My Life Is Broken Into "BD & AD": Before Dad & After Dad
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 8 June 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Bruce Paddock remembers his life in two chapters: BD and AD, Before Dad and After Dad. When his father died young, the loss reshaped everything, from the way he viewed family and purpose to the path he would eventually take in his own career.
In this deeply personal tribute, Bruce reflects on grief, memory, and the enduring influence of a father whose life and death continued to guide him long after he was gone.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:14.0 | And we continue with our American stories and with the story of a son and the impact of his father on his life. Here's Bruce |
| 0:23.3 | Paddock paying tribute to his father. Unfortunately, my father passed on at age 48. I was only 12, |
| 0:34.5 | and so it was a very, you know, even talking about it now I get somewhat emotional even though it was some 60 years ago that my father died. |
| 0:45.3 | But he was, he was Italian, he was happy, he loved to eat, he loved to drink, he was always telling jokes, He was always kidding around, so he was like a big, big kid. |
| 0:58.0 | And so I enjoyed being with my father. |
| 1:05.0 | He had tuberculosis when he was younger. |
| 1:07.0 | He actually had a collapsed lung, so he was functioning with only one lung. |
| 1:12.6 | He was a heavy smoker. |
| 1:15.6 | I still remember being in the shop and him spraying the furniture with lacquer and there's no ventilation. |
| 1:22.6 | I'd be breathing the fumes, he would be breathing the fumes. |
| 1:25.6 | It wasn't unusual for me to get so high and dizzy I would actually pass out from the fumes. |
| 1:31.3 | But we laughed about it, you know, it's back in the days. I had no idea that I was breathing toxic fumes. |
| 1:38.3 | But I was, and he was kind of ignorant to it. He would grab his chest and he would, oh, I have such, |
| 1:46.8 | he would grab his chest. |
| 1:48.7 | He was in pain. |
| 1:50.4 | Well, he thought it was his collapsed lung. |
| 1:52.5 | He would blame it on the adhesions in his lung. |
| 1:56.5 | But what he was really dealing with, |
| 1:58.3 | and I was too young to know any better. |
| 1:59.9 | Now with my medical background, he was suffering dealing with. And I was too young to know any better. Now, with my medical background, |
... |
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