Hey Gorgias, it's Paris Hilton. Get the party started with my new album, Infinite Icon, out now and stream the new single, Bad B**** Academy.
Welcome to the Bad B**** Academy. I wanted this album to be an escape, to take people to a happy place where they can heal and party in equal measure, and most of all, be your own unapologetic icon. Listen on iHeartRadio and visit InfiniteIcon.com to order the album, sponsored by 11-11 Media. There's two kinds of people in the world, people who love health-aid kombucha and people who have never tried it. The bubbly mix of probiotic tea and refreshing juice is delicious and good for your gut health, with great flavors to choose from that you can't help but love. If you've never tried it before, maybe try a bottle or can of passion fruit tangerine or ginger lemon.
Your taste buds and your gut will thank you. Look for the brown bottle with an anchor on it and try health-aid kombucha today. When you think about energy drinks, you probably think about physical performance, but what if you could have a mental edge too? Don't Quit is one of the only energy drinks on the market that contains a powerful ingredient called cognizant that has been clinically studied to improve your focus, attention, and overall brain health. That's why Don't Quit is one of the fastest growing energy drinks in the country. Don't let the wrong ingredients knock you down.
Fuel your perseverance with Don't Quit energy drinks. Get yours now at Amazon. Wherever you are in the world, it's an exciting time in politics. Take a deep dive into the stories making the news headlines across the world. The news agents. We're not just here to tell you what's happening, but why. From me, Emily Magus.
And me, John Sopel. With Global's award-winning podcast, the news agents dropping daily covering everything you need to know about politics and current affairs. And the news agents USA in the race for the White House. Listen to the news agents on Global Player. Roku has what you need to make your college home away from home feel more like your own. Make your dorm the place to be with Roku TV or bring a Roku streaming stick to easily access all your favorite free and premium content like iHeartRadio. Stream your favorite playlist with the Roku vibe setting smart light strips to sync your music to millions of colors and make your dorm feel more like you. Make your dorm the place to be with Roku TV, streaming players and smart lights.
Head to roku.com or your favorite retailer to deck out your dorm. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. To search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. Up next you're going to hear from Neil White who's the author of In the Sanctuary of Outcasts. For much of his early life, Neil's appearance and status is what mattered most to him.
He'll be sharing his story of a time when all of that was stripped from him and how he came to realize the real important things in his life. For most of the 20th century, anyone in the continental United States who contracted leprosy was sent to this colony in Louisiana just south of Baton Rouge. It was located on a bend in the Mississippi River that was surrounded on all three sides by water and for most of that time they were taken against their will and sent there. They were sometimes brought in shackles, sometimes at gunpoint. When they got there, they were given an inmate number. They were made to change their names.
They took an alias. They couldn't vote. They couldn't marry.
Some of the most tragic stories you've ever heard. So that treatment went on from 1896 to 1969 and in 1969 they discovered a cure and they threw open the gates of the colony and said to the four or five hundred patients who were there, you're free to go. A year later, only 17 had left. Their families had abandoned them. They had no place to go.
They didn't want to go out in public with disfigured limbs. So they had created this community and this culture with its own mores and traditions and so they felt safe in this colony. So in 1969, the government decided that they would be allowed to stay there and they could live there for the rest of their lives. So jump forward almost 30 years and there are only 130 of those patients left and there are all these empty beds where the leprosy patients used to live. And so a fiscally responsible bureaucrat said, I've got an idea.
Instead of wasting taxpayers' dollars on building a new federal prison, let's put nonviolent offenders and infirmed inmates, inmates who had a medical problem because there was a hospital there for the leprosy patients in these empty rooms and we'll save the taxpayer a great deal of money. So just about the time that they did that, which was 1993, I was a magazine publisher. I was 32 years old and I was going to conquer the world.
I wanted to build the biggest magazine empire faster than anybody else had. And I stumbled across this technique. It's a crime you can't commit anymore called kiting checks, where you could write a check to yourself, from yourself when I was running short of money until real money came in. I'd been doing it off and on for years and years.
It is absolutely illegal and I got to a point after acquiring Louisiana Life magazine where the house of cards just fell. The FDIC came in and did an audit at the bank and I ended up pleading to one count of bank fraud and was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. And it just so happened that I was sent to the experimental prison in Carville, Louisiana.
So this was pre-internet. I had no idea where I was going. I knew it was a mental security prison and that I would probably not be in danger physically. I knew I wouldn't see my kids except in the visiting room, but I had no inkling of what actually awaited behind those gates.
I packed a leather bag with books and racquetball rackets and tennis shoes and shorts like I was going to camp. And I was not going to be late reporting to prison. So I got there early and the guard was looking at his watch saying, you know, you're 30 minutes early. You're still a free man. It's like, no, no, I'm good.
I'll just wait right here. You know, I was so ridiculous, just wanting to do everything right and figuring that if I did, I would get special treatment there, which of course I did not. I was standing there waiting for a guard to come collect me. And I saw a man walking down this hallway. And when he got to the window closest to me, he waved to me and he didn't have any fingers. And so I went over to this guard house and I said, I just saw a guy with no fingers.
I assumed it might've been like a prison industry accident. And the guy said, oh, that's a Hansen's disease patient. And I said, what's that?
And he said, it used to be called leprosy. And that was the first time that I knew something might be off. So a guard came to get me. He strip searched me. He let me keep two books, gave me a couple of clothes I could keep. And he gave me a piece of paper with my room number on it. And so I walked out of that office into this courtyard where the prison was located.
It was surrounded by two story concrete walls and walkways. And when I walked out, I saw men sunbathing on a shuffleboard court. I saw 20 or 30 men who were over 500 pounds, a couple who were 600 pounds playing dominoes. They sent the most morbidly obese inmates there for the hospital. I saw men in wheelchairs who had been amputated so high, they had to be in a bucket so they wouldn't fall out.
It was, it was just this unbelievable crew of characters. I had been thrown into this place with not only the last Americans in prison for disease, but also these inmates, most of whom I thought would be nonviolent offenders. But because the medical inmates, a lot of them were there for heart attacks or stroke or diabetes or something like that.
And a lot of those inmates did have a violent past. And so I was sort of disoriented that this was not at all the kind of club fed that I thought I was going to be going into. I was so appalled that I had been subjected to these people that I was going to write an expose. And when I got out of prison, reveal to the world as a journalist, what this horrible government experiment was going on that nobody knew about where inmates could get leprosy and violent inmates were put in with minimum security inmates.
So I was completely in denial that I needed to change, that I needed this experience. And that's how I went in. As I was wandering, trying to find where I should put my stuff. I saw this woman in a wooden antique hand cranked wheelchair. She didn't have any legs and she was sort of wobbling down the hall in this wheelchair, not being able to go straight very well. And I knew this was an all male prison and I assumed she wasn't a prison guard.
So I held my breath and stepped back. And as she cranked her way past me, she said, there's no place like home. And then she turned a corner and an inmate came up to me and said, you see that woman?
She was dropped off here when she was 12 years old and her family never came back to see her. And he said, are you still feeling sorry for yourself? And when we come back more with Neil White's story here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country.
Stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.
Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. Hey, gorgeous. It's Paris Hilton. Get the party started with my new album, Infinite Icon, out now and stream the new single, Bad B**** Academy. I wanted this album to be an escape, to take people to a happy place where they can heal and party in equal measure. And most of all, be your own unapologetic icon.
Listen on iHeart Radio and visit InfiniteIcon.com to order the album. Sponsored by 11-11 Media. There's two kinds of people in the world. People who love health aid kombucha and people who have never tried it. The bubbly mix of probiotic tea and refreshing juice is delicious and good for your gut health. With great flavors to choose from that you can't help but love. If you've never tried it before, maybe try a bottle or can of passion fruit tangerine or ginger lemon. Your taste buds and your gut will thank you.
Look for the brown bottle with an anchor on it and try health aid kombucha today. We've all tried protein drinks on the go, but why don't they taste more like the ones we make at home or from the juice bar? They're too chalky and too sweet from sugar or artificial sweeteners. We love the health benefits, but hate the taste. Now you can finally get both with Don't Quit Protein Drinks. Loaded with 33 grams of protein, 26 vitamins and minerals, and a cleaner approach to ingredients that use no artificial flavors or sweeteners, but still delivers that smooth texture and delicious taste we all crave.
Fuel your perseverance with Don't Quit Clean Protein Drinks. Get yours now at walmart.com. Wherever you are in the world, it's an exciting time in politics. Take a deep dive into the stories making the news headlines across the world. The news agents. We're not just here to tell you what's happening, but why. From me, Emily Maitlis.
And me, John Sopel. With Global's award-winning podcast, The News Agents, dropping daily, covering everything you need to know about politics and current affairs. And The News Agents and The News Agents USA in the race for the White House. Listen to The News Agents on Global Playoff. Make your dorm the place to be with Roku TV, streaming players, and smart lights.
Head to roku.com or your favorite retailer to deck out your dorm. And we're back with our American stories and with author Neil White's story. When we last left off, Neil had just entered prison and had encountered a woman with leprosy. That woman's name was Ella Bounds.
Back to Neil. So later that week, I was assigned to a job in the cafeteria. I was doing the leprosy patient's menu board and I was there from 4 a.m to noon. So at about 5 a.m one morning, I was in their cafeteria and I saw this woman whose name was Ella Bounds and I asked her how she ended up here. Ella leaned back in her wheelchair, settling in.
Denham Springs, she said in a whisper. 1926. I was in grade school. According to Ella, a doctor had visited the one-room schoolhouse to administer shots. The raised oval spots on her leg where the pigmentation had disappeared had caught his attention. He pricked the blotches with a needle.
Ella felt nothing. Next week, white man drives up, Ella said, and I seen the carol boy pointing outside. Oh Ella, he said, bounty hunter fixing to carry you away.
I look out and seen the man leaning on his truck wearing dark glasses, arms crossed all tight. I hand painted sign large enough to be seen from neighboring farms and which would later be nailed to the side of her family's tenant house extended from the back of the white man's pickup truck. Ella couldn't read the long word scrawled in red letters. Later she would understand.
Quarantine. The school teacher put her hand on Ella's shoulder, pulled her up from her desk and let her outside. The other children ran over to the window. The teacher walked her across the small school yard toward the truck that idled at the edge of the field. The bounty hunter uncrossed his arms and pushed back his coat to expose a pistol. The teacher stopped and took her hand off Ella's shoulder. The man pointed to the back of the truck and Ella climbed in.
As he drove away Ella looked out through the wooden slats. So I was sentenced to 18 months for mishandling nearly a million dollars. She had been there 68 years because she was susceptible to a bacterial infection and standing in front of her hearing that story it was virtually impossible to muster up anything resembling self-pity. You never know how you're going to act when you go into a prison. I certainly knew that I wasn't going to be one of the tough guys. I wasn't going to get into a fight.
I wanted to get out as soon as I possibly could because I had a six-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter. I wanted to follow all the rules. I wanted to be the best inmate I could be and so I went in deciding that I wasn't going to put on any airs. I was just going to be myself. I was going to ask the questions I wanted to ask. I was going to be friendly.
I was going to use you know manners and be polite. So I sort of scurried off into a hallway to try and find my room. I walk in and my new roommate is reading a medical journal laying back on his cot and he drops it on his chest and he looks up at me and I introduced myself as Neil. He told me his name was Nick and everybody there called him Doc and he asked me if I snitched on anybody and I told him that I had committed this crime on my own. There was no conspiracy.
There was nobody else. I didn't testify against anybody and he said well good because I hate snitches. Apparently his accountant turned state's evidence over and that's why he was in prison. But it turns out this guy was brilliant.
Brilliant. He went to University of Tennessee Medical School and he said he had learned more in his 15 years in prison than he did in medical school because Tennessee never suspended his medical license so he got every medical journal for free and he had the time to read them all. So he was up on the latest of everything and he got in trouble because he had developed this weight loss drug.
The abbreviation is DNP. It's got a long chemical name. It's an illegal drug but he discovered it when he was hired by the CIA to translate Russian documents and this drug was used during World War II not as a drug against enemies but for the Russian troops.
It prevented them from getting frostbite. It warmed their extremities in their body and he saw on a footnote that the soldiers were losing five to ten pounds of wheat when they took this drug and he started doing research on it and he discovered that he could give it to women and they would lose weight without exercising and he had clinics all over the south. He said the lines were around the corner of overweight women coming in to get this DNP which was completely illegal and a lot of them were poor so it was about 40 million dollars in Medicaid fraud from what I understand but the patients loved him and the weight fell off and he was dispensing this illegal drug. So I think Doc could have done worlds of good for mankind if he had been placed in a pharmaceutical company and just said we're going to give you a million dollars a year invent stuff but he always I'm thinking that was the problem with all of us in prison there was this hubris this ego that he wanted to be the person who led the charge who got the accolades who made all the money and I can't say that I was much different from that in my own realm. So you know I wanted to put up photographs of my kids in my locker and I said do you have any you know tape or paste I want to stick these photographs in my locker and Doc reached over grabbed his toothpaste and tossed it to me and I said what's this he said toothpaste and so I spread toothpaste on the back of the photographs and put them up there I didn't know anything about the rules I wanted my clothes to be not just ironed but starched if possible I missed cologne I mean I was such a fish out of water and I didn't know any other way to act.
So you can't have paper money in federal prisons the reason for that is you could accumulate a lot of it so you can only have coins so when I came in with twenty dollars they exchanged it for two rolls of quarters and I put them in my locker after I put my kids photographs up with the toothpaste and later that night I came back and Doc was there and I opened my locker and the quarters were gone and I said somebody took my quarters and he didn't even look up from reading he said rumor has it there are criminals here I just I was such a fish out of water the second week I was in prison I was in the admission and orientation room to learn the rules of the prison and of course I wanted to be a model inmate to get back home as soon as I could and during the presentation I noticed there was an inmate who was turned away from the presenter staring at me who was a crack dealer from New Orleans we called link I went up to him and I said excuse me I don't mean any disrespect but why do you keep staring at me and he said man you look just like Clark Kent what the hell did you do to get in here and I said well I'm in here for bank fraud and he said you're a bank robber I said no no no no no not bank robber bank fraud I was I was kiting checks to keep my business afloat and he said let me ask you something did a bank lose money I said well yeah actually there were two banks involved he said then you're a damn bank robber and they all started laughing everybody was listening in and he said how much did you get he got real excited I said I think I'm going to get it I didn't get any I was paying printers and payroll and investors and I was you know leveraging one part of the company to expand in another he said how much did the banks lose and I swelled together they lost seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars and he said and how much of that do you have and I said I told you I don't have any and he said man I've been in jails all over this country you are the stupidest criminal I've ever met and so by the time the week ended he was following me around asking me questions and he determined that I was not only the stupidest criminal and the boringest person he'd ever met but I was the whitest man he had ever met and then when he found out my name was Neil White it was just all over with but this guy he was uneducated but he was brilliant he could size you up and dismantle you and he was so street smart compared to me and he told me after about the third day uh man your is in prison you don't need to be using manners and I was like well that's that's just how I talk you know thank you excuse me I just I was myself and I think maybe I had sort of lost that on the outside because I was trying to be something I wasn't and you're listening to author Neil White the book is in the Sanctuary of Outcasts you can get it at Amazon or wherever you get your books and you will not put this book down it's one of the finest reads I've come across and you know we love books and authors of all stripes here on Our American Stories and my goodness the cast of characters you'll meet Ella my goodness your heart will weep for this woman and her life and yet she's happy and of course there's Doc and Link I loved what he said about Neil you're the stupidest criminal I ever met you're the boringest criminal I ever met and you're the whitest criminal I ever met and then he finds out of course that Neil's last name is White when we come back more of Neil White's story he hails right from here in Oxford Mississippi a writer's town if ever there was one home to Faulkner and Grisham Richard Ford and so many others here on Our American Stories. Hey gorgeous it's Paris Hilton. Get the party started with my new album Infinite Icon out now and stream the new single Bad B**** Academy. I wanted this album to be an escape to take people to a happy place where they can heal and party in equal measure and most of all be your own unapologetic icon listen on iHeartRadio and visit InfiniteIcon.com to order the album sponsored by 11-11 Media. There's a lot of pros to drink in hell-fate kombucha no cons that I can think of pro amazing taste pro pairs well with anything pro probiotic that's a literal pro and it's deliciously refreshing it's the perfect pairing to your meal or great on its own whether you're having pink lady apple berry lemonade or one of the other great flavors it's the perfect swap for soda or alcohol make a part of your daily routine look for the brown bottle with an anchor on it and try hell-fate kombucha today. Hi this is pro football player Damar Hamlin you probably know my story about perseverance and never giving up that's why I joined the team I don't quit protein drinks whether I'm training hard on the field or in the gym don't quit helps me recover it with 33 grams of protein 26 vitamins and with none of the artificial stuff don't quit protein drinks also taste great they are not chalky and have no bad aftertaste my signature line of cookies and cream is my absolute favorite get yours now at Amazon. Wherever you are in the world it's an exciting time in politics take a deep dive into the stories making the news headlines across the world the news agents we're not just here to tell you what's happening but why from me Emily Maitlis and me John Sopel with global's award-winning podcast the news agents dropping daily covering everything you need to know about politics and current affairs and the news agents USA in the race for the White House listen to the news agents on global player Roku has what you need to make your college home away from home feel more like your own make your dorm the place to be with Roku TV or bring a Roku streaming stick to easily access all your favorite free and premium content like iHeartRadio stream your favorite playlist with the Roku vibe setting smart light strips to sync your music to millions of colors and make your dorm feel more like you make your dorm the place to be with Roku TV streaming players and smart lights head to Roku com or your favorite retailer to deck out your dorm and we're back with our American stories and with author Neil White he's been sharing with us his various adventures in the first few weeks in a prison in Louisiana dedicated to leprosy patients returned into a prison for well all kinds of characters back to Neil so my first day of working the 4 a.m. shift in the kitchen I went out to meet the guys and be escorted to the kitchen by guard and he was ball me even at 4 a.m. it was probably 78 degrees and I noticed four or five of the guys had on these huge heavy coats and these big mitts I was like that is idiotic they're gonna they're gonna die in this heat and so well walk to the kitchen and after about 30 minutes the guard left I don't know if he went back to his office or what and I was washing dishes and making toast and I noticed that there weren't many people around a bunch of them had disappeared so one of the people cooking asked me to go into the big cooler and get something I don't know if it was fruit or whatever and so I walked in and I didn't see it initially so I walked toward the back as I noticed that there were these three inmates asleep in the very back of the cooler they had gotten up on boxes of produce and and fruit and stuff and made these sort of makeshift beds and they had bundled up in their coats and mittens and they were sleeping they were just sleeping the morning away in the cooler and I couldn't believe it these guys they were literally sleeping on the job in like 37 degree temperature so there were about a third of us who did all the work but what always struck me and I guess you know the same thing would be said about me these guys were so creative and went to such lengths to do things the wrong way if they had funneled that energy into doing something that was sort of productive or legal there's no telling what they could have accomplished but they just thrived on beating the system so I was washing dishes with a guy named Jefferson and he was asking me what I did and I asked him what he did and he said that he worked the post office and he manned the x-ray machine at the Loyola Street post office in New Orleans and said x-ray machine did they why do they have an x-ray machine he said every package every letter goes through the x-ray machine to make sure there's nothing dangerous and I said did you ever see anything interesting go through and he said every damn day you see cash money coming through there he said I'd pick up that letter stick it in my pocket and go home I said you really took cash from the mail and he said absolutely he said some of the nicest letters you've ever seen in your life he said I'd take those things and read him say dear Tommy here's four $100 bills for your fourth birthday and he said I would start singing happy birthday to me happy birthday to me I can't believe it I used to send you know cash to my kids and to friends I said didn't you didn't you ever feel bad about that he said oh yeah absolutely this one day there was another kid who was turning six years old and there was six $100 bills and I said and you felt bad right and he said yeah cuz I was hoping he was a teenager and he just went on and on and on he had absolutely no remorse about this but he was hysterical I was bent over laughing and appalled at the same time but these are the people you encountered there so we had pay phones and we could make collect calls and I called you know as much as I could to speak to the kids and there was always this recording that interrupted about every three minutes this call emanates from a federal correctional facility so I was talking to Linda my wife and she told me that she was filing for divorce and I was just absolutely devastated what's interesting is I had filed for bankruptcy I had been humiliated in the newspapers there was six columns across the top of the headline white sentenced to prison I lost my house I lost my money all these things happened and I still didn't hit what for me was rock bottom but the thought of not living with my kids not putting them to bed every night not waking up with him every morning that was the one that finally got me I looked for an abandoned hallway a corner in the library an empty television room but inmates were everywhere I couldn't catch my breath air didn't go deep enough my hands trembled I felt nauseated I needed to cry but I couldn't let anyone see me not a guard or an inmate or a leprosy patient I sat on a bench in the corner the inmate courtyard slumped over I could feel my heart pound that's where link saw me look at Clark Kent feeling all sad I wanted him to go away my wife is leaving me I said hoping he would take the hint damn he said laughing like he thought this was way too funny you've been lying your whole life you lost two million dollars and your ass is in jail what the hell do you think she's gonna do you know link had a way of bringing you out of your self-pity and pointing out that yeah you might be sad but this shouldn't have been a surprise to you by the time I was 31 ambition had become the driving force in my life privately I envisioned the figure I would become owner of a huge network of city magazines editor of a daily newspaper holder of innumerable Civic Awards owner of a fabulous yacht and of course philanthropist with these images fixed in my mind I was able to overlook what I did to get there but the prospect of losing my children had stripped away every pretense it did what bankruptcy public humiliation and imprisonment had not done I could no longer stomach my own lies and delusions for the first time I felt the full weight of my crimes I began the process of asking myself the hard questions how did I get so far off course how could I have hurt so many people how could I have put my family at risk could I avoid caring what people thought of me and how could I support my family in a way that did no harm but allowed me to help others I'd never set aside the time to look at how I felt or where I was headed I believed I could not afford to question my motives I was focused on a single goal success and had no interest in anything that stood in the way I'd convinced myself that kiting checks wasn't a real crime I'd also convinced myself that there were no real victims as long as I covered the overdraft but deep down I knew better I used to tell people that I was my own best customer I could convince myself of anything that justified what I wanted and that is a really really dangerous way to live you know I knew I needed to change and I knew I needed to do things differently and I told Ella about that I said you know I want to be a new person but I still wake up feeling sort of the same Ella intertwined her fingers like she always did when she told the story in the early days of Carville she explained the coca-cola distributor from Baton Rouge sent chipped and cracked coke bottles to the colony so he could refuse to accept the return bottles he feared a public boycott of customers discovered the glass containers had been touched by the lips of leprosy patients more drink bottles than you've ever seen she said the crates of bottles filled closets and storerooms but the patients discovered new uses for the non-returnable bottles they use them as flower vases with beautiful arrangements they became sugar dispensers in the cafeteria for impromptu bowling games on the lawn the bottles were used as pins they were turned upside down and stuffed into the dirt to line flower beds and walks on the Carville grounds coca bottle still a coca bottle Ella said just found him a new purpose and I think what she was telling me was I didn't necessarily need to be a new person that those same traits I was born with could be used for good or not so good and that felt true to me because I'm suspect of the I'm a totally different person I made a you know 180 degree turnaround I think we're all made up of what we're made up of and we're gonna make mistakes and we're gonna stumble and we're gonna fall and bad things are gonna happen but the solution to that is not a 180 it's a more subtle series of shifts and and that's the gift she sort of gave me and pointed out to me and you're listening to Neil White author of in the sanctuary of outcasts a terrific read and a terrific storyteller and my goodness that understanding of what had happened when he kited those checks he endured the humiliation in newspapers a bankruptcy a lost house but the filing for divorce and possibly losing his children that's when Neil hit bottom and wouldn't we all and when we come back more with Neil White's story here on our American stories hey gorgeous it's Paris Hilton get the party started with my new album infinite icon out now and stream the new single bad academy I wanted this album to be an escape to take people to a happy place where they can heal and party in equal measure and most of all be your own unapologetic icon listen on iHeartRadio and visit infinite icon.com to order the album sponsored by eleven eleven media a lot of pros to drink in hellfate kombucha no cons that I can think of pro amazing taste pro pairs well with anything pro probiotic that's a literal pro and it's deliciously refreshing it's the perfect pairing to your meal or great on its own whether you're having pink lady apple berry lemonade or one of the other great flavors it's the perfect swap for soda or alcohol make a part of your daily routine look for the brown bottle with an anchor on it and try health aid kombucha today hi this is pro football player Damar Hamlin you probably know my story about perseverance and never giving up that's why I joined the team I don't quit protein drinks whether I'm training hard on the field or in the gym don't quit helps me recover with 33 grams of protein 26 vitamins and with none of the artificial stuff don't quit protein drinks also taste great they are not chalky and have no bad aftertaste my signature line of cookies and cream is my absolute favorite get yours now at walmart.com wherever you are in the world it's an exciting time in politics take a deep dive into the stories making the news headlines across the world the news agents we're not just here to tell you what's happening but why from me emily maters and me john sopel with global's award-winning podcast the news agents dropping daily covering everything you need to know about politics and current affairs and the news agents usa in the race for the white house listen to the news agents on global player roku has what you need to make your college home away from home feel more like your own make your dorm the place to be with roku tv or bring a roku streaming stick to easily access all your favorite free and premium content like i heart radio stream your favorite playlist with the roku vibe setting smart light strips to sync your music to millions of colors and make your dorm feel more like you make your dorm the place to be with roku tv streaming players and smart lights head to roku.com or your favorite retailer to deck out your dorm and we're back with our american stories in the final portion of neil white's story he told us about his wife linda filing for divorce when he was in prison here's neil with the rest of his story so linda grew up in oxford her family was here her friends were here we had moved to the coast and to new orleans when all this went down so she decided to move back to oxford smaller town for her and for the kids and so you know i realized i needed to be here too if i was going to be a good father and in a long handwritten note linda outlined every reason i should not move to oxford but in the last paragraph her tone shifted she would not resist my decision acknowledging she might be making a huge mistake she believed neil and maggie needed both of us she closed her letter with a request please respect my space and privacy for the sake of our children linda was willing to sacrifice her desire to be far from me i would have some hard times after my release especially in oxford but linda's blessing gave me great hope linda had done something remarkable she had given me a second chance a second chance with my children at that point in time i was in the catholic church and i was sort of uh i'd been crying for a couple of days i couldn't believe that this was happening to me and i noticed a new leprosy patient i'd never seen him before but that wasn't unusual patients from around the world came to carvel for special surgeries and treatments but he was performing a ritual i'd never seen he put his bible to his chin and pressed it against his mouth like he was licking the pages during communion standing at the altar i got a closer look he was blind and like most the victims of leprosy the man's hands were anesthetized so braille was of no use his fingertips could not feel the small bumps on the page but he had found a new way he was reading braille with his tongue and so to see what that guy overcame when i was wallowing in this pity of how am i going to go back out and survive in oxford mississippi it seemed like every time i fell into that i saw something there that gave me a little bit different perspective that pulled me out of that complete self-centeredness the good thing about the federal prison system is they they do want you to not be there they want you to get out and and live a good life they want you to have a good relationship with your family so there was this one day called kids day and the kids were allowed to come into the prison and there was a cakewalk and there were games set up and the other inmates and guards were dressed up in clown outfits and they were entertaining the kids and they showed a movie they showed free willy and one of the inmates said what the hell what the hell are they thinking about a captive killer whale trying to escape captivity showing that to kids whose dads are in prison you know i don't think it was intentional but it was pretty funny so the leprosy patients had this huge ballroom where they had their dances and their mardi gras parades and that sort of thing and that's where it was and it was just this remarkable day where the kids got to come in and see where i spent my time and as silly as it sounds it was just one of those absolutely remarkable moments and they both still remember that to this day but what's really interesting is in the prison visiting room they could visit friday nights all day saturday and all day sunday and in this visiting room there was no tv there was no telephone there was no nintendo there were no computers it was just them me a playground where we could throw a ball some vending machines some tables where we could draw pictures and tell stories i listened to what they wanted to do i answered the questions they had and i wasn't a bad father before i went there but i was so busy working trying to build this magazine empire i would you know run through the house pat him on the head and say we're going to go to disney world spring break and so i really kind of learned to re-parent in that prison visiting room when i got out of prison i just parented in a real different way the first thing i did when i moved back to oxford was i moved the dining room table out of our house and put a ping-pong table in the middle of it and we just spent hours playing ping-pong and goofing around and playing and i coached their teams i would go eat lunch with them at their school it's really interesting i was thinking when i moved back to oxford all the things that i wanted before were out of my reach i'd never be asked to be on the board of a bank i'd never be asked to be in charge of people's money i'd never be asked to be in any political office or any position of position of importance and it occurred to me hell i'm free i can go eat lunch with my kids i can coach their teams at three and so it was a very different way of living for me so i spent the next 10 years really trying to be a good father but i was trying to figure out how am i going to make this work i can't get a job because i have to check that box have you been convicted of a felony i'm not gonna have any resources i didn't know what to do so i set up a little card table in my kitchen and i called some people who were colleagues and friends and basically said look i lost my freedom i lost my money i lost other people's money but i didn't lose my mind i'm still creative i can still do good work if you have anything a press release a brochure you name it i'll do it i'll never take money up front if you don't like it you don't pay for it and within the first three months of being out i got three clients and all of them were banks who recognized a good deal i had no overhead i had no assistants i had no employees so after being convicted of bank fraud my first clients were banks and i did work for them and they were happy with it and i started doing their annual reports and then i started a small magazine for graduating seniors to help them navigate the path to getting into college and financial aid and that caught on and a bunch of big national banks bought into it and that ended up having a circulation within about four years of almost 2 million copies and so in very short order by myself without having an office i had a company bigger than the one that was on the coast with 30 employees so it was a strange turn of events but i didn't push to be big i didn't push for anything to happen it i was focused on doing good quality work with no expectation of the outcome linda told me when i got here that her love for the kids was greater than any of her animosity toward me that i could come to her house anytime and get them she would never call the babysitter she would call me and see if i wanted them first so i ended up having the kids about half the time neither one of us remarried for about five years we'd do mothers and fathers day together we were pretty good co-parents a lot of people in our church we went to the same church said that they wished their marriage was as good as our divorce but she went so far in forgiving me she could have made my life really miserable and she chose not to and i'll always be very grateful for that when i got back out i went to try and apologize to everybody i had hurt and with the exception of one or two and there were a lot of people that had been hurt by the wake of destruction that i'd left you know they said you've done your time we forgive you let's start new some of us started doing business together again and so it was helpful to me but i also think it was really therapeutic to the people who got hurt that some reckless guy wasn't going to get away with it again the truth is you know i was 32 when i was sentenced to prison and you know bad things had happened i'd gotten into a little trouble but i had never truly been held accountable people had always given me a benefit of the doubt in fact i had been caught on a very much smaller scale kiting checks eight years earlier in oxford it was stood the tune of like seven thousand dollars and i just paid it immediately and a woman at the bank said we're gonna have to notify the fbi of this and i said okay and nothing ever came of it nobody ever called nobody ever said anything and so what it told me was that might be illegal but as long as you pay it ultimately nothing's gonna happen i'm not blaming anybody else but i just people gave me breaks over and over and over again they would say oh he's a good kid let's slap on the wrist so nothing ever really serious in terms of consequences happened to me until this and this label of xcon this label of somebody who'd been convicted of a felony it took away all these options for me that did nothing but get me into trouble and what i was left with was you know the ability to be kind to use whatever skills i have to make the world a better place to be a good father to be a good friend so it was it was a gift in so many ways there were all sorts of people who helped me whether they intended to or not i felt proud to live in a room that offered a century of safety for leprosy patients i was honored to take communion in the same sanctuary where society's outcasts asked god to console their suffering i felt privileged to live and work and play in a place that few had ever seen and i was grateful i had been imprisoned here in a leprosarium where i could begin to rebuild my life in a different way and a terrific job on the production by madison derrick cutt and a special thanks to neil white author of in the sanctuary of outcasts again go to amazon or the usual suspects pick up this terrific book by the way he thanked the judge last line of the book for holding him accountable and putting him in prison what character neil was a better man a better father and a better friend for everything he'd been through and of course always those leprosy patients would jolt him back to 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