Now I've Heard Everything

America's schools are in crisis right now. 

After COVID took its toll, and forced remote learning on millions of kids, school boards all over the country are now dealing with loud, sometimes ferocious, debates over everything from mask mandates to gender pronouns to critical race theory. 

But debate over education is nothing new. 

A generation ago, a Chicago educator with unusual methods was both widely praised and roundly criticized.

Yet it was hard to argue with the success that Marva Collins had with the students who attended her private inner city elementary school.

The United States marks Veterans Day tomorrow. And very recently, we lost one of the most revered veterans of modern times. 

The son of Jamaican immigrants, Colin Powell was a lifelong soldier.

He joined the ROTC while in college in the 1950s, then served two tours of Duty in Vietnam in the 1960s.  In 1979 he was promoted to Brigadier General, and by 1989, he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

When George W Bush was elected in 2000, he named Powell his Secretary of State. a post Powell held for Mr. Bush’s first term.

I met Colin Powell in 1996, when he was promoting his autobiography, a book called My American Journey.

The men's NCAA college basketball season opens tomorrow. And it will be the final season for one of the game's winningest and most successful coaches ever.

Mike Krzyzewski, also known as Coach K, has been head coach at Duke University since 1980. He announced last June that he would be retiring after this season.

Under his leadership, the Blue Devils have made it to the Final Four 12 times, and have won five national championships, second only to John Wooden's ten.

I met Coach K 21 years ago, when he wrote a book on leadership called Leading with the Heart.

Who knew Russians had such a great sense of humor?

Well, few Americans thought so, until the 1980s, when the young Russian-born  Yakov Smirnoff burst onto the scene.

When he arrived here in 1977 from Ukraine, Smirnoff actually spoke no English.  

But quickly he was able to turn his foreigner’s naivete into a very successful comedy act.

In 1987, with Smirnoff's popularity nearing its peak -- and just before a visit to the U.S. by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev -- Smirnoff went on a book tour to promote a hilarious book he call America on Six Rubles A Day. 

Any list of the greatest operatic singers of modern times will include, somewhere near the top, the name Beverly Sills.

The statuesque soprano was an audience favorite for decades.  Time Magazine once dubbed her :America's Queen of Opera."

By the late ‘60s the singer whose nickname was Bubbles had also become a very popular TV talk show guests.

But she also struggled with personal crises.

Her daughter Muffy was deaf and suffered from multiple sclerosis. Her son Bucky, born two years later, was severely mentally disabled. 

Thirty years ago today, November 1, 1991, off the New England coast the six-man crew of the sword fishing boat the Andrea Gail were fighting, and losing, their battle with what has come to be known as The Perfect Storm. 

A close friend of those six was fellow swordfishing boat captain Linda Greenlaw. 

If you've seen the 2000 movie The Perfect Storm, Greenlaw was played by actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.

Greenlaw eventually wrote three books of her own, including a 2004 called All Fishermen Are Liars.  

Back in the 1960s, he had a very successful career writing screenplays for comedies. William Peter Blatty's credits include movies like A Shot In The Dark, the second movie in the Pink Panther series, and The Man From The Diner's Club, starring Danny Kaye.

But of course, Blatty's most famous and popular work, the one for which he is best remembered today, was his 1971 novel that at first, no one wanted to publish.

It was called The Exorcist. And it has become a classic. 

In 2013 I had the chance to spend a few minutes with this very warm, funny, and personable author. 

How would it make you feel if you woke up one day and realized your father was a traitor to his country?

Unfortunately that was more than just a rhetorical question for Laura Walker, whose father, John Walker Jr., is considered one of the most notorious and dangerous spies in American history.

By the time he was caught in the mid-1980s John Walker Jr. had been spying for the Soviet Union for over 20 years, even bringing his son Michael into the "Walker family spy ring," as it became known.

And he tried to recruit his daughter Laura into his spy ring as well, after she joined the military, but it was only after she tipped off authorities that her father and brother were caught.

It was an HBO Young Comedians special in late summer 1985 that launched a young comedian to national fame. Sam Kinison became wildly popular almost overnight.

And for the next several years was one of America's favorite stand-up comedians.

Tragically Sam Kinison's life ended abruptly in April  1992 in a horrible car crash in California. His brother Bill Kinison was in the car behind him and witness the accident.

Two years later Bill Kinison wrote a book about his little brother call Brother Sam. That's why I had a chance to meet him/

In recent years it's Donald Trump's extramarital Affairs that have captured all the media attention. But thirty years ago, there was someone else who was all over the headlines, for her claims of an extramarital affair with a then-presidential candidate.

In January 1992 Gennifer flowers came forward with her story of a long-time affair with then Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, who was running for president.

But as she explained in a 1995 book, flowers may never have brought her allegations public, if not for media articles the out of her, including a story in the supermarket tabloid the star.

I met her in 1995 when she was doing a book tour. So here now, from 1995, Gennifer flowers.