By Bill Cunningham, the Great America and one of the persons in big time media. I've had the pleasure of meeting is Leland Vitters spent years and years with a Fox News in the Middle East and then came back News Nation has been an anchor there for several years and the evening Monday through Friday.
And I did not know.
I had the good fortune of meeting Leland Vivertert and his family in Naples about a year or two ago, and his new bride and now they're married, and I thought, what a wonderful family. Had no idea that Leland Verdert was diagnosed with autism at a rather young age, but to not discover it himself to it was eighteen or nineteen years old. He just turned forty three years old, a relatively young man. And the book is out, which is fabulous, is called Born Lucky, which I read last week,
is two times sell out on Amazon. It's in his third printing. And if you have a friend, a family member, a grandson, a daughter, or anyone in conducted in your life that has a disability, this is the book that you must read. It's called Born Lucky, and Leland's nickname is Lucky and just looking at the cover of the book with his dad and Leland when he was about I guess about a year old. It's just a wonderful picture of love between a father and a son. And
Leland Veder, welcome again to the Bill Cunningham Show. And normally, Leland, we deal with politics, what's happening with the doings in Washington politically, who's up, who's down. But I want to spend most of this time with you on the book Born Lucky, and I want to jump ahead, which is not the normal thing for me. On page one sixty six, I made a note and uh, it says on it this is when you're in the Middle East in Jerusalem quote.
Then came the real shock.
A month and a half into my time in Israel, my dad had a heart attack. Because it was jam Kipoor. The country had effectively been shut down. I couldn't get a flight home. I was stuck, helpless, relying on second hand updates from mom. I finally saw my dad briefly in November and Florida, and when I took my first home. Lead was there at that point jumping ahead A complete sense on your part of failing in a sense to be the son that you should have been your father because of your job.
Wow, we went deep quick, Bill. So yeah.
I think when I was there in Israel, realizing that I couldn't be there for him the way he had been there for me for fifteen years every day when I got home from school, putting me back together, it was really difficult to sit there in Jerusalem and not know and not be able to get home. So absolutely, and I think what you're picking up on in why I felt that way is the absolute devotion that Dad had to me, to the point that he didn't tell anybody about my diagnosis. He didn't tell me until I
was in my twenties. He didn't tell any therapist, he didn't tell any principally, didn't tell teacher.
He went on a one man mission.
Supported unbelievably by my mother, to adapt me to the world rather than the world to me. And I think there's so many parents who are told right now, look, you know, we're going to give your kid all these accommodations. It's going to make LIFs great, it's going to make life easier, on and on and on. And what Dad said was that if Lucky doesn't understand how to be in the real world now, He's not going to understand later.
So this was his driving force was to adapt me to the world and rather than try to take the adversity away, hold my hand through that adversity.
Did you feel you should have known this when you were fifteen? And the book relays terrible bullying that you went through. You didn't fit in, it was awkward, you were beat upon, it was terrible in school. Your father would at the end of the day, you'd go home and he had to put you back together. Did you feel your dad should have told you early that you had autism?
You know, Bill, No, And here's why. This whole idea from my father was that I don't want anyone to define you by a diagnosis, and I don't want you to define yourself by the diagnosis, and.
I don't want you to use it as an excuse ever.
And I think that was a very powerful, powerful feeling that my dad instilled in me.
So, you know, I am just so grateful to him.
And I think this book, I think Born Lucky, and the reason it's getting the response it's getting online and on social media, and as you pointed, out, sold out twice on Amazon. I don't want any of your listeners to get in a car accident. But when you get to wherever you're going, go to Amazon and order it now before it sells out again. If you want to read it is because this is hope for every parent
of a kid who's having a hard time. It doesn't matter if it's autism or ADHD or anxiety or difficulties with bullying, whoever it is. This is proof of what parents can do for their kid to really help them grow, develop, be confident, understand how they can take on the world, get through the bullying, all of the things that are challenges that the experts don't ever tell parents.
This is what you can.
Do growing up.
You say, there were little signs that I was different. I felt I was different. I didn't speak until I was three years old, not a word. At some point a teacher said to your mom and dad, quote, you need to have Lucky evaluated. Did your parents have an inkling? But we're talking about the mid to late nineteen eighties. Autism then isn't as aware as autism today in twenty twenty five. How did that information hit your mom and dad?
You were probably too young to realize that you have to get to lucky that you evaluated.
How did your mom and dad real.
Yeah, I was five years old.
They took me to one of those little medical office buildings and sent me off to the testing with some woman. And they're sitting there, you know, a little waiting room with the old magazines and the stale coffee. And the woman comes back, brings my parents into a conference room and says, look, there is a lot going on in his head and we don't really understand it.
So major behavioral issues.
You know, if a kid would touch me in the lunchline, I'd turn around and slug them, and couldn't wear certain clothes because the sensory issues and all sort of the classic signs of what we now know to be autism didn't speak.
Till I was three. It's completely unable.
To understand any kind of social cues or social emotion, human interaction.
And then there were big learning disabilities.
Right, So I had an IQ test, two halves of an IQ test. A twenty point spread between the two halves is a learning disability. I had a seventy point spread. They'd never seen anything like it. And if you could measure my emotional intelligence by EQ, it would have been near freezing. So this is when the woman says to my dad, we don't really understand what's going on inside his head and there's not much you can do about it.
And my dad goes, is there.
Anything we can do anything? And she said no, generally not. So this is the story of what mom and dad did and what dad did after that.
And you know, Bill, you made a great point. You and I had lunch together down in Naples.
My dad was there, and you said, you know, you wish you'd known. He didn't tell anybody, and he's been very reluctant to tell this story. When we wrote More and Lucky, I was interviewing him, and every story we got.
To he would say, do we really want to tell that story?
And I'd say, try to talk him through it and why it was important.
And finally I made a deal with it. I said, book, I said, we can't do this.
You're going to be completely candid and open with me. I'm going to write the manuscript and if you don't like it, I won't turn it.
In, Okay, And I don't really I didn't really have.
A plan if he said no, but anyway, I gave him a manuscript and he read it and he goes, I don't know, this is.
Really way too personal. You know, these are these are the worst parts of your life.
Now you never well anybody, you can go to therapy. Now you're going to go to therapy on national television. Right, Yeah, let me ask it this way.
Yeah, please go ahead.
If if if in that waiting room when I was diagnosed, that little office, rather than the woman saying there's nothing you could do, she handed you born Lucky, she handed you this book. What would you have done? He said, Well, I would have read it every week.
He said.
I can't tell you how much I would have paid for that book, because it would have given me hope that I could make a real difference in your life.
Did your mom and dad feel as if they failed you by producing a child with this profound disability? Did they feel like, what did we do wrong?
It's a great question. I don't think they ever felt that way. I think certainly now with the debate around autism, it's so important for parents to know it's not their fault and that that's really, I think, such an important message and one that really needs to be said over and over and over again. No parent would wish this on their child. No parent wants their child to have a hard time. And you know, I think it's so wonderful now that we are beginning to have an honest
conversation about the cause of autism and why. As you pointed out, when I was diagnosed with what we now know to be autism, it was one in a thousand or one in fifteen hundred kids, and now it's one in thirty one, three times that for boys higher in poor minority community, and finally we're having an honest conversation about it.
George Weyll and A four which says Leland's story is one of adventure, exploration and discovery first and foremost, from beginning to enads about the mountain moving power of parental love. I can only think of the millions and millions of kids that are now in their mid forties as you are, and going through the bullying in school they're going through right now, that go through a living hell because they
did not have your parents. They had normal parents that said, you know what, we're going to get him some help and the ups and downs of life. And I can't imagine having Lucky. That is you Leland Vitter, coming home from school beaten, bloodied in a sense psychologically, sometimes physically, and your mom and dad puts you back together, then
send you back to school. At some point when when you were ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, you probably had the ability to say, no, I'm not going back to school.
I can't take it anymore.
You can you relate to an autistic kid right now who's thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. It doesn't want to confrom live, It doesn't want to confront life.
I did.
I didn't a lot of times, and my dad would sit there, you know, Bill, one of the stories in Born Lucky.
I'm in eighth grade art class and there's art, art on the walls. Whatever. It's none of this are going to be Picassia, right, But this art teacher.
Didn't like me very much, and he's send in form of the entire class. You know, if I was, if my age the line from him was in front of the entire class, if my dog was as ugly as you Vitter, I would shave its rear end and make it walk.
Backwards from the entire class. Oo.
Imagine what that does to a kid. So I walked home that night, and my dad was waiting for me at the end of the driveway, as he always was, and he says, you know what happened today? And I said, I was just you know, humiliated, and just you know.
This is awful.
And he would sit with me for a couple of hours every night, listening to me, letting me take out my frustrations and my anger and my difficulty. And he would then leave my room as I had cried and yelled and everything else, and he would go downstairs and oftentimes, and we now know this as we wrote the book, or I know it now, he would sit there in the living room by himself and cry in the dark.
And the next morning, no, he would get me up and he would take me back to school, because he said, the only way for you to get through this and to know that you can operate in the real world is to face this adversity head on and to learn how to adapt and overcome.
Now, what he didn't say to me is that middle school is.
Great training for a Washington newsroom. But it is, Uh, let's go back to this. So a teacher said to you, leyland vitterat you're so ugly if I had a dog, I would shave his butt and make the dog walk backwards.
That had to be He didn't say, bud, but yes.
Yes, devastating, devastating, And your father said, did their father confront that teacher? I can't imagine the rage your dad and your mom, Carol must have felt when a teacher says that to you.
Did did they confront him or not? Or her?
The school?
The school did and he ended up apologizing didn't didn't give me a lot of good because you know, it was clear, and really we put it in the book. Was it was illustrative of that. It wasn't just the kids, it was the adults, right.
It was the.
Principal who called my parents in two weeks into my time in this new school. I'd already been taken out of two schools because things had been so bad, and they call my parents in and sit them down and said, you know what, everybody at this school thinks, Lucky's really weird. And then the woman followed up and frankly, I do too.
So two arrows through my parents' hearts, and it was illustrative of both how different I was right as a kid, and also what they were facing and how isolated my parents felt, and obviously how isolated and alone so many families feel. You know, Bill, the reason Born Lucky's doing so well, if you want to call it that, there's so much interest isn't be to the me. It is
my story, but it's not about me. It's about giving this hope to parents who for so long have been told there's no hope and things are hopeless.
Well, what do you owe your mom and dad?
Well, I think the answer is a lot, obviously. And the reason Bill, one of them that I wanted to write this book.
Now is to say thank you, because you know, my dad's getting older.
He's seventy nine, I think seventy eight, and it was only fair I thought to let him know that I understood the sacrifices made and just how grateful I am to him.
And how grateful I am to my mom.
You know, Dad wrote the afterward, which I think is the best part.
The second best part is George Will's forward.
And I'm the two hundred and forty pages in the middle. But Dad wrote the afterward, and if he rightly pays, you know, homage to my mother and says she is the real hero here for keeping not only lucky together.
But him. My dad threw all this. You know, this was a whole family affair.
And we talked about how hard it is for siblings in this position. Or my little sister who was in kindergarten. You read this, Bill, I would in fifth grade walk to her classroom and pick her up, and we both.
Went to the same school and then walk home through the woods.
And we would get to the back of the p fields at this school. And she said that her first memory of her brother, she was in kindergarten with me, every time, getting into those woods and starting to cry and walking her home and her holding my hand. So it shows the cruelty of growing up in what it's like. And I think Bill, you picked up on this is
that we made a conscious decision in the book. We didn't use the names of anybody who was mean to me, right, and we use the names of everybody who is nice, because it's a lesson not just the parents but to everybody of what a difference people can make in the life of a kid who's having a hard time.
Leyland Vetter, how do you process the meanderings of the Department of Health and Human Services Trump administration to find the causes of autism. Since you have it, do you have more interest? Do you think it is? Tyler and all? What do you think? I mean, you don't know because you're a news will.
Yeah, here you go.
Okay, guess what, Bill, I don't have a medical degree. I'm not a doctor, and I am not a scientist, and I have the chemistry degrees to prove chemistry grades to prove it. Okay, So I'm not going to talk about dosing of tailano, and I shouldn't because I don't
have an expertise in it. What I will say, and what I think is so important to say, is thank god we are having this conversation now, and it really frosts me that there are people who would rather score political points than help solve the scientific question of our time. And I have said this before, which is you I really want.
To say to these people, do you really hate Trump? Would you really rather score political points.
On Trump more than you love our kids? Because I grew up with autism, I know what it's like. I know the hell that millions of kids and millions of families are going through. And if we can find an answer to this problem, it will be a wonderful and miraculous thing.
One out of every thirty one.
And I want to end this by referencing on page two forty two what your dad's advice to others would be. I really do not know what was ahead, who could help, or if the verdict would be just give up.
Well.
The purpose of this book is to offer hope, real hope. Here are the principles I wrote down for myself when Lucky that You was diagnosed. One, have no expectations in the future. Two, under no circumstances, let your child feel they've ever disappointed you, ever under any circumstances. Three you are the depository of their hurt, their frustration, and their humiliation. And four tell them that they have the right stuff for life. That the currency of high school, et cetera,
is not the currency of life. There are many more years after six years of junior high and high school. And I read it last week. I'm gonna save it. I'm gonna, with your permission, play this interview in a few months. Nothing's going to change by between now and then. But the book is out. It's called Born Lucky. The picture on the cover is enough to get one to read it and around Leland Vetter. I watch many nights on News Nation, and it's amazing your life, the most
amazing part of you as your mom and dad. But Leland, we got to run once again. We'll do it again. And God bless you and thank you. Give a big hug to your dad and a kiss for your mother for me, because they're very very special people.
They'll be in the arms of God Almighty.
They will.
Bill, Thank you, God bless you, Leland Vetter, News Nation. Wow, what a story.
Get the book Born Lucky, Bill Cunningham seven hundred WW