
| 0:33.9 | And we love to tell stories about faith whenever we can and redemption. |
| 0:38.8 | And this is one of our best redemption stories. |
| 0:43.0 | Ron Brown grew up on the west side of Chicago. |
| 0:47.3 | I grew up in a family where my uncles were drug dealers and pimps. |
| 0:50.8 | And I saw that growing up as a kid. |
| 0:53.7 | And it never appealed to me. |
| 0:55.7 | I can remember as a kid seeing my uncles get shot and different things like that and, |
| 0:59.3 | you know, one guy tried to murder my uncle and just seeing it and just being a kid like |
| 1:05.8 | five, six, seven, eight, nine years old growing up being like, this ain't the way this |
| 1:10.6 | supposed to be. I watch certain stories and years old growing up being like, this ain't the way this is supposed to be. |
| 1:12.1 | I watched certain stories and kids say growing up in the inner city, how they saw drug dealers |
| 1:16.7 | and that's the only people they saw. And for them, they saw that as a means to an end to get out |
| 1:21.5 | the ghetto or as a kid, I don't know what God blessed me with, but he blessed me with the ability |
| 1:26.9 | to see that I was wrong. And that wasn't the way for me to go about my life. He was also blessed with a strong mother, who divorced his biological father when Ron was a kid. I can remember he was part of an accident fraud scheme, and I remember being a kid telling him, I was like, hey, man, you're going're going to get in trouble. He said, say, son, you know what, I'm making my living the best way I know how. And eventually he ended up going to prison for a few years for that. And I can remember being a kid and him writing me letters and saying, hey, you know, when I get out, things are going to be different. I'm going to spend more time with you. I think it's important. |
| 2:03.6 | And the thing was, he got out, and nothing going to be different. I'm going to spend more time with you. I think it's important. |
| 2:01.9 | And the thing was he got out and nothing never changed. |
... |
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