Welcome to Strangers from KCW and Radiotopia. I'm Leah Tsoe. And happy New Year, everybody.

Let's make it a great one together, shall we? We are coming to you today to bring you a broadcast

special of strangers that we produced for KCW, our partner station here in L.A., and it aired here on New Year's Day.

Now, for those of you who've been faithful listeners for a long time, I'll tell you honestly

that it features two stories you may have heard before, but they're two of my favorite stories

of all time. And I think they offer important reminders about life and love and perspective,

which are good things to reflect on as the New Year begins, I think. They were for me anyway,

as I got to rework these stories, and I hope you'll enjoy them. This was a broadcast, so the format is a bit different from what we normally do,

but as I promised on the last show, I wanted to share it with you to keep your ears and your hearts warm

while we gear up for our official season premiere at the end of the month.

So without further ado, here goes.

Hi, I'm Leah Tao, and you're listening to a special holiday presentation of strangers

from KCW's independent producer project.

Strangers is normally a podcast on KCW.com and in iTunes, but today we're on the air to share a couple of our favorite stories from the show with you.

The first one is about Jane and Henry Evans. About 13 years ago, Henry Evans was your all-American dad.

He was tall, handsome, do-it-yourself kind of guy, married to his high school sweetheart, Jane. He was the CFO of a Silicon Valley startup, and they had four kids when Henry suddenly suffered a rare kind of stroke called a brain stem stroke. It left him paralyzed and mute.

The only movement he had left was blinking, his eyelids.

He was just 40 years old, and his kids were 6, 8, 12, and 13.

The doctors told Jane she had to put Henry in a facility that there was no way she could care for him at home.

She disagreed.

You ready, Henry?

This is Jane preparing to transfer Henry from his bed to his wheelchair.

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