The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: A Brave Front

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

In this hour, stories of finding inner strength in the face of unimaginable odds. The courage to make life or death choices, stick to one's guns, and not only survive, but thrive. This hour is hosted by Moth Radio Hour Producer, Jay Allison. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Storytellers: Les Strayhorn heeds his father's advice. District Fire Chief Michael McNamee confronts his worst fear. Robin Utz comes to face the hardships of pregnancy and love.

Attention Houston! You have listened to our podcast and our radio hour, but did you know the Moth has live storytelling events at Wearhouse Live? The Moth has opened Mike's storytelling competitions called Story Slams that are open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night's theme. Upcoming themes include love hurts, stakes, clean, and pride. GoodLamoth.org forward slash Houston to experience a live show near you. That's the Moth.org forward slash Houston. From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this radio show, and this time, bravery.

Stories of the moments you've trained for and moments that catch you off guard will hear people rise to the occasion or make great sacrifices or just manage to keep on going. Our first story is from Les Strayhorn who told this in Austin, Texas at the Paramount Theater. Here's Les live at the mall. So I grew up in a segregated town in a segregated county, in a segregated state in the South in the Eastern North Carolina. I wanted to myself, if I ever get off the farm

because my dad was a farmer and my grandfather was a farmer. And so I thought I'll be a farmer too. In 1965, I graduated from the last segregated eighth grade class in my county. About a few days later on Sunday, I will we went to church, you know, as a family, like we always did. About halfway through the service, my father got up

and told everyone that he was nominating me and my two cousins to be one of the first people, black people, to go to the all-white high school. Well, this was a surprise to me. He hadn't talked to me about it, but I did remember that we had a conversation. It was about desegregation and integration. Desegregation, he said said was a legal term. Integration, however, requires some personal sacrifice.

To be one of the first, we needed live bodies, and apparently, I was gonna be one of those live bodies. My cousins and I all met at the bus stop, together. We were assigned the first seat on the bus, right across from the bus driver. I suppose it was because we were going to feel a little safer, but I really didn't feel safe. You know, kids filed by some May jokes,

some were quiet, like the bus driver. But some were kind of coarse and unruly and kind of bullish. In the very back, I'll call him Joe and his cousins used to insult us every day. It was a five mile bus ride. They insulted us five miles. So this went on for a few weeks. And finally I was kinda getting fed up.

Now, my dad was running for the local board of education. He was also a voter rights advocate and one of the things he said to me was, okay, so you can't get kicked out of school, you can't fight it in the hallways, you can't be a troublemaker, so I'm going, well, what can I do? He said, well, I want you to think about it and I'm sure you'll come up with something. Well, I thought about it nothing. You know, I thought about it some more, nothing. So the next day, the three of us were only bus as usual and Joe and his cousins started talking about,

they were gonna go out for football. And I thought, huh, he's going out for football. I can go out for football and just maybe, just maybe, I'll get a chance to shut him up. So after my physical and after we were issued equipment, first day of practice, oh, I did practice on my cousins. We had no pads, no helmet, but they just let me hit them. Just so I know what it felt like,

because I never played football before, you only see it on TV. Well, that first day of practice, Joe was a defensive lineman. So I wanted to be a cross of him, so I became an offensive lineman. So he lined up and I lined up and I made sure that I was a cross from him on the first drill. And we both got down and he mumbled a threat to me. And I just kind of got me angry. The whistle blew and I drove him off the line of scrimmage

and pushed him down. So he got up and went to the back of his line and he was mumbling to himself a little louder this time. And he got in line. So I got in line. So he saw where I got. So he went into a different spot. So I went into a different spot. So finally, we met each other again,

and I drove him off the line of scrimmage. And he mumbled something in the back. And then this went on all the way through practice. But finally, practice was over. But next day, and the week after that, and the week after that, same thing. So finally, I looked up one day and Joe wasn't at practice. He had quit.

And I tried to turn my equipment into my coach. And I said, well, you know, I've done what I said I was to do. You know, I can quit now. Hey? And coach said, no, no. You know, we need good football players. You're a good football player.

I need you, please stay on the team. Well, that was the first time that anyone in the school had really told me that they needed me. I went home and talked to my dad about it. He said, son, take advantage of opportunities when they come your way. My coach also said, you might be good enough to play college football. And I told my dad, Daddy, and he said, oh, they might pay for it.

So I went, well, yeah, yeah. So I went back and I played. And I learned how to play better. And and I got bigger and I got a little faster And we started winning games in high school and finally Let's go start coming by from college. They were talking to my coach. They were called talked to my dad But my dad didn't really talk to me much so and I was wondering what's going on with this college thing?

So, in my senior year, I got letters from 10 to 15 different colleges, which kind of confirmed for me that I was doing okay. And the TCU horn frogs from Fort Worth? They were number one on my list. I wanted to be a horn frog just because I liked the name, right? When I said it sounded funny to me. It was like, horn frogs, huh? You know, huh?

But I talked it over with my mom and my mom said, no less. You can't leave the state. I said, OK. Well then, where can I go? She said, you can go to that school that's you can't leave the state. I said, okay, well then where can I go? She said, you can go to that school that's 50 miles away so your father and I can come to the games. So that turned out to be East Carolina University. And that's where, oh, we got to be CU fans, thank you.

So I can go pirates. So my dad dropped me off on the campus. I got the scholarship. He dropped me off on campus and he said, okay, less. Don't call home because you know we don't have any money. I got none to send you. Okay. So, if you're running the trouble, go talk to your coach. And be brave.

So I followed my dad's advice. My first year went well. So my junior year and my senior year, I started getting letters from professional football teams. And I had never thought about playing professional football before. It didn't seem like one of those possibilities for me because I'm a farm kid. I pick up 100 pounds fertilizer sacks and throw them all day.

In my senior year, however, I was told by my coach that I was going to be drafted. And I went, well, who's going to draft me? It said, well, the Dallas Cowboys. So, you know, in the last round, last round of the draft, then they had 17 rounds. I was like plus 352 or something. You know, on the list, Cornell Green came up to see me and said, you are going to be drafted because we're interested in you. We need you.

He took me out to dinner, bought the best steak, the most expensive steak on the menu, and that sealed a deal. I went, I'm a cowboy. I'm off to Dallas. So the cowboys were the first time that I really had a team that was kind of like half and half. Half it was like a little less than half black and half white. I didn't feel like a minority anymore. I kind of fit in.

But I still didn't have that confidence. You know that you need to be a professional football player. I remember my first practice, you know, we're out in California at training camp. I'm like number six in line. I'm running back, by the way. So I'm out there with Walt Garrison and Calvin Hill and Robert Newhouse and this crowd.

And they're all good. And I'm looking up at all these guys that are like 6.7.6.8.285.290 pounds and I'm like 5.10, you know, barely 200 and I'm going, I'm not going to make it a two days out here with these people, you know, but it didn't turn out that way. So what happened was when we actually started competing, I started thinking, maybe I can. I knew that I could make the team on a Monday after a Monday night football game with the Washington Redskins. Then they were the arch enemy, right?

So we were both in contention for the NFC East Championship. And it was a close game. So it came right down to the wire. The red skins won in Washington 14 to seven. We only lost four games that year and that was one of the four. Coach Landry however came by after everything was settled in the locker room and he actually came by and said, less, you played a good game, you did well, you're gonna get more playing time. At that point, I really felt like I belong to the NFL.

I'm very proud of you. Thank you. I finished my playing days with the Cowboys and wound up playing in the Canadian football league for another four or five more years, ending with a devastating knee injury. After it was all over, I kinda thought about the whole career and I thought about my dad.

And I also thought about Joe because without the motivation that I found from Joe, I wouldn't have had my accidental football career. So I kind of thank Joe for that, and I also thank my dad who said, be brave. Thank you. That was Les Strayhorn at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas. Since Les left professional football, he became a Brooklyn resident where he lives happily as a retired social worker. You can find him taking walks with his wife of over 30 years. Less says that he passed his father's message of bravery onto his own daughters and he says proudly that they take risks and follow their own paths. We asked all the storytellers in this hour what bravery means to them, less said,

bravery is doing the thing that scares you, taking a deep breath and doing the hard thing for yourself. Nothing is more rewarding, confidence is your benefit. Coming up, a district fire chief faces his worst fears during an out-of-control blaze, when the Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison, and this time we are hearing about bravery. Bravery's child can sometimes be sadness because the catalyst for bravery may be a terrible and

traumatic event. Our next storyteller is Michael McNamy who told us about such an event in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he served as district fire chief for 16 years. Here's Michael live at the Hanover Theater in Worcester. December 3rd, 1999. It was a Friday. Firefighters in Worcester, Massachusetts were working their 14-hour night shift. At 6.13, an alarm came in for 256 Franklin Street. The Worcester Cole Storage Warehouse. I knew the building, but a week before I'd been driving by it with my wife,

and I said, you see that building? It scares the hell out of me. As a district chief, my responsibilities were to be in charge of any fire-related activity that happened in the northern end of the city. When the alarm came in, I was several miles north of the warehouse. The building itself was built around 1906. It was a 80-foot tall with 18-inch thick brick, solid brick walls that were designed to hold in the temperatures within that building, had limited egress and access with virtually no windows above the second floor.

It was a firefighter's nightmare building, so it had amounted to. The first arriving companies reported that they saw smoke coming from the roof. All this tells us is, is some, there's a fire going on somewhere reported that they saw smoke coming from the roof. All this tells us is some, there's a fire going on somewhere within that cavernous building. They quickly located it on the second floor and it involved a fairly large area. The 25 firefighter is already on the scene, mounted on an aggressive interior attack.

What I arrived, I sized up the situation on the second floor, gave a couple of orders, called for a second alarm because we were going to need more help. They brought more companies to the scene. I immediately went upstairs above the fire to the floor above, traverse the whole floor. The fire had not yet gone up. We still had a chance at confining this thing. The conditions in the building were just lightly hazy. The central elevator shaft was acting like a chimney and taking most of the smoke up and out of the building. I returned back, passed, retraced my steps, went through a large area,

then through a second large area, and then I found myself in a smaller area facing three doors. I just said, which way is out? I should have paid more attention on the way in. I tried the first door, passed through a room, got to a dead end, solid wall, no stairway at the end. Second door, same deal. I came back to the large area, stood there for a few seconds.

The third door just didn't look right. And suddenly, I heard noise coming from the direction of the third door. The firefighter's climbing the steel stairs. I headed toward the noise, passed through a narrow room, found a door at the end, went through and found myself in the stairwell, relieved. I returned to the first floor, and the attack was still going on. About 30 minutes into the operation,

I looked up the stairwell through the haze, and suddenly within three to five seconds tops, that entire stairwell from the second floor up, charged with thick, accurate, black smoke. Visibility on the upper floors dropped to zero. Now my responsibilities as an incident commander is to coordinate the fireground activities at the scene

and to provide the resources necessary to get the job done. Things were not going well, I call for a third alarm. We needed more help. Shortly after this, a radio message came across. From our fire alarm, that he reported that homeless people had been living in the building. This changed everything. Now it went from a firefight and expanded to a search.

Firefighters on the roof started to top down search. Firefighters on the lower floors worked from the bottom up. A short time later, I got a radio message from one of the crews working top down. They were lost. Disoriented. They couldn't find their way back to the stairwell. I had positioned myself at the base of the stairs. Just outside the stairwell, several firefighters were waiting for orders. It's a firefighter's nature when they hear a message like that that they're going to

want to rush up those stairs and try to fix the problem. If that happened, things would have been reduced to chaos. There would have been no accountability. And there would have been, it wouldn't have been any way to track who was operating where. So I started to send teams up. The team radioed again from up above. We're two floors below the roof, two floors below the roof. We don't know how many floors are in this building. It's windalous. It's a monster.

You couldn't run outside and just count. So I ended up sending a team to the third floor, to the fourth floor, to the fifth floor. They were told to tie ropes off of the railing in the stairway. They'd crawl on their hands and knees into the building and search, feeling in front of them and beside them, as far as their arms would reach to see if they could feel our people.

They would do that until their low air alarms would sound. Then they'd reverse direction, follow the rope back out, go to the stairwell and be replaced by another fresh team. In the meantime, we had constant communication, radio communication with the loss firefighters. One radio message they sent, I could hear their low AR alarms going off in the background. That wasn't good. We didn't have a lot of time, though. When that low air alarm goes off, you have two to three minutes of air left, and once

out of air, nobody would be able to remain conscious for over a minute in that toxic atmosphere. Things were getting desperate. I told them to activate their pass alarms, devices that we wore that emitted a loud, ear piercing screech if a firefighter remained motionless for 45 seconds. They did that. The searchers continued. They sent one more radio transmission.

We answered them. When we called them again, no reply. The search is continued. Several minutes later, another urgent message. A report came down from a crew working on the fourth floor that they now were lost, disoriented and could not find the only stairway that served the six floors in that building in the roof. The men kept going up, determined, selfless, hands and knees crawling, searching. Meanwhile, through all of this, the firefight is still continuing.

Conditions are deteriorating, the fire was winning. A lieutenant that was descending from up above, doing his search up above. Reach the bottom of the stairs, plop down on them, took off his helmet, his face piece. He looked up at me and said, chief, I couldn't make the fourth floor.

His gear was literally steaming from the intense heat that he'd just been exposed to. was literally steaming from the intense heat that he just been exposed to. I physically took a step back and took a full minute to contemplate the next move. I could not let myself become emotional. If we continued this operation, we were going to lose more of the people that went up. I went to the doorway. There was about a dozen firefighters staged just outside the stairwell. I looked at each one of them. I knew some of their wives, their kids. The anxiety was palpable. I thought hard, then said, that's it.

It's over, we're done. They were not ready to accept the feet. A wave of pure anger came towards me. What do you mean we're done? We're not done. We're going up. And some of them started to take steps toward me. I physically put my feet in my hands against the door jam, and I said, listen, we've already lost six, and we're not gonna lose anymore. It was like they'd been collectively kicked in the gut, heads dropped, shoulders slumped, silent.

I then ordered all personnel to evacuate the building and told them, come on now, let's go outside and set up for a defensive operation. Silently, slowly, they left. The fire raged, contained within that cauldron of brick until the third through the sixth floors and the roof had collapsed into a 25 foot high pile of tangled rubble. That was sitting on four to six feet of compacted ash. Once the fire was controlled, around the clock operation

to recover, what would become known in the fire service nationally as the Worcester 6 from that horrible place. Meanwhile, while this was all going on, a memorial was held. President Clinton, Vice President Gore, came 35,000 firefighters from across the country, Canada and Europe marched six abreast into a procession that stretched for over a mile to that service. All along both sides of the route, the crowds were thick and absolutely silent. The only sound you heard was the uniform sound of the march's feet as they went down the street. It was an emotional day.

The memorial had been planned with the anticipation that by that time we would have recovered the six. But the reality was, by the time the memorial came up, we still had four buried somewhere in that rubble. Eight days later, we were looking for our last person. His wife approached one of our chiefs, handed him a bottle of Sam Adams beer and said, handed him a bottle of Sam Adams beer and said, here put this up on the deck and he'll find you. Well we did it and a short time later we found them. The amazing thing was all of a sudden one of the searchers said look and he pointed to high up on the brick wall and a large piece of insulation that had been hanging up there

through the whole process suddenly was in full flame. The file was out. It had been out for days. And this thing just spontaneously ignited for a reason we can't explain. We had a ritual that we followed when we were removing one of our found firefighters from the deck, which is what that level became known as. Two opposing lines of firefighters would stand facing each other helmets over their hearts

as a symbol of honor and respect while the body of their brother was carried on a stretcher in between them to the waiting ambulance. As we were passing this last man down over the deck, one of the firefighters just silently pointed. When we turned around, that flaming mass of insulation had extinguished without a trace of residual smoke. We'd completed our mission. We'd returned all six of them to their loved ones. Six wakes and six funerals will held the following week. Two thousand firefighters showed up at each one of those funerals.

Each one of them got the honors and the rights that they deserved. I'm fourth generation Worcester. I always knew this city had grit and attitude. But the way I saw the people come together during that tragedy, tragedy and afterwards, showed that Worcester has a tremendous heart. It was a life altering situation for so many of us here in the city. Here we are now, almost 17 years out. We have moved forward, but Worcester, Massachusetts and appointed to the fire department in 1972.

The Worcester cold storage fire occurred in his 27th year on the job. A little over a year after the fire, he was appointed the department's first safety and health officer and spent the last eight years of his career developing policies and practices to make the job, quote, as safe as a dangerous job can be, end quote. Michael retired in 2009 after serving for a total of 37 years. He and his wife now live on Cape Cod, not far from where we produce this radio show. When we asked him about his definition of bravery, Michael said, bravery and hero, I believe, are tossed around too casually these days. We are trained to do the job that we do.

When your efforts are successful, you're a hero. But, despite the same effort, if it doesn't turn out as you hoped, you are a, yeah, I was there. When we return, our final tale of fortitude from an expected mother. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. You're listening to the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm listening to the Mall 3DO Hour from PRX. I'm Jay Allison, producer of this show. This hour we're hearing about courage

and our final storyteller is Robin Uts. Robin told the story live in Boston, where we partner with Public Radio Station, there'll be GDH. Here's Robin at the Wilbur Theater. I believe there will be a G.B.H. Here's Robin at the Wilbur Theater. I was pretty sure about my husband right off the bat. When I met him, I loved how he talked about the things that he loved so much.

He would have me come over to his apartment and we'd watch Soul Train YouTube clips until late in the evening and he would look at me with these adoring eyes and say, it's the happiest place on Earth and I was like, it really is. It took me no time to know I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him and it took pretty much no time to realize I wanted to have a child with him. And the happily ever after has been easy. We're still as in love today as we've ever been.

But the child part has not been so easy. It was after four years of trying, two rounds of in vitro, three frozen transfers from those in vitros and a miscarriage that we finally got pregnant with our daughter Grace Pearl. And we were just ecstatic. The pregnancy went like a breeze and before we knew it we were at the anatomy scan, which happens a little over halfway through the pregnancy. And I could not wait. I wanted that profile shot. You know, you get the little like side profile that everybody thinks about with an ultrasound,

and Jim wanted to see it too, so he came to the appointment with me. And we were having a nice time, and you're just chattering about where we were going to get lunch. And it took me a little bit to notice that the ultrasound technician Nicole was not saying a lot. She was kind of making concern noises, and she goes, there's not a lot of amniotic fluid. I want you to roll on your side, and I'm going to go to the doctor. So I do that, hoping that it'll prompt Grace to move to a better position. And she comes back and

tries to scan again and no change. Grace has not moved. And she says, there's no amniotic fluid. And I'm sorry, I know that's not you don't want to hear and I'm like It's not Okay All right, so she leads us down the hallway to go talk to the doctor and I Google Google and you know Second trimester know I'm amnionic fluid and what stares me back in the face is 80 to 90% fatal. And I'm like, shit.

It does not improve when we get into the doctor's office. There is a waiting room in the, you know, doctor's office that is full of newborn pictures that my doctor has just delivered, most of them featuring her and they're all smiling and she comes in not smiling and introduces herself to Jim, my husband, as Jen. And I'm like, shit. Not Dr. Meyer, Jen, that's not a good sign.

She explains the following. Our daughter's kidneys are huge. They're full of fluid filled cysts. Basically, they're not working. And the way that babies work when they're in the womb is amniotic fluid travels through the kidneys and is urinated out, goes through, it is swallowed by them, and it cycles. And without that cycling, their lungs will never develop.

They can't breathe. She explains that the prognosis is not good, and we burst into tears. To confirm this, she has scheduled an emergency second ultrasound an hour later, also in this hospital. And for now, she lets us leave out a side door, so we don't have to go through the waiting room full of expectant mothers with their full bellies

for all of our sakes. I walk past a half-eaten birthday cake on the way out. We get outside and it is unusually warm November day and people are million everywhere. And I cannot believe the earth has not stopped taking their lives with it, just stopped in place. And I can't even stop.

My parents knew that this ultrasound was happening right then. And I can't not call them and tell them what's happened. So I call and my mom answers within a second and she's like, how was it? And I'm like, not good. And she drops a phone. I can hear her sobbing. My dad picks it up a few seconds later and asks what happened, and I do my best to tell him,

well, Jim's rubbing my back and silently crying next to me. And my dad asks if he can be there with us for the second ultrasound, and we agree. And that's when we meet him in the waiting room for the second ultrasound. He gives us each huge hugs and makes jokes about the reading material and I'm so grateful he's there. Dad jokes and all.

And soon we're taken back for the second ultrasound and it's about two hours of detailed pictures of our daughter. She shows us the kidneys and the little black dots on them, which are the fluid filled cysts. She shows us that there's no black background, which is what amniotic fluid is. So there is not going to be that profile picture. The doctor comes in and introduces herself as Dr. Gray,

and my dad goes, like, Gray's anatomy. And I'm like, I don't think he's ever seen that show. I was loved that he was being humorous in that moment. And she asks what we know. So we explain what we've heard so far. And she said, that's right. There are two outcomes for your daughter. She'll either be stillborn, having

been crushed to death by your body, because there's no amnesty out of fluid. Or she will be born, and the wheels will come off. I remember that phrasing, and the wheels will come off. Without working lungs, she'll never survive and she'll die within minutes, hopefully in my arms. My dad thought to ask, what are the odds for a baby like this? And she looked at him and said, none.

She looks at me and says, your baby would be the first if she made it. She then starts to explain the laws around abortion in the state of Missouri where I live. She says that you have to first sign consent, which aren't always easy to schedule because only certain people can allow you to sign them with them. Then you have to wait 72 hours. I guess to consider what you're doing. You also can't have an abortion after 21 weeks, six days. I'm 20 weeks and six days when this happens.

And there's an upcoming weekend and the Thanksgiving holiday. So we have no time to think about it. We have to decide almost immediately if we want to be able to do this, if we choose to, in time. She leaves the room to give us a moment. And we all just burst into tears. We're all hugging one another and just inconsolable.

And I think about it. And I'm just like, what choice do we have? She's going to die 100%. And if we don't terminate this pregnancy, she will suffer 100%. And I look at Jim and I'm like, we have to terminate, right? And he's like, of course we do.

Even my dad, who's raised Catholic agrees it would be cool to do anything else. The doctor comes back in and we tell her Even my dad, who's raised Catholic, agrees it would be cool to do anything else. The doctor comes back in and we tell her we made our decision and she says, I didn't want to sway you, but your risk would go up seven times if you didn't do this now. And that's just the risk of being pregnant. She explains that they will have somebody call us as soon as possible to get the signed consent scheduled because we're so short on time and we're lucky to be able to get in the very next day.

Jim and I go to a facility where a doctor in Scrubs meets us and takes us back to a conference room. And there are papers laid out. Before I can even look at them, she imposes us. And she says, these are state mandated forms. They're not medical. They contain judgmental language that is designed to make you feel bad.

It is not how we feel about you. I look down and I'm asked to be to sign saying that I have been offered to hear my daughter's heartbeat. I listen to my daughter's heartbeat on a home Doppler every other day. I have a recording on my phone. We're asked if we had been offered to hear or to see an ultrasound. I had three hours of ultrasounds just the day before and I also had asked for extra ultrasounds because I wanted to see her any time I could. Then I opened a packet and on the very first page in bold indented letters. It says, human life starts of conception. You're ending a separate, unique human life.

And my grief was interrupted by outrage. Nowhere in this documentation was how much grace would suffer. None of it talked about the increased risks to my health. It was all just biased on one side. I wanted to light them on fire, but I assigned them. I had to. And that started the 72-hour clock. That was the longest time in my life. It was a slow marching through time where my friends seamlessly cleared their calendars to invite me over to do jigsaw puzzles

and drink tea with them. My parents came over and they removed every stitch of baby clothing and items out of our home. I took pregnancy approved sleeping pills. I hugged Jim harder than I thought possible and hoped we could just meld into one person. I cried and cried and cried. And the night before the termination, I asked Jim how he wanted to say goodbye to Grace. Well, I thought about this. I thought about how sure I was about my decision.

I knew other people might make a different choice than I did. And there was a part of me that wanted to give birth to her and hold her. But I couldn't imagine doing anything, but what we were doing because it felt cruel to do anything different. It was so definitive. And I never thought I would have an abortion, but I've never needed to think about it. Jim said he wanted to have a dance party for her. Our own little soul train. And he made a playlist of songs he'd always wanted her to hear and always wanted to teach her about. And so in our pajamas

late at night in our living room lit by candles we danced with grace. We played Riot Girl Music and some rolling stones and laughed at, less spend the night together because we'd always thought I would have a little different meaning with a newborn. And when Mick Jagger saying, baby, I padded my little baby bump and we sang at it. And we slow danced to sitting on the dock of the bay, which Jim has always said is a perfect song, just the way that it is. We had to be at the hospital at five in the morning,

the next day, and in the operating room as the pre-Anastasia cocktail hit me. I looked at my doctor in the corner, and I was like, I need you to know that I love my daughter. I'm doing this because I love my daughter. The nurse rubbed my arms and I was gently turned and laid back on the operating table and they put my headphones in.

They told me I wouldn't be asleep. And so we played Grace's playlist. And that's how we said divide our. I'm girl again. I'm so excited. I can't wait to see what she's like. And to teach her things, I can't wait to hold her hands while she's learning to walk. And to braid her hair.

And to teach her about one of my favorite songs, Harvest Moon. I really wanted her to grow up in a world where she's valued, who are her humanity and dignity and her ability to make the best decisions for herself respected. Thank you. That was Robin Hutts. Robin's daughter Hannah was born just a day before she was due. She was 6 pounds 10 ounces and 20.5 inches long. Robin says, Grace lives on in Hannah as Hannah means grace in Hebrew.

Robin and Jim plan to tell Hannah about grace some day. They wanted to know that they loved Grace and that you can love someone very much before you really know them. Robin still works as a patient and reproductive health advocate. She feels strongly that we need to support reproductive rights all the way down the line. When we asked how she feels, when people tell her she's brave for telling her story, she said, it may feel like it takes bravery, because some people are willfully ignorant and let curiosity these days, but I know a lot of that comes from fear, and that propels me to share more and more. The stories in this hour have been about bravery, but there's bravery in every Moth story, the courageous act of getting

on stage and telling about the vulnerabilities at your core. If you feel like attempting that act of bravery, you can tell us about your story by recording a very short version right on our website, themoth.org. That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time, and that's the story from the Moth. The stories in this show were directed by Meg Boles and Michelle Jolowski. The rest of the most directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Geness and Jennifer Hickson, production support from Emily Couch.

Most stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers, our theme music, spy the drift, other music in this hour from Blake Noble, the Westerlies, our theme music, it's by the Drift, other music in this hour, from Blake Noble, the Westerlies, and Neil Young. You can find links to all the music we use at our website. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick, an Atlantic public media, and Woods Hole Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds

from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching this your own story, and everything else, go to our website, TheMoth.org. you