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Take it away, John. If you had to draw a picture of Americana back in the 80s, I think it would be a picture of our backyard. We had a picket fence. We had a golden retriever. My mother taught third grade history. And in her spare time, she raised six kids.
I'm the fourth one of those six. My father did not sleep as far as I know. I never saw the man in bed. I never once saw the man sick.
I never saw the man angry. I saw a man who was hardworking and industrious and faithful and loving and tender. He served in the U.S. Army, was a small business owner, and an example of true beautiful masculine love to not only his sons, but to his daughters. He came home for dinner every time, sat around the dinner table, held hands while we prayed. Mom made dinner almost every single night, except on Fridays when we went out together as a family for pizza. Both sets of grandparents were alive. It may be the biggest argument we had growing up.
The two grandpas would fight about who had it worse, the grandpa who fought in Europe or the grandpa who fought in the Pacific. We had a wonderful faith-filled idealistic upbringing. Prayers before bed, prayers before meals, church on Sundays, pancakes afterwards. I remember, this is a story I've never shared, our take-home exercise at school, I went to a little Christian school, was to draw a picture of Jesus. And I drew this picture of this boat being rocked by the waves, and then this one apostle stepping out of that boat toward Jesus. And as I was coloring this picture, I knew back then as a little boy, if I ever got called out of that boat, I could walk on water too. My mom and dad gave us that type of faith as kids, really candidly before we needed it.
I'll just be honest. I mean, the sun shines very brightly over the Illyri House for a long, long, long time. I don't know if we understood how fortunate we were, but in my life and in the lives of my five siblings, there would come a day for all of us when all of us would need that type of faith. Back in the 80s, we wouldn't have technology, man. We spent our lives outside kind of getting in trouble in creek beds and people's backyards. So these kids were playing with fire and gasoline in their backyard. They would drizzle a little bit of gasoline, stand back a couple feet, throw the match on top.
And this little gasoline puddle would dance to life. And these were boys I looked up to. They were about 11.
And I figured if they could do it, so could I. So the following weekend, my mother was out with two of my sisters. My father was at work. It was seven 30 bent over a five gallon can of gasoline. What I remember is it was too heavy to even budge filled to the brim. So I lit a piece of cardboard on fire. I set it down on the concrete floor and then very carefully bent down, poured a little bit of gasoline on top. And man, it was so heavy. I couldn't even move the thing at first.
So I bear hug this thing, tilted it. And as I waited for the liquid to come out, the fumes must have pulled the flame into the can. It created this massive explosion, split the metal can into it, picked up the nine-year-old boy, that's me, launched me 20 feet against the far side of the garage.
I remember coming to everything around me was either pitch black or on fire. And when you're little, you're taught to stop and drop and roll. But when you're the one on fire, you know, that's not what you naturally do. You run. So I'm panic struck. I'm in pain.
I'm burning. Although I'm not even sure if I know it at the time. So I just run on fire through the smoke, through the flames, back toward my mom and dad's house. I opened up this little garage door, came into the front hall, stood on top of this rug, man.
My mom and dad had this oriental rug in the front hall. And I remember standing on this rug, just screaming for a hero. Like God, I'll take anybody. I'll take anybody.
And I see my brother, Jim, coming from the upper steps and still distinctly remember, as I'm seeing Jim coming toward me, I remember thinking, Oh my gosh, anybody else, man, not, not him. I need a hero. I need a parent. I need a firefighter. I need a neighbor.
I need someone who can do something here for me. Jim was the kind of brother who my mother would ask, Hey, make everybody peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And Jim would, and he would add Tabasco sauce to all the sandwiches.
And yet on that morning, it was January 17th. My brother, Jim picks up a rug, the kind you're supposed to wipe your feet on. He runs over to me. He begins beating down the flames. After swinging down a couple of times, he dropped the rug because he started catching. And then I remember Jim sees me and he picks up it and he picks up the rug and he comes in and he beats me down a fourth time and a fifth time. And now he's burning. And he beats me a sixth time and a seventh time for two minutes, the 17 year old brother of mine, burning himself in the process, beats down the flames in my body, wraps me in that rug, carries me outside, throws me on the ground. Once we get out there, jumps on top of me, we roll around in the front yard. He then says, stay awake.
I'll be right back. He runs back inside, gets my two other sisters out of the house, gets our golden retriever out of the house, calls 911. 1987, the lifesaver of the year for the state of Missouri was not a firefighter. It was not a first responder. It was not a police officer or a veteran.
It was a 17 year old boy, high school junior named Jim. It was lightly snowing that day. It was cold outside. I'm in the front yard. My clothes had been burnt off and my skin has been burnt off.
And I'm naked in the front yard of a burning house. When my brother Jim went in and chased the two girls out of the house, out of the smoke, one of them walked over to me and she just put her arms around me. Her name is Amy. And she says, John, it's okay.
Have faith and fight the best that she had to come. And I remember hearing her say that and just like kind of in disbelief, I remember looking down and when I looked down, it's when I saw my legs and my hands, my body all burnt. So I looked up and when I looked up, I saw my house and there are flames leaping through the roof line.
It wasn't a lightning strike that caused that fire. I'm the one that caused it. And I remember looking up at her and saying, Amy, it's not okay. Not this time.
Do me a favor, go back into the house, get a knife, come back out of here and just finish me off. This time it's not all right. And this little girl pulls me even closer. She's 11 and she says, John, shut up.
What is wrong with you? Have faith and fight the best that she had to come. Overhearing this dialogue is our younger sister, Susan. This is the little girl that my brother Jim would make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with Tabasco sauce for me. I would hate him for, but I would learn from, and then I would make her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with Tabasco sauce.
I've just given her the green light to maybe do what she always wanted to do. She unbelievably goes back into a burning house. A few seconds later, she comes running back outside and then she threw a cup of water right into my face. I'm simmering.
I'm dying. I want out. And this little girl just went into a burning house for a cup of water, begging me to live. And after she threw that first cup of water in my face, she goes right back into a burning house. The second time comes back outside, throws a second cup of water in my face.
And then she turns and she runs right back in. One of my favorite scriptural lines is no greater love than this than to be willing to lay it on one's life for one's friends. She doesn't lay it on her life that day for me, but she was willing to. My entire body was burned on January 17th, 1987, 100%. 87% of it was burned third degree.
That's as bad as it gets. The part that was not burned third degree was my face and my scalp, which is why I'm able to not only have my face still, my ears still, my nose still, what a blessing that is, but also the scalp is where they took every layer of skin to replace the parts of my body that had lost the skin. And the doctors, it was Vachi and Vashi and credits my sister's love on the day I was burned with how he was able to salvage that donor site.
So not only did she embody selfless love, she may have given me back the opportunity of life beyond that day. And you're listening to John O'Leary, author of the bestselling book On Fire. Share his story.
He grew up in a good home, a joy-filled home, a prayer-filled home. And on this one occasion, this one day, he's playing with fire and with gasoline too. And there's an explosion.
It launches him against the garage and he's on fire. When we come back, this remarkable story of faith and fighting, it continues here on Our American Stories, John O'Leary's story when we come back. Did you know that there's a victim of identity theft every three seconds? It's Identity Theft Awareness Week, which means it's the perfect time to protect your identity with LifeLock.
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Visit att.com slash guarantee for details. And we return to our American stories and John O'Leary's harrowing story of survival. When we last left off, John had just set himself and his family's house on fire. Let's return to the story. So I'm in the hospital room. I'm among strangers. I'd never been away from home. I'd never even been a summer camp. I'd never been sick.
I'd never been in a hospital. And then I hear my father's voice down the hall. Where is my boy?
Where is my boy? And my first thought was, oh my gosh, my old man has come to finish me off. He's going to be so mad. Once he finds out what I did to the house, he's going to kill me. He marches in military style, left, right, left, right, points down at me.
So I shut my eyes. And then I hear my father say, John, look at me when I'm talking to you. So I look up at my dad. And then he says, I have never been so, so proud of anyone in my entire life.
And then he says, I love you. You're hearing this thinking, oh my gosh, nobody told my dad what happened. Clearly he does not know the cause of this thing in his son's life. And what I did not know back then as a kid was the power of grace was true unconditional love. As an adult, now looking back on the story as a man, as a father myself, man, I get it now. I got a picture of the prodigal father hanging up in my office. I did not understand what it looks like to look over the hillside to see a son coming home and to go sprinting down the path toward him. I didn't get that as a kid, but I felt it as a kid. I felt that I'm conditional love. And I'm telling you, it changed me in the emergency room. It did not make the journey forward easy.
Like how do you recover quickly from burns to your entire body? But I think my dad's love on day one, on moment one, made that journey possible. And that was a turning point. Right behind my dad came my mom. She takes my right hand.
My fingers are amputated on both hands now. So you can imagine what they might've looked like on the morning off, but she just boldly walks in. She takes my right hand, pats my bald head, and she says, I love you. So I look up and I say, mama, am I going to die?
Am I going to die? She looked me in the eyes and she said to me, baby, do you want to die? It's your choice.
It's not mine, mama. I don't want to die. I want to live.
And her response was good. The take the hand of God, walk the journey with him. And you fight like you've never fought before your daddy. And I will be with you every step.
You're never going to be on your own, but you got to do your part. And on that morning, it was January 17th, 1987, a lifetime ago, man, almost four decades ago. Now a little boy shut his eyes and took God's hand and just walked forward. I never heard of burn care, never heard of amputations, never heard of debridement, never heard of donor sites.
None of that. That has what made the journey, not only endurable, but ultimately miraculous and possible. The math that used to run on patients as they arrived into emergency departments and ultimately in the burn centers, they would take the percentage of the body burned. They would add age and that would give them mortality.
So get your calculators out. 100% of the body was burned. The child was nine, which means this little boy has 109% likelihood of dying.
That's just the cold hard facts. My mother doesn't know this. So right after she visits me, she has an opportunity of meeting with the doctor for the first time.
His name is Vachi Avajan. And Dr. Avajan is explaining how badly her little boy is burned and starting to talk about what the first procedures might look like and talking about the first night and what they've got to do right away to get this thing going. And finally, it's beginning to sink in with my mother, how desperate this fight will be. And so she says to him, doctor, are you telling me that my baby's got a 50-50 chance of surviving this thing?
And the way my mother told me later on was he took off his glasses, looked her in the eyes and said, Mrs. O'Leary, you are completely misunderstanding me. I'm not a betting man. But if I had to put odds on your son's chances of survival, I would say that he has less than one half of 1% chance of surviving this first night. And those odds will never improve. Every night it will be less than one half of 1% chance of surviving that night.
We know how the story ends. And the unbelievable thing about my parents' faith, gosh, I get emotional even sharing this. The day I was burned, my dad left the hospital in a snowstorm because he hears there's a prayer service. In St. Louis, we don't get that much snow.
And when we do, basically they call the National Guard, man, stay indoors. Don't go outside. Well, that night in seven inches of snow, my dad goes up to the church and it is sold out. They're not selling tickets, but there's nowhere to sit. The church is packed. No one goes to church when it's snowy, not even on a Sunday. This is a Saturday night.
It's late. My dad walks in. He kneels down in front of these guys.
He probably used to try to impress. He kneels in front of all of them. They hand him a microphone and he just thanks them all for coming.
He talks about the situation as it is right now. And then he says, but I need to turn this over to God. So he sends up this prayer. God, you gave us your son, John, to love and to raise. We now give him back to you.
We give him back to you. But our prayer, our expectant prayer is that you will heal our boy. He asked this through Jesus Christ. He stands up.
He walks out. The prayer service continues. My dad goes back to work at the hospital, but that little prayer, God, you gave us this boy to love and to raise. It remained his prayer during that five and a half months in hospital. They realized what a surgeon may not be able to do. God can.
God can. And so the prayers began to go out. You know, there was an old device that your grandparents once had in their home called the telephone.
The day I was burned. My next door neighbor, her name was Carol Bower. She was a widow. She called a friend who called a friend who called a friend. And her game of phone tag ultimately led five relationships deep to a girl named Colleen. Colleen called her dad. Her dad was an old cardinal player.
And back in the teens and sixties, his name was Red Shandings. And Colleen mentions that a little boy was burned in our community. He's probably going to die, dad. Keep them in your thoughts and prayers though. Red Shandings then goes to a charity auction that night. He's seated at a VIP table in St. Louis, Missouri. And while sharing with the table of nine others, you know, celebrating baseball and the promise of spring, he also shares that a little boy in our community was burned terribly.
Keep them in your thoughts and prayers. What at that table was a guy named Jack Buck. Jack Buck was in seven hall of Fames, baseball hall of fame, the football hall of fame, the hockey hall of fame, the broadcasters hall of fame, the radio hall of fame. This man was everywhere.
He was influential nationally, but also locally, hugely powerful locally. And Jack Buck hears a little boy is going to die. This is a man from the greatest generation fought overseas, picked up a purple heart. He understood pain, but he also understood what happens when people show up for one another. And he leaves the charity auction that night. Jack Buck is the voice of St. Louis Cardinals baseball.
In other words, he is the voice of my childhood. And I'm laying in the hospital bed dying. I'm tied down to this bed. My arms and legs are tied down, so I can't move my arms or my legs. My lungs have been burned, so I can no longer breathe on my own. There's a trach, forcing oxygen into my lungs.
My eyes are swollen shut, so I can't see, can't communicate. I'm cut off from the world, but I can listen. And I remember the night I was burned, the door opens up from the outside. I hear footsteps. I hear a chair.
I hear it get pulled across close. I hear a cough. And then I hear the voice of my childhood. And you've been listening to John O'Leary's story and what a story it is about the power of faith and grace. And my goodness, that encounter with his father and hearing his father's voice, where's my boy? And his dad says those words. I've never been so proud of you any time in my entire life. I love you. And there it was the power of grace, true unconditional love on display.
Anybody who's a parent out there, if this isn't the relationship you have with your kid, it's never too late. When we come back, what happens next? The story of John O'Leary here on Al American Story. Theater sound systems that already have surround sound and booming bass. If all that sounds too good to be true, it'll sound even better on the new Roku Pro Series. Your hearing isn't better. Your TV is.
This is Carissa Thompson from Calm Down with Aaron and Carissa. Guys, Valentine's Day is not the time to wing it. You know what I mean?
You need a solid game plan. Yeah. Yes. Aaron knows this all too well.
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Some are even grown on the side of a volcano. That's incredible. She'll be blown away by how stunning they are. Valentine's Day, you guys, is February 14th. Again, Steve, Jared, February 14th, right after the big game.
So don't fumble the flowers. You get what we're doing here and get your order in now. Go to Boox.com. Use my promo code CALMDOWN for 25% off. That's B-O-U-Q-S dot com. Promo code CALMDOWN. Boox.
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That's K-N-I-X dot com. And we return to our American stories in the final portion of John O'Leary's beautiful story of survival, faith, and as you'll soon hear, friendship. Let's pick up where we last left off with the great late Jack Buck, visiting John O'Leary at the hospital in St. Louis.
Here again is John O'Leary. The sound of our summertime was baseball from March until September. And if we were lucky more and the sounds of baseball for us was a guy named Jack Buck, the voice of St. Louis Cardinals baseball. He's in six different hall of fame.
He's a celebrity in and of his own right. But more than a celebrity to me, he was my connection to the thing I love more than anything else, baseball. Because back in the eighties, you weren't watching the games on television.
The way you watch baseball as a kid was to shut your eyes and listen. When my mom and dad would tuck me in in the summertime, they would walk out of that room about seven feet down the hallway. One of the floorboards would get this little squeak. And I knew mom and dad weren't coming back into my room.
And that's when I would turn on the radio, 11, 20 camo X. The voice I heard every night was the voice of Jack Buck. And the voice I heard on the first night of being burned was Jack Buck.
And the voice said to me, kid, wake up, wake up. You are going to live. And once you get out of here, we are going to celebrate. We'll call it John O'Leary Day at the ballpark.
Keep fighting. Mr. Buck stands up. He walks out of that room, leaned his head against a glass door, just started crying. One of the nurses came over, explained that the little boy wasn't going to survive. And then Mr. Buck goes home that night, cries, he prays, he journals on one question.
The question was, what more can I do? And the following day, I'm laying in a hospital bed. Now it's January 18th. The door opens up, footsteps walk back in, chair comes across the floor. And then I hear the voice of the radio kick on again. When Jack Buck says to his new little friend, kid, wake up, I'm back. You are going to live. You are going to survive. John O'Leary Day at the ballpark will make it all worthwhile.
See you soon. He would come back into that room almost every single day while I was in hospital. When he went out of town for spring training with the Cardinals, he would send in sick players, guys who were injured, like a guy named Ozzie Smith, an outfielder named Manny Van Slyke.
He'd send in hockey players. And he began championing this little boy, this little boy he had not met previously. I'm not a celebrity. I'm not famous.
Our family's not wealthy. He just saw an opportunity to serve someone in need. John O'Leary Day at the ballpark. So I've just celebrated my 10th birthday. And as part of the celebration, we go back to the celebration. We go downtown St. Louis to Bush Stadium. The person who greet us in the parking lot is a white haired guy in a beautiful red blazer named Jack Buck.
Helps get me out of the car. I knew a wheelchair rolls me into the stadium, takes me onto the field for batting practice. And then we go into a place called Players Only Clubhouse.
Buck was never much of a rule follower. So he walks right in. There's 25 athletes in various stages of undress. We make a right-hand turn. And one by one, he introduces me to 25 St. Louis Cardinals as if I'm one of them. And what I remember most distinctly about that is the first guy was Willie McGee. Came over, shook my broken right hand as if I belonged. And then a fellow named Terry Pendleton.
And then there's Ozzie Smith, Keith Hernandez. And down the line, we went. One by one, these guys all made me feel as if I belonged.
And then we went upstairs that night. The broadcast begins. Jack Buck begins with a call. It's John O'Leary Day at the ballpark.
The New York Mets are in town, kid. Are you having fun? So I look up on live national radio and I respond.
That's right. No, no noise. I'm nodding my head violently up and down like, yes, I'm excited. But I haven't found my voice yet.
Physically it's returned, but man, I'm in the presence of a hero of mine. So I don't say much to him all night. That night though, was not a blur. I remember almost inning by inning, frame by frame. Eventually the Cardinals coming back in the bottom of the eighth and winning the game against the Mets four to three year final.
What an awesome game. I also remember Jack Buck had learned that night that little John O'Leary can't do much with his hands. So the following day at our house arrives in a brown box, a little ball that says, kid, if you want a second baseball, write a thank you letter to the man who sent the first. And inside that box was a baseball signed by Ozzie Smith. So my mom looks at me and says, baby, I guess if you want a second baseball, you got to write a thank you letter. Unable to write up until that point, I begged my mother for a pen or a pencil. She brings one over. There are two occupational therapists who pushed my hands together.
We break through scar tissue. We wrote a note. And two days later, we got a second baseball from another Cardinal player, Tommy, her that read kid, if you want a third baseball, write a thank you letter.
So I did. Then I got a third baseball that said, kid, if you want a fourth baseball kid, if you want a fifth baseball. 1987, Jack Buck, a very busy hall of fame radio announcer sends a 10 year old boy in a wheelchair with no fingers and no real chance at life. D baseball's 60 teaching a little boy how to ride again. Everything I've done in my life professionally rests on the lessons and the gifts that Jack Buck gave me as a kid.
Those gifts of 60 baseball's changed my life. The last time I saw Jack Buck was at my college graduation. I'm 22. I'm captain gowned up. Jack Buck comes to the college graduation with a package and a note. The first word was kid.
I'm not sure Jack Buck ever knew my first name was John. He called me kid every single time we were together. Kid, kid, this kid that. So he writes, kid, this means a lot to me. I hope it means a lot to you too. Enjoy. It's yours. So I opened up this package, look inside, see something kind of shiny, glaring back at me.
I lifted up with both my hands. And that's when I read something that says major league baseball, baseball hall of fame, Jack Buck. It's the crystal baseball that Jack Buck had received when he went into the hall of fame. He said to me, as he hands me this baseball kid, there's only one like it in the entire world. It's priceless.
Don't drop it. And the final words he ever spoke to me, it's yours. He hands me this baseball walks away. And that's my last interaction with Jack Buck, this side of eternity.
And this is the part of the story. I hate sharing. After he gave that baseball to me, I took it home that night. I put it into a sock drawer, not for safe keeping. I put it in that sock drawer because I didn't want anybody to know that I was friends with Jack Buck. Because if they had found out how close we were, they would also ask me, how'd you guys meet in the first place? I wasn't telling anybody how I was burned.
Nobody. Why would you talk about the bad stuff? And I never, until unfortunately after his death, felt truly worthy of that type of friendship and that type of love. Jack struggled himself with Parkinson's disease and eventually lung cancer. And I was never able to be the friend to him that he was to me because I never felt worthy of that friendship in the first place. For five months, he sat in a hospital bed and I never went to visit him. Not because I didn't love him, not because I wasn't praying for him daily, but every single time I pulled up to that hospital, I always eventually left that hospital parking lot, realizing someone more important than I is already in front of him.
And that is a lousy way to go through life. When I got out of hospital, the commitment I made quietly to myself was I will be normal, which is a worthy commitment to strive for and yet ultimately impossible to achieve. And that's for all of us, but in particular, when that first year in a wheelchair, when you have scars that cover you from your neck to your toes, when your arms are locked at 90 degrees, when your fingers are missing on both hands, I will never be normal.
But I tried. I tried to become the version of normal for everybody else. And so I masked up through humor, through alcohol by trying to be popular. And I did that until my late twenties. That started to change in a church service when I was told by a pastor that my life was a precious, priceless gift.
I had one job. It was to say yes to being used for good. It's not about me, man. It's about God's grace. It's about showing up for others.
It's about being a Jack Buck, even when you don't feel like it, even when you don't know what to do. Jack Buck showed up for me. And now I'm trying to, I'm trying to be more like that for others in my life. And so it was only after learning that my life was a precious, priceless gift. And I had a job to be used for good that this awkward introverted kid who struggled academically, struggled with self-worth and self-belief, who was a lousy friend to Jack Buck, grabbed that ball from the darkness, bring it back into the light and start reflecting that goodness into a world longing for it.
I'm still trying to make up for that. I won't be able to do it for Jack, but I'll be able to do it for others in hospitals. I'll be able to do it through encouragement, through love, through prayer, through my life. And each time reflecting the goodness that Jack reflected my way first. And what a story we just heard and what a story about friendship, about love, about just a stranger loving another stranger and not any stranger. Here's Jack Buck not seeing himself as some world famous broadcaster, but as a guy who could help another person. The story of John O'Leary here on Our American Stories. Hello, iHeart listener.
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Copyright 2025. JPMorgan Chase & Company. Hey, Jenise Torres here. And I'm Austin Hankwitz. We're the hosts of Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories, produced by Ruby Studio and Intuit QuickBooks. Catch up on seasons one and two and join us for a brand new season of the podcast as we talk to small business owners about how they manage and grow their businesses with the help of platforms like Intuit QuickBooks.
