? [upbeat music] ?
[somber piano music]
- I'm Linda Beals, and I'm from Janesville, Wisconsin.
I worked in Beloit the 31 years.
I got a phone call the other day
from a supervisor
saying we're looking for someone who was on route 39
that delivered mail
to a little girl that was really sick.
And I said, "Well," I said, "It's a while back."
I said, "Jog my memory here. Give me an address."
And as soon as she said the address, I was like, "Joni."
- There's no reason that she should be here,
except by the grace of God.
No reason.
She was born in 1979.
She was born with a condition called VATER syndrome.
And it stands for her problems
that affect
the vaginal/anal area, the tracheal/esophageal area,
and then renal.
And she had surgery when she was 12 hours old.
- It mostly affected her kidneys.
She was born with half a kidney.
She's got a colostomy bag.
She had surgeries
pretty much from the time I can remember.
- She's pretty strong, that's what I can say about her. [chuckles]
Always got a good attitude about everything.
Always got the L-O-L, they say.
[chuckles]
- When she was born, they said she'd never walk or talk,
and they really didn't expect her to survive.
And she walked on her first birthday, so...
She's done things that they said she would never do,
but I know at least four times that they told us
that we wouldn't have her for very long, and we did.
- Okay, why isn't a bear purple?
- I don't know.
- Because he'd be a blueberry.
[laughing]
[somber piano music]
- My name is Joni, and I live in Beloit.
36 years.
I have one sister, one brother,
and two step-brothers.
I was born with something called VATER syndrome,
and it's an acronym for...[Pfffttt]
I have one kidney.
I've had problems with my bowel and my bladder.
My esophagus was connected to my lungs when I was born.
And I have scoliosis.
I've had 41 surgeries, mainly to correct
bowel and bladder problems,
and I have a ureterostomy.
Um...
Hmm...
I think that's about it.
[laughing]
- I really think that
she was more complicated
than what they ever imagined.
And they would try to fix it
the way they'd been able to fix it before,
and it didn't work.
So then we took her out to Boston,
and by that time--
They did some corrective surgery, too,
but they, you know,
things had already been too complicated
that couldn't be fixed.
- I didn't really...
I don't think I understood
just how bad everything was.
- We always took a trip before she went
'cause we always thought
it was gonna be our last time with her.
- In surgery, she passed away for four or five minutes
and came back.
And...
When you're a kid, these things are told to you,
but I don't think I really understood
the magnitude of what that meant.
- Leaving her in the hospital when she was little
was really, really awful.
But I learned very fast not to leave her.
It's not that the care isn't there,
but it's not the kind of care that I wanted her to have,
because too many things can go wrong.
So I actually lived at the hospital
for many, many years with her,
which was really hard for my other two kids.
- My mom and my sister would be gone for weeks at a time.
And being a kid, you're selfish, so you're like,
"Why is my mom gone all the time?"
And, you know, through the years you realize
she was where she needed to be.
- Oh, man, look it!
- [Cameraman] What'd you get?
- It's a new one. - Vanilla Ice.
- What was difficult for her is she doesn't look sick.
She's never looked sick.
That's made it hard for other people to understand
what she's going through.
- Like all my friends that I went to school with
had no clue that there was anything wrong with me.
- When she was younger, she would get frustrated
with her anomalies and not being able to control anything
because her whole life was out of control
until she was about eight.
- I used to have more pity parties when I was younger,
but, I mean, now it's just you kinda' think
there's somebody out there who has it worse than you, so.
If I didn't have the mom that I have, who's always there,
it probably would've been more scary,
but she makes a difference pretty much everywhere she goes.
She was the best mom
I could ever ask for. [laughs warmly]
- I honestly, and I know this sounds really far-fetched,
but I don't think Joni
would be here,
or she wouldn't be the happy person she was,
if it wasn't for Bob Jensen.
- Bob just kinda came
into our lives and became part of our lives
through this newspaper article.
- We were heading to Boston,
and Mrs. Schrader, her teacher,
found out that we were gonna be there for her birthday,
so she put this article in the newspaper, Beloit Daily News .
People went nuts. [laughs]
They started sending money and cards and, I mean, everything.
- Here we had a child that was a real sweet little girl
and here she was going to have to go in for major surgery.
So what we did was see, "How could we
cheer her up a little bit?"
- But then we received a homemade card,
very artistic and very personal to Joni.
We were just amazed.
And then another one came, and then another one came,another...
And we were in Boston that time I think for about four weeks
and they came every day, and they didn't stop.
I was like, "Who is this guy," you know?
- He was my brother.
He's four years older than I am.
He was a twin.
He was very caring.
Always looked after people.
Watched over me.
And all of us used to do artwork all the time.
Didn't have a lot of toys and things,
and we created a lot of our own entertainment.
And George and Bob were probably the most predominant
doing that.
They were always drawing,
and they would make Robin Hood characters,
and then they would let me trace it because
I wasn't really good at doing the original drawing
at six years old or seven.
I think they did that to keep me out of their stuff.
This is a card that our mother made.
She was probably in her teens when she made this
and hand-painted all of the flowers and the lettering.
She was very artistic.
? Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme that swing
? Gimme that swing
? Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme that swing
? Gimme that swing
- She worked for Simmons Manufacturing that made
beds and mattresses,
and she hand-painted
all of the filigree on the headboards,
all by hand.
And she was quite good at it.
George was a little over eight years older than I am,
and then Mom had
Bob and Roger, a pair of twins.
I was the youngest.
I think I was an accident
because I think once somebody has a pair of twins,
they don't want another child.
[laughing]
We all worked.
We all had jobs,
all had paper routes.
Bob would make carnations out of Kleenex tissues
with bobby pins, and then
we would go around the neighborhood
and try and sell 'em.
If people felt sorry for you then they would
buy a couple of those carnations.
I don't know what they ever did with 'em, but...
[laughing]
I was five years old when my father was killed.
He was in business for himself doing painting contracting,
and he did sign painting also.
He was doing a marquee on a theater in Racine, Wisconsin,
and the scaffolding broke.
The other gentleman that was working with him
was able to hang on to the scaffolding,
and my father fell to his death.
- For most of his life, he didn't have a father.
I mean, he had a lot of vivid memories of his father,
but most of his life was growing up without a father.
So he wanted to make sure that, you know,
we had the childhood that he never had.
[upbeat rock music]
I'm Jeff Jensen, Clinton, Wisconsin.
It's a nice little small town.
I mean, we thought it was boring as kids growing up in it,
The things we used to get excited for, I mean.
When we got our first air popcorn popper.
I mean, that was like the coolest thing in the world.
We only had three channels growing up as kids, you know,
but it was a different time back then.
I mean, you got excited over smaller things.
We did a lot of stuff as a family.
The family was pretty important to my parents
when we were growing up.
And we always took vacations, which, you know,
they weren't always big extravagant vacations.
Sometimes it was just we get in the car and we'd say,
"Okay, where we gonna go?"
The Winnebago was awesome.
We were really lucky that our uncle had a Winnebago.
When we'd pull into a campsite, there was a little bit
of setup because they had to
hook up like the water lines and the sewer lines.
And he wanted us out of the way so he could get it set up
and then we could start doing things.
- Mom was making dinner or whatever was happening inside,
and Dad needed to keep us busy.
And so when we got to the campground, he said this is
an old Indian burial ground.
And he said, "I think, if you guys look closely,
you'll probably see some, probably find some artifacts."
- So we're digging in the dirt and digging in the dirt,
and what we didn't know is that
we were picking up arrowheads that he had bought
at probably the previous KOA of wherever we stopped before then.
- We were busy for hours.
And eventually Jeff saw one that said Mexico on it.
[laughing]
The gig was up that time.
We knew they were not official artifacts at that point.
Interesting ways to keep us busy.
- We were always doing something artistic.
We were either drawing or making posters.
It was whatever he was into at that time.
- He was very good about keeping us occupied.
We used to take a blank piece of paper,
and he'd say, "Close your eyes and just draw a squiggle."
So we'd draw a squiggle and he'd say, "Alright,
now look at this and then make this into a picture."
Eventually your mind would come up with something.
You'd see it, "If I extend this out here,
"I can draw a beak here.
I can draw some eyes and feathers over here."
And all of a sudden it's a bird.
- He'd always say, "An artist can fix his own mistakes."
He said so, you know, no matter what you did,
it was never wrong.
- If there was a line that was askew
in a drawing that we did or we screwed up on something,
he'd just make it into something else.
It was something I never forgot.
- Well, I knew of him.
He was the superintendent of schools
where my children went to school,
and I was looking for an illustrator
for a new business that I was starting up.
And I knew that he was an artist,
because all of the signs that were made around Clinton
were made by him.
And he has a very distinctive style, so you can tell.
I think he was hired by everyone in the Clinton area.
- Anytime anybody needed a sign, he was always willing to do it.
I mean, if you looked around when we were kids,
on the boulevard probably 99% of the signs were by him.
- When there were community events, he painted signs
that would go down the main boulevard downtown.
You know, letting people know that there was a pork festival
or something.
- He made a sign that was of a pig, you know, this big, fat pig
with this big checkerboard napkin on eating pork,
which, thinking back, that's...
[laughing]
A little cannibalistic.
- My dad spent a lot of time just making things.
Our birth announcements were silk screened.
He made a lot of our toys.
A toy box hand-painted with
Sesame Street characters on it.
Things like that.
And he made children's books for us.
- So Dad would make us books every year.
This is one I brought that the cover's gone.
We were rough on these when we were little kids,
but all our books were specific to us.
They were inspired by us.
- We got books pretty much for every big event in our life.
- This is toys I received during my first year.
I can remember a few of these toys that I had.
I think I still have this in a bin somewhere.
This, probably from a different era.
See my gun. [laughing]
Dad brought it home from school for me.
It makes a loud noise.
Terribly appropriate for a one-year-old.
- One thing that I remember vividly from childhood was,
after church every Sunday, we would go and visit people
in the nursing home in Clinton.
- I think it started when we were in elementary school
where we would actually go to the nursing home
and visit people that didn't have family or friends
around this area.
-We'd make cards for some of the elderly people that were there,
and we'd pseudo-adopt some of those people.
- Once we started visiting one or two people,
then other people would find out about it, and by the end,
we were probably visiting half the nursing home.
When they'd see a bunch of little kids in there,
their faces would light up, you know.
For some of those people,
that might've been the highlight of their whole week.
- He enjoyed sharing that stuff with people,
and so he'd find the people that appreciated it
are the people that wanted it or needed it,
like Joni in the hospital.
And I think it just made him feel good.
- We learned about Joni when she was maybe six or seven.
She was out in the Boston children's hospital.
She was sick, having operations, and I think, you know,
a teacher or somebody just thought it would be nice
if people from back home sent her a card.
- He took a special interest in Joni because, you know,
it was a little kid that was battling a disease
that they didn't know what was gonna happen.
- It wasn't a typical card that you'd normally see
in the mail with just a typical address on it.
It would have like a bird on it or a bear or something,
or the bear would be made out of like a thumbprint.
And then all of a sudden after the first one, second one,
I thought, "Wow, what's going on here?"
You know?
And then I found out that she was really sick and stuff,
and then the cards just kept coming and coming and stuff,
so it was a highlight of my day kind of to see the cards.
Yeah, like here, this one would be like a postcard, really,
because this was it with the addresses on there
and everything, and he'd send this.
- And he personalized every single card that he made.
Every one.
And hand wrote everything.
These are awesome.
- And like this one here, here's the envelope.
I mean, you don't see these every day,
so that's why you remembered 'em.
- Put the stamps on it, the address,
return label on the tail.
- And he made all of his own envelopes.
[laughing]
- Just thought I'd hang around long enough
to wish you well today.
That's cute.
- She used to get a lot of visitors
just to come and see this kind of stuff.
- Just imagine how much work went into these.
- The bear trying to figure out how he's gonna get the honey.
And then the inside, he's climbed up the tree.
- Cute.
[laughing]
- It's almost like he was doing it for the mail person.
- Here's just like a typical envelope
that he'd send through the mail
that wouldn't fit through the machine and stuff,
and this is one of those that you wanna make sure
that the rain wasn't gonna get on it and stuff,
so I'd hide it underneath my raincoat and stuff,
make sure that there weren't gonna be any drops of rain on it
to ruin the artwork.
- That is the most incredible thing I have ever seen
is the artwork that goes on the envelopes that he sent.
And that's ways just kind of a little teaser
as to what's inside the envelope.
- And it's so nice to see what some of the actual cards
inside these envelopes look like
'cause I just saw the envelopes and never got to see inside.
So these are pretty amazing,
that he went through all that work.
I was in my 30s then, and I thought it was neat.
So a little girl, you know,
going through what she did and stuff,
yeah, it's special.
- This was the first one that I ever got.
It says, "Hi there, Joni,
"This little turtle
"is here to say...
"Hope you're feeling
lots better today"
"Everyone wants you
to get well quickly."
Bob Jensen, Clinton.
[laughing]
? ?
- She would get another one and another one,
and they'd be bigger and brighter and just...
yeah, amazing.
- My dad sent her a card and then thought,
"Well, then she's gonna get all these cards
and then they're gonna stop
and then she's gonna be, like, sad and lonely again.
So he decided to send her another card the next day
and another one the next day,
and basically sent her a homemade card,
usually oversized,
every day for about two-and-a-half years.
If he had to go to Las Vegas, he would pack cards with him
that he had made ahead of time to make sure that
she'd still get 'em every day.
There were a lot of cards with owls on them
because my dad loved owls and Joni loved bears.
- And so then that became a theme throughout.
He'd take different bears from different areas
that he'd see and different artwork
and apply 'em to the cards.
- Like this one, it says, "Hi, Joni.
"Did you know that the owls are the wisest animals
"in the world?
We're lots smarter than bears."
And then it says, "Don't believe him, Joni.
"If owls are so smart, then how come
"they live in trees and eat mice?
Does that seem very smart to you, Joni?"
[laughing wholeheartedly]
And a lot of 'em are like that.
[laughing]
- I don't know how that actually started with the owls,
but he had like an obsession when we were younger with owls.
He loved owls.
He had made little shadowboxes with owls in 'em
and owls hanging from everywhere and owls on his desk.
- Jeff's got a nice picture of the one that all of us remember.
It had six different owls on it,
and so when we were little kids we'd always say
so this one's Dad, this one's Mom, this is Jeff, Jay,
Jan, and then this one over here is Pokey,
which was our dog at the time growing up.
- The bicentennial beagle.
Yeah, that was basically our prize possession.
That hung above the piano and above the couch.
It was something that was like a staple of our childhood
was the owl painting, but he did 'em for everybody.
I mean, you know, if somebody had a baby or if somebody had
anything going on like that, a wedding or things like that,
he would make an owl painting for.
So it's amazing how many people have saved all that stuff.
- I think all of Bob's paintings were
on weathered barn board, which really looked really nice.
- When a barn would go down, I mean, he was always out there
trying to get as many pieces as he could
because that's what he painted all of them on.
- So a friend of his said, "Hey Bob,
I've got a barn that's coming down."
He says, "There's some beautiful barn board out there.
Come and get it, you can do your owl paintings on it."
So my brother went out
and started ripping off all the boards
before the barn completely came down.
And about a week later,
his friend said, " When are you gonna come out
and get all the barn wood?"
Well, it turned out that Bob had gone
to somebody else's barn by mistake
and tore off all the wood.
So he did a lot of owl painting on stolen barn wood.
He felt terrible.
- He loved owls.
Every time we would go somewhere,
if we saw an owl magnet or a lantern or a candle
or anything, he would pick it up.
- 'Cause his favorite animal was the owl
and mine was the bear,
so they just kinda became best friends.
[laughing jovially]
I have just always loved bears my entire life.
- She got her first teddy bear when she was born.
Her name was Sissy, and everything that happened to Joni
would happen to the bear as well.
So they were in it together.
- If she had to have an IV or colostomy bag or whatever,
they'd put that on the bear.
- This is Sissy. I've had her since I was a baby.
She has been
through every single surgery with me.
She even has a colostomy bag.
She used to have the dress on that I came home in,
but then it got ripped, so I just buy preemie--
preemie pajamas.
This is a newborn, so it doesn't fit her that great,
but preemie pajamas fit her perfect.
[laughing]
- It was very lonely there.
We didn't have family, you know.
So she would see other people come in
with their family members, and so forth,
and we didn't have that.
So I think these cards brought family to us,
brought home to her.
- If I was having a bad day or anything,
they made me kinda happy to see them.
Even this one still has tape on it.
- Her heart would break on the weekend.
I almost wanted to put a few cards to the side
so she thought mail was coming.
And we were there for Labor Day,
and so we didn't get cards then, and she'd be upset.
But when they did come, she'd be in Heaven.
She'd just be so happy and smiling.
She was very, very sick at that time,
and it just completely brightened her day up.
Completely.
- I think it really helped her positivity.
I mean, that's not the sole contributor,
but I think that really helped her stay positive
about all the negative that was happening.
A source of light and inspiration
from somebody she didn't even know.
And, you know, if somebody's out there making this for her,
probably the world isn't such a bad place.
- The way I found out about everything
is we were moving from
our one place to the other place that we had lived.
And Joni had this big, blue tote.
I'm like, "Why is this so heavy?"
I'm like, "I can't even get it off the floor."
And then I opened it up, and it was full of all these cards.
And I'm like, "What is all this?"
- Oh yeah.
Joni, when she graduated from high school,
when she moved to college, moved into her own place,
her husband and her moved three times,
these always went first.
And there was no doubt about it.
Sissy and then the cards.
So they were very, very, very important to her.
- I remember this one.
I think these are iron-ons.
And then he would always have shirts on the animals.
My name and this panda.
This one.
We all love her bear-y much.
That must've been one of the ones that I really liked a lot.
He said he's been practicing making koala bears,
but he throws them all away because they are all bad.
Says Bob doesn't how to draw good panda bears,
and he doesn't make rainbows right.
I think he writes funny, too.
Should draw owls because we are smart.
[laughing]
I thought the panda bear looked cute.
There is so many.
This doesn't even touch how many there are.
- Something else my dad was always doing is, you know,
secretly teaching all of us.
- Little things like this, like drawing a picture
of a monkey, like teaching her how to draw things.
She'd do it, then she'd pass it on to her brother
and sister, now you guys try this now.
And who knows how their monkeys turned out or didn't,
but just something different.
- Calligraphy, so he's teaching me about calligraphy,
which is writing, it's a special way of writing,
and then he gives-- This is cool.
The edges of the marker and how to practice calligraphy.
- That's nice, too, that he actually considered us
and realized that we were
probably needing, you know, some attention as well
and we were probably going through stuff as well
on the other side.
- As a mom, you know, I never wanted Steve and Angie
to feel like they weren't as important as Joni.
And I didn't want Joni to feel like there was
something wrong with her because she was sick.
So that was always important to me that all three
of 'em were equal, and the moment he met them,
that's exactly what he did to them.
- You know, my dad was really good about making sure
that the other two were included as well.
So even though he would send Joni a card every day,
he would also send Steve and Angie cards and little presents
and art supplies, especially on their birthday or Christmas
or things like that.
- He really became a part of our family, you know,
and I think Joni became a part to him.
- This is from Bob.
Big card.
- He'd be at every birthday party,
and he'd always come bearing gifts,
but he'd always stand to the side and just kinda watch.
- Whoa.
- That was really neat, you know.
It's like he was really enjoying watching her grow up.
Just the art supplies he brought, the paper he brought,
the love he shared, it made an impact on my kids.
There's no doubt in my mind.
Steve probably wouldn't be a Web designer
if it wasn't for Bob.
But the impact of what everybody does in their life
really has on people, the ripple effect.
It helped Joni through some really, really hard times,
but it also helped Steve and Angie
through some really, really hard times.
Talking about him and bringing this all back
is making me realize how important that man was.
[somber piano music]
- I was driving to Janesville, and I was probably
five to seven miles out of town, and my car had broke down.
And I had called for tow truck first, and then my next call
was gonna be to my dad to come pick me up.
And as I was reaching for my phone to dial his number,
because that was the person I called.
If I needed somebody like that,
I would always call him.
And I was ready to dial his number
and I realized that he wouldn't be coming this time, so...
- Got a call saying that my dad had had a massive stroke
and never woke up from it.
- I hope that I'm half the husband that he is.
And I'm thinking that he was more worried about,
more worried about who was gonna take care of my mom.
We tried to reassure him that at the end,
she's taken care of, you know.
And I think once he realized that ,
that's when he slipped away.
You know, once he knew that everything was done
that he could do in this life.
And he had raised kids that were in his image.
- We definitely learned
the best of the life lessons from my parents.
Through art, through giving back.
We were pretty lucky.
Even after my dad passed away,
we went down into his art studio and found,
you know, four months of cards
already, like, made for people's birthdays, anniversaries.
Things he had done ahead of time.
So pretty much everyone still got a birthday card that year,
which was the coolest and the saddest card to ever get.
[sniffles]
But that's just, you know, who he was.
He was super thoughtful
and very prepared. [laughs lightly]
- He always made time for you.
'Cause he was there for us in so many things
and just brought so much creativity to our lives.
And I think I'm a better person because of it.
And I consider myself the luckiest
because I'm the oldest and I knew him the longest.
And I was his favorite. [laughing]
He told me in confidence,
"I loved you more than any other kid."
[laughing heartily]
You know,
after creating a perfect child,
I don't know why you would try for two more.
"Don't tell Jan, but after you, we had to adopt her and Jay
because-- [breaking out in laughter]
you need some sidekicks."
- It's rough.
You think you're gonna live forever.
My sister has been through much.
I didn't feel she deserved to go through more.
Of course, life isn't fair.
You know, I'm just wanting her to get better,
and hopefully she makes it through this.
I know there's always the possibility that she won't.
But like when I was kid, put that away and enjoy the trip.
- So we have one more surgery to go at Mayo.
This one is extremely complicated
and could potentially be life-threatening.
- In 2014, I was probably having these cramps
for about a month or so.
- And I looked at her stomach and it was big and bright red,
and I said we're going to the hospital today.
- And they went in
and found out that the bladder had actually ruptured
and then put all this infection inside of her,
which was, come to find out, was gangrene.
- And at that time,
she was very, very serious.
She was in a coma.
They couldn't control the infection.
They said, "We're losing her."
- It was just kinda touch and go for a couple of days.
And when we talked to the doctor at Mayo,
he said that only maybe
2% to 4% of people would have survived that gangrene.
So come to find out she had a abscess,
and the abscess is what is still creating the infection.
- Everything happens for a reason, so must've been a reason
why I had to go through all that for all those years,
but, hopefully, it'll be the last one.
Yeah.
- For their family, it's been very tough.
In this world of insurance
that doesn't pay very much,
they have been left with a lot of bills,
and they've lost a lot because of it.
- We had to take out loans and stuff
just to pay doctor bills.
- The bills are staggering.
There's certain things that insurance doesn't cover.
And then you find out about that later down the road.
You know, we were stuck this year
with $40 to $50,000 in medical bills.
And then, of course, when you can't pay these things,
then they garnish your paychecks,
and then that's when we had to file.
- We lost our house and, I mean, this place is great,
but we're renting it.
So, yeah,
financially it has sucked, definitely.
- I mean, I think it's just-- it's a journey.
It's just a really big journey that you have to go through,
but I think when you really love somebody
that you can get through.
You know I always raised: you have a roof over your head,
you have food on the table, you got your family,
and your family's the most important thing.
I mean, Joni's at a point where
now she can have her last surgery.
She's healthy.
We adopted our six-year-old daughter Mackenna.
Best thing in the world.
So for me,
there's nothing more than that,
you know.
- Ooh, this one's cute
'cause it has a bear on it.
- Yeah, a lot of 'em have bears on it, huh?
- Ooh, there's hearts and it says, "Joni,
best--"
- Wishes. - Wishes to many--
- To my.
- To my bear-y.
- Special.
- Special friend.
- Yes.
- Love you, Joni.
Bob? - Yeah.
[laughing]
- A couple times I had called the newspaper about him,
then I called a state legislator about him
'cause I just thought he was amazing.
I thought that he needed to be recognized.
And that's when I found out that he had wrote cards
to other kids before that, but I never really knew why
until it was mentioned that he had had polio,
and that makes sense now.
That he had lived in the hospital, possibly lonely, too.
- If he could put a smile on your face, he would do it.
That really was his motivation.
- He wanted to give back, more than anything else, I think.
- Back then, it just seemed, growing up,
that's just something that dad did.
I don't think he had any idea at the time
it was gonna snowball into, you know,
making a card every day
for X amount of years.
But it did.
- And you know people give, and they give from the heart,
but there's very few people
that continue to give and give and give.
He is really very rare.
Yeah.
I would say a rare jewel, honestly.
- I suppose there's special people that are meant to,
you know, make a difference and have the talent
and the drive to do it.
And, yeah, these are the people that kind of shape
and influence other people's lives.
- It just blows me away that we were the chosen people.
We were the ones that got to get all this, you know.
It's just wonderful.
[laughs]
That's all I can say.
I don't know how to put that into words,
but I feel very, very blessed.
Very.
- You know, none of this would've ever happened
if not for a little, tiny article in the newspaper.
And I think the article's like that big.
Just a little, tiny thing, you know.
As a kid, these probably helped out a lot more
than I probably even realized,
you know.
So, thank you. [laughs]
? ?
["Do What I Want" by William Davies]
[energetic pop]
[retro synthesizers and grooving bass]
- female singer: ? Sometimes I need to get away
? Back to this side of me
? And when I feel I ain't gonna stay,
? Oh no
? 'Cause I'm here to be free and it's all up to me
? Don't need your permission to breathe
? I get down when I want
? I'm my own confidant
? For sure I was born with my swag on
? But I can do what I want, yeah, yeah
? And I can say what I want to you
? I just don't care what you think, no, no
? 'Cause you can't stop me doing what I choose
? And I can do what I want, yeah, yeah
? But I can't say what I want to you
? I just don't care what you think, no, no
? You ain't the one walking in my shoes, yeah
? It ain't about the way I dress
? Though I look pretty sexy
? When I come through don't try and test
? 'Cause I live for the streets
? Got no reason to care, got no silver piece there
? Don't wonder, I got it dude
? I get down when I want
? I'm my own confidant
? For sure I was born with my swag on
? But I can do what I want, yeah, yeah
? And I can say what I want to you
? I just don't care what you think, no, no
? 'Cause you can't stop me doing what I choose
? And I can do what I want, yeah, yeah
? But I can't say what I want to you
? I just don't care what you think, no, no
? You ain't the one living in my shoes, yeah, yeah
- For more information about The Bear and The Owl ,
go to the TheBearandTheOwl.com.