Untold Stories

In this poignant episode of "Untold Stories," recorded live at the Florida Theatre on May 6, 2022, we explore diverse narratives bound by themes of discovery, resilience, and transformation. The episode "There and Back Again, Part 2" presents three unique stories, each offering a window into the profound journeys of its storytellers.

Barbara Colaciello of BAB'S LAB meticulously curates stories, coaches the storytellers, and skillfully hosts and serves as master of ceremonies for the live events for each 'Untold Stories' episode.

Yhang Quintero, originally from Venezuela and now a Jacksonville entrepreneur, shares his harrowing yet inspiring journey through cancer. At just 19, Yhang faced a life-altering diagnosis that propelled him into a world of uncertainty and treatment. He narrates his experience with a blend of humor and depth, reflecting on his youthful days in Caracas, the vibrant cultural scene, and the drastic shift his life took post-diagnosis. Yhang's story culminates in his creation of Wildcrafters in Jacksonville, a non-alcoholic bar symbolizing his journey back home and his passion for community and wellness.

Hope McMath, a cultural leader and Jacksonville native, delves into her transformative experience on a trip to Montgomery, Alabama. She recounts the profound impact of visiting sites dedicated to the victims of racial terror lynching and the history of American slavery and mass incarceration. This journey leads Hope to a moment of introspection on a stalled bus in southern Alabama, where she confronts her family history, grappling with the revelation of her ancestors' involvement in slavery. Her narrative is a powerful testament to the importance of facing uncomfortable truths for personal and communal healing.

Matt Colaciello's story takes us on a global journey from Jacksonville to Mali, India, and Indonesia. Growing up in Jacksonville, Matt navigated challenges related to identity and belonging, which propelled him into a life of exploration and self-discovery. His travels and experiences abroad, including harrowing moments and enlightening interactions, shaped his perspective on life, leading to a deeper understanding of his purpose and place in the world. Matt's narrative is a compelling tale of personal evolution and the quest for meaning beyond one's immediate environment.

Together, these stories form an intricate tapestry of life experiences, showcasing the resilience of the human spirit and the unending quest for self-discovery and connection. Tune in to this episode of "Untold Stories" for an evening of emotional depth, laughter, and inspiration, revealing the power of storytelling in understanding our world and ourselves.

Content warning: This episode of "Untold Stories" contains a historical recount that includes the use of the word "faggot." This term is referenced in a personal story to authentically convey the experiences and challenges faced by the storyteller. We understand this term is offensive and hurtful. It is not used to promote discrimination or harm but rather to provide a truthful depiction of the individual's journey and the societal challenges they overcame. Listener discretion is advised.

Please note that the following transcript has been generated by automated technology. While efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, there may be errors, inconsistencies, or deviations from the original audio. We encourage listeners to refer to the actual podcast episode for complete and accurate content. This transcript is provided for convenience and may not fully capture the nuances of the spoken word.

David Luckin:
Welcome to Untold Stories, a production of the Florida Theatre and WJCT Public Media.
Tonight's program was recorded May 6, 2022.
The theme, there and back again.

Barbara Colaciello:
Yhang Quintero

Yhang Quintero:
[applause]
Thank you
[applause]
Woo!
[applause]
It's Tuesday morning, and I wake up like every day, go to the bathroom.
[laughter]
I look down, and I notice something was different today.
My left testicle is a lot larger than the other one.
It doesn't hurt, it's kind of hard.
But I, you know, I went on with my day.
Didn't make up much of it.
Couple of days later, I talk to my mom, and we go see Hwanchu.
Hwanchu is a family friend that happens to be a neurologist.
Who knew they were both doctors?
[laughter]
I didn't.
Hwanchu checks me out, and immediately he gives me a diagnosis.
He says, "Yhang, you have a tumor.
We don't know what it is, but you have a tumor."
And he right away scheduled a surgery for the same night to remove that testicle.
Couple more days, mom and I go back to see Hwanchu to talk about the biopsy,
and surprisingly he tells me, it's cancer.
Here I am, I'm 19 years old, ready to eat up the world.
Having a great time in life, and what?
Now I have to put my life in pause and, you know, dive into this amazing, fun time,
which is cancer treatment.
Everything went so fast that I didn't even have time to get scared.
In fact, I felt that I needed to keep my family spirit up.
Everyone in my family, you know, when they hear the C word,
they kind of got in a little bit of a panic mode.
So, yeah, it was on me to, you know, make fun of everything.
And I really was having fun throughout my whole process.
It was a little scary, but even though it was scary,
it brought a lot of things into perspective for me.
You know, I realized then that the life that I had just started
a couple years prior to that was so awesome.
And now I have to adjust to it.
Think about a lot of sunshine,
greenity everywhere, fun, diverse, culture.
That was Caracas, Venezuela in 1994.
I'm 17 years old, long hair, pawnbroker.
I'm having a great time.
I scored a fake ID from a neighbor, and with that,
I landed a job at the coolest venue in the city.
Brooklyn Bar was a little bar, little eclectic,
loud, dark, smoky venue where you could go see
the best underground bands and any really act in Caracas.
There were some time international acts too.
Brooklyn Bar was actually known as the CVGV of South America.
Who of you remembers CVGV?
It was badass, right? I worked there.
So here I am in 17, I'm hot.
I'm having a lot of fun.
I spent a lot of nights in Brooklyn Bar surrounded by musicians,
photographers, dancers, poets,
all kinds of amazing artists, and we together had a community.
We loved to do things together. We hung out together.
We worked together. We loved to make cool #### happen.
That was our thing.
You know, after a while,
I started looking around my life and I realized I had a really cool life.
My life was full but simple. I lived with my grandparents at the time.
Mom Carolina, or grandma Carolina was my mom.
She loved plants. My house was full of plants everywhere.
It felt like we lived in the prime forest for a little bit.
She knew all about her plants. There was one thing that it seems like she never got.
It was how to water them. Because every side of it, you know,
every single side of it for years, I had to get up and water all her plants.
To the point that I started making up stories and leaving early,
6 in the morning, I'm out, so I didn't have to water the plants.
It was great though.
Carolina was a kindergarten teacher. She loved to paint and sing.
She really had this thing with nature.
Dad — Grandpa Marín — he was also a school teacher.
He was a man of faith, very, very involved in the community.
He was a healer. At the time, I didn't think much about this.
But every time anyone at the house got sick, he will go to the backyard,
get some herbs, and make us what he called "varao de monte."
Cool name, huh?
It was an herbal tea that he made with these plants and a little spices.
And every single time got the job done.
Somehow, he got us well.
Every time it tasted different, it was delicious.
I remember it like it was yesterday. It was so good.
And that was my life. I live a really good life.
A year and a half has passed since I started my cancer treatment.
And now I'm in remission.
Yeah.
[applause]
I'm back in school. I'm back at Brooklyn bar.
I'm thin, bold.
I'm feeling sexy.
My birthday is coming up.
And I decided to take a trip to visit some friends up in the mountains.
So I grabbed my backpack and I headed to the bus station.
I'm standing in line, long line to get a ticket.
And this beautiful chick walks right by me.
Obviously, it was the normal thing to do in this situation.
I left my place in line and went to the other counter,
where she just got her ticket.
I asked the guy behind the counter, where was this bus going to?
And immediately without hesitation, I buy a ticket.
To an 18-hour bus ride, to a remote little town in the middle of the Amazon,
called Puerto Ayacucho.
That's how much of a hot #### I was.
Now I'm really feeling good.
That was a bold move. She's so sexy.
I'm going to talk to her.
And so I did.
I go over here, just sit her in the bench.
I sit next to her.
I show my ticket, introduce myself, and I say, "You know what?
I got this ticket because of you."
And I tell her, "Why?"
Really soon after, I found out that this gorgeous woman,
girl, who were about the same age, was a nun.
And this amazing story, an adventure I had planned already in my mind,
ended right then, before it even started, it's okay though.
Everything worked out.
We went on 18 hours.
I think we prayed about 42 times.
I faked to be asleep, through a couple of those prayers.
But she was super cool though.
18 hours later, we get to Puerto Ayacucho.
Goodbye now.
And I get out of the bus and I meet this guy, Juan.
There was a car parked right by the bus station with a hand-written sign
on the windshield that says "Taxi."
Very legit.
So I go there.
I tell him my story.
He immediately opens up the car.
"Come on, dude. I got you."
Takes me into town, introduced me to a few locals,
shows me around.ƒ
He takes me to a cool place to stay, affordable, safe,
and he tells me all the good places to go to have a really good rainforest experience.
Juan is awesome.
Juan introduces me to Natalia.
Natalia is the owner of this jungle expedition company.
I want to talk to her for a little while.
After a few hours talking, we both realize that she's the mother of this musician
that had played at Brooklyn Bar.
He's been living in Caracas to go to college.
And after playing a few times, he became a regular, and then my friend, Luis.
What are the odds?
I go home with my knight, and the next day, there's not a lot to do in this little place.
So the next day, I go back to the office to say hi to Natalia,
and she tells me she talked to Luis, but not before.
He didn't tell her that it was my birthday, and so he said, "Please, take care of him.
Show him a good time."
He doesn't know what he's doing. He wasn't even going there.
So she follow up to say, "Yhang, there is a five-day expedition to the jungle.
Are you in? You'll have to pay anything. It's already paid for. Come on."
Obviously, I say, "Hell yeah."
Went on, got excited, got my backpack, got up early.
Right early in the morning, go to meet the crew.
It's a small group of tourists, and two guys, and myself.
We board this canoe-looking boat.
It looks like it was made out of a really long and wide tree.
I wasn't sure if that thing was going to float, but we were all there.
And we take off.
Ramon is one of the guys.
Ramon is a Yanomami native, and he's well known around that area.
It's probably the best expedition tour guide there was at the moment.
He spoke a few different languages, super knowledgeable, cool guy.
And our first stop of this expedition was in his village.
He was bringing some supplies to his family, and then we were picking up Ramoncito.
His 14-year-old son.
We went on with our trip. Ramoncito blew my mind.
And that was probably the first really big lesson I had in my young age.
Ramoncito also spoke a few different languages, even though he lived in a village, in a remote village in the Amazon.
He walked around bare food, and he was being trained to be the next shaman of his village.
Ramoncito and I clicked it. He was my buddy the whole time.
Before I went back into town and before the trip was over, Ramoncito tells me,
at this point he already know my story and my cancer thing.
At one point Ramoncito tells me, "Hey, you were a man of medicine.
You need to do this."
And he tells me that his shaman is leading a ceremony back in town within the few days.
He's like, "I don't have details, but you go and you ask for it and you're going to find it."
And so I did what I was told. I get back to town. I was supposed to be heading back home, but I canceled that.
And I found the people that was hosting the ceremony, and I see it in ceremony.
His shaman came to town, and it was a Jopo ceremony. Anybody knows what this is?
Well, Jopo is a psychoactive or psychedelic, actually,
systems that is made out of a bark of a tree.
And shamans in the Amazon use this to connect to the earth and with the power up above.
This is how they find out where are the right medicines that they can take and give to the village.
And this is how they find out answers for the well-being of the village and the earth.
The job of the work of that shaman wasn't only to save people or heal people.
He needed to heal the earth, and that was pretty cool.
At that moment, I felt connected. For the first time in my life, I felt what my grandpa, Marín and Ramoncito were all about.
Now I understood whether what Appomonta was.
And now I know that plants know a lot more than we do.
I get back home, and you know, I'm inspired. I'm like, this is it.
Now I'm a man, a man of the jungle.
It's August of 2001.
My sister, Michelle, is in Venezuela. I never met Michelle.
I don't know her, but she's pretty cool. She couldn't speak English. I mean, Spanish. I couldn't speak English.
But somehow we communicated.
And she convinced me to come to the States and spend some time with her and my brother Johnny.
Obviously, I say yes. And within weeks, I'm there again, grabbing my backpack, filling, packing it up,
and getting ready to embark on this journey, but now to another country.
I come to Florida. Oddly enough, I moved to the town where I was born, Melbourne, Florida.
Never thought I was going to be there again.
Now I'm in the States and life is a little bit different.
My priorities, my goals have changed.
I made this beautiful, amazing woman, Melina, who then I married her and had the most amazing kid with my son, Lucas.
The American dream is in my mind.
I think everything that I ever wanted was there. I had it.
The life that most people back home and including myself thought was the perfect life.
I was living it.
But even so, even having that perfect life that everybody thought I was having, I kept catching myself thinking, is this it?
Am I going to be a good dog like this?
Why am I going to teach Lucas?
Am I happy?
The relationship with Melina ran its course. We end up getting a divorce.
You know how that goes? Life is a little shaky.
I then come to Jacksonville to visit a girlfriend, and I get a job offer.
So I say, "Yeah, why not?" "I'm going to Jacksonville."
I moved to Jacksonville and I immediately fell in love with this place.
It's diversity, culture, a lot of artists, a lot of things going on.
There is the sunshine and the nature. Somehow it feels a little bit familiar.
Jacksonville has given me probably the best gift I've ever gotten.
In Jacksonville, I found a family away from my family.
Some of you are here.
When I got here, I fell right in.
It was like the Lego piece, the puzzle piece got in.
A few months later, after a move here, I got invited to share a studio at CoRK.
There I got to meet and work and collaborate with musicians, artists, photographers, poets.
I have met some of the most interesting people here in Jacksonville.
I'm now a part of something that is a lot bigger than me.
I'm now a part of a community.
I'm hanging out with people, they love to work together and they love to get cool #### done.
I knew you were safe, I get invited to go to a dinner with some friends.
I show up to a restaurant right here in San Marco.
There's this guy sitting at the table.
Bearded guy, kind of long hair, serious looking.
Never seen this guy in my life.
He's a friend of a friend.
I don't know nothing about him and I sit down and introduce myself.
And the little that I know, this guy was going to be one of the most impactful person in my life from then on.
At the dinner table, he talks about this super powerful shamanic ceremony he just came from
and he immediately caught my attention.
Then after he started talking about a bunch of hippies, yoga, meditation.
I was like, you know, I kind of make fun of it a little bit as we were getting a little
boosie, you know.
I just brushed it off and we went and danced and had a great time.
I thought he was hitting on my girlfriend, I just let him be.
Well, exactly a year from that day, here I am, I just started my first yoga teacher training.
I'm learning meditation and I'm a goddamn hippie.
[Applause]
That exact day, a year later, Kyle Roberts, that guy.
And I sat together for the first time in ceremony with who is now our chairman, Julio.
At that moment, I found my place.
I found my medicine and I once again felt connected to this earth and to all of you, and I know
that sound hippies.
[Laughter]
From then on and through years of work with this medicine, I started receiving messages.
And one of them was that I needed to create this place, a safe space, where everybody could
come and hang out and connect through these plants and connect through nature.
That's how Wildcrafters was created.
[Applause]
Wildcrafters was a message receiving ceremony that then, with the help of a bunch of hippies, we manifested.
[Laughter]
And now, it's the place where people come to feel better, when people come to try and
a natural alternative to all these toxic options that we have had for years.
It's four in the morning, I'm standing in the middle of Wildcrafters, and I'm looking around
and there are plants everywhere.
I'm surrounding by an excessive amount of plants, just like I did when I was a kid.
I also look up and up in the wall there's a shelf that is holding a bunch of jars filled with herbs and teas.
And at that moment I couldn't help it, but just started to cry.
At that moment I realized, oh I'm back home.
Now I'm surrounded by plants that I still have to water once a week.
And while there's still a pain in my eyes, I don't hate it anymore.
I'm now own a place where people will come, and I will make them what I've all wanted for them to feel better.
I'm now surrounded by artists, musicians, photographers, dancers, and a bunch of cool people that like to do cool ####.
I created a small eclectic, dark, cool little bar that I can share with my family and friends.
At that moment I realized, it felt better back then.
It wasn't that hard.
Life was real and complete.
I'm now 44 years old going on 17 and I couldn't be happy about the place I am and the new family I got.
Thank you.

Barbara Colaciello:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Yum.
[applause]
She's a Jacksonville native. Please welcome Hope McMath.
[applause]

Hope McMath:
So it's a few minutes after midnight and I am sitting on a bus that is not moving on a two-lane road somewhere in southern Alabama.
I'm sharing that space with 24 other folks from my city of Jacksonville.
We've just spent three incredibly intense, powerful days together in Montgomery.
We were there with the purpose of really visiting two sites.
One is the Peace and Justice Memorial, which is a place where we remember the victims of racial terror lynching.
The second site is a museum established by the Equal Justice Initiative that really focuses on American history as told through the arc that leads us from slavery to this moment of mass incarceration.
So to say the trip was heavy is an understatement.
The reason we're sitting still on this bus in the middle of the night is because it turns out there's an accident further up the road that has actually blocked the road.
And we can't get off of it.
So I look around at the people that I'm traveling with and after a couple hours of very boisterous conversation, things are starting to chill.
People are doing what you would expect them to do a little after midnight on a dark bus.
Some are napping, some are listening to music.
You can tell that some tell that some people are reading because you can see those little lights above people's heads that sort of go through the darkness and create a pool of light in their laps.
And I decide this is my moment to also chill a bit because I was one of the organizers on this trip and so I was obsessing with keeping the bus driver awake.
But at this point it didn't matter.
We had been there a while and it looked like we were going to be there a while longer.
So I did what I like to do anytime I can carve out a couple of extra minutes in the day and I pulled out my journal.
And I opened it up and put it on my lap.
And what I wanted to do was document the things I had seen, the people I had met, the conversations I had had, and of course to create that list of the things I wanted to do when I got home.
And before I began I took a deep breath and I looked out the window.
And it was pitch black, couldn't see anything.
And it was quiet because at this point everybody had turned the engines of their vehicles off.
And I was overwhelmed by a feeling of gratitude really for the people who were on that bus with me.
Because for three days we had sat in circle together and people had shared their very, very honest lived experiences, especially as it intersected with race and racism.
And some of those folks were able to actually reach way back into their history and pull it forward so that we could all learn from their ancestors.
And that deep feeling of gratitude began to be swept away by something else.
And with this one, this second feeling, it's harder to describe.
All I know is my space in the bus began to feel a little smaller.
The air felt heavy, like a weight on my shoulders.
And there was almost like a crackliness in the air.
Whispers next to my ears, not of specific words that I could understand, but just something that had shifted.
It was not a comfortable feeling.
It actually was incredibly unsettling.
So much so that I looked around to the other people on the bus to see if they noticed that anything had changed.
And of course they hadn't.
And I decided it was time to start writing in my journal.
And now I felt like I needed to write about what I was feeling in that moment.
And when I looked down at my journal pages, the pages that were once blank, there were now two sentences written there.
I had no consciousness of having written them, but they were in my hand, so I had done it.
And the first line said, "Do your work."
And the second one said, "Figure out where you're from."
I was a little bit stunned, very confused, and uncomfortable.
But as I looked at that second line, "Figure out where you're from," when I think about my own history, it doesn't feel like it goes any further back than the 1970s in Arlington, where my sister and I grew up.
But neighborhood just right over the Matthews Bridge from where we are right now.
We grew up in a lower middle income neighborhood where the parents all worked really hard, and the kids played even harder.
It was joyful and fun.
It was also super diverse.
My schools and my neighborhood were places where black, brown, and white families lived hard together, took care of one another, where the neighbors' parents were also my parents.
In some ways, it didn't seem like we had a lot, and yet it felt like we had everything that we needed.
It was idyllic.
And as childhoods go, things began to sort of morph and change, and as my sister and I became teenagers, my father left the picture.
Now, this seems like a dramatic thing, but in some ways it was inconsequential.
He wasn't a huge figure in our home, but it was still a severing.
And that separation from him also meant a separation from his family.
And though we did not know them very well, not near as well as we knew my mother's family who lived in Ohio, it was still a separation.
It was also a separation from their history.
The fact is I had no idea who the McMath's were.
I knew absolutely nothing about that family.
And at the age of 16, 17, I could have cared less.
In fact, for most of my adult life, I didn't care.
So as life continued to throw its curveballs at us, I decided I was going to stay home for college, stay local.
And when I say local, I mean real local.
Like, I went to JU, which was like three blocks from where I grew up.
And I was fortunate.
I got a scholarship, a full ride, which was absolutely the only way I was going to be able to do it.
And I went to study art and art history, and it was terrific.
But there was something that was a little uncomfortable about JU.
There was a big class difference between me and my peers.
And it was also a place where absolutely everybody looked just like me.
Meaning it was very different than the neighborhood I had grown up in.
And that would actually set up a trend in my life, at least for a long time.
I started a career that ended up a 22-year career in an art museum here in Jacksonville, Florida.
It was sort of a dream job.
And when I got there, that place too seemed very exclusive, very closed, and very white.
But I still loved it, and I loved the people I was working with.
And I was around some people who were a lot smarter than me, who convinced me that as an educator and an artist,
I could actually be part of what would change that system.
That I could actually play some sort of role in creating a more just and equitable world.
That actually became my calling.
And at some point in my career at the museum, it became an obsession.
In my last couple years there, I began waking up every day thinking about how do I use this place I am working in,
this seat I am sitting in, to try to create real change.
Not just in the organization, but in the city that I loved.
Now, just because I was waking up every day obsessing about this, did not mean other people were.
In fact, you could say there was maybe a bit of the opposite.
So I began to recognize that if I was going to follow that authentic path that started to become such a driver for me,
that I was going to have to do it in a different way in a different place.
So I leapt out of that world that I knew so well.
And when I did, I leapt into, it seemed like nothing.
And then it started to take the shape of a little yellow house.
And that little yellow house is a place where art and activism and education and community and love and care get to play with one another.
And it's messy and it's fabulous.
And it's that work, the work I do with Yellow House, that put me on that bus in Alabama.
Well, that bus finally began to move.
And we pulled into Jacksonville at 5.30 a.m. in the morning.
And I was one of the fortunate few that actually got to go home, get a little bit of sleep.
But I'll tell you what, when I woke up,
all I could think about were those lines in my journal and all that I had learned.
And I decided it was absolutely time to get to work. There was no time to waste.
So in my pajamas still, sitting on my couch in my living room, I opened up my laptop and got to work.
And of course, the first thing I had to do was renew my membership with Ancestry.com, which I hadn't used in 10 years.
I have no idea why I ever even had it.
But now I had a purpose for it.
And to be honest with you, I really thought it would take a long time to find out anything about the McMath Clan.
And y'all, I was wrong.
(Laughter)
It did not take long. And it was kind of nasty back there.
As I was looking at my screen, and there were census records and newspaper articles and family trees and war records
and even historic photographs,
I realized that information had always been there. I just had never looked.
I began to be introduced to people in my family named Hachaliah McMath and Malachi and Elijah,
and a woman named Espy Turnip Seed McMath, like for real.
(Laughter)
I won't even tell you what she was up to.
(Laughter)
I also was introduced to an entire generation of young men who had fought and many of them died for the Confederacy.
This was really uncomfortable for me.
Because I'm one of those people who is much more interested in burning that Confederate flag and melting those monuments.
And now I had to face the fact that those people's blood was coursing through mine.
I also learned that I had ancestors who were writing Jim Crow laws to create a segregated society,
and they were doing so in Georgia and Mississippi.
And I knew, I just knew that the more I looked, that it was only going to get harder.
But I decided to keep to it.
And on the third day after returning from my trip to Montgomery, there it was.
A census record from one of my ancestors who lived in North Georgia.
And in addition to naming his wife and his sons and his daughters,
and the tools that he owned and the livestock that he had,
there was also a list of nine people who he had enslaved.
It made me sick.
And yet I wasn't shocked.
In fact, there had to have been a part of me that knew that was going to be there, which is why I had not looked.
And that nine people in that first census record I found has now turned into 423.
As I was discovering these stories about these people, I also was looking at places
and I had a little paper map where every time I found a place where the McMath family had lived,
I was putting little dots.
And on the fourth day after returning from Montgomery,
I put a little dot somewhere in Southern Alabama.
And it was in Henry County, a place I had never heard of.
But it felt so familiar.
So I pulled up Google Maps and I retraced the route we had taken from Montgomery
to Jackson, though only a few days before.
And there it was.
The spot where I had sat on that bus in the middle of the night for hours in the dark
was in spitting distance to a piece of property the McMath family had owned.
A place where they had had their children, where they had gone to church,
where they had farmed the land—correction—where the people they owned farmed the land.
And I realized that everything that happened on that bus had a completely different context now.
The fact is when I was looking out the window of the bus,
if I had been able to pierce through the darkness and see past the trees,
I would have seen that piece of land.
So what was it that created that shift in the air?
Was it that the ground recognized me, or that I recognized that ground?
Were those whispers that I was hearing breaking through that crackling, shifting air?
Were those people asking me to pay attention?
To maybe recognize that there were stories that had never been told about people who had lived there?
The fact is, I have no idea.
In fact, I have no idea what I'm going to do with any of this.
As an artist, I have started making art inspired by what I'm learning,
which is great because it gives me a way to process it, to live with it, and to share it eventually.
But I've decided that I don't need to have that big lofty goal.
That maybe the power in all of this is simply holding on to the truth.
For exactly what it is.
And to stare directly at her.
No matter how glorious she is or how wretched.
And I happen to believe that to heal requires truth to be an important ingredient.
And maybe, just maybe, by me looking at my own truth,
puts one more stitch in the repair that this world needs.
And if we all do a little bit of this, and we lock our arms together while we're doing it,
anything is possible.
So, I don't know where it's going, but I will tell you this.
I'm grateful for that trip to Montgomery and the people that I got to share that experience with.
And I am so glad that that damn bus stopped on that road.
It provided an opportunity, a pause, to feel the tug, and to hear those whispers.
And I am grateful that I listened.
Thank you.

Barbara Colaciello:
(Applause)
That was just wonderful.
Please welcome Matt Colaciello.

Matt Colaciello:
Hey!
I am on a makeshift dock on an island called Bao-Bao in southeast Sulawesi in eastern Indonesia.
A place I am certain no one in the city I grew up in probably has ever heard of,
because even in Indonesia, Bao-Bao isn't exactly a big destination.
Part of that maybe because it means bad smells.
We are about to carry our bags over a narrow, cut-in-half coconut tree log to board a boat.
I am a study abroad instructor, and I have twelve 18-20 year-old American students with me.
And we are boarding a boat that looks like it hasn't been surfaced since 1972.
And as we board and the students, all of whom are from America, not used to carrying luggage on their shoulder over a narrow log into a boat,
are all looking a little concerned.
And my co-worker, Sarah, says, "Okay, everybody, now remember, this is Fun Type B.
What we just did was Fun Type A, where we are getting to know people in another culture and making friends and dancing.
Fun Type B is the kind of fun well, that you learn from."
And I am thinking, "Okay, red at night, sailors delight, red in the morning, sailors warning, and it's the afternoon and the sky looks pretty much blue, so we're good.
We're not going to encounter a storm on our trip to Wangi-Wangi, the island eight hours away, which means good smells."
So we board the boat and everything seems okay. We give our students Dramamine and they wear their life vests along with everyone else on the boat.
And the Indonesians on the boat all sort of look around and say Insha'Allah, and we depart.
A couple of hours into the trip, lightning appears on the horizon.
And then, as the sky goes pitch black, the lightning is over us and it's pouring rain, and the ship begins to rock, and then sway violently back and forth.
And to everyone, including the Indonesians, who are very used to being on the sea, look extremely concerned.
I'm looking at the ropes with barnacles attached to them that connect the captain in the front, his steering wheel, to the rudder in the back.
And I'm thinking this cannot be safe, and this definitely is not Fun Type B.
As the storm gets worse, my students are clinging to one another, and my co-instructors, and to the mast of the boat, and one of our students gets violently ill.
And so I get up with her and cling to the side of the boat as she throws up into the ocean, and I hold her hair back.
And she's throwing up, and then she looks at me and she says, "When is this going to end?"
And I don't blame her because I am thinking the same thing. It is like, "Oh my God, are we going to die?"
And I'm suddenly asking myself before answering her question, "How the hell did I end up here?"
I am in a classroom in a Jacksonville public school. I'm in fourth grade, and it's my music classroom, which is my favorite place to be in school, because it's the one place where I don't have to be like a "boy boy."
I get to play music and sway my hips, which I'm always trying to find an opportunity to do.
And it's coming, you just wait.
And everything is beautiful in that space. But then someone like every day, multiple times, calls me a faggot.
And on this day, a little girl that I had stuck up for myself, she tells on that boy to our music teacher, and the teacher calls us both together.
And I remember so clearly looking up at her, as she said to the little boy next to me, "Don't you ever call anyone that" And I feel vindicated. I feel affirmed.
I'm like, "Thanks Desiree. You can tell on him any time you want."
But then she turns to me and she says, "That is the worst thing you can be."
And I just remember thinking, "I thought a murderer is the worst thing you can be."
But that was just one experience. I mean, this was a kind of daily experience. I have the words now to call it navigating heteropatriarchy.
But at the time, I was just a little boy carrying around a lot of shame.
When sixth grade came around and I was about 12 years old, two things happened. One was that my feelings of attraction began to happen, and they were for other boys.
And something intellectually made a connection in my mind, which is that that word faggot is a category, and that category accurately describes the feelings I'm having.
And so, of course, I spent my year of being 12 on the floor in my bedroom with my arms,
splayed out looking up at the sky — well, at the ceiling, but I had painted the sky on my ceiling, and crying, and asking God, praying to God, "Why did you make me this way? Why did you condemn me to hell? Why did you make it so that I have no future?"
It did. It seemed like a logical conclusion that if it was worse to be gay than to be a murderer, that I might as well murder myself.
And so I spent middle school and most of high school dipping in and out of suicidal thoughts.
But when you live with that feeling of existential threat long enough, yeah, it's there. It sits there inside of you.
But you also start to feel bigger than it. You actually, in its presence, start to feel a little bit fearless.
It's like the evolutionary part of us that lives in all of us, that part that drove us to change our circumstances from being monkeys to becoming humans wakes up inside of you and affects your individual person. And for me, it meant that I started looking for something bigger that I could identify with.
And the first thing I identified with was nature. Beautiful, rejuvenating, vital nature, which we have so plentifully in Jacksonville.
It had survived colonialism, strip mining, deforestation, dredging, pollution, and yet it lives here everywhere you go, coming between the cracks.
And that was how I wanted to be. And so I started taking walks in middle school and connecting with the sky and the trees and the Spanish moths.
And then I began to feel like I was connecting with my land-sestors, the Timacuan people. This was just like my desperate fantasy as a seventh grader.
And then the sun would set. And I would look into the sky and feel bliss. A bliss that was identifying with something bigger than me, something bigger than the culture and the religion that condemned me to hell.
And when the sun would set outside of the gaze of my peers and their parents, I started slipping my walkman into my pocket and putting on headphones.
I would listen to the music that my dad brought home. It was world music. I felt foreign to hear, so world music must be my music because foreign music was for a foreign boy.
And I became obsessed with Manu Chao, anybody, and I would go out to that field.
🎵 "Me llaman el desaparecido
Fantasma que nunca está
Me dicen el desagradecido
Pero esa no es la verdad" 🎵
I mean, this is me like at 13 years old, alone in the field in Jacksonville, like just like,
🎵 "Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm." 🎵
That was me evolving. But that only lasted so long because it started to hit my intellect as well, and I could not stay in school.
I wanted to read Howard Zinn. I didn't want to read the AP textbook about American history.
I wanted to know the meaning, truly, of what it was to be a colony.
And so, I came home to my parents and I said, "Look, I cannot be healthy in an unhealthy environment.
My mother loves to quote that quote." She said, "That's what you said. You have to tell that in the story."
I said, "I cannot be healthy in an unhealthy environment, and I am not learning about what I need to learn about to live in this world,
which is why we die and where the universe comes from."
And with a little prodding and a promise that I would figure out how to get into college, my parents said, "Yes."
So now I'm 15, and it's like the rest of my life has begun.
I walk into the public library like it is walking into the library at Alexandria, and I am so excited to go first to the cosmology section
and take out books about the Big Bang, where I discover that the cosmic radiation background means that we were all just energy once,
and there is no reason to categorize anyone in any way that creates any suffering because we were just energy, and we still are.
And then, I went to the religion section and took out books on Hinduism and Buddhism and Gnosticism and Indigenous mythology,
and I imbibed and imbibed and imbibed, and then I came home and said to my parents, "I have transcended my location.
I was in the library today, but I was time traveling and space traveling."
And then I graduated from high school, which was just a performance art show at the theatre, my parents,
the theatre that my mom worked at, where I sang,
🎵"They say, if you see the Buddha,
if you see the Buddha in the road,
you should kill him, but if I saw the Buddha, I would make love to him." 🎵
That was my graduation.
(Laughter)
And then I went to college, and this was my opportunity to get someone to pay for me to travel abroad.
So I got my work study job in the study abroad office, and I made best friends with everybody that worked there.
So that when my junior year came around, I got them to pay for me to go to West Africa, to Mali, to study with Griots.
Griots are people who combine sort of the work of a historian and a conflict mediator and a musician.
It was like, "Oh, well, that's what I want to do."
And so I went to Mali, and for a year I studied Bambra and dance, and the practice of the Griot,
which at the time the president of Mali had a musician who would come and help negotiate situations.
Over the course of the journey that I have been on, I have met incredible people, but one of them was named Daikone,
and he was the Griot that I studied with for a year.
And by study I mean just sort of riding around on the back of his motorcycle and going wherever he went
as he pulled out his Griot lute, which is called Angelion Goney, and he would pick at the lute with his long fingernails
and sing about the history of the people who were in conflict, make jokes about their ancestors, make very, very poignant points
because Daikone was the kind of guy that was laughing until he wasn't.
And he had something to say.
And I watched this man who was a musician who was effervescent, who was beautiful, who was always dressed in a silk indigo robe,
and no one was calling him "faggot."
He was just being his musical existential navigating self, and it was okay.
And I know it might sound strange, but it was in that place at that time when I was 22
that I finally stopped wanting to kill myself there in West Africa.
But from West Africa I had to go to India because I wanted to study that religion that says "concept and culture"
and even mythology, even the concept of God.
Those are empty.
What is is and what is is.
And that is all there is.
So I was like, "Yes, I want to make isness, my business."
So I went to India to live in a monastery, something I had actually been wanting to do since I was 14 years old.
I wanted to put on the robes and step outside of society.
I wanted to be in the liminal space.
I loved the word liminal when I was in my early 20s and interstitial.
I wanted to be in the spaces in between where I had always felt at home.
And I was.
I lived in this monastery in Bodh Gaya, the place where the Buddha,
and tamed enlightenment under the Bodhi tree.
I would sit in meditation.
I would study texts in Sanskrit.
And at the end of my time in the monastery I decided to take a vow.
The Buddhist vow, it's called the Bodhisattva vow, to serve all beings and stay in your life
in the constant mission of trying to end the suffering of all beings.
Because it started to become clear to me that I could not just be my own teacher
or seek out other teachers for a one-on-one relationship.
That was really, really important and I needed it to heal myself.
But I had to also start to do the work to make myself a servant,
to make myself a teacher, and actually serve other beings.
So we all gathered under the Bodhi tree, me and the other students from the monastery,
and the teacher gave us our vows.
And he read a passage from a fourth century Buddhist scholar named Shantideva,
and basically described what this vow means.
That we should each be medicine for those who are sick.
That we should be a bridge for those who need to cross the river.
And that we should be a boat for those who wish to get to the other shore.
And I prayed hard to be given opportunities to do that.
And then, six months later, I got a job as a study abroad instructor in Indonesia,
a place I was wholly unqualified to be reading a study abroad program.
And I found myself on that boat from Bao-Bao to Wangi-Wangi, thinking,
"Maybe we're going to die."
But having had all this flash through my mind,
holding that student's hair back as she looked up at me, asking me,
"When is this going to end?"
I realized that this was precisely what I had asked for,
and precisely what I had been prepared to do.
And so I said to her in so many words, because, you know,
we were also actually really thinking we were going to die.
"I have navigated stormy waters,
and I have been under this dark sky.
And I have suffered the consequences,
gastrointestinaly of poor infrastructure in many countries.
And I promise you that no matter how painful this moment is,
you are going to find a way to turn it into a cause for your evolution.
And when we reach that other shore, it may even smell better, too."
Thank you.

Barbara Colaciello:
[Applause]
Thank you, Matt.

David Luckin:
The live performances of untold stories at the Florida Theatre
were originally recorded by Jeremy Moore and Eric Stansfield.
Saul Lucio is the technical director of the Florida Theatre.
The untold stories broadcast and podcast was produced by Brady Corum and Ray Hollister.
[Applause]
[Music]
(piano music)

In this evocative episode of "Untold Stories," recorded live at the Florida Theater, we dive into the theme of 'There and Back Again.' The show features an array of captivating stories that take us on a journey through the diverse experiences of our storytellers.

Barbara Colaciello of BAB'S LAB expertly guides the narrative as the artistic director and host of "Untold Stories," bringing unique stories to life with her insightful leadership.

The evening begins with Jolie, an independent singer, songwriter, and keyboard player from Saint Augustine, celebrated for her two CDs and recognition as Saint Augustine's Best Female Vocalist and Best Musician in 2019 and 2020. Her soulful melodies in "Belong" reflect on the bittersweet nostalgia for childhood friendships and the simplicity of the 'good old days.'

Yanira Cardona, with her vibrant personality and gripping narrative, transports us from the vibrant beaches of Puerto Rico to the challenging yet rewarding journey in Jacksonville, Florida. Her story is a vivid depiction of cultural shock, personal growth, and her eventual role in shaping the city's cultural landscape.

Bob Wiltfong's story provides a contrast, focusing on the evolution of dreams and identity. From his childhood moniker 'Goober' in Omaha, Nebraska, to his aspirations of fame and a stark encounter with reality, Bob's narrative is a candid reflection on finding purpose and contentment beyond the allure of fame.

The episode concludes with the powerful voice of Yvette Angelique, who spans six decades in her storytelling. From imaginative childhood tales to challenging corporate norms as a diversity leader, and finally embracing her artistic identity, Yvette's journey underscores the importance of remaining true to one's convictions and the transformative power of art and activism.

Each story, unique in its essence, is bound by the common thread of resilience, self-discovery, and the unexpected turns life takes. Tune in to "Untold Stories" for an evening of inspiration, laughter, and introspection, capturing the essence of human experience and the paths we navigate in our journey there and back again.

Please note that the following transcript has been generated by automated technology. While efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, there may be errors, inconsistencies, or deviations from the original audio. We encourage listeners to refer to the actual podcast episode for complete and accurate content. This transcript is provided for convenience and may not fully capture the nuances of the spoken word.

(gentle music)
David Luckin:
- Welcome to Untold Stories, a production of the Florida Theater and WJCT Public Media.
Tonight's program was recorded May 6th, 2022.
The theme, There and Back Again.

Barbara Colaciello:
- So welcome, welcome to tonight's Untold Stories.
And our theme is There and Back Again.
It was a very interesting theme.
And I found myself constantly saying
to the storytellers when I'd work with them,
"Where is there?"
I am thrilled to present, Jolie.
(audience applauds)

Jolie:
- Thank you so much for the warm welcome.
I'm just gonna play some songs throughout the evening
and this first one I wanna play for you is a song
that I wrote kind of about missing my childhood friends
and what I like to call my good old days.
This one's called "Belong".

(gentle music)
♪ Close doors ignored ♪
♪ I can't say that I don't care anymore ♪
♪ Where you are these days ♪
♪ Contoured that keeps score ♪
♪ Is it too late to call for an encore? ♪
♪ All the better days ♪

♪ All the times you saved me from myself ♪
♪ And made me feel like I could measure up ♪
♪ And I know those days are gone ♪
♪ I think I've known it all along ♪
♪ But can can you blame me for wanting to belong? ♪

♪ I've tried and I've lied ♪
♪ For the sake of keeping us alive ♪
♪ But here I am missing you ♪

♪ And all the times you saved me from myself ♪
(gentle music)
♪ And made me feel like I could measure up ♪
♪ And I know those days are gone ♪
♪ I think I've known it all along ♪
♪ But can can you blame me for wanting to belong? ♪

♪ Years passed I still go back to the chapter titled Us ♪
♪ Nowadays I find it all a little better left untouched ♪
♪ You turn the page on me and I'm still stuck ♪

♪ I remember all the times you saved me from myself ♪
♪ And made me feel like I could measure up ♪
♪ And I know those days are gone ♪
♪ I think I've known it all along ♪
♪ But can can you blame me for wanting to belong? ♪
♪ But can can you blame me for wanting to belong? ♪
♪ I miss the feeling that you and I belong ♪
(audience cheering)
(audience applauding)

Barbara Colaciello:
Okay, so I'm excited.
I want you to give a big round of applause
to my dear friend, Yaya! — Yanira Cardona!
(audience applauding)
(audience cheering)
(audience applauding)

Yanira Cardona:
Oh man.
I love daydreaming about the days
when I was a senior in high school in Puerto Rico.
I could hear the seven fell going off
and I'm telling my friends to hurry up
and grab their stuff so we could walk to the beach
that was literally right next to our high school.
I could feel the warmth of the sand in my feet
and I closed my eyes and I could hear my friends dancing salsa.
I could feel the warmth of the sun hitting my face
and when I opened my eyes, it's 40 degrees.
I'm in a town that worships a dinosaur statue for some reason
with a football team that, well, let's just say go jags.
(audience laughing)
It was a culture shock.
I mean, I just came from an island
that literally celebrates everything.
I mean, our baseball team came in second place
for the World Baseball Series
and the governor shut down the island.
We had a parade.
Even our kayakers came out with the little kayaks to celebrate, okay?
That's how much we celebrate in Puerto Rico.
To a city that if it rains, oh my God, a tsunami is coming.
We can't go out.
Can't do anything.
It was hard for me.
And although I started working in radio off the bat
in my senior year, I still saw Jacksonville like a 1950s television.
It was still very black and white.
It was an unseasoned barbecue chicken.
Just with salt and pepper.
Then I got married.
Yes, believe it or not,
I got married at the age of 20
and I thought I found my Prince Charming.
But I quickly realized I didn't want to be a military wife.
I'm a Navy brat.
I grew up in that life.
I know what that life is.
And I respect it and I love it.
But when you're a military wife,
you have to follow your husband wherever he goes.
And I wanted to be my own independent woman.
So I got divorced.
And I was like, "Aha, this is my golden ticket."
I felt like Charlie from Willy Wonka.
So I went to Full Sail University in Orlando
and I have graduated with my associates
as the advanced achiever
with my associates in sound engineer
and my bachelor's in music business.
I thought I 'd hit the road.
I was gonna be like the girl in the journey song.
You know that song that you guys love?
Don't stop believing here in Jacksonville.
Can we retire that song, please?
Anyways.
So I thought I was gonna get on the train
and go on the midnight train and take me anywhere.
Took me back to Jacksonville.
(audience laughs)
Now I'm staying with my mom.
And at that time, that AM radio station turned FM.
And so I started working with them.
And the landing called us
and wanted to do a Hispanic festival.
And so I did three Hispanic festivals
in the Jacksonville Landing.
Latina hot summer fiesta.
It was the first Latina summer.
It was the first Latina festival ever
at the Jacksonville Landing in 2014.
We had over 10,000 people attend each and every festival.
And that's when I started seeing Jacksonville
a little bit more colorful.
That's when I started seeing the blues in our waters.
That's when I started seeing the beautiful different shades of browns that we have here.
But even then, it wasn't enough for me to stay.
I got a phone call from a friend and he was like, "Hey, come back to Orlando."
"I know some people that are starting some radio stations and I think it'll be great for you to join them."
I was like, "All right, let's go."
So I packed up my stuff and I went back to Orlando and I helped start the first ever Reggaeton radio station in Florida.
And on top of that, I was the only woman in the company, okay, honey?
And I was a general manager.
(audience cheers)
Although literally I slept in my car a couple times, okay, I'm not gonna lie.
It was rough, but I was sitting with the city.
I was sitting with the mayor of Orlando.
I was sitting with all these CEO and executive people from Orlando and Kissimmee, making big moves.
I did a car show.
I didn't know, I don't know anything about cars,but I did a car show for them.
I felt like I was the boss.
In fact, they started calling me la jefa (the boss), right?
They really did.
And in one of the meetings, my phone is going off
and it's going crazy, crazy.
I'm like, "I'm sorry, guys, excuse me.
Let me answer this really quick."
"Hello?
Huh?
I don't understand what you're saying.
Calm down."
You know what?
I'll be at the station in a little bit.
It was my program director.
He was so upset.
So I get to the station.
We just moved to this new office.
I stumble walking in and he's there
with his friend in the studio.
And I'm like, "Hey, what happened? Why are you so upset?"
You are so ####### stupid. You don't know how to do your job.
How hard is it for you to staple some goddamn papers?
You know what I have to do now?
I have to waste my gas and take this paper to the winner."

"What are you talking about, stapling some papers?
I know I stapled some papers.
I know I did my job."

"No, you are so ####### stupid.
I don't know why you have this job."
And by the time he said that, he was in my face
and I was like, "You better relax.
I'm not your wife.
I'm not your daughter."

He's like, "Yeah, what are you gonna do about it?"
And he pushes me.
And I pushed him back.
(audience applauding)
Next thing I know I'm feeling this burning sensation
on my right cheek.
And at that moment, I realized I just got
smacked in my face for the first time in my whole entire life.
And I was like, "I'm gonna kill this ############.
We gonna kill each other!"
Or I could call the cops and he could go to jail for this for real and ruin him.
And I called the cops and I told them the story.
And they're like, "Well, you admitted to the fact that you pushed him back so we could take you to jail too."
And I was like, "Another slap in my face."

And then I spoke with the owner of the radio station. Somebody who I thought was like my brother, somebody that I spent that Christmas with.
I didn't spend that Christmas with my family.
I spent my Christmas with him and his family.

And the first thing he told me was,
"Well, what did you do to make him so mad?"
And I was like, "Another slap in my face."

And it slapped me so hard that it slapped me back to Puerto Rico when my dad.
My dad was like, "You know what? Come back home for a little bit. Come to Puerto Rico."

So I went back to PR.
And that was the first time I felt what depression was.
I felt lost.
I wasn't the happy, "Yaya you guys know."
I was angry, I was confused.
And I felt like Eeyore.
Like there was a gray cloud over my head.
And then my birthday was gonna come up.
And you know, I'm a Gemini. We Gemini's, we go all out.

And my grandmother dies on my birthday.
The one grandmother that I sing, that I am Yaya because of my Yaya.
She dies on my birthday.

And my cloud just got heavier and heavier to the point where it formed Hurricane Maria.
And Hurricane Maria hit my beautiful island.
And although Hurricane Irma my hit a week before, but it didn't do as much damage on my side of the island as Hurricane Maria did.
My island that was, is green, and you see parrots flying and wild horses everywhere, all of a sudden, it was like a horror film.
It was, all the trees were with no leaves.
The trees looked like they were gonna attack you with their branches.
It was dead horses and dead parrots and dead cows all on the road.

Where I'm from, my family's from Sabana Grande and Guánica — particularly I stayed in Sabana Grande,
We were trapped.
We couldn't get out.
There was literally one way in and one way out.
And the farmers came out with their machete, and they got this stuff to clear up the road.
And what people don't know is that it rained for nine days straight after Hurricane Maria.

Nine days straight.
But hey, at least we had some paper towels from the US.
You know what I'm saying?
Thanks, President!

So you can only imagine how we were on the island.
We didn't know anything about anything.
We didn't know, there was no formal communication.
The only formal communication was an AM radio station.
And they were telling us what was going on.

And somebody said that there was a gas truck coming
to my hometown.
So me and my cousin went at two in the morning to the gas station.
And we were calling number 13.
We were like, yeah, we're calling number 13.
We gonna get this gas.

And then at six in the morning, they're like,
no, they're going to the other gas station.
So we all got in our car.
We went to the gas station.
And of course, there were already cars there.

And I was frustrated.
I was like, why is this happening?
But then when I look up, everyone was outside their car playing music.
The kids were dancing, having a good time.
In the time that we should be selfish with what we have, the people that were in their house
were coming outside offering us a little bit of water and coffee and bread with butter to us while we were waiting for the gas.
That never came.

I waited 13 hours and the gas truck never came.
And I remember a couple days later, I went to the grocery store.
We were only allowed five people at a time to the grocery store.
You get how to pay cash.

And all of a sudden, cell phones are going off.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
I'm like, oh my god.

And I'm waiting for my ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,
to go off.
And my phone wasn't going off because the only cell phone
company that started working 11 days after Hurricane Maria
was the local cell phone company of Puerto Rico Claro.

So I'm desperate.
You can only imagine everyone talking with their loved ones.
And I'm like, please, who can I?
So I turn around to the guy behind me.
And I'm like, listen, I will pay you whatever it is.
I will buy your family food.
Just let me call my mom.
I'm her only child.
I can only imagine the anguish that she had.

And I called my-- and he's like, yeah, please, use the phone.
So I call my mom.
And my mom was in a meeting.
Every Wednesday, they have a meeting in their credit union.
And my mom says, "Ay dio mio!"
Yeah.
And I start bawling.
And of course, she starts bawling.
She can't talk.
I can't talk.

And I didn't want to take up too much of his time.
And I call my best friend, Toni Smailagic.
And he's like, "We're trying to bring you on a shipping boat!"
Because I don't know if you guys know.
Jacksonville's port is the port that Puerto Rico uses for important and exporting for everything.
By law, we have to.
So we have a great relationship.
And so they were literally trying to ship me back.

And that's when I realized, you know what?
I'm always going back to Jacksonville.
So just like a boomerang, I went back to good ol' Jacksonville.
And I was like, man, what am I going to do now?
I'm here in Jax.
I don't know if I want to go back to radio.
I'm still traumatized.

I'm like, what do I like to do?
And I remember I'm sitting down with my best friend, Tony.
And he just moved back not too long ago.
And he's talking about how he wants to introduce Jacksonville to Jacksonville and take pictures of all the events.
And he was talking about starting his company, Cre8Jax.

And I was like, man, friend, that sounds dope.
Man, I want to do something too.
I was like, man, I'm already known here in the Hispanic community.

But Jacksonville is very separated.
It's the whites with the whites, the blacks with the blacks,
the Hispanics with the Hispanics, the Asians with the Asians.
We're not working together how we should.
And I remember telling him, I want to be the Yellow Pages.
I want to be Jacksonville's Yellow Pages.

I want to connect us all.
I want us all to work together.
And I remember I closed my eyes.
I said, I can envision just us like being in a park, people dancing, salsa, having a good time mingling, getting to know each other, no matter the color, the race, just experiencing a good time.

And when I opened my eyes, it's October 13, 2017, my very first festival, Viva La Fiesta.

And that all happened because Janice, the executive director from the Landing, when she realized that I moved back, she called me right then and there, like the next day from talking with Tony.

She's like, "Hey, I heard you're back in Jacksonville. I need you to come do this festival for me, the Hispanic festival."
And I was like, "Janice, thank you, but I'm not working with nobody.
I'm not with no media company, no,"

But she's like, "OK, well, I need you to come do this festival for me."
I was like, "yeah, but I don't think you're understanding. I'm not with the company. I don't have no backup. It's just me."
I don't want to-- you know what I'm saying?
It's just me.
She was like, didn't you do these festivals by yourself
with the company anyways?
I was like, yeah, she's like, so what's the difference?
She saw something of me that I didn't even realize.
Like, I made all these other people money.
Why can't I make myself money?
What the hell?
[LAUGHTER]
So I decided to start Gaya Productions.
And that's why I'm here.
And all of a sudden, PGA Tour started supporting me
and started sponsoring me, Florida Blue.
And all these big companies started
supporting little Yaya Productions.

And that is why I feel I was meant to come be here in Jacksonville, was to bring that culture, that salsa,
that heat from my island that we so much need here in Jacksonville.

[CHEERING]

Thank you for listening to my untold story.
[LAUGHTER]

Barbara Colaciello:
I told you she's on fire.
Ah, that was fabulous.
Thank you so much.

Yanira Cardona:
Thank you.
[CHEERING]
[LAUGHTER]
[CHEERING]
[CHEERING]
[CHEERING]
Thank you.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]

Barbara Colaciello:
Thank you.
Here you go.
Bob...
[APPLAUSE]
Wiltfong!

Bob Wiltfong:
Thanks, Babs.
[APPLAUSE]
Hello.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you so much for coming out as well.
I'm echoing the sentiments from earlier.
And for giving me your ears for a little bit, hopefully you find my story entertaining, and somewhat educational.

I was born Robert Allen Wiltfong at a Immanuel Hospital in Omaha, Nebraska.
I was the youngest of six kids, and my older siblings would call me Bobby.
So I grew up as Bobby, but more commonly around the house they would call me Goober.
[LAUGHTER]
Because my oldest brother said I slobbered a lot.
I looked like a Goober, so he gave me that name.
So I was Goober, the baby of the family.
And we grew up on 68th Street in Omaha, Nebraska, in a white, large kind of shoebox house.
And I loved this house.
My dad put a basketball hoop in the front yard along the driveway, and I'd play basketball with my friends.
And there was a lot of kids, black kids in my neighborhood, so I was always Larry Bird, right?
They could always pick Michael Jordan, Isaiah Thomas, whatever. But I was always Larry Bird.

And then we had a huge backyard, at least by kid's center.
It's a huge backyard, and it was adjacent to a little league baseball club, Omaha Country Club.
And I would literally go for my backyard to jump over the fence during the summer months, and you could smell the fresh cut grass, and you'd feel the sun warming your skin, and you'd have hundreds of other kids along with me, and our little baseball caps
and little league uniforms all going, "A-badda, a-badda, a-badda, swing!"

So it was a great kind of all-American upbringing, but winter times were my favorite there.
We would get blizzards in Omaha, and when blizzards happened, we got no school.
And there would be high snow drifts in our backyard, and we would tunnel some, we would dig out tunnels in those snow drifts, and have a great time.
My dad would put down this big plastic tarp in the backyard and flood it with a pool of water, and we'd ice skate.
It was awesome.

At Christmas time, free of school, all my siblings, we'd hang out in the house, we'd play board games, we would sneak peeks at gifts underneath the Christmas tree, and we had a fireplace in the living room where we put real logs on it, you could smell the fire.
Even today when I smell that smell, it takes me back to my childhood.

And then we started to grow up, and one by one, my older siblings became adults,
and they left the house, and became less and less frequent, especially around Christmas time at the house.

I became an empty nester, if you will, of siblings.
And I too wanted to grow up to be an adult.
I looked up to my older siblings, and I decided to step in the right direction, as to go by Bob.

No more Bobby, no more Goober, okay? I'm Bob.
And I dreamt of going to a big city, and I wanted to be on a cool TV show like Saturday Night Live. I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
And I wanted to be world famous.
I felt a little bit like the Jimmy Stewart character, from "It's a Wonderful Life", right?
I want to get out of this town.
I want to get away from Potter.
[laughter]
And I envisioned myself in this shoe box of a house that, when I became an adult, people would line up around the block
and just line up to see the magical life where Bob Wiltfong began.
Wow!
Incredible!

So when I picked my majors for college, I went with broadcast news journalism.
I went with that major because, honestly, in Omaha, I didn't see a path to any Saturday Night Live.
And I felt like being a TV news reporter or anchor would be the next best thing.
So I went there.

My first job out of college was at KPLC TV, Channel 7 in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
We got some Lake Charles people?
All right.
Laissez le bon temps rouler!
Okay. Yeah.
I know, I know some Cajun French. That's it.

The first day at the TV station, my news director,
pulled me off to the side in a hush voice.
He said, "Bob, what's your middle name?"
And I said, "It's Alan. Why?"
And he goes, "I want you to report under your middle name here.
And I want you to be Bob Allen."
I was like, "Okay, why?"
And he said, "Well, I think when our Cajun audience hears Wiltfong, it may be a little off-settling to them."

So I went by Bob Allen, 7-8, your service, for two years there.
I should point out that my news director had probably one of the most least off-putting names in the English language.
He was James Smith.

About a year into my stay at KPLC, a gorgeous girl walked into the newsroom.
And her name was Jill Newton, also very non-offensive to a Cajun person,
Jill Newton.
And I knew that she loved me because a few years later she accepted my last name
in marriage. She got screwed.

In 1998, a big break happened.
I get a job offer at a 24-hour local news channel in Long Island, New York.
I'm a kid from Omaha. I've never been,

"Hey, all right, let's play Kanaesta."
That's all I know of Long Island. I've never been in New York.
And I recognize this is an opportunity for a kid who grew up wanting to get to the
big city, wanting to be world famous, and be on cool television shows.

New York City. That's awesome.

Suddenly and shockingly, these dreams are closer than they've ever been in my life.
And I figure, — 'cause I take the job — And I figure this is a good time to step into the light of my life, to reimagine myself, to shed my background, and to become a new person.

So I decide I'm going to be Bob Butler at News 12 Long Island.
And I do this because I feel like Bob Butler sounds a little bit more
networky.
Sounds more like a guy who would report from Ukraine as opposed to Bob
Wiltfong.
It made sense at the time.
The other reason I did it is because I was an investigative journalist at that
point.
That's the reason why I won the Edward R. Murrow.
I did some investigative reporting before that job.

I wanted another layer of privacy between me and somebody who might get really
upset at the reporting I did.
I wanted to be Goober in disguise.

One of my first priorities when I landed at New York is this childhood dream.
Finally, I get to a place where I can explore this idea of just being a comedian.
I settle on a theater in Chelsea called the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.
Fans!
I'm very fortunate.
I get on the ground floor of this thing before it takes off.
Their headquarters at that time was a very tiny black box theater in Chelsea.
The stage could maybe hold ten people. OK? Small.
But I loved it.
And everyday I got to get up on stage with my friends and chatter.
"What's your suggestion? What's your suggestion? Let's play."
It reminded me of jumping over the fence for little league.
Let's play. Let's play.

The summertime was my favorite at that theater.
The theater, just to really get a sense of it, constantly reeked of ##### and sweat.
There were yellow blinding lights that wouldn't allow you to see beside behind the
first row.
And we would do 48 hours continuous improv comedy marathon during the summer.

Yeah.
Only in your 20s are you going to do something like that.
I remember one of my friends from New 12 Long Island, the TV station, came to one of those shows in the middle of the night.
It was like 3 a.m. is one of my slots.
And he remarked, it was Glenn Pettit, and he said, you know, there's more people on the stage than there are in the audience right now.
That's very true.

And then 9/11 happened.

I had to... my friend Glenn, who went missing, Glenn was a photographer on the weekends at the TV station.
And during the week, he was a full-time member of the NYPD in their video unit.
He loved shooting video.
And his job with the NYPD was to capture emergency situations for training for the police department.
Now to set a scene for you, Glenn, when you met him, you're like, you're a cop.
He talked like a cop.
He had a presence about him that you're in trouble if you cross Glenn.
Little short guy, huge balls.
Huge.

We would go to crime scenes as a team on the weekends. And within 5 minutes, Glenn would come back to me, tell me everything off the record and on the record that the police knew. And he would get me behind police tape so we could shoot good video.
He was one of those guys.

On 9/11, though, he talked himself into a space that he couldn't get out.

It breaks my heart every time I think of it.

A friend of ours, who's also a photographer at the Fox affiliate in New York, shot the last images we saw of Glenn.

Ed, with his camera and his shoulder, he's following firefighters into the basement of one of the World Trade Center buildings before it collapses.
And you want to stop the video.
Bring it all back.
And you can't.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Bob Butler has the assignment of putting together a video tribute for Glenn.
It's my friend.
We're going to do him a service on our TV station.

I interview a number of his friends and family.
And one of the reoccurring themes, among other things, besides the fact that he's a practical joker and his neighborhood friend called him Frickin' Frack. They were just a terror in the neighborhood.
He's a horrible driver.
But one of the reoccurring themes, all the friends and family said, and I took from it too, is,
"God, we saw Glenn. The last time we saw him, he was doing what he loved to do. Had the camera on his shoulder."

I went home at night, looked myself in the mirror.
I'm not doing what I love to do.
My heart, my childhood is in this comedy thing.

So six months after 9/11, I quit TV news.
And I pursue a full-time gig, if you can call it a gig.
Mostly it's unemployment interrupted by gigs.
As an actor and a comedian.

It's October 25, 2004.
And I'm standing in a beautifully lit TV station on the west side of Manhattan.
And a studio audience, packed, is laughing and rising in laughter to a comedy piece of mine
that's playing on one of the monitors.

During the commercial break, the host, Jon Stewart, turns to the audience.
Says, "Ladies and gentlemen, Daily Show correspondent Bob Wiltfong."

I step into the light.

Less than a year later, that light goes dark.

Rather than firing me from the Daily Show, Jon Stewart and the powers that be at that show
do what they've done to so many before me and will do to so many after me.

They just stop calling.
There's no explanation.
There's no goodbye to my coworkers who I thought were my friends.
There's just a mysterious awkward ghosting that lasts to this day.

What do you do when your childhood dreams of what being an adult is doesn't match up to what you want out of your adulthood?

Why am I here?

About three years ago, my wife's work brought us to Florida.
We settled in Nocatee.
I didn't even know about Nocatee.
They have a lot of golf carts in Nocatee.
We have a splash park in Nocatee.
We're in gated communities.
I don't know why.
We are.
[laughter]
Sorry.
Yeah.
Thank you.
[laughter]
Thank you.
Don't tell my kids that.
Don't tell my kids.
They think it's awesome.
And I start to build a childhood home that I remember.
We've got a home in Nocatee with a basketball hoop in the driveway.
We've got a pool in the backyard.
It's exactly like my childhood home, but it completely different.

Times have changed.
A few weeks after we moved into our home in Nocatee, it's the day after the 2020 election.
Yeah.
Things are tense.
Okay?
Especially in Nocatee.
There's a lot of tension.
[laughter]
It didn't help that I had a Biden sticker on my hybrid vehicle.
[cheers and applause]
We're out walking our dog on our cul de sac.
I'm dressed kind of like this.
Okay?
I couldn't look much more like a dad if you paid me.
Walk on our dog gumdrop.
This is my life, folks.
This is my life.
Gumdrop starts to pee in a yard.
He's a dog.
We pick up the poo.
When he pees, it's grass.
Around the same time our dog starts to relieve himself.
He's a dad of the adjoining property.
He sees the dog and out of his side of his mouth, he says, "Oh, I can't wait to bring my dog down to your yard and pee in your yard."
Well, Nocatee.

My first reaction is, "Oh, that's funny. What's your name? I'm Bob."
He stops.
Straightens up a little bit.
Looks me up and down.
Looks me right in the eye and goes, "I'm Mike. Why?"
I'm like, "I'm Bob. We're going to spend a lot of time. I live right down the street from you. I just want to introduce myself."

A couple of months later, Jill, my wife and I find out that his real name is Leonard.
His real name is Leonard!
In that moment of feeling vulnerable, the guy changed his identity.
That's my thing.
Touche. Touche.

Sometimes you achieve your childhood dreams.
Sometimes you see behind the curtain of fame, and you don't like what you see.
Sometimes you marry a girl that still makes you feel like out of my league.
[applause]
Sometimes you have kids that humble you in the most wonderful way.
And you realize that the only audience I have to please in my life are the people who give a ####
[applause]
The people who love me and the only fame I need is to have a really cool nickname.
[laughter]
My husband, my dad, Goober.
Thank you.
[applause]

Barbara Colaciello:
Give it up for Bob Wiltfong.
Bob Butler.
Bob Allen.

Bob Wiltfong:
Bob Allen.
Depends on the day.

Barbara Colaciello:
All his aliases, Bob Dad.
Bob Wiltfong
Thank you.

Barbara Colaciello:
Thank you so much.
Please welcome, Yvette Angelique.
[applause]

Yvettte Angelique:
Hello, everybody.
Hello.
DC is in the house.
Whoo.
Y'all.
Listen.
Listen.
I've been around for six decades.
So when it comes to there and back again, I got stories.
[laughter]
So, you want to go in the head?
This is my little sister telling me, in my nine-year-old self, in our bedroom, in Palmer Park, Landover, Maryland.
This was her cue to get me to start doing some storytelling at night.
It was like my imagination was always turned on, and it always started at bedtime.
You see, I was married to Alexander Mundy from "It Takes a Thief."
He stole from government, or for the government, I should say.
She was married to Jim West from the "Wild Wild West", and he was a Secret Service agent.
So both of our husbands were spies.

We were beautiful black women.
We wore Barbara McNair hair, you know, it was like puffed up at the top, straight with that big flip.
You know, happening at the bottom with a big white headband?
We would travel to places all over the world like spy wives do.
[laughter]

We would go to places like Istanbul, Morocco, Spain.
They would take us everywhere.
And I would make up these stories every single night,
and we'd be giggling and laughing,
and my mother would be downstairs there, "Hey girls!
Get your ass asleep!
Gotta go to school tomorrow!"
"Alright, yes, mom, yes, mom."

And it was always hard for me to go to sleep.
Lisa would always go first.
I would hear her snoring, which would let me know story time was over.
And then I would go to sleep.
But the next day, it was hard getting up.
41:32
[sings]
♪ Last night, I didn't get to sleep at all. ♪
♪ No! No! ♪
Remember that song?
"Fifty Mention", Marilyn McCool?
That was my jam.

Because with every story, there was a song.
I mean, I'm a musician, right? Yeah.
Well, let's just take this on a little further in the early 1990s.
As time I'm up in the Philadelphia market.
And I'm vice president, director of diversity, at a major bank.
And I mean, this was in the early 90s, like people think it's a new thing today, but this was in the early 90s where you're doing this.
And part of my job was to help educate people in the company, and particularly I was working with the top executives around racism and sexism.
We were focused on those two areas at that time.

So I'm doing a diversity thing with my colleagues who are the heads of the company.
And the assignment is that we have to tell a story to each other about the first time we became aware of our own race.
So I'm sitting there listening to these stories about how, you know, I had a black woman who was like my grandma.
She was like, "She was so good to me. Miss Betty Lou, Miss Miss Anne, Miss Miss, whatever."
She couldn't come in the front door.
We let her in in the back door.
And even though she cooked our meals every day, she was such a fabulous cook.
She didn't eat with us.
She had to eat in the kitchen.

So I'm sitting down and I'm taking in all these stories.
So then I get to tell my story.
I was in junior high school.
I was at the same height I am now, maybe about an inch shorter, which meant at 14 years old I was mammoth.

And my best friend, her name was Beth.
She wore her hair cut real short blonde.
She kind of looked like a boy.
I mean, she wore a boy clothes.
She wore no makeup, like all the girls who wear makeup.
And so, you know, she and I were just buddies.
We hung out together all the time.

So one Saturday she invites me over to her house on the other side of town.
And I go over there and we check out the pool that's in her neighborhood.
It's actually a pool that's in an apartment complex where they let all the neighborhood kids come and swim.

So Beth and I, we go over there.
We're like swimming.
We're playing tag.
We're having a good time.
We're sunning and funning all in the afternoon.
Great Saturday.

So then I see her in school on Monday.
And I notice that she's walking towards me, you know, down the hall.
And when I look at her face, it's like melted butter.
I said, girl, what is up?
What's up with you?
She said, you're not going to believe this.
She said, but the manager of the pool came to my house and talked to my mother and told her that I was never to bring you back to the pool.

They drained the pool.
And I said, I didn't pee in the pool.
She said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it wasn't that.
It's because you're black.
I said, what?
So she's looking at me and I'm looking at her.
We can't even begin to process what has happened.

So I tell my story like this to this group of executives and they're looking at me like we were looking at each other.
Because what do you do with that story?

[sings]
♪ Is this the real life? ♪

♪ Is this just fantasy? ♪
♪ Caught in a landslide? ♪
♪ No escape from reality? ♪
♪ Remember that? ♪
Queen was my jam.
No?
Because I play guitar.

So we're going to fast forward this up.
I'm still at the bank.
It's about eight years later.
Now I'm a real big muckering muck.
I work right for the CEO.
I have a big division that's under my direction.
And we had just been through this major reengineering in which I was part orchestrator.
Well, the one thing I didn't orchestrate was the name.
It was called Best.
Worst name in the world.
Especially when you know you're going to lay off staff.
That's not a good name to call a lay off situation.

Anyway, so I'm in my nice L-shaped office overlooking City Hall one late evening, which I spent lots of late evenings in my office.
And I get a visit from a colleague who has lost his job.
So Jay works at another building.
He comes over and he pokes his head in my office.
He says, "Hey, you got a minute?"
I said, "Yeah, Jay, come on in."
He says, "He sits down on my couch and his hands are in his lap and he's looking down."
He said, "I just got Bested."
Best became a verb when you lost your job.
"You know, I know Jay.
Look, you're going to be okay."
I said, "We're giving you a generous severance.
We're going to have some outplacement that's going to work with you on strategies to find another job."
And I said, "Look, you're in a lending group. You have a ton of contacts in your network.
You're going to land somewhere really fast, really soon."

He sits there.
"What am I going to tell my wife?"
So now I'm listening.
"I've got two kids in college, one in Villanova, one at Brown, and what about our place at the shore?"
So I'm listening.
"You know what?
I want to go upstairs on top of this building of Center Square and just walk off."

So I look at him and I say, "Jay, you know I can't let you go after having told me this."
He said, "I know."
So I call employee assistance and we get Jay some help.
And it just stays with me that feeling and his face, because you know what?
I could have been Jay.
I was rising to the top, had a nice, fat, bake account, riding limousines, flying here and there,
operating billion dollar budgets.

Yeah, that could have been me, but I would never let it be me because I can't imagine for one second
being so married to a job that I would consider jumping off of a building for it.
So I got clear.

When I first joined the bank, I really wanted to own my own business.
And I said, "Girl, it's time for you to do that right now."
So it took about two years of some power moves and some negotiations, but what I did was I made a deal with the bank I was with.
I made a business case for outsourcing the group I was managing as a separate business for the bank
in which they own part shares and the management team and I own shares
and that we would sell services back to the bank as well as their corporate customers.
And that was the beginning of a management consulting group that was called Prime Directive Consulting Group.
I ran that business for 15 years.

After having the business for years, I acquired 100% of the shares, so then I was 100% owners of that business,
and we did extremely well.
So you would think this was it, right? This is my happily ever after story, right?
No! It doesn't go like that.

So I'm sitting in a meeting with a client.
I'm working with a school district where the superintendent is black.
The mayor is black.
The head of City Council, the president is a city council, is black.
The governor loves all of them and it's like, whatever you all want to do, I'm supporting you.

So I'm looking at this great opportunity to change the lives, particularly for the black kids who were failing
an astronomical rate.
We can make a difference in the lives of these black children and the parents, and it's going to be in a way where everybody benefits.

I really believe, because I had all of these black folks in the room, that we could really change things.
And what I saw was infighting, power, struggle, positioning for more power.
Nobody had the kids in mind. Nobody had the parents in mind.

So then I'm sitting there thinking, what in the hell am I doing in this space?
How am I making the difference like I always have?

So I come home and my husband and I, we decide that we're going to put together a joint vision.
We want to live in a place where it's like we're on vacation.
And we're going to do this once the kids graduate from high school because we didn't want that drama.
So we had a couple of years. So we started going to all these different cities.
We went to the southeast, we went to the southwest, we had already lived in California.
So it's like, okay, let's just try out some of these places.
And so we finally found a place that we liked and we came back two or three times.
So we found and go, oh my God, it's my Mecca, it's my nouvana, it's Jacksonville.
[laughter]

Now, hang with me for a minute.
In theory, this should have been correct.
Because my criteria was had to be by moving water.
What we got?
Rivers, oceans, right?
Had to be a 30-minute drive to the airport.
You could circle that around Jacksonville pretty much anywhere.
You can get that, right?

I had to have a 40%—remember I'm a banker—a 40% population of African Americans.
Because somebody's got to do a sister's locks.
[laughter]
And it needed to have a gay population.
So I, you know, that's a little bit more trickier to find out.
But I do my homework through the advocate in some other places and I get data on Jacksonville.
Yo, we got a big gay population here at Jacksonville!
So I was like, all right!

Because where I had some gay folks and I got the black folks and I am complete.
And then the next thing I wanted was a thriving arts community.
Guess what we got here?
We got art.
I went to CoRK.
I didn't know the CoRK was closed most of the time.
Except for that one weekend it was open when I was here, right?

And then I went to the Ritz Theater and I went, oh my God, it's like a black museum.
Oh my God, I'm so excited.
And then there was this place called the Comer and then it was the Riverside Arts and then there was live music everywhere.
I was in the house.

Jacksonville, you know?
I would tell her, I'm going to Jacksonville.
Where's that?
Nobody in the northeast knows where Jacksonville is.

So we moved to Jacksonville.
I'm here.
And I said, this is where I'm going to focus on my artistic life.
I've been doing it part time, little time up in the northeast.
Now that's going to be my identity.

I'm going to take off my recovery, now recovering banker.
You know, I'm taking off that life and that former CEO life.
That's done.
I am an artist.

I'm going to continue to do my workshops and, you know, I'm going to be very Zen.
This is where I will find my piece.
So one of my neighbor friends says, hey, that, I wasn't even here a month.
You don't come down to City Hall with us?
I said, why?
What's going on?
Well, we got this HRO thing that we're trying to get through.
I said, as an human rights ordinance, HRO?
I said, yeah, I said Jacksonville doesn't have one?
I said, dang, I did that two and a half decades ago in Philadelphia.
They said, well, then you must know something.
Come on down here.
I'm like, just come down here and do this down there with us.
And I said, get the hell out of here.
All right.

Then it was like, what?
Confederate statues.
What the hell?
We got, we got who?
Where?
I saw black women in the daughters of the Confederacy.
The daughters, I just, I was like, you know, this is a world gone mad!
I ain't never seen this!

I'm just a DC girl living in a Florida world.
Right?
So here I am doing what I know how to do.
I know how to do art.
I know how to do storytelling.
And I sure as hell know how to change things because that's what I've been doing my whole
dad gone life.
And yes, I got that chance to go to Kenya.
And I've had the chance to go to Singapore and Mumbai.
Yes, I did all that jet setting since I've been here.
But when I decided that I was going to anchor myself here.
Now, I want to be that voice that says,
[sings]
♪ We who believe in freedom cannot rest ♪
♪ We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it's done. ♪

Thank you.

David Luckin
The live performances of "Untold Stories" at the Florida Theatre were originally recorded by Jeremy Moore and Eric Stanfield.
Saul Lucio is the technical director of the Florida Theatre.
The Untold Stories broadcast and podcast was produced by Brady Corum and Ray Hollister.
[applause]
[music]
[BLANK_AUDIO]

Story Tellers: True Poet, Erica Saffer, David Girard
Musical Guest: Brent Byrd

The fourth episode of Untold Stories was recorded live on stage at the Florida Theater in downtown Jacksonville on Sunday, February 12, 2022.

Brent Byrd kicked off the episode with his bluesy song Wrong Way Road which urges listeners to let go of negative emotions and thoughts, and get on the right path towards peace and unity. The lyrics emphasize the importance of leaving behind loneliness, clearing away confusion, and moving forward together towards a better future.

The first storyteller of the episode, True Poet, shares the traumatic experiences of being sexually abused by his uncle from the age of eight to thirteen. He had been holding his breath for years, until he finally found the courage to speak up and confront his uncle. However, even after his uncle moved away, the trauma and shame remained with him, and he struggled to find a way to move on with his life.

True eventually decided to start a new life for himself, moving to a new city and finding solace in Memorial Park. He was inspired by a sculpture of an angel floating above turbulent waters, which represented a beacon of strength to him. He began to use his voice to speak up for other survivors, eventually sharing his story with his parents and finding a sense of healing and closure.

True’s story explores the complex emotional and psychological aftermath of sexual abuse, and the importance of finding a sense of strength and empowerment in the face of trauma. His journey serves as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, and the power of self-discovery and healing.

The next story, by Erica Saffer, follows her personal journey growing up in Florida, with her grandparents' summer love story as a backdrop. The Weeki Wachee Springs, named after the Seminole tribe meaning "winding rivers," became the place where her grandparents fell deeply in love while working as a mermaid and a maintenance worker.

Erica's upbringing was along the banks of the Julington Creek River in Mandarin, Florida, where she met Nordell, a man who embodied the wildness of Florida. They fell in love and had a son, Rivers, when Erica was only 19. Despite their struggles, Erica worked hard to provide for her family, getting her teaching degree and MFA, becoming an author, and giving back to her community.

Now, as her son Rivers is on the cusp of adulthood, Erica reflects on their shifting relationship and worries if she has equipped him enough for success. She realizes that their relationship is changing, and she may need to be a little more bold and strong-willed, like Rivers, to relax and enjoy where their winding river will take them.

David Girard, the final storyteller of the evening, shares a compelling and humorous tale about his experience with a free house that was gifted to him by his “evil” grandmother. The house was in Callahan, a town that was notorious for being a sundown town, where black people were expected to leave before the sun went down. David's girlfriend, now wife, saw the potential in the house, despite its flaws, and they moved in.

The house had its fair share of issues, from uneven studs to a malfunctioning well pump and septic tank that overflowed every year. Despite all the challenges, David and his family cherished the memories they made in the house, from throwing parties to taking care of his father-in-law until he passed away. It was also the place where David's “good” grandmother, who had worked in white people's kitchens before, was called "Ma" and "Grandma" by his friends during his wedding reception. The love and respect shown to her by David's diverse group of friends meant the world to her and represented a powerful moment of recognition and acceptance after a lifetime of hard work and discrimination.

Now building a new house in a drier area, David reflects on his time in the old house with a sense of nostalgia. He acknowledges that the new house will have its own set of problems, but the swamp house has left an indelible mark on him and his family. Through David's witty and engaging storytelling, we are reminded that sometimes the challenges we face can lead us to unexpected places and create lasting memories.

Brent Byrd's closing song, Shine a Light, is a heartfelt plea for guidance and direction in difficult times. The lyrics speak of feeling lost and alone in the midst of a cold, dark night, and the desire for a guiding light to show the way. Byrd's soulful vocals and driving acoustic guitar create an uplifting and hopeful atmosphere, encouraging listeners to keep moving forward despite the challenges they face.