"You Can Change Your Story": Why I Wrote a Book About the Death of My Mother
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 18 April 2023
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, David LaBelle's last memory of his mother was seeing her washed away in a raging flood when he was a senior in high school. She would never be found. It took David years to wrestle with the loss, and eventually he decided to write a semi-fictional book about the event called Bridges & Angels as a therapeutic exercise.
David's books (and photos) can be found on his website.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:18.2 | This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, including yours. |
| 0:26.0 | Send them to OurAmericanStories.com. |
| 0:28.9 | They're some of our favorites. |
| 0:30.1 | And up next, a story from California about love, loss, and coming to terms with grief. |
| 0:37.0 | Here's David Label with his story. |
| 0:39.3 | My name is David LaBelle. |
| 0:41.3 | I'm primarily a teacher and a photographer and have been for the last 50 years. |
| 0:46.3 | I started in high school. |
| 0:48.3 | When I was a junior in high school, I was probably the kid most likely to end up in prison. |
| 0:53.3 | In fact, I think some kids probably wrote that in the yearbook for me. Because I came from a difficult family |
| 1:00.4 | and I wasn't a good student and I hated school. And so, you know, I stayed away from school. |
| 1:08.9 | I did school as much as I could. And then eventually they caught me, the Truant officer caught me, I think, as a junior. |
| 1:14.6 | And then I had to go to school, had to go to night school in order to even graduate from high school. |
| 1:20.6 | I used to walk to the halls of the high school when I was a junior, and I would see these photographs on the walls, |
| 1:26.6 | and I thought |
| 1:27.5 | boy that's what I'd like to do and then eventually when they asked when they took me the truant |
| 1:32.6 | officer took me to school and they asked me you know how do we keep you in school I said well I'd like |
| 1:38.2 | to take photography I think that would really be something that would center me and he said you can't do it |
| 1:42.9 | basically he said you know there's a there, basically. He said, you know, |
| 1:44.7 | there's a waiting list of 300 kids. You have to be a good student and you're not. And so we're not |
| 1:51.6 | going to let you in. And then what I'd learned 40 years later when I was talking to my high school |
... |
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