BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

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Is there a more terrifying writer in the world than Edgar Allan Poe, nor a more fun one to read with a child with than Theodore Geisel, "Dr. Seuss" ?  I don't think so. 

In this episode we chronicle two of the most extremely different authors of our entire series. 

Edgar Allan Poe wrote some of the strangest and most horrifying stories ever written. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" "The Mask of the Red Death" The Fall of the House of Usher", "Tell Tale Heart", The Pit and the Pendulum" the list goes on and on. But for all of that he is actually considered the father of the modern detective novel which is what he actually made his living doing. Though he struggled financially his entire life. 

His poetry is equally famous and perhaps no other poem stands out at all like "The Raven" which we will feature in this episode. The actor most closely associated with Poe is Vincent Price who made some of the best movies ever made in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Poe's life was as interesting as his writing and his death just as mysterious, we will tell you the story and feature his writing tips too, through the episode. 

Dr. Seuss, was a part of every child's life under the age of 8 in every home I have ever visited, you at least see one of his books. "The Cat in the Hat", "The Lorax", "Green Eggs and Ham," "Oh the Places we will Go" , "The Sneeches" , "One fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish", "Horton Hears a Who?" , my personal favorite "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas", and even a book found two decades after he passed away, hidden in a box at his house, titled "What Pet Should I get" 

What an extraordinary legacy to have had such an impact on the lives of children everywhere, with characters that never existed until he dreamed them up, mixed with timeless themes, that match perfectly with his rhymes. In this episode we introduce you to the man, his books, and his writing advice. 

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In this episode our host honors two of his family members who passed away in recent times. 

Aunt Margie Wallace - My Aunt was a substitute teacher in Darlington County for two decades after finishing a 30 year career at the sewing plant there. She was known to all the students there as "Grandma" and they turned out to her funeral in mass. She was a delightful, thoughtful lady and it is an honor for our show to remember her with this broadcast. 

Uncle Kenneth Huggins - My Uncle worked at the Sonoco Products Company for decades, was an avid Atlanta Braves baseball fan, and active duck hunter. He was a camper and outdoorsman. He was also a lot of fun. Some of my happiest memories of childhood are visits to his house when I was small. We tell a few of those stories in this episode which features the eulogy we gave at his funeral. 

This episode also captures three women who were near and dear to our hearts throughout our lifetime, My Grand mother Hattie King, my mother Gloria Bulmer (who will be heavily featured in our coming series on the Great American Authors) and my Aunt Willie Mae Huggins who passed away nearly 26 years ago but who was married to my Uncle Kenneth and who was also the life of any party she attended. 

This is an episode about my family, one I was very lucky to have been born a part of and we hope you will enjoy the memories we share with you in this episode. 

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Welcome to the first episode of our special Holiday Season, "The Great American Authors", Bob Dole's series will return in January 2026. 

In this episode we welcome you to our series, an introduce you to our host, Randal Wallace's,  English teacher Mother, Gloria Bulmer. She was also a writer and as part of a writing class, had some of her writing published in only one book by Coastal Carolina University, as part of a writing class in 1983, also one of her short stories won an award. Our host has that award hanging at his home. This series is dedicated to his mothers memory. 

Her influence led to the selection of the very first author to be profiled in our series, F. Scott Fitzgerald, my mother's favorite author. 

Fitzgerald wrote essays, short stories, and several novels:

 "This Side of Paradise", "The Beautiful and Damned,"" The Diamond as Big as The Ritz" ,"  Tender is the Night', "The Last Tycoon", and his biggest one of all "The Great Gatsby" which ironically flopped when it first came out in 1925.  The Great Gatsby was one of many books given to soldiers during Word War 2, to help keep them occupied, that led to a resurgence of Fitzgerald's writings. All that success coming, long after he had died. 

Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul , Minnesota, and we will take you there to hear about his early life story, then we will meet Zelda Sayre, whom he met while serving in his Army days in Alabama. They had one of those renown love affairs and it was her denial of his marriage proposal that spurred his first literary success. He had a surge of success before his writing stopped being popular, the money dried up, and he headed to Hollywood to be a screenwriter. His wife became ill and was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he battled alcoholism. It was a tough life but a glamorous one. 

We will cover it all and listen in on the descriptions of the Jazz Age which formed the foundation of much of his writings, especially "The Great Gatsby." 

Throughout the series we will also give you lists of writing tips for each of the authors covered, so if you have any aspiring authors in your family, this series, which will have 16 episodes, may be something you want to let them know to tune in for over the holidays. 

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In this our second episode honoring the life of Former Vice President Dick Cheney we listen to the various eulogies from his funeral in Washington D.C. at the Washington National Cathedral. They range from his cardiologist, former Press Secretary, a Former President of the United States, his grandchildren and daughter, a former Congresswoman in her own right. This is a moving selection of addresses. 

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On Sunday, November 15, 2025, I woke up to the news that legendary Mid Atlantic Championship Wrestling Host Bob Caudle had died , peacefully, in his sleep at the age of 95. I can’t explain it but this one was like losing a lifelong friend because in a way it was. 

Bob Caudle’s voice is as familiar to me as any on Earth, he has been a fixture in our home for my entire lifetime, each Saturday for my entire childhood straight through to early adulthood I heard him say "Welcome Fans to another exciting hour of Mid Atlantic Championship Wrestling." He has stayed a fixture through my DVD collection and on "YouTube" whenever I have wanted to travel back in time to “the good old days” of Professional Wrestling. I am pretty sure I am not alone. 

Bob Caudle was like that great old recliner, comfortable and steady, that you don’t pay that much attention to until it’s gone. Bob Caudle was never the star, never tried to out shine the wrestlers, never made himself the story, but was always there presiding over all the chaos every Saturday when we fans tuned in. He always asked the questions we wanted to ask and said exactly what all of us wanted to say as all the insanity erupted. Bob Caudle was there steady as a rock. 

In the end, this very normal “old white guy in brown shoes” was , in fact, as big a star with all of us fans as the stars he covered, and in the eyes of us wrestling fans of Jim Crockett Promotions, there was no one more beloved, than this often befuddled host of the greatest territorial wrestling show in the history of wrestling. It has been like a part of all our collective childhoods vanished Sunday. But what a wild, fun ride it was, and I hope I speak for all of us fans of the Wrestling Network, Bob Caudle, you will be missed, and we will cherish your memory forever, for Bob Caudle provided the soundtrack of our childhood. So, to Mr. Caudle , here is our tribute to you, rest in peace, and “until next time so long for now.” 

(No copyright claimed nor intended for the clips used in this tribute to Bob Caudle. This is for historical use only. ) 

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Join us starting November 25, 2025 for a Christmas Holidays Special 16th Season as we venture into new territory. Over the end of November and through out December we will spend 16 episodes looking at the Great American Authors, From F. Scott Fitzgerald to Stephen King and all points in between. We hope you will join us as we take a little break from American Political History and take a deep dive into American Literature, its history, and learn some writing tips from some of the greatest authors our country has ever produced. 

This sixteen episode season will feature F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edgar Allan Poe, Dr. Suess, John Steinbeck, Thomas Wolfe, Mark Twain, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Harper Lee, J. D. Salinger, Margaret Mitchell, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, William Faulkner, Ian Fleming, J. K Rowling, Pat Conroy, Gene Hackman, Kurt Vonnegut, Walter Mosley, Lee Child, Stephen King, John Grisham, Joyce Carol Oats, Sinclair Lewis, Tennessee Williams, Ernest Hemingway, Jimmy Carter, Marilyn Quayle,  Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton, James Patterson, and the announcement about our hosts own three books, a history companion book to this podcast, and two novels by Randal Wallace. 

We hope you will join us starting November 25 for The Great American Authors Special Season and Bob Dole will return in "Bob Dole The Life That Brought Him There" in January, 2026. 

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In this episode we look back at three people it is almost hard to imagine not being around. 

Hulk Hogan, if you are kid in my age range, middle 50s, was as big a star as ever roamed the Earth. He was the catalyst for Professional Wrestling's leap into mainstream society taking it from a cable television novelty, to starring in, what is still today, the largest indoor sporting event in all of history with an attendance of 93,173 to see Hulk Hogan wrestle 7ft 4 inch, Andre the Giant. Huge is an understatement at what an event that was for anyone who was watching it. 

We honor Hulk Hogan here though, for one of the last things he did in his long and storied career. He spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2024 on behalf of President Donald Trump. At the time, many of the political analyst were saying he was the first Pro wrestler to be involved as an endorser in Presidential Politics. That was far from the truth. Ric Flair had been a big supporter of George H. W. Bush and in 1992 he traveled North and South Carolina with him. We have an episode dedicated to that in our back catalogue from our 1992 Changing of the Guard Series.  We look back at Hulk Hogan with a great deal of fondness, he was a huge part of my childhood. Hulk Hogan was 71 years old.

Jim Lovell, helped guide the Apollo 13 Moon mission back to Earth after disaster struck it and an oxygen tank exploded mid mission. The fabulous movie "Apollo 13" starring Tom Hanks and Directed by Ron Howard tells the story, as does an episode in our back catalogue of material. Jim Lovell always came across as a super nice man, known as "smiling Jim" by his fellow astronauts in the 1960s. I was honored to tell his Apollo 13 story during our initial Richard Nixon series. Jim Lovell was also on the first trip to circumnavigate the moon, and was a a part of the crew that took the famous "Earthrise" photo. We have an episode in our series on Lyndon Johnson that covers that mission. Jim Lovell was 97 years old. 

This year also saw the passing of my Mother, Gloria Bulmer's favorite movie star, Robert Redford. He was "The Great Gatsby." I have seen the movie several times, it was my mother's favorite. Redford was famous for many other huge blockbuster movies too from "All the President's Men" to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", to another of my mother's favorite movies, "The Sting" with Paul Newman and Robert Shaw. He was the quintessential movie star. 

He also has an episode in our back catalogue, when we profiled one of my all time favorite movies, "Casablanca", and along with it another of my favorites, that was one of the few of his movies that flopped, "Havana". I loved the movie and never understood why it did so poorly at the box office. Redford also founded the Sundance Movie Festival, which has helped show some of independent films best work. For that we owe him a great deal of gratitude. Robert Redford was 89 years old. 

We invite you to comb through our back catalogue for all four of these episodes. 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1507867/episodes/9047347   Episode 42 Earthrise the story of 1968's Apollo 8

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1507867/episodes/9474650  Episode 58 Richard Nixon the Man that Saved the Union : Apollo 13 Our Finest Hour

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1507867/episodes/16716829  Episode 349 George 
H. W. Bush -  1992 the Changing of the Guard: On the Trail with Ric Flair and George Bush (and later Mike Huckabee)

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1507867/episodes/16567204  "Casablanca, Havana, and a Novel (A Valentine's Day Special Edition) 

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In this episode , we look back at three men who worked tirelessly for their religious beliefs and trying to make this world a better place in their own way, Pope Francis, Pope Leo 14th, and Political Activist Charlie Kirk, plus a rock star from the 1950s and 60s, Connie Francis. 

Pope Francis became the first Jesuit Priest to rise to the Papacy. The first from Latin America, and the first in centuries not to be born in Europe. He had a daunting task as the Catholic Church was facing a growing scandal of Priests abusing underage kids in their parishes. It would fall to Pope Francis to rebuild the Church's image. 

He was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, in Buenos Aires in Argentina. His Papacy had controversy, but he was also known for his humility, concern for the poor, the refugee, and his belief in God's mercy to man. He continued to work through various health issues right up until his own death this year. 

Which leads us to a moment I certainly never thought I would see in my lifetime, if ever. The installation of an American Pope in Pope Leo 14th, Robert Francis Prevost of Chicago. It is an event that even moved me, and I am not a Catholic, that finally we have an American at the helm of the largest Christian Church in the World. We let you learn a little bit about him also in this episode. 

 Then we look back at the all to short life, and career, of political activist Charlie Kirk. The assassination of Charlie Kirk has been the saddest story and most heinous crime I have seen in my 46 years involvement in politics. Kirk while talking to a college at an outdoor event in Utah, was gun downed by a transgender activist. What was almost as shocking was how far our society has fallen that we saw widespread celebration on the left at the news of Kirk's death. It should give everyone pause. In this episode we look back at his life and his group Turning Point USA, and while I recognize his career was one that had some level of controversy to it, he said nothing that warranted, a father of two small children, being gun down in pubic. It was a shameful day for America. 

Finally, we will also look back at the singer Connie Francis, known for her hits "Pretty Little Baby", and "Who's Sorry Now", she had a remarkable career which included a campaign song for one of the people we have profiled during the run of our show. We will let you hear that at the end of this broadcast. 

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For decades the one thing that never seemed to change in Washington D.C. was constant presence of David Gergen. He was an aid to Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He was a political analyst for PBS and CNN. David Gergen seemed as permanent a fixture as the Washington Monument in Washington D.C. 

He wrote to extraordinary books Eyewitness to Power, and Hearts Tinged by Fire, which came out when he was 80 years old. I became a fan during the 1990s when he was a commentator alongside Mark Shields at PBS. they were an extraordinary pairing because they were reasonable despite being from opposite political backgrounds, and having decidedly partisan resumes' with the exception Gergen's time with Bill Clinton. 

David Gergen passed away earlier in 2025, and it marked the end of an era in politics. This episode we try to capture some of his moments, from debating Ari Fleischer, to promoting his books, or talking about the Presidents for whom he served over his long career. We will also take you back to 1992, just after Governor Bill Clinton finished his Democratic Nomination acceptance speech, as we tune in to some giants in political commentary summing up their thoughts on that monumental evening, Jim Lehrer, Robert McNeil, Mark Shields and David Gergen on PBS. 

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Last week, former Vice President Dick Cheney passed away, he was 84 years old. There has been no more powerful a figure in the history of politics in the modern era. He transformed the Vice Presidency into a power center all its own. 

In this episode, we will look back at his life, his love of the outdoors, his life after the White House and his life long battle with coronary heart disease. Dick Cheney is also a heart transplant recipient. The family of our host, Randal Wallace, is a donor family, as his brother Keith Wallace was an organ donor, who passed away in 2012 of a brain aneurism. Organ donation is a cause near and dear to our hearts here at this podcast. 

This is a tribute to a great man and a giant political figure in our time. This is also the first of four episodes, as we begin our 16th Season, honoring several people we have lost in 2025. 

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