A Daughter's Amazing Mission toTell Her Father's Heroic Story

It was when she opened up an old battered suitcase that longtime TV correspondent Rita Cosby discovered an astonishing truth about her father. he was a World War II hero.

In this 2010 interview Rita Cosby talks about her book Quiet Hero.
Get your copy of Quiet Hero by Rita CosbyAs an Amazon Associate, Now I've Heard Everything earns from qualifying purchases.

You may also enjoy my interviews with Edith Hahn Beer and Kazimierz Wierzbicki

For more vintage interviews with celebrities, leaders, and influencers, subscribe to Now I've Heard Everything on Spotify, Apple Podcasts. and now on YouTube
#World War two #Poland # greatest generation # resistance


(00:25):
As time goes by, we're losing more and more of the stories
told by members of the Greatest Generation, World War 2.
But a few years ago, there was one hero whose story was told
when his daughter discovered it by accident.
Richard Kosbutsky was a teenagerin Warsaw, Poland when World War

(00:47):
2 broke out. This teenage boy joined the
Polish resistance. He fought the Nazis.
He's a key member of the Warsaw Uprising, but eventually he was
injured and then captured by theNazis, and he survived the Nazi
concentration camp, eventually rescued by American forces.

(01:08):
Now, when Richard Kazabutsky came to the US after the war, he
changed his name to Richard Cosby, married and had a
daughter. She grew up to become an
investigative reporter on television.
Her name is Rita Cosby. Now, just a few years ago, when
her mother passed away, Rita Cosby was looking through her

(01:30):
mother's possessions, and one thing that she found was an old
battered suitcase. And when she opened it,
everything changed because it contained the details of her
father's Warsaw Uprising, his Polish resistance background,
everything that he'd never talked about to anyone.
Well, that's when she put on herinvestigative reporter hat and

(01:53):
talked to her father, whom she hadn't talked to in several
years, did research, and the result was her 2010 book, a best
seller called Quiet Hero. Now Rita and I met one afternoon
in the summer of 2010 to talk about it.
In just a moment. Our conversation.
Over a 30 year span, national radio personality Bill Thompson

(02:15):
did over 10,000 interviews with people who had a hand in shaping
our culture and our society. Here is one of those interviews.
Enjoy. So Here Now from 2010.
Rita Cosby. Every time these days that I see
a book like yours, I am encouraged anew.

(02:36):
Because. What you your book?
Is going to inspire so many other people to sit down with
their dad or in some cases theirmom and say, OK, it's been long
enough, now tell me what happened because we're running
out of time. And I hope that that happens.
In fact, since the book has comeout, even on our website, we've
been saying, you know, send us your quiet hero, tell us your

(02:56):
details. And we've gotten already all
these amazing stories from youngpeople saying, you made me want
to reach out to my father. You made me want to reach out to
my grandfather. Or I haven't had an estranged
relationship with so and so. And your book inspired me to
reach out and learn what they went through.
And especially that generation, as you point out, time is
passing. And in my father's case, my

(03:17):
father's 84 years old. And I said to myself, when I
found these relics that sort of triggered everything, I thought,
you know what? My father is still alive.
I want to know why he's here. I don't want to ever say I wish
I would have. This man went through something
so harrowing and so heroic. And it has been the most amazing
journey of my life. And I'm so glad I did it.

(03:38):
And I hope it does encourage others to say, let me find out
about my parents past. Let me find out about my own
past. That's the thing.
I mean, other people's stories may not be as dramatic or even
as heroic, but yet. In their own.
Way they will be. I mean, your father's story
would have been heroic no matterwhat you found out about him,
wouldn't it? You know, I have learned what a

(03:59):
hero my dad is and I love. I picked the title quiet hero
because what's amazing about my dad and that whole generation is
that they truly were the greatest generation.
They truly were the humble ones.I mean, if you asked my father
today, were you a hero? He had this great line to me,
villain. He said, you know what, I am not
a hero, but I can tell you for sure I was never a coward.
And I love that line. But he still also always

(04:21):
believes that all the attention should be on somebody else, that
the focus should be on his comrades, that they were the
real heroes. And I think there's something
amazing about that generation and something so inspirational
about that generation of the quiet humility, the quiet
elegance of that generation. And I think it's something that,
you know, we can all learn from.And I, and I agree with you that
I think my father's story from beginning to end is so

(04:45):
admirable, so heroic. And, and I think that it's a
more or lesson, whether it's youhave a parent who went through
war or didn't go through war, I hopefully it is something that's
going to inspire you regardless.I also thought of, and maybe I'm
going a little far afield here, but you know, a lot of kids when
they're little, especially if they don't know much about what
their dad has been through, they'll begin to fantasize, Oh,

(05:05):
my dad must have been a Prince. Or, you know, my dad, I'll bet
he was an airline pilot. You know, he And they usually
turn out to be a little bit moremundane than that.
I have a feeling that whatever you imagined, your father's real
life was even bigger than that. It's a great question because it
was so much more than I ever imagined.
I mean, I knew my dad went through something because I

(05:25):
remember when I was 8 years old,I had to think of when I knew my
dad was different than the otherdads in the neighborhood.
My dad has a heavy accent, you know, he's Polish.
And I knew he went through the war.
I remember hearing these bits and pieces, but very small.
And then I remember when I was very young, my mother basically
shut it down and said, this is not an area to talk about.
My father came back from a run and I remember he was jogging,

(05:48):
took his shirt off. It was drenched in sweat.
And I saw scars all over his body.
And I thought maybe dad got in afight or something like that.
And I asked my mother about it. My mother said, your father went
through tough times growing up. We don't talk about it.
And I remember hearing that lineas sure as if it was yesterday.
And it said to me, my father went through something so
traumatic and, you know, physically and emotionally that

(06:09):
it was off limits. And here I become this
investigative journalist. And yet in my own backyard, it's
off limits. But it's true.
When I was growing up, I knew mydad, you know, obviously went
through something difficult, butI never in my wildest dreams
imagined what he had. Just the incredible guts of my
father and his comrades and the incredible heroism and the
incredible moral fiber that my father had at such a young age

(06:33):
and devotion. It's, it's been inspiring and,
and touching to me. I mean, I've been so in awe this
last year knowing that this incredible hero was in my own
backyard. But it's also you.
Know how all the pieces of fate have to fall into place for
something to happen? The tragic death of your mother
and you and your brother had allthese possessions of hers put

(06:54):
them in storage for years. You can't bear to look at them.
One day you figure, let's look at them and you find this old
suitcase that she'd kept. Now she could have thrown that
out 30 years ago and the story would have taken a whole
different turn. It's incredible.
And I remember sitting in the storage locker and that painful
task of what to keep, what not to keep and seeing that old
suitcase and suddenly it's just by looking at it, Bill, I knew

(07:16):
that there was something different about it because it
looked old and tattered and worn.
It didn't fit with sort of everything else.
And I had never seen it before. And when I opened it up, my jaw
dropped. Inside was this rusty POW tag
and you can see the cover of it.It's on my, you know, the
cover's on my, the shot of it ison the cover of our book.
And then also this Polish fighting armband, dirty and worn

(07:38):
with blood in it. And then I also saw this card
with secret code names on it, a name, you know, all these
different names that I didn't know what they meant.
They were in Polish, but they had like secret codes.
And I'm thinking this is unusual.
And then I saw a card of an XPOWnamed Richard Kozabotsky with a
different birth date than I thought my dad was all these
years. And I went, Oh my gosh, this is

(08:00):
my father. And when I saw that, I was so
overwhelmed. And there's something so
incredible when you're sitting there and you're touching these
items and touching this rusty POW tag.
And now to know that it hung around my dad's neck while he
was starving. And when he finally escaped from
the prisoner of war camp, it, itis incredible when you touched
it. And I remember thinking, my

(08:22):
father, this was clearly my father's.
This was this, this is my father's life in the suitcase.
And I wanted to find out. Do you think?
If there. Hadn't been that if your mother
had thrown it away all these years ago.
If you haven't found anything tangible like that, would you
have gone on this odyssey to find out the the the answers to
the questions you had? I don't think I would have, you
know, I, I think I always believed that it was an off

(08:44):
limits topic and my mother made that clear when I was younger.
And in fact, I know more about my father now than my mother
ever did. And I think I would have always
wondered bits and pieces about my dad's life.
I would have always wondered what happened to him because I
knew there was something. There was always this mystery.
But I don't think I would have been able to have the ammunition

(09:06):
to go and ask him. And when I called my father and
I came with, I think, an open heart, and he saw that how much
I wanted to know. And as you point out, timing, I
think in life is everything. My father was sitting back and I
think realizing when he got thatcall from me, just only about a
year and a half ago, when he gotthe call, I think he said, first
of all, this is the daughter whoI really didn't know very much.

(09:27):
He left the family when I was a teenager, and he was so happy to
hear from me. And I think he sat back and also
thought, look, I'm 84 years old.If I'm never going to share this
story for history, it's now. Maybe now or never.
And it was sort of a beautiful collision of time and finding
these things and me having the ammunition to be able to say, I
have some background on you. I have some pieces here after

(09:51):
this short break. Rita Cosby talks about her and
her father's emotional return toPoland.
Now, AI is not just for. 22 yearold coders.
A lot of us older adults are drawing on our life experience
to find unique and creative waysto use AI at home.
Or at work. Got an AI success story you'd

(10:13):
like to share? Tap the link below to visit our
YouTube channel, AI After 40 andLet's keep learning together.
Now back to my 2010 conversationwith Rena Cosby.
In reading your book, it becomesapparent that he had built walls
not only between him and you, and between him and everybody

(10:35):
else about the wall. It's almost as though he built a
wall between him and himself because he didn't want these
memories either. He was really fighting within
himself. And it's my father went to such
an extreme. I mean, he went from Richard
Kozabotsky, who had a code name,who even his comrades didn't
know each other's real names because if they got caught by
the Nazis and were tortured, they could only rat out the code

(10:57):
name. They couldn't rat out the real
name. So they actually did it to
protect each other. So he came, you know, left this,
this code name. His code name was Mountain Lion.
And that's the translation in, in English from it.
And so Mountain Lion, you know, came over to America, changes
his name from Richard Kozabotskyto Richard Cosby and never
really talked about it again andnever joined, you know,
basically tried to sort of separate his life from anything

(11:20):
that reminded him of his past. And so much so.
And I think, I think it was parts, different pieces of it.
I think 1 of it was it was so emotional for him because what
he went through was so painful and so difficult for him.
And then the other part was he still feels like it was his
comrades who did everything thathe was just he was, you know,
lucky to be alive, but not a hero, not, not like not as

(11:43):
courageous as the other guys. He's one of those folks who even
to this day, when I gave him my book before it came out, I said,
Dad, I want you to read it because in case there's any
facts or anything that needs to be changed, something I'm
missing. And he said and he had not seen
the title yet. And when he when he saw it and
read it, he said, you know, I love everything he said, but I'm
a little embarrassed about hero.I'm not a hero.
My comrades were the heroes. Those were the real heroes.

(12:05):
Those. That's who you should be writing
about. And this is what I find so
fascinating that that World War 2 veterans always say that, that
it's the people, the guys they left behind, the guys who didn't
make it back out. Those are the heroes, they say.
And in fact, if you listen to myfather's story, I mean, I can,
you know, firmly say he was truly a hero.
I mean, my father, the age of 13, you know, was thrust into

(12:27):
World War Two, saw the planes hovering above and then dropping
bombs on his hometown. Then at 15, he was offered a
chance to basically get out. His mother said, I may be able
to get you out of the country because my father's not Jewish.
And she said I might be able to sneak you out of Poland through
the black mark. And I might have enough money.
And my father said, no, I am staying.
I am fighting for my country. And he said this great line,

(12:48):
Bill. He said I would rather die with
friends than live with strangers.
I am fighting. Can you imagine at 15 to have
that kind of guts and that kind of patriotism and that kind of
loyalty to your country and yourcomrades?
And then he was surrounded by the Nazis as he got deeper and
deeper into the resistance and was fighting with everything he
had. And one night he talks about how
they had no way to escape and the only way to go was below

(13:10):
ground and they escaped through the sewers.
And then he was seriously injured by a mortar shell, taken
to a POW camp, and then escaped.And Can you imagine?
And yet he still will say what Idid was just a regular guy.
He'll say that, but I'm wondering in the closing
chapters here. But I don't want to give too
much away because it's almost reads like a novel.
There's kind of the narrative here, but you go back with him

(13:30):
to Poland and you see the sights, you see the manhole, you
stop traffic to see the manhole cover and you see where the tank
exploded and things like this. Did none of that convince him
even just a little bit? Maybe I was a little bit of a
hero. You know, I think to this day he
still wouldn't admit that. But what he will say is that it
was his finest hour going to Poland and that he was so proud

(13:53):
of what he did for his country, even though they were in such a
David and Goliath fight against the Nazis.
He looks back now with such pride.
I think of what he did and what his comrades did.
And when we went back to Poland,which was amazing, I never
thought he'd ever go back because he when I was growing
up, he'd always say Poland was anightmare.
It was hell on earth. And it was, you know, this
horrible nightmare that he couldn't revisit.
And when he when I gave him backthese items from the suitcase

(14:15):
and he said, you know what, I'd love to see if any of my
comrades survived. And we went back together and
retraced his steps after 65 years.
Literally, I was holding his hand when we took are my first
steps on polar soil and his first in 65 years.
And it was very painful for him to go back and see some of the
scenes. But on the other hand, he was so
proud to see that Poland had notforgotten and the world had not

(14:36):
forgotten what he and his comrades did because there were
plaques everywhere. And then we were honored by the
president of Poland. And when he saw that and saw
that the young people of Poland everywhere, you know, we went,
they said upriser, upriser, He'sone of the guys.
And when we went to the place with the sewer, one of my most
beautiful moments we go to here we are in downtown Warsaw.

(14:57):
Imagine if you're in downtown New York or downtown Washington
and there's there's the manhole cover in the middle of the
street. And that was now the famous
manhole. There's, you know, gold bricks
leading up to it, but there's cars going all over it too.
And I said, I'm going to I want my dad to walk, go that walk
again. He hasn't done it in 65 years.
So we did stop traffic. And the most amazing thing was

(15:17):
not a single car hunt. And Can you imagine all these
drivers were looking and some ofthem with tears in their eyes
and saluting because they saw this, you know, old fighter
going back to his roots. And it was so beautiful just to
see that they. Knew what it was.
I didn't have to tell them, oh, this is my dad going back to
where he escaped. They knew exactly what it was

(15:38):
and they were saluting as they drove by.
It was beautiful, no? One's going to read this book
without crying. And you know what?
I cried the whole time. When I was writing it.
Because I felt that this is the story of my life.
This is the story, I hope of a lot of people's lives.
I hope it brings out the best ineveryone and reminds everyone
that there are so many quiet heroes in your own backyard.

(16:02):
That it doesn't have to be a celebrity.
It doesn't have to be a world leader.
It doesn't have to be these people you see on television,
that sometimes the most amazing people are ordinary people in
your own backyard who did some extraordinary things.
And I hope that this book recaptures that part of history.
And, and when I wrote it, I saidI also have to be honest about
what happened with my father andI.
And also my father was very honest about some of the most

(16:24):
painful things. I mean, he wept.
And for my father and I to go through this process together, a
true catharsis. Now I have a father and a best
friend. At the end of the day, I was.
Just going to say this is not the kind of thing where you say,
hey dad, it was a wonderful time, see you again in a few
years. No, you 2 are, I gather, closer
now than ever. And I feel like probably have
one of the best relationships that maybe a daughter and father

(16:45):
can have. And I hope it inspires people
that sometimes in life there's bumps along the way.
Again, my father left the familywhen I was young and I really
didn't feel like I had a father until this year.
Has there been talk about a movie?
We've already had a lot of people talk about that.
In fact, in the early days, evenbefore I was finished with
Chapter 1, I had people coming and saying, oh, you got to do a
movie on this. This is amazing.

(17:06):
And at some point, maybe we will.
We've, you know, I wanted to getthe book done first.
That was I wanted, you know, my father, it took him 60-5 years
to tell this story. I didn't want him to change his
mind. So I wanted to hurry up and get
it done for the book first. Richard Cosby died in 2012 at
the age of 86. Rita Cosby will be 61 next

(17:27):
month. You can see her on Saturday
nights on Newsmax now. You can get your copy of Quiet
Hero by Rita Cosby by tapping the link in our show notes by
clicking the link in the description below.
If you're watching this on YouTube or by going to our
website heardeverything.com, we earn an Amazon Commission if you
make a purchase. heardeverything.com is where you

(17:47):
can also hear my 1999 conversation with a woman who
survived the war even though shewas married to a Nazi officer
and she was Jewish. The story told by Edith Hahn
Baer. I was three years wanted by the
Gestapo, The next generation of the youngsters, they have no

(18:08):
idea what it was from the the life from day-to-day and how
horrible and how terrible. And my 1982 conversation with a
more latter day Polish hero, a member of the Polish Solidarity
movement. My inner 1982 conversation with
Kasmis Vybzbitsky. People couldn't realize that

(18:29):
after 35 years of communist totalitarian system you have
possibility to join free independent union.
And of course, we post new episodes of Now.
I've heard everything every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
And you can find us wherever youfind podcasts.
Thank you so much for listening.Next time on Now I've heard
everything. Well, you knew me for many years

(18:50):
as a stand up comedian. He was on The Tonight Show, my
1990 conversation with David Brenner.
I. Crack myself up sometimes.
You know, I had lips so much that I crack up on stage
sometimes. I think that's so funny, like
someone else said it. But when I hear some of my
jokes, it's like some other guy in the room told it.
I go, that's funny. And then I realize, hey, you
said it. That's next time.
Now I've heard everything. I'm Bill Thompson.