This is an I-Heart podcast.

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This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories.

Up next, a story about a prayer that led to the making of one of America's most beloved movies, Braveheart.

It doesn't happen often.

At the 2011 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., the keynote speaker wasn't a pastor,

politician, or head of state. It was acclaimed Hollywood screenwriter and director

Randall Wallace. He wrote or directed some great American films, Secretariat, the Man in the Iron Mask,

and the American War classic We Were Soldiers, which he wrote and directed.

But the movie he'll be most remembered for was the 1995 classic Braveheart, which he wrote and which

would go on to win five Oscars, including Best Picture. The film stirred the hearts of millions

when it was released, and still does as it plays in regular rotation on cable and streaming

channels. But this great American movie didn't have a probable start.

Indeed, it was birthed by a prayer. A prayer prayed not from a writer pleading to God for

inspiration, but out of desperation. He started the speech by talking about his life growing up in Lynchburg, Virginia,

and then came two powerful stories that shaped his life, one about a tough patch,

what Christians call a valley story in his father's life and then one in his

own.

My father was a salesman who loved his customers, and he won promotion after promotion until one day the company had worked

for for 20 years of family-owned business was sold to a group of investors who knew nothing about

the business. But they believed the way to increase profits was to fire all the old guys and hire younger ones who were cheaper.

And my father was one of the old ones.

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