This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is our American stories and one of our favorite regular segments is our American Dreamer series. And today, Alex Cortez brings us

the voice of an American classic. When I grew up the word depression, then entered my vocabulary,

enter my consciousness. And little did I know, I lived through it.

But I didn't know it was going on

because I was well taken care of

by loving parents and a family environment.

We're listening to Donald Sturm,

whose parents were German immigrants that settled

in Brooklyn, New York.

My father had some securities, owned some real estate, and Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, or wherever it is,

and lost everything. I never recovered financially and wound up getting jobs in a restaurant business no longer as a manager,

because those jobs became few and far between, and wound up being a waiter for the rest of his life.

He worked hard to bring home money so that he could take care of his life. He worked hard to bring home money

so that he could take care of his family.

And he did so in a very heroic way.

I never heard him complain.

He didn't achieve much, financially speaking. But he had a great family and he was a great father

grew up in a very dense neighborhood in the sense that there was lots of

people nobody had much money there were five of us in the building.

We lived on the, I think, the third or fourth floor is a walk up.

There was no elevator.

...