How My Mother Built a Life Out of Nothing
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 17 October 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, before Devon Westhill became the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, he learned the meaning of perseverance from the woman who raised him. His mother faced poverty, long hours, and the weight of raising a family on her own in rural Florida. Yet through every setback, she refused to let her children see defeat. Her story is one of grit and grace of a mother who built stability out of scarcity and taught her children that success isn’t handed down; it’s earned, day by day.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | What I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi. |
| 0:08.5 | Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why? |
| 0:15.1 | Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies. |
| 0:18.5 | From prologue projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco, Benghazi. |
| 0:23.6 | What difference at this point does it make? |
| 0:26.6 | Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:33.6 | Music And we're back with our American stories. |
| 0:46.6 | Up next, a story from our true diversity series sponsored by the great folks at Philanthropy Roundtable, |
| 0:52.6 | America's leading advocate for you to support the causes you believe in. |
| 0:56.7 | Today we meet a partner of their campaign, Devin Westhill, |
| 1:00.0 | the president and general counsel at the Center for Equal Opportunity. |
| 1:04.0 | Today he'll share with us a beautiful story about the person who impacted him the most, his mother. |
| 1:15.1 | Okay. who impacted him the most, his mother. For a long time, I've been a Steve Martin fan, right? |
| 1:18.7 | So the kid that grew up in the 80s and 90s |
| 1:21.6 | at the height of the Steve Martin mania, I suppose. |
| 1:26.4 | I like the quote from Steve Martin's film The Jerk, where he says, |
| 1:32.9 | It was never easy for me. |
| 1:36.7 | I was born a poor black child. |
| 1:41.9 | I like that because it's a funny line because Steve Martin's white. |
| 1:47.7 | But for me, I like the quote because it describes a little bit of my past. |
| 1:55.0 | I'm a very light skin or bright skin, biracial black man. |
... |
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