This is an I-Heart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

Our next story comes to us from a man who's simply known as the History Guy.

His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages on YouTube.

The History Guy is also a regular contributor for us here at Our American Stories.

On October 3rd, 1955, a television program debuted that would eventually produce nearly 9,000 shows over a span of almost 40 years.

Here's the history guy with the story of Captain Kangaroo.

If you want to know how history can be forgotten, just look at popular culture where a song

or a movie or a television program can become incredibly popular and important to one generation

and then wholly unrecognized by the next.

The first week in October represents the anniversary of the first airing of a television show

that for many of you will bring back a flood of memories, but for others, well, leave you

completely befuddled. But I was one of millions of children whose childhood weekdays

almost always started with the words. Good morning, Captain. Robert James Keishen was born June 17, 1927 on Long Island. The son of an Irish

immigrant who was an executive with a grocery company. In his 1996 autobiography, he describes

an idyllic childhood growing up in the New York City suburb of Forest Hills. His life, however,

changed dramatically when his mother died suddenly when he was just 15.

Such a loss could pull a young man off the rails, but he credited the school guidance counselor

named Gertrude Farley for demanding that he find his way once again.

He graduated in 1945 and enlisted in the service in the last year of the Second World War,

and this has led to one of the most enduring myths about Bob Keishan.

There's a popularly shared web story that says that actor Lee Marvin said during an episode

...