August 16, 2025 • 47 mins
Florida author/practicing attorney Steve Eichenblatt talks about his latest release “Pretend They Are Dead: A Father’s Search For The Truth” as a memoir of resilience & reminder of how our fathers play in a pivotal role of emotional well-being of their children and the ways childhood trauma can be overcome! Steve is a father of five and spent 30+ years advocating for children as a pro-bono guardian ad litem and representing first responders killed on 9-11, plus shares his story of when he was 8 when his Dad disappeared while working as a veterinarian until a grisly car accident forced a reunion of sorts and more! Check out the amazing Steve Eichenblatt and his latest release on all major platforms and www.stevenscotteichenblatt.com today! #steveeichenblatt #author #florida #practicingattorney #pretendtheyaredead #fatherhood #childhoodtrauma #probonoguardian #firstrepsonders #veternarian #caraccident #spreaker #iheartradio #spotify #applemusic #youtube #anchorfm #bitchute #rumble #mikewagner #themikewagnershow #mikewagnersteveeichenblatt #themikewagnershowsteveeichenblatt
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 5 (01:32):
And more.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Check it out Today, we're here with the amazing gentleman
who's an author and graduate of Florida State University, University,
Florida College of Law, practicing attorney and father of five.
Spend thirty plus years advating for children as a pro bowl,
a guardian at LIDIUM, and also representing the first responders
that are killed in nine to eleven. He has a
new book out with a memoir of resilience and reminder
of how our fathers play in a pivot role of
(01:55):
emotional well being of their children and ways childhood trauma
can be overcome. Book that's called Pretend They're Dead. A
Father's search for the Truth, Live places and gentlemen plus dudes,
a beautiful downtown Orlando. The amazing author graduate of Florida
State University and University of Florida College of Law with
the book Pretend They're Dead, A father Search for the
Truth Multi time Steve, I can blind Steve, Good morning,
(02:17):
good afternoon, get anything.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
Thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, thank you, Mike, And it's an honor to be
here with you today. I really appreciate you taking the
time to talk to me.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
What's great to have you on board.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Steve so Here an author graduate at Florida State University
University of Florida College of Law. You're a praxicing attorney
and a father of five. You spend thirty years av
Came for Children as a pro bono guardian ad litam
and also representing the first responders killed in nine to eleven.
You have a new book which is a memoir of
resilience and a reminder of how our fathers playing a
pivowl role of emotional well being if the children in
(02:49):
ways childhood trauma can be overcome. You had a story
as well too, starting at eight and your dad being Veterinarian.
The book that's called Pretend They're Dead, A father's search
for the truth for getting all.
Speaker 5 (03:00):
Steve tell us how I first got.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Started, first, got started with the book.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
First, got started with you way back, oh, way.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Back when, way back when, well I was I was born,
and I was born in Michigan, actually Michigan State University,
because my father was a veterinarian. He went to school there.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
I was a twin.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Moved to New Jersey shortly thereafter, so I had a
twin sister and a brother, uh, and we were lived
in New Jersey. My parents got divorced when I was
about six or seven. My father left the house. They
were not doing well. When I look back at it,
(03:40):
you know, you don't have that much of memory when
you're six or seven, but you know, kids see and
they see everything, they hear everything, and they My father
was a really hard worker building his practice as a veterinarian.
But he wasn't such a great father or husband. Spent
a lot of time just kind of in his room
(04:00):
and his man cave, whatever you want to call it
back then, just focused on building his veterinary practice. And
I think my mother had enough at some point and
so when I was six or seven, he left the house.
They got divorced. We would see him on occasion, went
(04:20):
through the whole visitation thing. He would leave us on
the curb, not show up. I was playing baseball, he
supposed to be picking up a practice or a game,
wouldn't show up. And eventually he disappeared, and a new
man appeared, and a guy named Richard, and with his kids,
(04:41):
and he became a new dad. So one father left, disappeared,
never came back, and all of a sudden, there's a
new person in my life. This is your dad, these
are your brothers and sisters, and you're gonna listen to him.
And it was it was traumatic. It's traumatic now looking back.
I didn't realize when you're a kid, you kind of
(05:02):
like accept stuff that's thrown at you. But he was
a really difficult person, and it was a tough house
to grow in, to grow up in. Nine people, seven
kids just thrown together. Uh so that's some serious I
call it the Brady Bunch from Hell.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
Oh, that would be a made for TV movie on Netflix.
I'm to think of it.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
That's right, that's right. Well, you know, you never know
what's going on. Next door, right, Like you don't know
what's going on behind the behind the door of somebody's house,
you can, you know, in my family, it was very
important that everybody acted when they were outside the house
like we were this very happy together family, and that
is not the way it was.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Okay, yeah, I'm just getting the whole just of it
as well too.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
That your dad being a veterinarian, and I guess what
was his main reason for having his own practice, his
sincere love for animals or you always want to have
a practice.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
What was this reason behind want to be a veterinarian
his own practice.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Especially you know he had been a he was actually
a parasitologist this I stuff learned later on, and was
in the army for a long time and stationed in France,
and always wanted to get into veterinary school, which is
very difficult to do, and wound up finally getting into Michigan.
I never I never really had the opportunity to ask
(06:27):
him why veterinary medicine. But what I do know from
talking to some of his former employees was that he
was not a people person, but he was great with animals,
so very skilled, very brilliant guy, but was very almost
like on the spectrum, which is sort of a cliche now,
(06:48):
but he was a difficult guy to have a conversation
with m H.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
And plus that you found out later on your bio
is gonna father struggle after he left and try to
get professional help, And of course was advice that a
psychiatrist gave him as well.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
He went through some help. All his advice a psychiatrist.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Gave sure, Well that that goes to the really what
the title of my book was? So you know, for
those people who are listening out there, when you write
a book, you know, it's of course it's very challenging
and difficult, and you kind of pull your hair out
if you have hair, and try to figure out like
line by line, and then when you're done with the book,
your publisher agent says, well, what's the title? And then
(07:32):
it's like, oh my gosh, I gotta have a title
that works and all that and my book. Pretend they
are dead. Here's a copy of it right here, Pretend
they are dead. What happened was that years after he died,
I got a I wound up getting it turned out
he wasn't just a veterinarian. He was also a writer,
and he was a highly skilled writer. And he had
(07:53):
actually taught at the at the New School in New
York in Manhattan, and he published artist goals you know
in Esquire, Playboy Magazine, Time Magazine, and he also kept journals,
wrote journals that he kept for He wrote Birch everything
that happened in his life between nineteen sixty and nineteen
(08:14):
ninety ish. I got all this stuff after he was
after he died. And one of the things that I
was able to get and I didn't know existed, was
when my father left. He wrote a magazine. An article
for magazine is called Hell Yellow, and it described the
last night that he spent with his kids. It's like
(08:35):
the last supper. He knew that he was never going
to see us again. He knew he was giving us
up for adoption, but we stayed over his house. I
didn't know. I was just a kid. Nobody told me
that that was the last time I was going to
see him. So he writes this very detailed story about
us being there at the house and me getting up
(08:56):
in the middle of the night and saying this poem
that's called Hello Yellow. That was the poem, Oh Yellow, Okay,
Hello yellow. So, uh that that was I mean, I
don't remember it, but that's what I came up with.
And in the in the magazine article, he said that
even though he knew that it was the last night
that he's going to spend with us and and we
(09:18):
didn't know, you know, he still acted like everything was normal.
And the reason he did that is because when he
went to a psychiatrist and he had some mental health issues,
the psychiatrist said, just pretend they're dead.
Speaker 5 (09:32):
Oh that's why, okay, And.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
And that's what he did. And that's not it doesn't
seem like great advice, but that's what he did. So
he dropped us off and and we were dead to him,
and ultimately he became dead to us.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
And how soo would you say, that's that's dead to you?
So what ex actually happened to the moment that he
was actually dead or you know, close to it?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
You know, we he dropped this off. I was like
eight years old, had zero contact with him. He lived
in the same town. And I've always said to people, like,
is it better to be adopted when you don't know
your parents? So they don't they don't reject you, like
so you know, they just or you know them and
then they reject you. I mean I was his son,
(10:19):
I was his oldest son, lived in the same town,
and he dropped me off one day and never came back.
That's hard for me to accept as a as a dad.
Now five kids, how you can do that and live
in the same town. But you know, I found out
the truth of what happened, you know, many years later.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Okay, and what was the truth about that? We'll find
out with us Steve Ackenblat and pretend they're dead. A
father search for the truth, but first listened to the
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dot Com. We're here with the amazing author Steve I
can bly of Pretend They're dead. A Father's search for
the Truth Here on the Mike Wadners Show, and he
(13:00):
talked about the truth and find about the truth, and
you know, let's go ahead and hear about the truth.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Who actually did happen?
Speaker 2 (13:07):
So, you know, one of the big events that happened
in my life and one of the traumas was when
I was sixteen years old and I hadn't seen my
biological father for a long time. I'd been adopted by,
you know, another person same as Richard, and he became
my father. I mean in the house, he was my father.
(13:29):
We had unbelievable rules when we first moved in, When
he first moved in with his kids, basically laid the
law down, which was we weren't allowed to walk in
the front door. We weren't allowed to sit on the furniture,
we had to sit on the floor. We were not
allowed to go into the kitchen. We're not allowed to
eat meals with them. We eate meals separately. You know,
(13:50):
there are seven children, and if you violate the rules,
you know, there was a punishment, whether it's physical or emotional.
It's a really hard house to live in because he
was he was a tyrant. He was he was he
was living in it was living in a house where
every every step you wondered, is it going to blow up?
And I is somebody gonna blow up on me? It's
(14:11):
like walking through minefields. You know, you're like the guy,
the point guy, trying to figure out, all right, where
is he? Because I need to avoid him, because I
don't want to get the shit kicked out of me,
because he's my language.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
And it's okay, it's okay, I understand. And what and
what was his occupation?
Speaker 2 (14:27):
He was a he was a chemist in the Bronx,
like a junior chemist or something. We didn't have a
lot of personal conversations. He didn't really if you can
imagine living in a house the man who, other than
being a tyrant, we never he never really talked to
us like people. It was, uh, my mom would, but
he he didn't. And we weren't allowed to talk about
(14:49):
like I don't know what happened to my father, my
biological father. He disappeared. This guy shows up, We get adopted,
and I go through a lot of that in the
in the book, because there was some chaos related to
all those things. And then when I was sixteen years old,
I got a job working at these tennis courts. And
I was at the tennis courts on the fourth of
(15:10):
July of nineteen seventy five, which is a long time ago,
and I held it in. I didn't tell I haven't
told any hadn't told anybody this story right here until
I was in my fifties. So I held this in
for forty something years. I was at the tennis court.
I was sweeping the courts. I was at the end.
I was on the very end court. I was a
clay court, and you take a roller, you sweep. And
(15:34):
I was next to the roadway and I heard the
screeching of car brakes, burnt smell, burned rubber from tires,
you know, when the brakes are hit and this car
is out of control, hit a telephone pole, probably fifty
feet from where I was standing. For your listeners or
for you watching, seeing a car crash and seeing somebody
(15:58):
go through the windshield, is it's not something that you
forget very easily. And I my heart was pounding. I
was just I didn't know what to do. I was
just a kid. I ran to the ran over to
the front of the car. He had gone through the windshield.
His face was battered. Uh, and I went to the payphone.
(16:19):
I ran to the payphone. I'm the only person there.
Ran to the payphone, try to call the operator. Start hearing,
you know, and you know, sirens, police come, ambulances, you know,
neighbors come, that were around the tennis court. And I
walked so I walked back up there. And when I
walked up there, they had this man laid out on
(16:40):
the ground near the near the car. You know, I'm
just a teenager, and I felt this. I felt it's
that feeling when somebody is staring at you, even though
you're out looking at him. You just feel something. You
feel that energy of somebody looking at your back or
whatever it is. And I turned and he was staring
(17:02):
at me. His eye had been cut in half. He
was obviously really bad shape. And the police pulled out
his wallet and said, you know, does anybody know this man?
And I listened, I got on my bike, I rode away,
and for it took me forty years to tell anybody
(17:23):
that that man was my father.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
Oh wow, and here's the one that got killed in
the wreck, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Well he didn't die, he just got serious, severely critically injured.
Let's put it, you know, let's put it that way.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Okay, And then have you heard any word on if
he's progressed, has he healed or anything like that. I
know it's rather sensive, but have you heard any word
after his injuries was he healed?
Speaker 2 (17:50):
I never talked to anybody about it, you know, I
just you know, I was, you know, sixteen years old.
I lived in a house of chaos, a lot of trauma.
I was really quiet it and I just held everything inside,
and uh, I got on my schwind Varsity ten speed
rode to my buddy's house and never told a soul
(18:13):
that I was there.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
And of course, uh, when you when you had the
thing about you know, see or father, inter wreck and
everything like that, if you were to let it out,
did you have this fear of like maybe that you know,
they think you're crazy or is it going to like
you know, like, uh how what what's what's that worms?
Like you know, letting worms out or something like that
or Pandora's box.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, I think that was part of it. I think that,
you know, looking back now, I mean I've I've had
teenage kids. I mean, they know it's hard to talk
to your teenagers no matter what it's just normal. And
then when you're a teenager who lives in trauma, who's
afraid of getting hit, who's afraid of being emotionally abused.
I just didn't share anything with my parents, I mean,
(19:00):
and even something like that, I didn't shore with my parents.
I really had nobody to tell, and I didn't even
allow myself to process it. It took me a long time,
and I didn't even really wonder what happened to him,
even though he was bloodied, and it turned out later
he got two hundred stitches in his face, you know,
you know, he ruptured, spleen, broken ribs. I mean, it
(19:23):
was a really bad crash. I was, I was, and
he was fortunate that I didn't watch him die. But
in some ways I saved his life. Here's your the
son that he hadn't seen for years happens to be there.
And I'm the one who called the cops and there
all those things, But you know, I just kept it inside.
You know, you bury things when you live like that.
(19:45):
You know, you're you read about this with kids who
have been abused, like you just bury it, and so
I just buried it. It was just like another day
in my life. And that's not a healthy thing to do.
But it's what I did.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Now, you said earlier that you got if I'm correct,
you got adopted by another adopted a parent. Was it
like with your mom's second husband, Richard, or they still
married or she divorced Richard during a certain point and
got remarried, or was it like a program where you
got adopted by by another a father of ours marriage
(20:21):
not or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Sure, yeah, she he Richard adopted us. It was kind
of like the Brady Bunch, trying to make us look
like the Brady Bunch, where we all were this big,
happy family. That's what he wanted everybody to believe. And see,
so we all had the same last name. And uh,
you know, they didn't have a great marriage. They wound
to answer your question, they did get divorced like years later.
(20:46):
But you know, my mother was an abused woman. She
was afraid of him. She was, uh, she's afraid of leaving,
and they you know, they there's a lot of violence
in the house. And you know, looking back now and
talking to her now, and he died years ago, but
talking to her now, she knew she should have left,
Like thirty days after she married him. But you know,
(21:09):
this is back in the sixties. She had kids, she
had us, and when she was in her twenties early twenties,
then got divorced. We're the only people in our neighborhood
who were divorced, I mean people, you know. And then
she marries again very quickly, and he's there with his
four kids, and there's a lot of issues there and
they're thrown into our house, and you know, it created
(21:32):
a lot of chaos and uncertainty and tension in the house.
You know, just a lot of tension.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
How'd you go along with your step brothers and step
sisters at that time?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
I got you know, we were all in it together.
I mean, it took a while to kind of assimilate her.
But I was an easy kid, you know. I was
one of those I just kind of went off on
my own. I was really in the sports. And you
know my brother who I consider them all full brothers
and sisters. You know, we were in it together. I
(22:05):
mean it really I got along fine with them, But
like my twin sister didn't necessarily get along fine with
one of my sisters. You know, there was there's always
there's always conflicts and a lot of fighting. But but
but we were definitely in it together, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
And this is also a part whereas it's like you
became a practicing attorney and he spent thirty years avercame
for Chillin'll talk about that with them, Steve, I can
blot and pretend they're dead. You listen to The Mike
Wadner Show at The Mike Wadnershow dot com powered by
Soncrab Studios, brought to professional sponsor The Mike Waidner Show
interush Warbring out There, Me and Muslims are missing. The
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(22:43):
including thirty Squids of Pains and Ken David Salms. Check
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Regna Wagner. Check on Amazon. We'll be back author Steve
ickenblot pretend they're dead after this time.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
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Speaker 6 (23:24):
Hey there, Dana Laxa here, American news anchor. Hey, let
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(23:48):
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The Mike Wagner Show is brought to you by Serena
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Speaker 5 (24:34):
Right place? Right time?
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Tuned into the Mike Wagner Show.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
You heard me?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
We're back on author Steve Akimblad hearing the Mike Waterer's
Show with Pretend They're dead, a father's search for the
truth and later on, you know, after going through the
childhood and everything, you want to become a practicing attorney.
You graduated from Florida State University. At one, at one
precise moment did where you inspired become an attorney?
Speaker 6 (25:02):
I just.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
So you know what happened was, uh, my family moved
us from New Jersey to Sarasota, Florida right before my
senior year of high school, which was which was a
really brutal thing because I lived in New Jersey my
whole life except for when I was born in Michigan
and they just announced we're taking it to Florida. And so,
(25:28):
you know, I had I had friends, I played sports.
I you know, you you establish a life and then
all of a sudden, you moved to Florida from New Jersey.
In Sarasota at that time was like the cattle you know,
it's a there's a cattle county. You know, there's a
lot of agriculture, which is fine, but that's not what
I was used to. And a lot of you know,
(25:49):
guys driving trucks with guns, which I don't have any
problem with, but we weren't used to that, and it
was just a whole different environment, and so we were
I was thrown into a new school. I completely rebelled.
I stopped going to class. You know, it was a
miracle that I even passed. They graduated me. I graduated
(26:09):
with two point one. Yeah. I didn't go to the prom.
I refused to have my picture taken in the yearbook.
I was like, I'm going to do everything my parents
don't want me to do. And of course I realize
now I wasn't hurting them, I was hurting myself. But
I was able to you know, I did well in
the SATs because I was a big reader and so
(26:32):
I could read, and I did well and well enough
to get into Florida State. So I went to Florida
State and I started I was a big you know, Mike,
what part of what saved me? And I think it
is important for parents. And it's a little different now,
but you know, I would read. You know, I would
go to the library to get books and I would
hide in the corner, I'd hide in a closet in
(26:55):
my in my house, just kind of stay out of
the way, and I would read books. And you know,
now people are on there's a million other things other
than books. But back then, you know, you read. And
I got really got into some books by James Mitchener,
who was this kind of scholarly fiction writer, and the
books were all like a thousand pages, and I started
(27:17):
reading about Centennial and Chesapeake and the American Indians, Native Americans.
And when I went up to Florida State, which was
the Seminoles, and still at the Seminoles, I decided I
hated school. I hated going to class where I was like, well,
the Seminoles, I mean, who are they? You know, why
are we the seminoles? And I wound up getting a
job with the Florida governors Council of Indian Affairs because
(27:39):
I wanted to help wanted to help people. So I
wound up, you know, going to work for the for
the for the tribes, like part time. Flunked out of
school because I didn't I was more interested in helping
people than.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
I was.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
You know that I was attending class uh, and I
basically took off. I went to Israel. I I read
another book called The Source, and I was like, I
want to explore Israel. I'm Jewish, explore my roots. And
I went to work on the key Butts, which we've
heard a lot about since October seventh and everything that happened.
(28:15):
But I went to a key Butts. I was all
on my own. My parents, I think I called them
once in a year that I was there, but they
really they I was on my own. I was just
on my own. And I went to Israel and I
started working on a key boots. I started picking food,
driving tractors, you know, just just you know, being in nature,
(28:36):
and I would start I started reading there, and I
started reading self help books and I realized, you know,
no one is going to do this for me. If
I want to get out of the whole victim role
because I had the crap beating out of me my
whole life, I needed to do it myself. And I
started reading self help books and realized, Okay, I need
to get myself together. If I want to help people,
(28:59):
I want to get along. I got to go back
to school, get readmitted, and do well enough to get
into a great law school, which I did University of Florida,
so that you know, my childhood, like, I really wanted
to help kids who had been who were in this,
were in situations like I was, who were stuck, you know,
help families going through divorces. And that's what I started
(29:23):
doing when I when I got out of law school,
I was working. I'm a trial lawyer, so I was
working representing insurance companies, but I was also volunteering as
a guardian ad litem in the juvenile court, representing the
children of either parents who had drug addictions and gave
them up, or parents who or kids who had been
(29:46):
sexually abused. And they appoint lawyers. So I became a lawyer,
and I still do it. I've been doing it for
thirty years, thirty plus years, representing children who are in
the worst situations and trying to help them, you know,
find a way out.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
And plus he also helped out first responders too that
were killed in nine to eleven.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Yeah, that's right. I volunteered. You know, after nine to
eleven there was a call for trial lawyers to take
the training and volunteer to help the families. What happened
was President Bush set up a victim's recovery fund. In fact,
there was a movie a couple of years ago Michael
Keaton was a star called Worth, and it was about
(30:26):
Kenneth Feinberg, who was the judge who basically decided what
every case was worth. They set up this fund because
they didn't want the airlines to get sued by all
the families that people killed in nine to eleven. That
would have destroyed the airline. So they set this fund up.
And I was a lawyer, and I volunteered, went up
(30:49):
to New York and I represented probably fifteen families of
you know, children whose parents were firefighters or fathers or
mothers firefighters nine to eleven. And I was able to
appear in front of Feinberg on numerous occasions, and we
would talk about, Okay, what is this, you know, what's
the firefighter's life worth versus a maintenance worker versus a
(31:13):
Wall Street guy? And he had to make those decisions
and I was part of that.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Do you think Feinberg made the right decisions most of
the situations with nine to eleven everything like that? Or
do you think he might have failed in some marriage
that he could have done better?
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Or I think he did. I think he did an
incredible job. He's a great man, and he had an
impossible task. And he would explain to the families exactly
what he was doing and why, and I thought he
was you know, maybe I'm biased because I really respected
him and I still respect him, but that's an impossible
thing to do. And he would say to the family, Look,
(31:49):
this is impossible. I can't There's no money that's going
to bring your your husband or wife back. But you know,
we can try to make it better. You know, this
is just uh, you know, economically, you know, a firefighter
dies and you know the family doesn't. He's the means
of support, and so that's what he would base it on.
(32:11):
So I would present the economics, I bring an economisty
and I talked to him about the family survivors and
and then he would decide what it was, what it
was worth.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
And of course, you know, being a big part of
you being a father, that you're a father of five
yourselves too, and y'all tell us more about that.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah, No, I mean, I you know, I love kids,
and you know, when you grow up without without a parent,
without a father, and I'm sure without a mother, there's
this huge hole in your heart. And I you know,
because I would I was always jealous of my friends who,
you know, their dads would be out there playing baseball
(32:49):
or playing catch. And you know, for me, I think
it was somewhat somewhat worse because it wasn't that I
didn't have a father, It's just I had these two
There's one man who abandoned me and then another man
who was just brutal and you didn't want to be
around and nobody wanted to be around him. So so
that was really hard. So when I got out of
law school and and got married, and you know, of
(33:10):
course I wanted kids, and you know I'm not. I
wasn't a perfect dad. I mean I had I didn't
have great role models in my marriage. I've been through
a couple of divorces and my exes will tell you,
they will tell you I'm a great guy. Steve's a
really nice guy. He's a great guy, but you know,
he's disconnected. He doesn't know how to connect with with
(33:30):
people and intimate relationships. I mean, that was something that
I've been working on, because when you come through trauma,
there's just a you know, you're different. So for me,
when I had my I had the kids, I spent
every second I could with him. I I coached baseball,
I coach soccer. I would go to their practices. You know,
(33:51):
I was I was always there for them, and and
I made sure that they knew I was there for him,
and so that, you know, I thought that's all I
needed to do that, you know, being a husband and
father was just taking care of the kids. And you know,
it didn't take care of my wis necessarily the way
I should have. Not in a mean way, but just
(34:11):
you know, I had some limitations because of what I
went through. I really, I really did. And then I
wound up adopting my last son, he's now twenty one.
I got married to my college girlfriend, my first girlfriend,
and when I reconnected with her, I realized that she
I never told her that I had been adopted. I
(34:33):
didn't tell her that my last name had been something else.
I'd never told her anything about any of my life.
I had just kept everything inside, everything inside, just hidden.
And she's really helped me, you know, open up and
going to therapy, and I talk about it in the book.
I mean, it's been a it's my One of the
(34:53):
reasons I wrote the book is because I would my
friends would my friends would ask me about things, and
I started telling stories. There always be like, man, you
have the greatest stories. You know you need to you
need to either write a movie or write a book
because some of the stuff you've been through. And you know,
I've always been sort of a risk taker too, so
uh but as far as relationship, and you know, I'm
in open. I mean, here I am talking about this,
(35:15):
you know, going to therapy, trying to figure stuff out.
I can honestly say, like, you know, I don't have
a lot of feeling for my father's you know, it
would be you know, there's that closure or did your closure? Well,
I don't know if you ever get closure. You know
that I love them. I don't know what love means,
but I did find out eventually after my father died,
(35:36):
and I got all that writing that he was tortured
by what he did and and he loved us, and
he wrote a lot about that. So that's in my
in my uh, in my book.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
And do you feel you have the capacity or able
to forgive your biological dad and your adoptive dad?
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Yeah, I mean I understand it now, Like my biological
father was just stuff. He had a lot of problems.
He had a drug issue, it turned out, and he
had hired a private investigator to find me, and he
had spent a lot he would You know, this is
all because he he left thousands of pages of what
(36:16):
he did and I incorporated and he was a hell
of a writer, and I incorporated a lot of that
in the in the book, so you can read, like,
you know, his version of the car crash, you know,
his version of when I showed up in his office
one day. He wrote it all in detail. So and
he was tortured. I mean he would drive by our house,
you know, to see if he could see us. He
(36:38):
wouldn't stop, and he was forbidded from doing a lot
of things. And when I did finally meet him, he
was an injured person. You know, he'd suffered a really
bad injury in the car crash. It was really a
hard person to talk to. But he wrote beautifully and
he wrote about his love for us, and so I realized,
you know, I forgave him. I forgive him. I wrote
(36:58):
him a letter as part of the book after he died.
He's like a ghost man, you know. I learned about
him when he was dead because he left it all.
There were things he couldn't say to me in person.
So I forgave him. As far as my adopted father,
I really it's not that I forgive him. I don't
care enough about him to forgive them.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
And also too that what's the advice you can give
the others to glad to deal with a paranalistrangement?
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, I mean I think that the thing is really important.
And look, you know, everybody in this h in our
country and this world, goes through a lot of well,
you know, a lot of dysfunction. Uh, And I've really
noticed it since COVID. You know, there's a lot of
people that are dealing with anxiety, dealing with anger issues,
(37:45):
dealing with you know just the world that has changed.
And I used to talk a lot to high school
kids and parents, and you know, my advice is if
you're if you're a parent, even when you get mad
at your kids, make sure they know every day that
you love them. You need to tell them that you
love them, just just even if you have to punish them.
You need to let they need to know that you're
(38:05):
there for them, that you can that you'll be there
for them, and that they can come to you when
they have an issue or a serious problem. So you
really need to, like you know, you need to tell
them you love them, text them whatever it is. Even
if they don't text. You don't get mad if your
kids don't text you back. A lot of times, they
just they know you're there. So that's really important. So
(38:26):
and then you know, for parents that are going through divorce,
I think it's important for parents to understand that your
kids hear everything, that that they are collateral damage, just
like a bond that goes off and innocent people are hurt.
The kids are innocent. So no matter how much you
hate your husband or your wife, keep in mind that
(38:47):
do what's right for the kids. And I'm not saying
don't get divorced. Some people should be divorced, but just
you know, try to get along when you're in front
of them, when you're in public. You know, you see
these families who they can't they have to see the
different areas, you know. It just you know, do your
best to maintain, you know, some kind of unit for
the kids.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
And how about overcoming childhood trauma? What's the best advice
you can gift for that?
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I mean, I think mental health therapy. I think there's
there's nothing wrong with going to a therapists and talking
through it. I think it's important to have really good friends,
develop relationships, friendships, people that you can talk to outside
of even your marriage, that you can share with. But
don't be afraid. Now there's lots of resources online. You
(39:35):
can get online counseling. I mean everybody that everybody in
this world right now could use a little bit of
help and support and and be transparent, be honest. You know,
if yodo a therapist, don't hold back. You know I
carried secrets around until I was fifty years old. You
know that I didn't share. I mean, it burned a
(39:58):
hole in me, you know it really, I didn't even
realize and sharing my story, you know, in my book.
I mean I'm not a person that normally exposes everything.
You know, I'm an athlete, I'm a lawyer, I'm a
fund all these things. So now all of a sudden
my book, I'm very vulnerable. You know, it's I'm sensitive
(40:19):
and that's not normally. Uh, you know, people are surprised.
But yeah, share your story, get help, you know, get support,
have good friendships, stay away from toxic people. Don't be
a victim. You know, we're all victims, you know, get
off your button, set goals, and move forward.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
And that's really great advice during these times. And where
can you find your book? And what's your website?
Speaker 4 (40:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Sure, so my book is called Pretend They Are Dead.
Put it up one more time for you, Pretend they
are Dead. My name is Steve Iikenblatt, and I have
a website. It's called Steven Scott Iikenblatt if you can
spell it, and I can be found. And you know,
if anyone is listening to this and they and they
(41:04):
need direction in their life somehow, or they need a therapist,
or they're they're just confused, man, just call me. I
can be found, you know, I give my number out
all the time the kids that that I speak with,
and you know, and I'll help best I can. But
you know, go go to my go to Amazon buy
(41:25):
my book, and I think you like it.
Speaker 5 (41:28):
And what's the website again?
Speaker 2 (41:30):
It's well, I have a I have a law firm
website that's called page and ike and blat. And then
there's a I have an author website. It's called Steven
scott ikenblat dot com.
Speaker 5 (41:42):
We will certainly check that out. What's worth of multi
time Steve?
Speaker 3 (41:46):
I can black pretend they're Dad here on the Mic
Waiter Show, Steve A few more things?
Speaker 5 (41:50):
What else can we expect me twenty twenty five and beyond.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Oh wow, well, you know, other than my other than
my book, I mean, I continue to work work in
my law firm. I still try cases, and I still
work on helping people, and you know, I'm just going
to keep moving forward. And I just really I have
a big, big heart for those things. So and I'm
going to keep working on myself. I'm still working on
(42:16):
my relationships and you know, and I let my my
one of my sons is in Alaska right now on
a you know, a sake salmon boat, you know, and
other sons. A lawyer and other sons. And you know,
I just let my my one daughter is a comedian.
I really support my kids as much as I can
and and I'm going to keep doing that.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
And I think that's great as well too during these times.
And who do you consider biggest influence.
Speaker 5 (42:41):
In the career?
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Who is my biggest influence?
Speaker 5 (42:45):
Correct?
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Yes, you know, that's a really man, that's a that's
a really difficult question because I certainly can't turn to
my I can't turn to my to my father's I
don't think it's a particular person as much. You know,
maybe my grandfather, but books, you know, I mean, I
really had to do it on my own. I didn't
have that mentor I wish I did. I think that's
(43:08):
a really important thing. But I had a lot of
good friendships, a lot of good relationships and friendships that
I'm still that. I have a lot of friends I've
had for fifty years.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Okay, And that's really amazing as well. And what's the
best advice you can give the a btce this point
to uh, I'm sorry to what to a boy in general?
Speaker 5 (43:27):
Best advice anybody?
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yeah, I think the best advice is, you know, if
you know, don't be afraid to help people. You know,
don't feel sorry for yourself, you know, get off your
tailbone and take care of yourself, you know, move forward,
stay away from toxic people, and just do the best
you can, really do the best you can.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
And I think that's great advice during this time as well.
We're here with the author, Steve Ackenblat of Pretend Their Dead,
a Father search for the Truth here on the Mike
Whinner Show.
Speaker 5 (43:56):
Steve, a very thank you for time.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
You've been absolut amazing, learned a lot looking forward and
soon keeps up to the jate, keeping touch laugh a
you back. What's your website? How do people contact you?
Whoring people will purchase or check out your book?
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Where do they contact me?
Speaker 5 (44:11):
Yeah? Website and everything.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Yeah website, but so my website would be at www
dot Stevenscottaikeinblatt dot com. My book Pretend They're Dead can
be purchased on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I've got
an audio audible version coming out. I've got a hardback,
i got a paperback, and I'm already getting I've got
(44:35):
like I've got a lot of good reviews. Pretty pretty
excited about It's only been out a few days and
I've gotten some really good feedback, so really excited about that, and.
Speaker 5 (44:45):
We're excited as well too. Steve.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
Once again, Steve, a very big thank you for telling
people absolutely fantastic, looking forward having soon, keeps up today,
keep in touch, laugh have you back.
Speaker 5 (44:54):
We wish out best and Steve, you definitely have a
great feature.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
You thanks a lot of Mike as really a pleasure,
is great meeting you, so thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
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Speaker 6 (45:32):
Hey there, Dana Laxa here, American news anchor. Hey, let
me ask you something real quick. Why do you read
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I have his book right here, and it's based on
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(45:56):
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And more.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Check it out Today, we're here with the amazing gentleman
who's an author and graduate of Florida State University, University,
Florida College of Law, practicing attorney and father of five.
Spend thirty plus years advating for children as a pro bowl,
a guardian at LIDIUM, and also representing the first responders
that are killed in nine to eleven. He has a
new book out with a memoir of resilience and reminder
of how our fathers play in a pivot role of
(01:55):
emotional well being of their children and ways childhood trauma
can be overcome. Book that's called Pretend They're Dead. A
Father's search for the Truth, Live places and gentlemen plus dudes,
a beautiful downtown Orlando. The amazing author graduate of Florida
State University and University of Florida College of Law with
the book Pretend They're Dead, A father Search for the
Truth Multi time Steve, I can blind Steve, Good morning,
(02:17):
good afternoon, get anything.
Speaker 5 (02:18):
Thanks for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Yeah, thank you, Mike, And it's an honor to be
here with you today. I really appreciate you taking the
time to talk to me.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
What's great to have you on board.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Steve so Here an author graduate at Florida State University
University of Florida College of Law. You're a praxicing attorney
and a father of five. You spend thirty years av
Came for Children as a pro bono guardian ad litam
and also representing the first responders killed in nine to eleven.
You have a new book which is a memoir of
resilience and a reminder of how our fathers playing a
pivowl role of emotional well being if the children in
(02:49):
ways childhood trauma can be overcome. You had a story
as well too, starting at eight and your dad being Veterinarian.
The book that's called Pretend They're Dead, A father's search
for the truth for getting all.
Speaker 5 (03:00):
Steve tell us how I first got.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Started, first, got started with the book.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
First, got started with you way back, oh, way.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Back when, way back when, well I was I was born,
and I was born in Michigan, actually Michigan State University,
because my father was a veterinarian. He went to school there.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
I was a twin.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Moved to New Jersey shortly thereafter, so I had a
twin sister and a brother, uh, and we were lived
in New Jersey. My parents got divorced when I was
about six or seven. My father left the house. They
were not doing well. When I look back at it,
(03:40):
you know, you don't have that much of memory when
you're six or seven, but you know, kids see and
they see everything, they hear everything, and they My father
was a really hard worker building his practice as a veterinarian.
But he wasn't such a great father or husband. Spent
a lot of time just kind of in his room
(04:00):
and his man cave, whatever you want to call it
back then, just focused on building his veterinary practice. And
I think my mother had enough at some point and
so when I was six or seven, he left the house.
They got divorced. We would see him on occasion, went
(04:20):
through the whole visitation thing. He would leave us on
the curb, not show up. I was playing baseball, he
supposed to be picking up a practice or a game,
wouldn't show up. And eventually he disappeared, and a new
man appeared, and a guy named Richard, and with his kids,
(04:41):
and he became a new dad. So one father left, disappeared,
never came back, and all of a sudden, there's a
new person in my life. This is your dad, these
are your brothers and sisters, and you're gonna listen to him.
And it was it was traumatic. It's traumatic now looking back.
I didn't realize when you're a kid, you kind of
(05:02):
like accept stuff that's thrown at you. But he was
a really difficult person, and it was a tough house
to grow in, to grow up in. Nine people, seven
kids just thrown together. Uh so that's some serious I
call it the Brady Bunch from Hell.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
Oh, that would be a made for TV movie on Netflix.
I'm to think of it.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
That's right, that's right. Well, you know, you never know
what's going on. Next door, right, Like you don't know
what's going on behind the behind the door of somebody's house,
you can, you know, in my family, it was very
important that everybody acted when they were outside the house
like we were this very happy together family, and that
is not the way it was.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
Okay, yeah, I'm just getting the whole just of it
as well too.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
That your dad being a veterinarian, and I guess what
was his main reason for having his own practice, his
sincere love for animals or you always want to have
a practice.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
What was this reason behind want to be a veterinarian
his own practice.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Especially you know he had been a he was actually
a parasitologist this I stuff learned later on, and was
in the army for a long time and stationed in France,
and always wanted to get into veterinary school, which is
very difficult to do, and wound up finally getting into Michigan.
I never I never really had the opportunity to ask
(06:27):
him why veterinary medicine. But what I do know from
talking to some of his former employees was that he
was not a people person, but he was great with animals,
so very skilled, very brilliant guy, but was very almost
like on the spectrum, which is sort of a cliche now,
(06:48):
but he was a difficult guy to have a conversation
with m H.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
And plus that you found out later on your bio
is gonna father struggle after he left and try to
get professional help, And of course was advice that a
psychiatrist gave him as well.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
He went through some help. All his advice a psychiatrist.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Gave sure, Well that that goes to the really what
the title of my book was? So you know, for
those people who are listening out there, when you write
a book, you know, it's of course it's very challenging
and difficult, and you kind of pull your hair out
if you have hair, and try to figure out like
line by line, and then when you're done with the book,
your publisher agent says, well, what's the title? And then
(07:32):
it's like, oh my gosh, I gotta have a title
that works and all that and my book. Pretend they
are dead. Here's a copy of it right here, Pretend
they are dead. What happened was that years after he died,
I got a I wound up getting it turned out
he wasn't just a veterinarian. He was also a writer,
and he was a highly skilled writer. And he had
(07:53):
actually taught at the at the New School in New
York in Manhattan, and he published artist goals you know
in Esquire, Playboy Magazine, Time Magazine, and he also kept journals,
wrote journals that he kept for He wrote Birch everything
that happened in his life between nineteen sixty and nineteen
(08:14):
ninety ish. I got all this stuff after he was
after he died. And one of the things that I
was able to get and I didn't know existed, was
when my father left. He wrote a magazine. An article
for magazine is called Hell Yellow, and it described the
last night that he spent with his kids. It's like
(08:35):
the last supper. He knew that he was never going
to see us again. He knew he was giving us
up for adoption, but we stayed over his house. I
didn't know. I was just a kid. Nobody told me
that that was the last time I was going to
see him. So he writes this very detailed story about
us being there at the house and me getting up
(08:56):
in the middle of the night and saying this poem
that's called Hello Yellow. That was the poem, Oh Yellow, Okay,
Hello yellow. So, uh that that was I mean, I
don't remember it, but that's what I came up with.
And in the in the magazine article, he said that
even though he knew that it was the last night
that he's going to spend with us and and we
(09:18):
didn't know, you know, he still acted like everything was normal.
And the reason he did that is because when he
went to a psychiatrist and he had some mental health issues,
the psychiatrist said, just pretend they're dead.
Speaker 5 (09:32):
Oh that's why, okay, And.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
And that's what he did. And that's not it doesn't
seem like great advice, but that's what he did. So
he dropped us off and and we were dead to him,
and ultimately he became dead to us.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
And how soo would you say, that's that's dead to you?
So what ex actually happened to the moment that he
was actually dead or you know, close to it?
Speaker 2 (09:58):
You know, we he dropped this off. I was like
eight years old, had zero contact with him. He lived
in the same town. And I've always said to people, like,
is it better to be adopted when you don't know
your parents? So they don't they don't reject you, like
so you know, they just or you know them and
then they reject you. I mean I was his son,
(10:19):
I was his oldest son, lived in the same town,
and he dropped me off one day and never came back.
That's hard for me to accept as a as a dad.
Now five kids, how you can do that and live
in the same town. But you know, I found out
the truth of what happened, you know, many years later.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Okay, and what was the truth about that? We'll find
out with us Steve Ackenblat and pretend they're dead. A
father search for the truth, but first listened to the
Mike Weders Show up the Mike Weddershow dot compowered by
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(12:16):
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The Great Books, Merchandise and more and sports, The Mike
Wenders Show and ankrafm PayPal and The Mic Winners Show
dot Com. We're here with the amazing author Steve I
can bly of Pretend They're dead. A Father's search for
the Truth Here on the Mike Wadners Show, and he
(13:00):
talked about the truth and find about the truth, and
you know, let's go ahead and hear about the truth.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
Who actually did happen?
Speaker 2 (13:07):
So, you know, one of the big events that happened
in my life and one of the traumas was when
I was sixteen years old and I hadn't seen my
biological father for a long time. I'd been adopted by,
you know, another person same as Richard, and he became
my father. I mean in the house, he was my father.
(13:29):
We had unbelievable rules when we first moved in, When
he first moved in with his kids, basically laid the
law down, which was we weren't allowed to walk in
the front door. We weren't allowed to sit on the furniture,
we had to sit on the floor. We were not
allowed to go into the kitchen. We're not allowed to
eat meals with them. We eate meals separately. You know,
(13:50):
there are seven children, and if you violate the rules,
you know, there was a punishment, whether it's physical or emotional.
It's a really hard house to live in because he
was he was a tyrant. He was he was he
was living in it was living in a house where
every every step you wondered, is it going to blow up?
And I is somebody gonna blow up on me? It's
(14:11):
like walking through minefields. You know, you're like the guy,
the point guy, trying to figure out, all right, where
is he? Because I need to avoid him, because I
don't want to get the shit kicked out of me,
because he's my language.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
And it's okay, it's okay, I understand. And what and
what was his occupation?
Speaker 2 (14:27):
He was a he was a chemist in the Bronx,
like a junior chemist or something. We didn't have a
lot of personal conversations. He didn't really if you can
imagine living in a house the man who, other than
being a tyrant, we never he never really talked to
us like people. It was, uh, my mom would, but
he he didn't. And we weren't allowed to talk about
(14:49):
like I don't know what happened to my father, my
biological father. He disappeared. This guy shows up, We get adopted,
and I go through a lot of that in the
in the book, because there was some chaos related to
all those things. And then when I was sixteen years old,
I got a job working at these tennis courts. And
I was at the tennis courts on the fourth of
(15:10):
July of nineteen seventy five, which is a long time ago,
and I held it in. I didn't tell I haven't
told any hadn't told anybody this story right here until
I was in my fifties. So I held this in
for forty something years. I was at the tennis court.
I was sweeping the courts. I was at the end.
I was on the very end court. I was a
clay court, and you take a roller, you sweep. And
(15:34):
I was next to the roadway and I heard the
screeching of car brakes, burnt smell, burned rubber from tires,
you know, when the brakes are hit and this car
is out of control, hit a telephone pole, probably fifty
feet from where I was standing. For your listeners or
for you watching, seeing a car crash and seeing somebody
(15:58):
go through the windshield, is it's not something that you
forget very easily. And I my heart was pounding. I
was just I didn't know what to do. I was
just a kid. I ran to the ran over to
the front of the car. He had gone through the windshield.
His face was battered. Uh, and I went to the payphone.
(16:19):
I ran to the payphone. I'm the only person there.
Ran to the payphone, try to call the operator. Start hearing,
you know, and you know, sirens, police come, ambulances, you know,
neighbors come, that were around the tennis court. And I
walked so I walked back up there. And when I
walked up there, they had this man laid out on
(16:40):
the ground near the near the car. You know, I'm
just a teenager, and I felt this. I felt it's
that feeling when somebody is staring at you, even though
you're out looking at him. You just feel something. You
feel that energy of somebody looking at your back or
whatever it is. And I turned and he was staring
(17:02):
at me. His eye had been cut in half. He
was obviously really bad shape. And the police pulled out
his wallet and said, you know, does anybody know this man?
And I listened, I got on my bike, I rode away,
and for it took me forty years to tell anybody
(17:23):
that that man was my father.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
Oh wow, and here's the one that got killed in
the wreck, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Well he didn't die, he just got serious, severely critically injured.
Let's put it, you know, let's put it that way.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Okay, And then have you heard any word on if
he's progressed, has he healed or anything like that. I
know it's rather sensive, but have you heard any word
after his injuries was he healed?
Speaker 2 (17:50):
I never talked to anybody about it, you know, I
just you know, I was, you know, sixteen years old.
I lived in a house of chaos, a lot of trauma.
I was really quiet it and I just held everything inside,
and uh, I got on my schwind Varsity ten speed
rode to my buddy's house and never told a soul
(18:13):
that I was there.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
And of course, uh, when you when you had the
thing about you know, see or father, inter wreck and
everything like that, if you were to let it out,
did you have this fear of like maybe that you know,
they think you're crazy or is it going to like
you know, like, uh how what what's what's that worms?
Like you know, letting worms out or something like that
or Pandora's box.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Yeah, I think that was part of it. I think that,
you know, looking back now, I mean I've I've had
teenage kids. I mean, they know it's hard to talk
to your teenagers no matter what it's just normal. And
then when you're a teenager who lives in trauma, who's
afraid of getting hit, who's afraid of being emotionally abused.
I just didn't share anything with my parents, I mean,
(19:00):
and even something like that, I didn't shore with my parents.
I really had nobody to tell, and I didn't even
allow myself to process it. It took me a long time,
and I didn't even really wonder what happened to him,
even though he was bloodied, and it turned out later
he got two hundred stitches in his face, you know,
you know, he ruptured, spleen, broken ribs. I mean, it
(19:23):
was a really bad crash. I was, I was, and
he was fortunate that I didn't watch him die. But
in some ways I saved his life. Here's your the
son that he hadn't seen for years happens to be there.
And I'm the one who called the cops and there
all those things, But you know, I just kept it inside.
You know, you bury things when you live like that.
(19:45):
You know, you're you read about this with kids who
have been abused, like you just bury it, and so
I just buried it. It was just like another day
in my life. And that's not a healthy thing to do.
But it's what I did.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Now, you said earlier that you got if I'm correct,
you got adopted by another adopted a parent. Was it
like with your mom's second husband, Richard, or they still
married or she divorced Richard during a certain point and
got remarried, or was it like a program where you
got adopted by by another a father of ours marriage
(20:21):
not or anything like that.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Sure, yeah, she he Richard adopted us. It was kind
of like the Brady Bunch, trying to make us look
like the Brady Bunch, where we all were this big,
happy family. That's what he wanted everybody to believe. And see,
so we all had the same last name. And uh,
you know, they didn't have a great marriage. They wound
to answer your question, they did get divorced like years later.
(20:46):
But you know, my mother was an abused woman. She
was afraid of him. She was, uh, she's afraid of leaving,
and they you know, they there's a lot of violence
in the house. And you know, looking back now and
talking to her now, and he died years ago, but
talking to her now, she knew she should have left,
Like thirty days after she married him. But you know,
(21:09):
this is back in the sixties. She had kids, she
had us, and when she was in her twenties early twenties,
then got divorced. We're the only people in our neighborhood
who were divorced, I mean people, you know. And then
she marries again very quickly, and he's there with his
four kids, and there's a lot of issues there and
they're thrown into our house, and you know, it created
(21:32):
a lot of chaos and uncertainty and tension in the house.
You know, just a lot of tension.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
How'd you go along with your step brothers and step
sisters at that time?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
I got you know, we were all in it together.
I mean, it took a while to kind of assimilate her.
But I was an easy kid, you know. I was
one of those I just kind of went off on
my own. I was really in the sports. And you
know my brother who I consider them all full brothers
and sisters. You know, we were in it together. I
(22:05):
mean it really I got along fine with them, But
like my twin sister didn't necessarily get along fine with
one of my sisters. You know, there was there's always
there's always conflicts and a lot of fighting. But but
but we were definitely in it together, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
And this is also a part whereas it's like you
became a practicing attorney and he spent thirty years avercame
for Chillin'll talk about that with them, Steve, I can
blot and pretend they're dead. You listen to The Mike
Wadner Show at The Mike Wadnershow dot com powered by
Soncrab Studios, brought to professional sponsor The Mike Waidner Show
interush Warbring out There, Me and Muslims are missing. The
Sweet Samist by Sarregna Wagner, based on Life of Dead,
(22:43):
including thirty Squids of Pains and Ken David Salms. Check
out their jury of the Sweet sawmist keyword Sweet samis
Regna Wagner. Check on Amazon. We'll be back author Steve
ickenblot pretend they're dead after this time.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
The Mike Wagner Show is powered by Sonic Web Studios.
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(23:17):
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Speaker 6 (23:24):
Hey there, Dana Laxa here, American news anchor. Hey, let
me ask you something real quick. Why do you read
a book. You're buying a story, a thought, a message,
and a good book entertains and inspires. And that's exactly
what a missing by award winning author me On Ziadas.
I have his book right here, and it's based on
real events with relatable characters that hook you from start
(23:48):
to finish. I personally love this book. It's super powerful
and meaningful. You can actually get it on Amazon right now.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
The Mike Wagner Show is brought to you by Serena
Wagner's book This Week Saw. It's now avelve on Ms.
This book includes thirty exquisite paintings by well known and
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us a new perspective on his life in this book
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(24:17):
of love, betrayal, repentance, and more. It also offers advice
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Check out the book The Sweet Salmist by Serena Wagner,
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this is Ray Powers and boy are you in luck?
Speaker 5 (24:34):
Right place? Right time?
Speaker 3 (24:36):
Tuned into the Mike Wagner Show.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
You heard me?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
We're back on author Steve Akimblad hearing the Mike Waterer's
Show with Pretend They're dead, a father's search for the
truth and later on, you know, after going through the
childhood and everything, you want to become a practicing attorney.
You graduated from Florida State University. At one, at one
precise moment did where you inspired become an attorney?
Speaker 6 (25:02):
I just.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
So you know what happened was, uh, my family moved
us from New Jersey to Sarasota, Florida right before my
senior year of high school, which was which was a
really brutal thing because I lived in New Jersey my
whole life except for when I was born in Michigan
and they just announced we're taking it to Florida. And so,
(25:28):
you know, I had I had friends, I played sports.
I you know, you you establish a life and then
all of a sudden, you moved to Florida from New Jersey.
In Sarasota at that time was like the cattle you know,
it's a there's a cattle county. You know, there's a
lot of agriculture, which is fine, but that's not what
I was used to. And a lot of you know,
(25:49):
guys driving trucks with guns, which I don't have any
problem with, but we weren't used to that, and it
was just a whole different environment, and so we were
I was thrown into a new school. I completely rebelled.
I stopped going to class. You know, it was a
miracle that I even passed. They graduated me. I graduated
(26:09):
with two point one. Yeah. I didn't go to the prom.
I refused to have my picture taken in the yearbook.
I was like, I'm going to do everything my parents
don't want me to do. And of course I realize
now I wasn't hurting them, I was hurting myself. But
I was able to you know, I did well in
the SATs because I was a big reader and so
(26:32):
I could read, and I did well and well enough
to get into Florida State. So I went to Florida
State and I started I was a big you know, Mike,
what part of what saved me? And I think it
is important for parents. And it's a little different now,
but you know, I would read. You know, I would
go to the library to get books and I would
hide in the corner, I'd hide in a closet in
(26:55):
my in my house, just kind of stay out of
the way, and I would read books. And you know,
now people are on there's a million other things other
than books. But back then, you know, you read. And
I got really got into some books by James Mitchener,
who was this kind of scholarly fiction writer, and the
books were all like a thousand pages, and I started
(27:17):
reading about Centennial and Chesapeake and the American Indians, Native Americans.
And when I went up to Florida State, which was
the Seminoles, and still at the Seminoles, I decided I
hated school. I hated going to class where I was like, well,
the Seminoles, I mean, who are they? You know, why
are we the seminoles? And I wound up getting a
job with the Florida governors Council of Indian Affairs because
(27:39):
I wanted to help wanted to help people. So I
wound up, you know, going to work for the for
the for the tribes, like part time. Flunked out of
school because I didn't I was more interested in helping
people than.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
I was.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
You know that I was attending class uh, and I
basically took off. I went to Israel. I I read
another book called The Source, and I was like, I
want to explore Israel. I'm Jewish, explore my roots. And
I went to work on the key Butts, which we've
heard a lot about since October seventh and everything that happened.
(28:15):
But I went to a key Butts. I was all
on my own. My parents, I think I called them
once in a year that I was there, but they
really they I was on my own. I was just
on my own. And I went to Israel and I
started working on a key boots. I started picking food,
driving tractors, you know, just just you know, being in nature,
(28:36):
and I would start I started reading there, and I
started reading self help books and I realized, you know,
no one is going to do this for me. If
I want to get out of the whole victim role
because I had the crap beating out of me my
whole life, I needed to do it myself. And I
started reading self help books and realized, Okay, I need
to get myself together. If I want to help people,
(28:59):
I want to get along. I got to go back
to school, get readmitted, and do well enough to get
into a great law school, which I did University of Florida,
so that you know, my childhood, like, I really wanted
to help kids who had been who were in this,
were in situations like I was, who were stuck, you know,
help families going through divorces. And that's what I started
(29:23):
doing when I when I got out of law school,
I was working. I'm a trial lawyer, so I was
working representing insurance companies, but I was also volunteering as
a guardian ad litem in the juvenile court, representing the
children of either parents who had drug addictions and gave
them up, or parents who or kids who had been
(29:46):
sexually abused. And they appoint lawyers. So I became a lawyer,
and I still do it. I've been doing it for
thirty years, thirty plus years, representing children who are in
the worst situations and trying to help them, you know,
find a way out.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
And plus he also helped out first responders too that
were killed in nine to eleven.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Yeah, that's right. I volunteered. You know, after nine to
eleven there was a call for trial lawyers to take
the training and volunteer to help the families. What happened
was President Bush set up a victim's recovery fund. In fact,
there was a movie a couple of years ago Michael
Keaton was a star called Worth, and it was about
(30:26):
Kenneth Feinberg, who was the judge who basically decided what
every case was worth. They set up this fund because
they didn't want the airlines to get sued by all
the families that people killed in nine to eleven. That
would have destroyed the airline. So they set this fund up.
And I was a lawyer, and I volunteered, went up
(30:49):
to New York and I represented probably fifteen families of
you know, children whose parents were firefighters or fathers or
mothers firefighters nine to eleven. And I was able to
appear in front of Feinberg on numerous occasions, and we
would talk about, Okay, what is this, you know, what's
the firefighter's life worth versus a maintenance worker versus a
(31:13):
Wall Street guy? And he had to make those decisions
and I was part of that.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Do you think Feinberg made the right decisions most of
the situations with nine to eleven everything like that? Or
do you think he might have failed in some marriage
that he could have done better?
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Or I think he did. I think he did an
incredible job. He's a great man, and he had an
impossible task. And he would explain to the families exactly
what he was doing and why, and I thought he
was you know, maybe I'm biased because I really respected
him and I still respect him, but that's an impossible
thing to do. And he would say to the family, Look,
(31:49):
this is impossible. I can't There's no money that's going
to bring your your husband or wife back. But you know,
we can try to make it better. You know, this
is just uh, you know, economically, you know, a firefighter
dies and you know the family doesn't. He's the means
of support, and so that's what he would base it on.
(32:11):
So I would present the economics, I bring an economisty
and I talked to him about the family survivors and
and then he would decide what it was, what it
was worth.
Speaker 3 (32:21):
And of course, you know, being a big part of
you being a father, that you're a father of five
yourselves too, and y'all tell us more about that.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah, No, I mean, I you know, I love kids,
and you know, when you grow up without without a parent,
without a father, and I'm sure without a mother, there's
this huge hole in your heart. And I you know,
because I would I was always jealous of my friends who,
you know, their dads would be out there playing baseball
(32:49):
or playing catch. And you know, for me, I think
it was somewhat somewhat worse because it wasn't that I
didn't have a father, It's just I had these two
There's one man who abandoned me and then another man
who was just brutal and you didn't want to be
around and nobody wanted to be around him. So so
that was really hard. So when I got out of
law school and and got married, and you know, of
(33:10):
course I wanted kids, and you know I'm not. I
wasn't a perfect dad. I mean I had I didn't
have great role models in my marriage. I've been through
a couple of divorces and my exes will tell you,
they will tell you I'm a great guy. Steve's a
really nice guy. He's a great guy, but you know,
he's disconnected. He doesn't know how to connect with with
(33:30):
people and intimate relationships. I mean, that was something that
I've been working on, because when you come through trauma,
there's just a you know, you're different. So for me,
when I had my I had the kids, I spent
every second I could with him. I I coached baseball,
I coach soccer. I would go to their practices. You know,
(33:51):
I was I was always there for them, and and
I made sure that they knew I was there for him,
and so that, you know, I thought that's all I
needed to do that, you know, being a husband and
father was just taking care of the kids. And you know,
it didn't take care of my wis necessarily the way
I should have. Not in a mean way, but just
(34:11):
you know, I had some limitations because of what I
went through. I really, I really did. And then I
wound up adopting my last son, he's now twenty one.
I got married to my college girlfriend, my first girlfriend,
and when I reconnected with her, I realized that she
I never told her that I had been adopted. I
(34:33):
didn't tell her that my last name had been something else.
I'd never told her anything about any of my life.
I had just kept everything inside, everything inside, just hidden.
And she's really helped me, you know, open up and
going to therapy, and I talk about it in the book.
I mean, it's been a it's my One of the
(34:53):
reasons I wrote the book is because I would my
friends would my friends would ask me about things, and
I started telling stories. There always be like, man, you
have the greatest stories. You know you need to you
need to either write a movie or write a book
because some of the stuff you've been through. And you know,
I've always been sort of a risk taker too, so
uh but as far as relationship, and you know, I'm
in open. I mean, here I am talking about this,
(35:15):
you know, going to therapy, trying to figure stuff out.
I can honestly say, like, you know, I don't have
a lot of feeling for my father's you know, it
would be you know, there's that closure or did your closure? Well,
I don't know if you ever get closure. You know
that I love them. I don't know what love means,
but I did find out eventually after my father died,
(35:36):
and I got all that writing that he was tortured
by what he did and and he loved us, and
he wrote a lot about that. So that's in my
in my uh, in my book.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
And do you feel you have the capacity or able
to forgive your biological dad and your adoptive dad?
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Yeah, I mean I understand it now, Like my biological
father was just stuff. He had a lot of problems.
He had a drug issue, it turned out, and he
had hired a private investigator to find me, and he
had spent a lot he would You know, this is
all because he he left thousands of pages of what
(36:16):
he did and I incorporated and he was a hell
of a writer, and I incorporated a lot of that
in the in the book, so you can read, like,
you know, his version of the car crash, you know,
his version of when I showed up in his office
one day. He wrote it all in detail. So and
he was tortured. I mean he would drive by our house,
you know, to see if he could see us. He
(36:38):
wouldn't stop, and he was forbidded from doing a lot
of things. And when I did finally meet him, he
was an injured person. You know, he'd suffered a really
bad injury in the car crash. It was really a
hard person to talk to. But he wrote beautifully and
he wrote about his love for us, and so I realized,
you know, I forgave him. I forgive him. I wrote
(36:58):
him a letter as part of the book after he died.
He's like a ghost man, you know. I learned about
him when he was dead because he left it all.
There were things he couldn't say to me in person.
So I forgave him. As far as my adopted father,
I really it's not that I forgive him. I don't
care enough about him to forgive them.
Speaker 3 (37:17):
And also too that what's the advice you can give
the others to glad to deal with a paranalistrangement?
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, I mean I think that the thing is really important.
And look, you know, everybody in this h in our
country and this world, goes through a lot of well,
you know, a lot of dysfunction. Uh, And I've really
noticed it since COVID. You know, there's a lot of
people that are dealing with anxiety, dealing with anger issues,
(37:45):
dealing with you know just the world that has changed.
And I used to talk a lot to high school
kids and parents, and you know, my advice is if
you're if you're a parent, even when you get mad
at your kids, make sure they know every day that
you love them. You need to tell them that you
love them, just just even if you have to punish them.
You need to let they need to know that you're
(38:05):
there for them, that you can that you'll be there
for them, and that they can come to you when
they have an issue or a serious problem. So you
really need to, like you know, you need to tell
them you love them, text them whatever it is. Even
if they don't text. You don't get mad if your
kids don't text you back. A lot of times, they
just they know you're there. So that's really important. So
(38:26):
and then you know, for parents that are going through divorce,
I think it's important for parents to understand that your
kids hear everything, that that they are collateral damage, just
like a bond that goes off and innocent people are hurt.
The kids are innocent. So no matter how much you
hate your husband or your wife, keep in mind that
(38:47):
do what's right for the kids. And I'm not saying
don't get divorced. Some people should be divorced, but just
you know, try to get along when you're in front
of them, when you're in public. You know, you see
these families who they can't they have to see the
different areas, you know. It just you know, do your
best to maintain, you know, some kind of unit for
the kids.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
And how about overcoming childhood trauma? What's the best advice
you can gift for that?
Speaker 2 (39:14):
I mean, I think mental health therapy. I think there's
there's nothing wrong with going to a therapists and talking
through it. I think it's important to have really good friends,
develop relationships, friendships, people that you can talk to outside
of even your marriage, that you can share with. But
don't be afraid. Now there's lots of resources online. You
(39:35):
can get online counseling. I mean everybody that everybody in
this world right now could use a little bit of
help and support and and be transparent, be honest. You know,
if yodo a therapist, don't hold back. You know I
carried secrets around until I was fifty years old. You
know that I didn't share. I mean, it burned a
(39:58):
hole in me, you know it really, I didn't even
realize and sharing my story, you know, in my book.
I mean I'm not a person that normally exposes everything.
You know, I'm an athlete, I'm a lawyer, I'm a
fund all these things. So now all of a sudden
my book, I'm very vulnerable. You know, it's I'm sensitive
(40:19):
and that's not normally. Uh, you know, people are surprised.
But yeah, share your story, get help, you know, get support,
have good friendships, stay away from toxic people. Don't be
a victim. You know, we're all victims, you know, get
off your button, set goals, and move forward.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
And that's really great advice during these times. And where
can you find your book? And what's your website?
Speaker 4 (40:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Sure, so my book is called Pretend They Are Dead.
Put it up one more time for you, Pretend they
are Dead. My name is Steve Iikenblatt, and I have
a website. It's called Steven Scott Iikenblatt if you can
spell it, and I can be found. And you know,
if anyone is listening to this and they and they
(41:04):
need direction in their life somehow, or they need a therapist,
or they're they're just confused, man, just call me. I
can be found, you know, I give my number out
all the time the kids that that I speak with,
and you know, and I'll help best I can. But
you know, go go to my go to Amazon buy
(41:25):
my book, and I think you like it.
Speaker 5 (41:28):
And what's the website again?
Speaker 2 (41:30):
It's well, I have a I have a law firm
website that's called page and ike and blat. And then
there's a I have an author website. It's called Steven
scott ikenblat dot com.
Speaker 5 (41:42):
We will certainly check that out. What's worth of multi
time Steve?
Speaker 3 (41:46):
I can black pretend they're Dad here on the Mic
Waiter Show, Steve A few more things?
Speaker 5 (41:50):
What else can we expect me twenty twenty five and beyond.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Oh wow, well, you know, other than my other than
my book, I mean, I continue to work work in
my law firm. I still try cases, and I still
work on helping people, and you know, I'm just going
to keep moving forward. And I just really I have
a big, big heart for those things. So and I'm
going to keep working on myself. I'm still working on
(42:16):
my relationships and you know, and I let my my
one of my sons is in Alaska right now on
a you know, a sake salmon boat, you know, and
other sons. A lawyer and other sons. And you know,
I just let my my one daughter is a comedian.
I really support my kids as much as I can
and and I'm going to keep doing that.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
And I think that's great as well too during these times.
And who do you consider biggest influence.
Speaker 5 (42:41):
In the career?
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Who is my biggest influence?
Speaker 5 (42:45):
Correct?
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Yes, you know, that's a really man, that's a that's
a really difficult question because I certainly can't turn to
my I can't turn to my to my father's I
don't think it's a particular person as much. You know,
maybe my grandfather, but books, you know, I mean, I
really had to do it on my own. I didn't
have that mentor I wish I did. I think that's
(43:08):
a really important thing. But I had a lot of
good friendships, a lot of good relationships and friendships that
I'm still that. I have a lot of friends I've
had for fifty years.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Okay, And that's really amazing as well. And what's the
best advice you can give the a btce this point
to uh, I'm sorry to what to a boy in general?
Speaker 5 (43:27):
Best advice anybody?
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yeah, I think the best advice is, you know, if
you know, don't be afraid to help people. You know,
don't feel sorry for yourself, you know, get off your
tailbone and take care of yourself, you know, move forward,
stay away from toxic people, and just do the best
you can, really do the best you can.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
And I think that's great advice during this time as well.
We're here with the author, Steve Ackenblat of Pretend Their Dead,
a Father search for the Truth here on the Mike
Whinner Show.
Speaker 5 (43:56):
Steve, a very thank you for time.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
You've been absolut amazing, learned a lot looking forward and
soon keeps up to the jate, keeping touch laugh a
you back. What's your website? How do people contact you?
Whoring people will purchase or check out your book?
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Where do they contact me?
Speaker 5 (44:11):
Yeah? Website and everything.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Yeah website, but so my website would be at www
dot Stevenscottaikeinblatt dot com. My book Pretend They're Dead can
be purchased on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I've got
an audio audible version coming out. I've got a hardback,
i got a paperback, and I'm already getting I've got
(44:35):
like I've got a lot of good reviews. Pretty pretty
excited about It's only been out a few days and
I've gotten some really good feedback, so really excited about that, and.
Speaker 5 (44:45):
We're excited as well too. Steve.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
Once again, Steve, a very big thank you for telling
people absolutely fantastic, looking forward having soon, keeps up today,
keep in touch, laugh have you back.
Speaker 5 (44:54):
We wish out best and Steve, you definitely have a
great feature.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
You thanks a lot of Mike as really a pleasure,
is great meeting you, so thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
The Mike Wagner Show is powered by Sonicweb Studios. If
you're looking to start or upgrade your online presence, visit
www dot sonicwebstudios dot com for all of your online needs.
Call one eight hundred three oh three three nine six
zero or visit us online at www dot sonicwebstudios dot
(45:23):
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Speaker 6 (45:32):
Hey there, Dana Laxa here, American news anchor. Hey, let
me ask you something real quick. Why do you read
a book? You're buying a story, a thought, a message,
and a good book entertains and inspires, and that's exactly
what A Missing by Award winning author me On Zia does.
I have his book right here, and it's based on
real events with relatable characters that hook you from start
(45:56):
to finish. I personally love this book. It's super powerful
and meaningful through and you can actually get it on
Amazon right now.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
The Mike Wagner Show is brought to you by Serena
Wagner's book The Sweet Sawmist now aveilve on Amazon. This
book includes thirty exquisite pinions by well known and unknown
painters and King David songs. The sweets Amist gives us
a new perspective on his life in this book through
the songs he wrote. His time as a shepherd in
the field is will the book starts, and it goes
on to describe his complicated and turbulent relationship with King Saul,
(46:23):
as well as other events. It's a story of love, betrayal, repentance,
and more. It also offers advice on approaching God and
living a life that pleases him. Check out the book
The Sweet Salmist by Serena Wagner, now available on Amazon
keywords Sweet Sawmis Serena Wagner.
Speaker 4 (46:40):
Thanks for listening to The Mike Wagner Show powered by
Sonic Weeb Studios. Listit online at Sonicwebstudios dot com for
all your needs. Mike Wagner Show can be heard on
spreak a, Spotify, iHeartRadio, iTunes, YouTube Anchor, FM Radio Public,
and The Mike Wagner Show dot com. Please post that
program with your donations Mike Wagnershow dot com. Join us
(47:02):
again next time for another great episode of The Mike
Wagner Show.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
H
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