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And CUA insured. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star. and the American people coming to you from the city where the West begins. Fort Worth, Texas. Up next, the story of Wally Amos, the man behind one of America's most recognizable cookie brands.
Here to tell the story is his daughter, Sarah. Take it away. My dad was born in 1936 in Tallahassee, Florida. Both of his parents barely knew how to read until they were adults. His mother was a domestic worker.
His father was on the janitorial staff at a company. And essentially, he was born as a poor black kid in segregated Tallahassee, Florida, which, you know, was a time and a place in which. To be blunt, his life was not valued as being worth much. And I think if you had asked a lot of people at the time what would Wallace Amos amount to, most of the people at the time would have expected very little or certainly not the levels of success and fame and notoriety that were to come for him later in life. His parents split up when he was really young, but even before that, his dad was a kind of serial philanderer, used to take my dad sometimes to sit on the front steps of his girlfriend's house while he was cheating on my dad's mom, my grandma Ruby.
You know, he was a kid who was raised in a bit by the community and a bit by the people around him because Ruby was always working and his dad was just not around a ton.
So at a very young age, he was sent to live with family in New York when he was just, you know, 10 years old. And I think how terrifying it must have been to be just a nine, 10-year-old boy being sent 24 hours on a train by yourself to a place you've never been before. To live with family that you only kind of know and not have either of your parents there. Um My grandma Ruby was a harsh woman. She was quick with a switch.
She was quick with a criticism. She loved my dad. She loved everyone in the family, but she was just raised in a time and a place where that sort of affection and care was, there was just no time for it. And so a lot of the stories are really stories of heartbreak that I know of my dad's childhood. It is a childhood in Tallahassee that I think my father Worked really hard to move past, and in his mind, moving past it meant.
Not really talking to anyone else about it. Just always looking forward, always keep focused on what is to come. Do not dwell on the negative of the past. But you know, he was part of what is considered the great migration of black Americans that were moving from the south up north in hopes of a better life. And that is really what his mom, my grandmother Ruby, wanted for Wally.
He had a better chance of having a life outside of kind of what was still the segregated South if she could get him to New York to live with his Aunt Della and his Aunt Lily and the rest of his extended family that had already moved north. And that really was the beginning of kind of a new phase of my father's life, not only in terms of education, experiences, seeing a wider world, but actually, it's also how he was introduced to chocolate chip cookies. Mm-hmm. His mom, Ruby, was an incredible cook, made a great pound cake, did a fish fry all the time down in Tallahassee that she actually had running as a second business. But Chocolate chip cookies.
were what my Aunt Della made. And some of my father's earliest and happiest memories are of helping Aunt Della make chocolate chip cookies. If Ruby was kind of the loving but harsh taskmaster of the family, her sister Aunt Della was the warm embrace. There are only like two or three photos I have of my dad from his childhood. And one of them is this just is seared in my memory.
And it's this photo of my dad and Aunt Della uptown in New York sitting on kind of a stone wall. And she is hugging him. And his smile is just absolutely as wide as it can be. And I think that is everything of who Aunt Della is. She was warm.
She was loving. She certainly had her own streak, ran numbers at the local church, as many women did in my family, it turns out. But she was a really important influence on my dad for the couple of years that his mom had not come up to New York. Ruby eventually came up to New York. But in those early years, Aunt Della was really the mother figure for my father, and they remained close for the rest of their lives.
He did with his aunt Lily as well, who was Ruby's youngest sister, who also was around and kind of kept an eye on Wally. These two women gave him so much love and positivity and a sense of you deserve and can be anything you want to be. They were both really important to him and really helped shaped the joyful side of my dad. And he was that. He was an extremely joyful man at all times.
And I think a lot of that really comes from their influence. And so, all those years later, when he starts Famous Amos, it is really. about him. Chasing kind of the memories and the feelings that he had as a young boy living with Aunt Della up in the Bronx. And you've been listening to Sarah Amos tell the story of her father Wally.
And what a story it is indeed. And so many of these stories we do from the great Duke Ellington and even Madam C.J. Walker when we do them are sort of not just racial histories of America, not just economic stories, but they're just clear and simple American history stories. We're getting a look at America through this one man's life. And my goodness, growing up in Tallahassee in 1936, was tough.
The segregated South. a father who, well, let's just say wasn't a good one. And a mother who was working all the time. And the next thing you know, he's shipped north to New York for opportunity and for a chance at a better life. And I think most importantly, just to see yourself as having value and having opportunity.
When we come back, more of the story of Wally Amos, the man behind one of the most recognizable cookie brands in the world. Here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here again. Our American Stories tries to tell the stories of America's past and present to Americans, and we want to hear your stories too. There's some of our favorites.
Send them to us. Go to allamericanstories.com and click the Your Stories tab. Again, please go to OwlAmericanStories.com. and click. The Your Stories tab.
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and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs. Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at let's get real about skincancer.com. You're grinding, putting tracks on Spotify, making TikToks, and watching fractions of a cent roll in.
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M PowerSlap 23 is live and free on YouTube on Thursday, September 17th. Dana White is bringing PowerSlap to Texas for the first time on the campus of Texas Tech University. Two massive title fights headlined the card, including slap fighting legend Wolverine. Also on the card is former WWE champion Jake Hager and the debut of former UFC heavyweight Chris Barnett. You can watch PowerSlap 23 for free on PowerSlap's YouTube channel.
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Now just 248 and 358. And we're back with our American stories and with the story of Famous Amos. When we last left off, a young Wally had moved from Tallahassee to New York, where his Aunt Della introduced him to chocolate chip cookies. Here again is Wally's daughter, Sarah. His mom, Ruby, eventually moved up to New York as well.
And he was going to school, and there was kind of a vocational high school presentation that was done. And as part of it, they said, cooks make a lot of money. And one thing my dad liked. Was the idea of making a lot of money. And so he ended up enrolling in a vocational high school.
And he worked at the kind of back pantry of the Essex Hotel's kitchen. And, you know, he really always had, always had such a strong work ethic. And that really came from Grandma Ruby, which was: if you're going to do something, you do it to the absolute best of your ability. You give it your all. And so he did.
And every time he should have been promoted to the next rung up in the kitchen, one of his white co-workers and fellow students would get the promotion instead. And it became really apparent to him that he was never going to get promoted in the way that he deserved because of the color of his skin. And something else that Ruby really instilled in him is know your own worth and be willing to stand up for it. And so he dropped out of high school.
Now, I think that was a terrifying thing for him. And in fact, he didn't even tell his mom at first and spiraled a little bit. But when he did finally have to tell her, you know, she said, okay, well, I support you, but what are you going to do now? And so from there, it was the Air Force. And he ended up, after some stints in the main part of the United States, getting shipped off to Hawaii, which at the time wasn't even part of the United States.
But it was this, as it remains, magical tropical paradise that he showed up in, this, you know, young black kid who had only really seen New York City and Tallahassee, Florida, didn't even know how to swim. When he moved to Hawaii, and he was immediately enchanted by it. He always would talk about the fact that he always felt like he could be himself and that he wasn't necessarily trapped in the confines of race. And so he fell in love with the place and always vowed that he would come back. And for most people, that just seems like a.
A fanciful dream? For Wally Amos, God bless him, it was a reality in the end. Uh But first he came back to New York. And started a career by going to secretarial school. There was a program that allowed those who had been in the military to go to secretarial school.
So he did that, got a job working at Saks Fifth Avenue, and again, found himself. Passed over for the proper promotions and position and salary he deserved because of the color of his skin. And again, he quit. And you know, he really had such deep faith in what he deserved, and he was always willing to risk it all. for that.
So He quit Saks Fifth Avenue, didn't have a plan, and ended up in the mailroom at William Morris Agency. A talent agency in New York City that had almost no black people working at it. And so he was put in the mailroom and pretty quickly advances into the music department. And became the first black talent agent at William Morris and really started this phase of his career that introduces him to showbiz, to fame, to a level of success that previously had probably seemed unattainable to him. He really, kind of in a forest gumpy way, was just like at such a perfect moment in pop culture when he entered that phase.
Uh He finds a good niche. It was, you know, right around the time that you had a lot of black musicians kind of coming up in the showbiz world. He works early on with the Supremes and Diana Ross on some of their tour dates. He works with Solomon Burke. He actually is one of the first people to discover Simon and Garfunkel wants them to sign with William Morris.
William Morris doesn't want to sign them, actually.
So they move on to other pastors, but I love that kind of claim to fame. He kind of saw something there before anyone else. And eventually finds himself in a position where... He should be running the music department. And once again.
is told that his white colleagues won't feel comfortable. Taking orders from a black man being in charge of the department, so he's passed over. And so he strikes out on his own and he represents some clients, a comedian named Franklin Ajai for a brief period in time. He manages John Amos of no relation, but I find that hilarious. He works with Helen Reddy.
He works with a bunch of clients and at this point has actually moved to LA. And I think what's so interesting about his entire arc in show business is that everyone I talk to who knew my dad from that period leading up to Famous Amos, they all speak of just the presence he had. My uncle Johnny, who is one of my dad's oldest friends, has known him since truly these early, early days in show business, says that the first time he met my dad was at a big kind of conference event and my dad walked into the room. And the whole room just kind of turned and gravitated towards Wally. He had A commanding quality.
That was almost impossible to ignore. And later in his life, it proves out that he kind of enjoyed being the star more than he did managing the stars. He would be at a client's gig, and literally, they would have to shout out from stage. Hey, Wally, do you want to get up here? Because he was always holding court and he loved the spotlight.
My brother Sean, when he was in college, my father, one of the few pieces of advice he gave Sean was. Don't be an agent because your self-worth will always be tied to someone else. And I really think that was how my dad viewed that world. He wanted to be the star and front and center and had the charisma to do so. and his heart was just never truly in.
helping other people achieve that necessarily.
So, when he was a manager in LA, and it was just, it was tough times. It was getting tougher and tougher. And he got to a point where he just needed something to unwind. And he's never been a drinker.
So, like, he wasn't a guy who was going to have a beer after work. And so. He just started baking cookies in the evening just to make him smile and just to relax and unwind. And then he started taking them to clients. He would have client meetings or signing meetings and he just became known as the guy who had really good chocolate chip cookies in like a little brown bag.
He had an office near Quincy Jones, and it was one of Quincy Jones' secretaries who actually said, Hey, you should sell these. And then it was through another person in Showbez who always had given him the nickname Famous Amos that was like, That's what we should call it. And so it really was kind of this very natural, almost like a ball rolling down a hill, this very natural process of. Just people in his life who knew about the cookies and gravitated towards them, kind of being like, hey, you should consider this. And eventually, you know, he kind of took those signs and thought to himself, Well, you know, they have corner liquor stores.
Why not a corner cookie shop? Which is a completely insane concept in retrospect. But that was Wally Amos. Many people said, you can't do that. You can't you can't open a store selling Just cookies.
My accountant, Maurice Kahn, said, If you're going to have a baker, you've got to have 25, 30 different items. I said, Maury, if you've got one item, you don't need the other 29. And you've been listening to Sarah Amos tell the story of her father Wally Amos. And my goodness, his journey, job after job, not getting the promotions he deserved, in much part based on race. And well, he just kept, well, moving to the next thing.
Ultimately moving to LA as a talent agent. But in the end, there was something about Wally. People gravitated to him. He was a star. And deep down inside, he didn't want his worth to be determined by other people.
This is probably why he didn't make it all the way as a talent agent or manager. He was the talent. And to unwind during tough times, he started baking these cookies. And it was Quincy Jones' secretary who said, hey, you should sell these. This began an entire new life.
When we come back, more of the story of Wally Amos here on Our American Stories.
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And we're back with our American stories and the story of Famous Amos. When we last left off, Wally had his sights set on an idea almost no one believed could work. A store devoted entirely to the The cookies. Here again is his daughter Sarah. It certainly was a Hail Mary for him.
His car had been repossessed at one point. He could not pay his bills. He had almost no clients. It had gotten to the point where he just was done with the music industry. He was done with being a manager.
And He wanted to try something entirely different.
So he really bet on himself, which, you know, he had done time and time again successfully.
So part of it feels very rational, and part of it also feels entirely insane. You know, at the time, There truly were no standalone cookie stores. It feels very commonplace now, but I cannot stress enough that this was just not a thing. A store that literally was only going to sell originally one type of cookie and milk, and then later several types of cookies and milk. He did not go the traditional business plan route.
He did not know how to start a business. He had not been to business school.
So he went to the people he knew. He went to people in the entertainment industry, right, to ask for the funds. And he put together a business plan with what he did have in terms of skills and understanding. And he put together a very good marketing plan. And he went to folks like John Rossica, who at the time was still working in kind of PR for the music industry.
And he said, Johnny, you know, you're my best friend. You got to help me figure out how to sell this cookie. And he really just. took a leap of faith. He finally just got fed up in the music industry altogether and he went to a couple of clients and friends he knew in the industry.
He had known Marvin Gaye for a number of years and Marvin put in some of the initial money along with Helen Reddy, another longtime friend of his from Show Business who remained a friend for life. And Helen and Marvin and a couple of other folks put in the initial funding needed to open a standalone cookie store on Sunset Boulevard, Sunset Informosa. And he went about figuring out how to open a cookie store. Had never run a business, had never mass-produced cookies, truly had no idea what he was doing. But just had faith in himself.
And more than anything, He knew he could promote it.
Now I'm gonna reveal something that I've never before revealed on television. All right? It's a miracle cookie. The more you eat, the thinner you get.
Okay, I'm gonna start. You ready? Check me out, check me out, come on. Let's have a cookie eating. They even sound good, huh?
Num num. That was so key to Famous Amos' early success, he treated the cookie like it was a client. Even had 8x10s made up of the cookie as though it was its headshot. He knew how to throw a party, he knew how to get people interested, he knew how to get people excited. He had picked a location that was really right in the heart of the music industry.
And so you had studios nearby where artists could stop by late night and get cookies. He threw a block party opening day. Like he knew how to drum up excitement for it and make this cookie and his store feel and become a very cool thing. in a town that trades on coolness. In choosing his location, As I mentioned, he really, he chose a location that was very much in the heart of kind of the Hollywood vibe at the time.
Sunset Boulevard, 1975, was a very cool place to be. You had studios, you had TV shows taping nearby, you had record labels nearby.
So you had a scene that had a lot of like late night traffic and famous people traffic and just foot traffic. And so it was right in the center of something. And he thought he could capitalize on that. And then he threw a really big block party and invited everyone he knew. And really early on, always leaned in not just to the cookie being famous, but what could you associate the cookie with, right?
Could you do a party as he did with Andy Warhol? Could you get Muhammad Ali to come and do an event, right? He understood. Better than most. Certainly at that time, the power of celebrity, in a lot of ways, the way my father launched Famous Amos, the approaches he took were straight out of what would be a social influencer's playbook these days.
At the time, it was just him. Doing management/slash PR, the things, the things he knew how to do from his career in the music industry. And he was just transferring it over to selling cookies rather than helping a client, you know, sell records or book gigs. But it was that same skill set. And, you know, for the rest of his life, That was really what he was the best at and also what he was the happiest at.
He loved promoting. He loved promoting himself. He loved promoting cookies. Later in life, he loved promoting literacy. If it was something he really believed in that he felt was important, To him, his family, the world, then he loved selling that.
That was really when he was his happiest. He sent out hundreds of invites, had painted the whole parking lot behind the store. My brother, Sean, my other two brothers, Michael and Gregory, flew out from New York to be a part of it. Everyone who was close to my dad really chipped in. My grandma, Ruby, worked behind the cash register.
It was really a family affair. And I don't think he really knew if he was going to pull it off until the day of the event. But it was a huge block party, and there were, you know, hundreds of people there from the community, celebrity friends that he knew. They had a marching band, I think, that came through. Like it was a vibe.
And my brothers all remember it as just being this like Extremely energetic, really special, incredible day. It really felt like. Dad had created something magical, something different, something that had a spark and energy to it that you wanted to be a part of. And from there, word of mouth really spread. The party did a great job at kind of launching the cookie into the world and saying, hey, there's this cool new thing that you should go check out.
And from there, it really quickly grew, and suddenly, He was selling in Macy's and Bloomingdale's in New York, and they were opening additional stores. He was, you know, in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and traveling the world, really celebrating and pushing and trying to build a brand, which is not something he initially had planned to do or, frankly, had set up the company for. He wanted to, you know, have a store, have it be successful, make a business out of that. I don't think any part of how the company was initially set up or how my father. Thought about business was necessarily structured for a successful corporation or multi-franchised brand.
It kind of got ahead of him really, really quickly. It was so successful, so quickly that. The problems that were to come were born out of the unexpected pace of success that he initially had. And you've been listening to Sarah Amos tell the story of her father Wally. My goodness, at a certain point Wally just bet on himself.
He was at Wits End, and it was basically, as Sarah said, a Hail Mary, opening up this cookie store at a very famous location. I mean, a very famous address, right in the heart of the entertainment business and the record business at the time, Sunset and Formosa. And this was his talent in the end. What we learned from Sarah is it's a talent to promote. He was using the techniques straight from social influencers of today's playbook.
And in the end, he just loved selling. And he loved selling things he loved. And that would be, of course, his cookies himself. and down the line is Bull Learn literacy itself. when we come back more of the story of famous Amos, of Wally Amos, on our American stories.
Hey, our ride's almost here. Are you ready? Just grabbing my shoes. That's what you said ten minutes ago. I just dropped a video call, uploading this giant file on my tablet, looking at my watch go bananas with the group chat, and of course, still lining up tonight's playlist on my phone.
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So many reasons to join T-Mobile. Find yours at T-Mobile.com. FAST is based on analysis by OCLO Speed Test Intelligence data of national speed score results incorporating 5G download and upload speeds for the first half of 2026. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S.
and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs. Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at let's get real about skincancer.com. Love discovering new music before anyone else?
Stop being just a listener. Start making the rules and work with your new favorite artist before they even break. The Beam is a free music competition app where real emerging artists compete, you vote, and massive brands step in to fund the next big name. Your votes change careers. Find them first.
Download thebeam at thebeam.com or on the app store. Vote for an artist you love or discover your next obsession. It's the first music chart that pays artists. PowerSlap 23 is live and free on YouTube on Thursday, September 17th. Dana White is bringing PowerSlap to Texas for the first time on the campus of Texas Tech University.
Two massive title fights headlined the card, including slap fighting legend Wolverine. Also on the card is former WWE champion Jake Hager and the debut of former UFC heavyweight Chris Barnett. You can watch PowerSlap 23 for free on PowerSlap's YouTube channel. Thursday, September 17th for the first time from Texas. PowerSlap's biggest card of the year.
This is the Dan Labatar Show. This is Dan Lebatard, and I've been doing this for more than two decades. Our show is contagious. It's a little bit addictive. It's in the most positive of ways.
It has a good amount of range from smart to silly, and it's got a journalistic backbone. Monday through Friday, I show up and talk about sports, listen to the Dan Lebatard show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. It's football season and Vizio Mini LED TVs are here to turn your living room into the front row of the stadium. Watch every play come to life in breathtaking realism on a 55-inch or 65-inch mini LED TV. Plus, crank your favorite game day tunes on the iHeartRadio app built right into your Vizio TV.
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And CUA insured. And we're back with our American stories and the story of Famous Amos. When we last left off, Wally Amos' first cookie store had become a sensation. but its rapid success was beginning to outgrow the business behind it. Here again is Wally's daughter, Sarah.
with the rest of the story. His friend Chuck Cassell helped him do all the packaging. It was this photo of him pointing towards kind of a hovering cookie floating in the sky. He has his Panama woven hat on, has his kind of gauze Indian style 1970s shirt. Giant smile, full beard.
It just, it is this very iconic image of. My dad pointing at a cookie, and above that, in blue script with a gray underline, famous, famous cookies. That image went everywhere. I mean, that image is in the Smithsonian now. That image was so clear and enticing and joyful.
And this was not a time in which you had black spokespeople doing a lot. Along with the cookie, he really put himself out there. And there was not a TV spot, a radio interview, a store promotion, a collaboration, a commercial, a print piece, a blurb in a newspaper that if my dad had the opportunity to do to promote the brand, he wasn't gonna do. He did it all. He worked non-stop to get the name and branding of that company front and center with as many people as he could.
He was on Cloud 9. It is in this period that he meets my mom on a flight. She's a flight attendant, and they start a whirlwind romance. They decide, largely led by my dad, to move back to Hawaii. My mom had never even been to Hawaii until they moved there, and they start a life there.
He really was leading this larger-than-life personality. All of the fame and the persona and the confidence that he exuded to help sell the brand, he really was doing his best to live that life. This is really where a tale of two Wallyamuses starts to come. Come up because he was having incredible success on a kind of superficial level. He was on the cover of Time magazine.
He was on Taxi, he was on the Jeffersons. He was arguably one of the most famous black men in America, with one of the most famous brands in America. But at the same time, You know, he had at this point now three children, three boys from two different women, and the relationships with all of them were deeply frayed. And the company itself, while wildly successful from a promotional standpoint, was barely making payroll from a financial standpoint. This is really where you start to see things Diverging kind of the public perception of the life of Wally Amos and the private perception and reality.
A friend of mine has a great quote. See? When you're going through hell, don't stop to take pictures. It was just that that is who Wally is. It was something.
that he was comfortable navigating between. even at the expense of others. Because I think deep down he did always think it was for good and he did use. His fame and his notoriety as much as he could to help with literacy and with causes and with other people. But he kind of, as my mom says, somewhere Wally Amos got lost in the world of Famous Amos.
You know, he understood the promotional part. He didn't understand the business part. And so they expand so quickly. And they Are trying to just keep things afloat, and they are not able to make payroll, and they are not bringing in enough cash versus how much they're putting out. And just a lot of bad business practice decisions were made early on.
Some of the wrong people were trusted in terms of people he brought on for the business. And so eventually they start taking in outside investors, and he is diluting his shares of the company more and more just in order to bring in more cash to keep it all going. And, you know, I think some of that is to blame on the fact that. He's a guy with a GED who had no formal business training. And from there, he just kind of baked it till he made it.
Also, part of it is like he was a guy who, once he had had a taste of fame, loved a certain lifestyle. And he wanted to live that lifestyle and fly first class and stay in the fancy hotels and be this success story that he was projecting. even if they didn't necessarily have the money as a business to sustain that lifestyle. And so eventually they take on so many investors and the company goes through so many different hands that he finds himself with pretty much no ownership of it whatsoever. And at that point, the owners start making decisions that he doesn't necessarily agree with.
As they try to really formalize the business and make it a sustainable business. You know, it is as much about the promotion and branding that my dad did early on that made it a household name as it is about some of the compromises and Practical business decisions that got made by other people that allowed the business to continue to scale and be sustainable and make money. But that did not work for my dad necessarily. And so he eventually ends up signing a piece of paper that gives the company. all legal rights to his name and likeness.
in perpetuity. And at the time... He didn't even totally know what he was signing. And my mom had asked him, Should you get a lawyer? No, Golds, it's fine.
And at the time, he was still with the company.
So they presented this as a thing of, well, we need you to sign this so that we can keep doing this and that. But my dad had no plans on walking away. And then when he did walk away... He didn't really think about that piece of paper.
So he goes and he tries to start a new cookie company, Chip and Cookie, with my mom and these two cute little chocolate chip cookie characters. And he gets sued by Famous Amos because they say, well, we own your name and likeness for everything. And so he goes to court. And spends, you know, a fair amount of time and a lot of money that he didn't even really have in court. fighting to be able to use his own name and likeness.
For cookies. And there's a bit of my dad just then chasing the glory that came with Famous Amos again and again and again in trying to start new cookie companies, none of which are able to achieve even a fraction of the success that Famous Amos was. And to this day, his name and likeness in regards to cookies are still.
solely owned by the Famous Amos Company. My mom talks about how he barely made cookies for over a year, the thing he loved the most in the world. But as he went on in life, he really, as he did with almost every experience, he tried to turn it in to a teachable moment for himself and for others. But it clearly weighed on him forever. And there was a brief period in the late 90s, early 2000s, where he came back to Famous Amos and did some spokesperson work for them, but he really wanted.
He wanted the company to be his, and so to follow their rules and the things they wanted. Uh, he was not capable of doing. And I I was always so frustrated about It at the time, but over the years, I have understood that, you know, if you start something, if something is solely yours, and you start it, and you build it, and you love it, and you grow it, and one day it is not yours. It would be hard to suddenly have someone else telling you how you can be a part of it. And so eventually he did just fully walk away from it.
But he was never not proud of it. He never, if someone came up to say, Oh, you're famous, Amos, oh, I love those cookies, he would never, he would never shy away from that. He was always very proud of what he accomplished, and I do think. Even at the end, he is proud and I hope happy that his legacy is still connected with that brand. But man, it was it was complicated.
He did just want a better life. Not just for his family, but for everyone he knew. He just he wanted people he really did want people to be happy and have joy. The relentless optimism was insanely annoying to me as a child, but it was so deeply genuine. To him as a person.
Bringing any sort of peace or happiness to other people, that is what he would be the most proud of and ideally want to be his true legacy. A lot of people will come into your life.
Some will help you. But you you cannot give them your power. The only limitations there are are those that you place on yourself. You can all soar like eagles. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Madison Derricott.
And a special thanks to Sarah Amos for sharing the story of her father. Check out her podcast, Tough Cookie. That's Tough Cookie. You can learn so much more about Wally Amos' life and what a story she told. And it is complicated when people get into business without the proper knowledge.
And one day, the company he was running was being run into the ground. And he lost the business and lost his name and likeness too, but always he was proud of what he achieved. Proud about what he'd built and kept a positive attitude even if it infuriated some of those around him. The story of Wally Amos, the story of famous Amos cookies. Here on Our American Stories.
Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs.
Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at let's get real about skincancer.com. Love discovering new music before anyone else? Stop being just a listener. Start making the rules and work with your new favorite artist before they even break. The Beam is a free music competition app where real emerging artists compete, you vote, and massive brands step in to fund the next big name.
Your votes change careers. Find them first. Download The Beam at TheBeam.com or on the App Store. Vote for an artist you love or discover your next obsession. It's the first music chart that pays artists.
PowerSlap 23 is live and free on YouTube on Thursday, September 17th. Dana White is bringing PowerSlap to Texas for the first time on the campus of Texas Tech University. Two massive title fights headlined the card, including slap fighting legend Wolverine. Also on the card is former WWE champion Jake Hager and the debut of former UFC heavyweight Chris Barnett. You can watch PowerSlap 23 for free on PowerSlap's YouTube channel.
Thursday, September 17th for the first time from Texas. PowerSlap's biggest card of the year. This is the Dan Lebatar Show. This is Dan Lebatar, and I've been doing this for more than two decades. Our show is contagious.
It's a little bit addictive. It's. In the most positive of ways. It has a good amount of range from smart to silly, and it's got a journalistic backbone. Monday through Friday, I show up and talk about sports, listen to the Dan Lebetard show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever it is that you get your podcasts.
It's football season and Vizio Mini LED TVs are here to turn your living room into the front row of the stadium. Watch every play come to life in breathtaking realism on a 55-inch or 65-inch mini LED TV. Plus, crank your favorite game day tunes on the iHeartRadio app built right into your Vizio TV. Big screens, big picture, and a totally immersive experience. Find rollback deals at Walmart today on Vizio 55-inch and 65-inch mini LED TVs.
Now just 248 and 358. Upgrade to elite checking from America's Christian Credit Union and earn up to 3.5% APY. Plus everyday perks and access to your paycheck up to two days early with early pay. Don't settle. Choose checking that rewards you and aligns with your values.
Visit America's ChristianCU.com forward slash iHeart. Minimum balance of 1 cent required to earn advertised APY. Early pay not guaranteed. APY equals annual percentage yield. Membership eligibility required.
And CUA insured. Warning, the following song has been rated dangerously catchy and may not be suitable for grown-ups. One, two. Three, four. One, two, three, four.
Knock, knock, knocking at the door. Knock, knock, knockin' at the door. Five, six, who is it? Five, six, who is it? It's Callie and Elliott.
It's Callie and Elliot. Lingo kids, only suitable for kids. If it gets stuck in mom's head, that's not our problem. Everything kids love. Download now for free.
