Georgia Focus - Gregory Leeson

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to Georgia Focus. I'm John Clark on the Georgia
News Network. Gregory Leason calls himself the life chronicler, and
his fascinating, heartfelt volume, Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives, exemplifies that
moniker in a significant way. Entirely at his own expense,
he criss crossed the United States and Canada east west,
north and south for the sole purpose of talking in

(00:32):
depth to as many people from as many walks of
life as he can manage to meet in just over
thirteen months. Gregoryleason is my guest today. But today I'm
here with Gregory Leson and I'm fascinated by your book.
I haven't read it yet. I'm going to read it.
I have it, and you have it in my hand.
Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives, a path to reconciliation in our
divided times. Yes, sir, you went out and met ordinary people.

(00:58):
And I always tell people, well, on this show, even
this show, and even talking about this show, everybody's got
a story.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yeah. Is that what you found out?

Speaker 2 (01:10):
That was my premise. Yeah, everybody got a story and
it's worth hearing and so forth. And that's exactly what
I found John.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Yeah, And how did you find the people serendipity?

Speaker 2 (01:21):
So absolutely so, just a slight background. So the idea
started in twenty fifteen. So I grew up in Halifax,
Nova Scotia. I'm Canadian, I'm American now too. I've been
in United States most of my life or adult life.
And at the high school reunion, I was the MC
and they about eighty five ers there that night, and

(01:43):
a few stories I knew. For example, a guy with
best friends with back in grade two college roommates. He
became head coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins the National Hockey
League until he lost his job, and then they want
to Stanley Cup that year, Mike. So I knew Mike's story,
but there are a few other stories there too, and
I thought, wow, these kids I went to high school with.
Now I left Nova Scotia in my early twenties, finished

(02:04):
off my education in Ontario and started working in Toronto
before I moved to Chicago to trade bond futures. But
just listening to those stories, and I wondered, has anybody
ever written a book about disordinary people?

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
I thought, well, now, Greg, you're a numbers guy. You
don't know anything about letters, forget about it, right, So
I put in the backshelf and just kind of forgot
about it. Number of years later, just before COVID, I'm
on a date of divorced and I'm talking to this
woman and she says, I'm midsense. She interrupts me and says, Greg,

(02:40):
if we were considered running a book, And I said, well,
not about my life, but I have about everyone else.
And I told her the idea and she just wand
me go do it. So that was kind of the
inspiration behind it. And then COVID set in. Of course,
everything I put on hold, and I ended up retiring
for Pfizer in Illinois in October twenty one, and I said, well,

(03:01):
we're going to do it. Within a week, I had
a website up and running. I had four journeys planned.
I'm in the center of the continent, right, Illinois a
great place to start, so I did in East, West, South,
and a great plains journey. I runted my home for
thirteen months because I did not want to give myself
a fall up fall back plan, so I had no
place to live.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
John, Oh, really, you just took off on the road.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
I just took off the road. May first, twenty twenty two.
Not a coincidence, John, I turned sixty five that day.
It was not a coincident's psychologic and everything else. You
know what sixty five means, right, And so I head
out from Illinois May one, twenty twenty two. First off
was Lansing, Michigan, and did not get an interview there.

(03:44):
I was looking to find people, you know, I gave
a lot of speeches to mostly rotary clubs. I found
people that way. I found people on the street. I
interviewed a handful vera me and B people I did interview.
A small few were friends in Illinois. Uh before I left.
So I put those stories up on my website to

(04:04):
show credibility. Yeah, he's actually doing this. And so four
road trips twenty six thousand and four and three miles
drove fifty three cities, thirty nine states, eight Canadian provinces.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Oh that's great. You kept up with that.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, yeah, oh absolutely, it's in fact, if you look
at my book there, you see what the numbers. Yeah,
each of those numbers means something.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Oh go yeah, seven eight on oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
One one one one, So that means I left May one,
twenty two. I slept in my own bed on June
eighth of twenty three, one year, one month, one week,
one day.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
It wasn't planned or anything.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
No, no, I did not even realize it until about
two or three days before I return home. I said, Hey,
one one one one one.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
One one one, Yeah, okay, so you just how did
how did you pick the people? And did all of
them make it to the book?

Speaker 2 (04:56):
So I interviewed seventy one people. Sixty six people read
to have this story in the book. If I, for
their own reasons did not, that's fine. And so, as
I said, I just met people however I could, and
I interviewed them with a protocol A professor by the
name of Dan McAdams. Dan McAdams is one of the

(05:17):
world's leading authorities and narrative psychology, which is all about storytelling.
How what are our stories about our lives and so forth?
How do we see our characters that we play throughout
life and so forth? And he's one of the world's
leading authorities in this and he lives only about works
only about twenty five miles away from where I live
in Illinois Northwestern University. So I got jes medium and

(05:39):
Dan has allowed me to publish his twenty two question
interview protocol in my book as appendix A. Okay, And
you know other people have referenced him. David Brooks, a
well known New York New York Times guy. His most
recent book was based on Dan McAdams How to Know
a Person. So Dan is quite well known by several people,

(06:02):
and it's just amazing that he allowed me to publish
his protocol.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Did you end up asking the people the same questions
or about different ones about what they did?

Speaker 2 (06:10):
No, this was a protocol. I stuck in a protocol. Now,
I did make two slight modifications. I'd added a question
one that was mine, that was a thirty second question,
and I added a last question as well to conclude
the rest of it was all mcadamsself. So I did
the same. Now, I extemporaneously, as we were having our discussion,

(06:31):
said hey, wait a minute, tell me more about and
so forth. So, yes, there was some of that, but
I stuck to the script. And mccadams wrote this in
his book The Stories We Live By, which was where
I learned about his protocol. He said he and his
graduate students have been doing this for years at Northwestern
and of course they paid people come in to tell

(06:51):
the story right for the graduate students and so on.
And he says two things. He said. Number one, he said,
many of the people who are interviewed by other Haimworth
graduate student will say to him, I don't want your money.
That's how deep it is. The second thing he said,
in this book, he said, there will be tears and
the telling. I think, yeah, sure, I interviewed seventy one people. John.

(07:13):
Of the seventy one people, thirty most strangers cried during
the interview. It's not making mouse.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Wow that's true.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yep, yep, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
What are some of your favorite ones? How who some
who interviewed who's stuck with you? Probably did? I probably
stuck with you. But because you have a book, right,
what the type of questions you ask.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Him so so questions? It covers the whole gamut, you know, philosophical, spiritual, political,
your personal life. I mean, it gets deep into a
lot of things. What is meaning and so forth? You know,
health questions, you know what's next for you? Those types

(07:54):
of questions. And so you asked both the stories and
if there's any favorites, and of course says you can
probably imagine My politically correct answer is I don't have
a favorite. However, I'll tell you a few stories, and
if I had to select one favorite, it had to
be the youngest person I interviewed Manchester, New Hampshire, a

(08:14):
guy by the name of Dan, big burly guy, blue
collar beer, the whole works. And you know what I did,
I prejudged what I was going to hear. Man Did
I get blown away by this twenty nine year old man. So.
Dan was born to an unfortunate family. His father a

(08:36):
drug addict, His mother was an alcoholic, had an older brother.
His father had a son from an earlier marriage who
was also a drug addict. And well, one day, poof,
that's it. The son took out the father, so they're gone.
The mother was an alcoholic, did not take family services
very long to come and take five year old Dan

(08:56):
and seven year old brother and put them to a
foster home, where things got worse. It was a horrible situation,
he said. The man wasn't too bad, the woman was
an apolute nightmare. They were just for the money and
they could not afford the seven kids they had. I mean,
they didn't have the area for him at all. Five
years later, Dan's in grade four, reading at a grade

(09:19):
one level, and these angels come along adopt Dan and
his brother, an older couple. By the end of that
school year, at grade four, he was reading at a
grade sixth level, not a grade one level anymore. They
ended up moving down to Florida during high school and
he went to like a preppy school, which was not
really Dan's thing. But one of his teachers, a chemistry teacher,

(09:43):
saw his potential and went on Dan's behalf. He got
him a full ride four year scholarship. Dan was a
four point zero student. He was a star athlete and
a classical pianist.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
Wow go away, Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
At age and again.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Burley Beard and big, big, big burly.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
And he didn't go. He didn't take the university because
Dan what he wanted to do, want anything else, And
I learned four four months ago he was engaged. Now
is get married and have children, And so he took
a heavy machinery operator course for about a year so
he can start earning money because he wanted to have
a wife and everything else. So he passed up the
four year scholarship. But at age ten, who could have

(10:28):
possibly known four point zero star athlete, classical pianists who
could have known incredible story. Another one has a little
bit of humor to it, and then I'll tell you
one more after that. So I met Joe Anne in
Palm Springs. My brother actually induced me to her, and
she's eighty eight. Lost her husband during COVID. An incredible

(10:52):
love story out of New York. They were each dating
someone else when they met, and well, you know, love
his love and there's nothing that they can do about it, right,
So they had this wonderful life together. He was a
successful sales executive. She was a former model, and she
owned her own business for travel. So since you know
that travel business, they traveled quite a bit. Well, one

(11:14):
year they found himself from Jordan and they got to
meet a shake and Joanne a former model. The shake
you kind of took a shine to her. He offered
her husband not one, but two campbells for two campbells,
John and I write this tongue of cheek. Of course,
after serious contemplation, he decided to turn down the generous

(11:37):
offer because what the heck was he going to do
with two camels in New York City?

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Right?

Speaker 2 (11:42):
So I learned some humorous stories as well along the way,
but there was a love story. This last story I'll
tell you is from Amy in Los Angeles. I met
Amy in Seattle. She was there for a job interview.
I ended up in an interviewer. Two weeks later in
Los Angeles, we met at a confectionery store by chocolates,
said goodbye, walked out in the streets and bumped into

(12:03):
each other again. So we started talking. I told her
what I was doing. She said, would you interview me?
And I said, chure, I'll be in Los Angeles. Amy
was from the East Coasts and she was an incredibly
abusive marriage two sons. Oldest son had Asperger's and was
starting to get aggressive with her as well. She's a
very petite woman. She because of her husband and so forth,

(12:27):
literally feared for her life. She stuck around physically, and
the judge said to her, if I grant you custody
of your two boys, are you going to follow through
as you've told me and leave the state and go
to California? Said yes, your honor, I have to just
like that. She lost complete custody of her two sons.

(12:48):
She said, as a woman, how could I tell anybody
that I did that? When I talked to her about
ten years after that event, she said, you the first
person I ever told my story to because I couldn't
tell anyone else. I'm sure her family knew obviously, And

(13:10):
she said, I think about our interview all the time. Amy.
I had several people write a testimonial for my original website,
and Amy wrote an incredible testimony to the process, and
it's in Appendix A, along with Dan McAdams's protocol, which
I strongly strongly urged people to use. In fact, I

(13:30):
tell people jokingly, if you're thinking of buying the book,
don't buy it for anything, I wrote, buy it for
Appendix A Dann McAdams interview and use it in your life.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
Really, that's that's how powerful it is.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
It's how yeah, thirty people cried her first time ever.
I had a handful of people say to me, I've
never told anybody this before, Greg, but it's it's very powerful.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
How did you for example? You know, I'm so curious
on how do you meet these people? How did you
find Dan? For example?

Speaker 2 (13:59):
So Dan was by your me and b house, Oh okay, yep,
and and the sticks deep in the woods and it
was a nighttime. I knew he worked at Boston. He
commused every day to Boston. And I was deep, deep
in the sticks in New Hampshire, and that as I
drove to his home, I thought, I couldn't find the
key to the house where he said it was. And
I'm getting a little nervous now because dusk is starting

(14:21):
to fall, right, And I looked at these area and
so forth, and thinking, oh my god, I'm in the
movie Deliverance. It crossed my mind, you know, But he
turned out to be the most incredibly wonderful guy. Wearnbb Houst.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
You just just pick him like that, just you know,
when you know when well.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
You know every I mean, I met so many everyone
in my ear me b house, I asked, not all
in agreed, and you know, but if a handful Dad
and so I got some great stories and that's how
I got his. And like I said, I met people
from the speech that I gave. A couple of people said, oh,
you need to talk to so and so when you're
in Sioux Falls or whatever and so forth. So I
met people. However I could, like I say, it's seventy
one people sat down with me.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
You recorded on a recorder. Oh, absolutely, Okay.

Speaker 2 (15:04):
The interview average interview I was asked this the other
day and the speech I gave in Raleigh, the average
interview was two hours and forty minutes, but I had
I think two go over six hours really, and in fact,
one of six hours we watched the super Bowl with
him on February ninth in San Antonio. But yeah, that's

(15:25):
that's kind of how it went.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
And so now on this tour, you're going You're going
back to visit these people and hand them a copy
of the book.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
Right. So I'm doing this tour. I've hired a publicist
who arranged some interviews like this. I'm giving speeches to
a lot of rotary clubs that I gave two speeches
two before. Who want to hear the repeat for rest
of all? Well, tell us how it went, Greg and
to personally hand a book signed, of course, to every
one of the individuals that I interviewed is one.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
I'm here in Atlanta.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
Yes. In fact, there is a well known fellow to
Harvard degrees, uh went Rose. He was one of the
first black people at Price Waterhouse to rise to his
level and so forth. Chris Simmons uh uh. He's kind
of known by a handful of people here in Atlanta,
including some talk show people.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Really, so you're going to you'll go you haven't met
him yet, you'll meet him.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
I'm going to see Chris tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Tomorrow, you see him and you have meet him. Hand
a book to him, yep, and uh, and then he'll
read first time he's had a chance to read this,
you see.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Actually I sent one to him earlier because Chris and
I are playing in a couple of things that we
want to do, so I sent him in a book early.
We want to kind of do a little bit of
a talk show thing with some schools and so forth.
He's say, he's a great public speaker, and so we
have some just some ideas that we're working on. So
I'm gonna look forward to seeing Chris to marrow.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
Oh that would be great. Now, you say you go
to a lot of clubs like Roady Clubs and things
like that. What do you talk to him about?

Speaker 2 (16:55):
So? Yes, right, So I uh, my first tours. It's
all about the idea. Here's my idea. This is what
I want to do. Obviously the book didn't exist in
that And rotarians are great people. I mean they're there
to serve people and so forth. So they were inspired
by the idea and so forth, because it's not just

(17:17):
telling stories of ordinary people. The expectation that I have
and hope that I have is that when people read
these stories, they will see themselves. Oh, I know that person.
I know that person too, and I know that person
also because I live that, and I live that, and
I live that in addition to the protocol that mccadams has,
And so the hope is that in the premise was

(17:40):
that we live in a divided world. That was my premise,
and in fact, in the book, I have fifty two
anonymous opinions on how divided we are, and most people
came down on that side of things. And so my
idea was to try to mitigate that division by telling
people's story. Worries having people read these stories, and I think,

(18:03):
as Damn McAdams rights on the back of that book,
he says, once you come to know another person's story,
it is impossible to hate, letlone or despised, let alone hate. Yeah,
someone wants you to know their story.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
That's that's really good. That's true.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, absolutely, that's very true. And that's McAdams is quote
which he nicely gave to me. That's on the back
of my book.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Now they all know you're coming to give them a
copy of the book. Have they all have? They all lived?
They if they aren't alive, or they do you present
to somebody else, So what do you do in that case?
Or if they've heard.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Unfortunately, a few people have passed away, most of them older.
One was, as I told you before the show, one
of my best friends in Illinois who had a stroke
and couldn't live with it. Took his own life. But
a few people have passed away, and so in one
case I actually interviewed her daughter as well, one of

(19:03):
the ones that passed away. In Poem Springs, another woman
from PAULM Springs good personal friends with Dalai Lama. Oh really,
Oh yeah, I went to Harvard back in the day
when women were supposed to go to Harvard and study divinity.
And so she said, well, the heck with you guys.
She hopped on about at age like twenty two or whatever.
This was, for her graduate degree and went to Morocco
and lived with the Berbers for two years, learning about

(19:25):
their lifestyle and so forth, came back to Harvard study
under Paul Tillick no less the great philosopher, and went
on again agree in anthropology as her husband a PhD.
But she passed away. But it didn't interview her her
daughter as well, so obviously her in Palm Springs.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
Oh and so she this lady was friends with the
Dalai Lama and good.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
Friends with the Dali. Good friends too, presented him with
an award from Harvard at one time. I know she
and her husband were anthropologists, and they spent a lot
of their time in the in the in India and
Nepol and so forth. Matt and sent their their children
to Swiss boarding schools and so forth.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
Interesting people, How far along are you on the tour
to give the book to people?

Speaker 2 (20:09):
So I had four tours at the beginning this tour.
These tours are they're gonna be three of them, and
they're very quick, city to city to city, real quick,
because all I'm doing is basically give them a speech
or two or being interviewed and handing the book and
move on to the next city. So I just started
my southern tour in the wintertime and only to be

(20:30):
agreed with a blizzard.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
I know you said it's gonna be warm a.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
Snow blizzard ninety minutes away from Atlanta, oh my goodness.
And then of course on May one, actually I will
start a Western tour, go up into Canada, across down
the West Coast and so forth. And then my last
tour is going to be the Eastern tour, so and
part of that is to be home for my fiftieth
high school reunion in July, which I'm also planning, So

(20:54):
three tours to see everybody.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
How's it selling so far the book?

Speaker 2 (20:58):
So interestingly, I haven't got the numbers yet from my
publisher in Los Angeles. I will get them sometime in January.
They said, you know, people have asked me about the
sales and making money and so forth. I did not
do this to make right, No, there's no way. I mean,
I probably get maybe eighty grand in this or so,

(21:20):
I suppose all in, but I never did to make money.
You know, if it does, and if I get some
great interviews, that line up things, beautiful, beautiful. But it's
kind of a precursor to my next book, which I'm
handing John a card right now so we can see

(21:42):
the front. That's my next book, John on the front,
which I plan to do in twenty twenty six. That's
the book you're looking at in the back. On the
front is my next.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Book, Story from Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
So one of the guys are interviewed in West Virginia
sends me an email in June July says Greg, I'm
going to volunteer in Ukraine. You need to go and
tell their stories. I thought, yeah, right. Two days later
I thought yeah right, and he actually went. I saw
him in West Virginia a few days ago, told me
about his five weeks in Ukraine. And so I planned

(22:17):
to go to Ukraine at twenty twenty six. But that
book I planned to pre sell to an institution, foundation,
philanthropy or whatever to because I want that to be
something big. Yeah, So I plan to do a narrative book.
I also planned doing a picture book of people, and
so picture a picture or narrative book. I've already got

(22:38):
a wonderful photographer, photographer from British Columbia lineup. She tells
people stories through pictures, goes all over the world. Just
amazing photographer. And the third thing I would like to
do with that is a documentary. Okay, I would love
to do that, but that's the next project and inspired
by one of the people I interviewed.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
And you're gonna when you start the tour of you train.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
So I'm planning to do this in the spring summer,
okay of twenty six assuming hoping hostilities have you know, received,
and so forth. And you know, my my friend in
British Columbia she says, you know, I definitely want to
do this. Yeah, but you know, hopefully the war will
be over pretty much and so forth. But yeah, that's great.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
Fast another Yeah it does. It opens up the door
and they step through it and Google. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
this is great, fascinating book. It's ordinary people, extraordinary lives.
A Path to Reconciliation in our divided Times by Gregory
Jane Nils Lisen. And he's been my guest today and
I just appreciate so much because I want to keep talking.

(23:41):
Go ahead.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, yeah, just one last thought if you're a few minutes. So,
I have a website of course, Gregory Leason Books dot com.
That's Gregory and Liason is L E. E. S O. N.
Gregory Releasing Books dot com. It's available on Amazon, you
I find today it's available and Burns and Noble too
on their website. So yeah, I just want to throw

(24:02):
that plug in.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
I think it's fascinating that you do this because everybody
has a story. Every person has don't have to be
famous or anything. Everybody's got a story, and some of them.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Are fascinating absolutely, yeah, oh yeah, I you know, some
are more fascinating than others, of course, as you can expect, right,
But everybody's got a story. And here's one thing that
I learned. Regardless of what the story was, you know,
how high up the total poll they went or or not,

(24:31):
everybody wanted me to know one thing their life mattered
for whatever reason, maybe because they were the greatest mother
or greatest father ever in the history of mankind and
their kids turn out remarkable. They want me to know
that that their life mattered for whatever the reason was.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
That was a reason for their life. Oh yeah, and
it was there.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
It mattered. Yeah, yeah, they all wanted me to know that.
I could I could feel that them just said it,
but I could just feel it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
That's great. Ordinary people, extraordinary lives. That's exactly what it
is right there too. I wish you would look on
your journey to see all these people and to give
give copies of the book. I think it's great. Thank
thank you so much, Thank you, Gregory, thank you, thank you.
That's Gregory Leson, author of Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives. You
can find out more about him at gregorylesonbooks dot com.

(25:21):
For questions or comments on today's program, you can always
email me, John Clark at Georgiannewsnetwork dot com. Thanks for listening.
I'll talk to you next week here on this local
radio station on Georgia Focus