Audie Murphy: America's Most Decorated Soldier

What up, it's dramas from the Life as a Gringo podcast.

We are back with a brand new season. Now Life as a Gringo speaks to Latinos who are born or raised here in the States. It's about educating and breaking those generational curses that man have been holding us back for far too long. I'm here to discuss the topics that are relevant to all of us and to define what it means to live as our true authentic self. Listen to Life as a Gringo on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by State Farm.

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. What is Circle? At Circle, we're building a digital dollar that's actually dollar backed one to one.

Circle is a future where money will travel at the speed of internet for fractions of a penny and no one will think about it because it will just be the way we work. Visit circle.com slash podcast. MSNBC Films presents a new six-part original series from NBC News Studios hosted by John Leguizamo. I wanted to do a show where people watch this and go, I want to be Latino. And you can't tell Latino stories without plenty of good food, music, and dancing. So come on, let's go, let's go.

Leguizamo does America beginning Sunday, April 16th at 10 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC and streaming on Peacock. This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show.

And this is one of our favorites. Much of what's known about legendary NFL quarterback Brett Favre has been kept between the goalposts. So our own Greg Hengler took the three and a half hour long drive from right where we broadcast in Oxford, Mississippi, and that's in Northern Mississippi, close to Memphis. And he sat down with Brett Favre in his Hattiesburg, Mississippi home. And by the way, Greg grew up a mere walking distance, almost spitting distance from Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Here's Brett with his story. Well, my mom and dad are both from the Gulf Coast. My dad's from Gulfport. My mother was from Pass Christian, which probably doesn't mean anything to you, but right on the beach. And my dad grew up not far from the beach. Gulfport's kind of right in the smack dab in the middle of the Gulf Coast, Mississippi Gulf Coast. So if you, as you came down from Oxford, you eventually got on 49.

If you'd take 49 all the way till you can't take it no more, you would be in Gulfport. So that's where he grew up. My mom and dad met at Mississippi Gulf Coast Junior College. My dad played baseball and football there. And then they dated, eventually got married. I think they got married while they were at Southern Miss. So they left junior college, came here. My dad played baseball.

Then they started having kids. My older brother, Scott, is two and a half years older than me. We all were born in Gulfport, Gulfport Memorial Hospital. So there's Scott, me, my younger brother, Jeff, and our youngest is Brandy, our sister.

And I'm going to fast forward a little bit. My mom, her mother, and father owned a restaurant bar in Pastor Shan. We practically grew up here. My grandfather died in 78. And I actually remember a lot about him. I was seven or eight.

I was born in 69. When he died, my grandmother just, she kept the, and it was called Benny French's Tavern after my grandfather. We practically grew up there because when he died, my mom and dad would help my grandmother tend bar. And we had the whole place to ourselves, pretty much.

There was pool tables and pinball and people get in there getting drunk. Well, we were drinking like little bottle of Cokes, which were the best, eating all the sweets. And my grandmother was awesome. She was the best. Staying with her was the coolest thing. Mississippi Gulf Coast is a lot like New Orleans.

It never closes. We grew up Catholic. Everyone on the Gulf Coast is Catholic. So there's parties for everything. There's festivals, there's rodeos, there's cook-offs, parades. Growing up in that lifestyle, we went to Mardi Gras parades. My mom and dad would drink, but I don't remember them ever getting, we always were with them.

So they didn't drop us off and then they'd go. Ironically, throughout high school, I never drank. My older brother, I think he may have drank a little bit, but we were in athletics. My dad's mother and father lived in Gulfport, were polar opposite of my grandmother on my mom's side. I stayed with them one time and that was one too many. They said, good night, 5.30.

Still daylight. One went to one bedroom, one went to the other bedroom. And I loved my dad's mother and father, but they were boring.

You know, I knew Scott was up playing pool or doing whatever. But at 18, my mom told me that she was adopted. I played summer league baseball. My dad was a baseball and football coach and I was actually 17. And I was driving, my dad was already at the, it was a summer league.

It was like American Legion baseball. We were down on the coast. I was driving my mom and it was just us two. And she just felt the need to tell me that she was adopted. And she was all upset, worried that I wouldn't, we called my grandmother Meemaw. She was worried that I wouldn't look at Meemaw all the same.

When actually, I looked at her even more fondly. Like I just couldn't believe she could be that great of a mom and it wasn't even her daughter. But I only bring that up because I don't know a whole lot about my mom's actual biological family. But my mom's biological mother worked for my grandmother and grandfather at the bar or restaurant. Cause he, my grandfather was, believe it or not, 25 years older than my grandmother. And this girl was pregnant, mom's mother, and didn't want the baby. And they said they'd take it. So she had a baby, dropped it off and was gone. That was it. And what the only thing she knows about her father is that he played professional baseball.

I don't even know if she knows the name, she never said. So kind of interesting. And my dad's family, my grandfather was a hundred percent Choctaw Indian. And his family were from Oklahoma, like a big reservation up here. But yeah, growing up, my dad was a driver's ed teacher and head head football coach at Hancock North Central. Now it's Hancock County High School. My mom was a special education teacher there. First through 12th was right all together. It was a real small school, graduated a hundred. So we all rode to school together, rode home together. I never thought we were rich, but we had a pool, so I thought we got to be doing something right. But I think that combined they made $44,000. And I know people that do that and get by, but it's amazing how you can. And four kids, and when they called us to the dinner table, I'd eat 12 hot dogs if I could.

And so would everyone else. So, you know, I say all that, like how in the world did y'all make it? When we come back, more Brett Favre on Our American Stories. I live way out in the country. I drive everywhere.

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