The Story

Mary Viehland's son Josh found himself mixed up with the wrong crowd in high school. He was doing drugs. But when he fathered a child, Josh decided to turn his life around. Then one day Josh heard that his friends had bought drugs from a drug dealer and not paid their tab. Josh began to nag them to pay up. Inexplicably, his friends saw Josh as the threat, and decided to kill him. Mary's story, though, is more than the loss of her son. It is about how she found the strength in herself to visit his former "friends" in prison, and even forgive them. Also in this episode: dismantling the darkroom.

One of the last things Victor Anderson's older brother Ron did before he was killed in World War II was write to Victor, then 17. He asked that Vic write to an 11-year-old Jewish girl named Marianne Baum whom he had met while visiting her parents in Tel Aviv. Victor and Marianne stayed pen pals for 12 years before they finally met, and eventually fell in love. Also on the show: after 30 years of segregated class reunions, black and white alums hold a reunion together.

 Four years ago a tornado tore into Greensburg, Kansas, flattening the town. Greensburg is now back, stronger and greener, but the more private story is that it’s a lot harder to bounce back when the people you love are gone. Dick Gordon speaks with two residents of the town, Bob Dixson and Norm Volz, about how to rebuild when all seems lost. Also in this episode, a musical memory from Nanci Griffith, plus Delsie Bailey shares the story of her daughter Faith.

In May, Lindaleigh Irvin-Portner came on the program to tell her story. She became pregnant as a teenager and her mother sent her to a home for "wayward girls" to deliver her baby, Monique. Soon after, the baby was taken away. Lindaleigh says it was not her intention to give her daughter up for adoption, and she has never stopped looking for her. A listener to The Story heard Lindaleigh on the radio, and there’s been an intriguing development.