This is an I-Heart podcast.

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This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories,

and we tell stories about everything here on this show, from the arts

to sports and from business to history, and everything in between, including your stories.

Send them to Our American Stories.com. They're some of our favorites. And today we have a feature

from one of our regular contributors, Stephen Rossiniak. This piece is titled An Hour to Chat, and to read about the

backstory of this story, please visit stephenriciniac.com. Here's Stephen sharing this story.

Can you imagine if only it were possible, if only it were true?

A photo of a bench on a grassy hill overlooking a place where an ocean's waves are succumbing upon a distant sandy shoreline

showed up today in my email inbox with a simple and yet thought-provoking question. If you could sit here and chat for

one hour with anyone, past or present, who would it be? Immediately, a plethora of possibilities

began flooding my thoughts. As an unabashed history buff, my mind immediately went into overdrive

as the faces of countless historical figures suddenly appeared in my mind's eye, all of them,

vying for what I selfishly saw as a coveted chance for someone of historical significance to spend an hour sitting on this bench and chatting with me.

I imagined questioning any one of them about their life, about their successes and failures,

about the choices that they had made that ultimately led to their fame, their

fortune, or in some cases, their downfall. I considered briefly the potential picks that others

might have chosen as well, and I suspect their answers would certainly have included the rich

and the famous. Actors, rock stars, revered

religious icons, presidents, or famous sports heroes, perhaps the likes of John Wayne,

John Lennon, John the Baptist, John Adams, or maybe even pitching great Tommy John, each of whom,

...