There Goes My Hero

On this episode of Tell Me About Your Father, writer Brandi Larsen tells Erin about her late father Eric Kleinert, an appliance repairman and volunteer firefighter whose unsolicited life lessons transcended the textbook they published together in the early 90s when she was just 15 (turning them both into authors, and not for the last time). Eric was a walking, talking #1 Girl Dad and Wife Guy t-shirt who saved lives like it was no big deal and preferred to give his daughter the spotlight (unless he was pushing his toy poodle, Rudy, in a stroller at the mall with the love of his life, Eileen, Brandi’s late mom). Brandi opens up about the day her parents told her she was adopted, what she found out about her biological father when she went looking, and reflects on the quiet heroism of everyday superdads.