houston public radio

KUHF-Houston Public Radio's "This I Believe" with Chase Foreman

July 3, 2009
by: Paul Pendergraft

Chase was born in Hannibal, Missouri but moved to Houston with his parents when he was just a year old. He is a product of Houston I.S.D. and is now entering his senior year at the University of Houston pursuing an engineering degree. Chase also works in the hospitality industry to pay his way. That work has also opened his world to new friends including one particular colleague who gave Chase a new perspective about friendship.

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Chase has lived in Houston all but the first few months of his life. His birth certificate lists Hannibal, Missouri is his birth place, but he proudly claims to be a native Houstonian. His parents, younger brother and sister are native Houstonians. Chase has dozens of aunts, uncles and cousins and most of them live in Houston, so his family roots run deep in the Bayou City. After attending Lamar High School, Chase enrolled in Houston Community College and is now at U. H. Chase says his goal is an engineering degree, but he admits, writing is one of his passions. He began writing recreationally at the age of 11...mostly musical lyrics and poetry. Chase says he and his family are big fans of This I Believe so he admits it's a thrill to record his essay for the radio series.

Here's Chase Foreman with his essay for KUHF's This I Believe.
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"I work with a friend named James. We serve fine wine and cuisine to the doctors of the Texas Medical Center. My friend James is black with a heavy African accent. He has a cheery disposition and is constantly cutting up in the banquet halls as we lug tables and chairs. James and I have nothing in common except our friendship. When asked about his homeland, James talked about his wife and children who remain in Africa while he works here in the U.S. James attended Houston Community College and works this job, sending most of his money back home to his family. James is exceptionally bright and genuinely humble.

One day, James told me the story of his country's hero, a native of Sudan who received his doctorate in America and returned home to assist the Sudanese people. They were being oppressed in a political takeover. The hero opposed the takeover and eventually died in a plane crash. Many thought it was an assassination. James told this story with a solemn tone, his eyes gleaming with pride. I listened intently as we polished the glassware.

One night I watched a documentary about the so-called "lost boys" of Sudan. They lost their families in a civil war and were run out of their own country because they were believed to pose a threat to the takeover. Their fathers were murdered. Their sisters and mothers were raped, killed, or assimilated into the enemy culture. The boys had no home and shared overcrowded campsites in Ethiopia, in the truest of poverty. After enough attention was brought to the travesty, programs were initiated to bring these young men to America. James was one of them.

When I came to work the next day I looked for James. When I saw him I called out..."James! Hey...I know about you man!" "You're a lost boy! I learned about you and your brothers." "Yes," he gleamed. "Yes, me and my brothers...We are lost boys."

The respect I feel for that humble man is hard to express. I grew up with everything I needed. James grew up escaping genocide. I believe in appreciating a friendship.

There we were...two men with little in common except a friendship...polishing glassware at the top of a decorative waterfall overlooking a golden city."

KUHF-Houston Public Radio's "This I Believe" with Gail Collins

June 26, 2009
by: Paul Pendergraft

Gail was born in Virginia, but attended high school and college in Arizona. Gail has lived in many places in the in the world, still the mountains of Flagstaff, where she was a student at Northern Arizona University, remain special. That is also the place Gail chose to grow roots. Gail is a writer. She's penned a book with more in the works plus numerous magazine and newspaper articles, but she says her greatest accomplishment is her family...specifically her four children.

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When Gail was fourteen, her parents moved the family (Gail and three younger brothers) from the east coast to Glendale, Arizona. This is where she attended high school, and it's where she met the man who would become her husband and the father of her four children. Gail's husband is an executive with an oil company, and they've lived in many places in the world including Norway, Scotland, Nigeria and Houston...three times. During their time in Africa, Gail and her husband purchased a home in the mountains of Flagstaff, and it's the place they return to for summers and holidays to host family gatherings.

While there, Gail puts her writing skills to good use. She writes for Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine penning articles about travel, health and art. She also writes for Flagstaff's local newspaper, The Arizona Daily Sun. Gail also has a website where much of her work can be seen.

Gail's next project is a young adult novel based on the true experiences of her parents during World War II. They are European. Her mother is from Germany's Black Forest, and her father hails from a lower class London neighborhood. Gail says they were children on opposite sides of a war who were shaped by a conflict they had nothing to do with. They simply fell victim to the ever-present danger that comes when war became personal, on their individual home fronts. It's a project she's wanted to do for a long time and is now finally prepared to proceed.

Children are hugely important to Gail, which is why she co-wrote and edited a charity book in Nigeria. From the simple idea to write a book of personal stories, a foundation with international sponsorship has grown. Sales of the book, Nigerian Gems: Expatriate Tales of Adventure, have funded the building of a school and outbuildings, supplied curriculum and teacher salaries and much more. The book's success—now in its fourth printing—has reached out to four other local schools in need to ensure that children are offered hope through an education.

Gail's dearest love is her family which she considers her greatest accomplishment. She's been married for 28 years and has four children...three sons and a daughter. Her youngest is a senior in high school, so all the children will soon be out on their own. That's what Gail calls "the best case scenario" referring to the reality of children moving out on their own. Gail says, despite it being sad, it's the natural cycle. She says kids are supposed to leave their parents to assume their own life, and if that happens successfully, it's the "best case scenario."

That's also the focus of Gail's essay for This I Believe in which she describes her greatest work...raising four wonderful children.

Here's Gail Collins with her essay forKUHF's This I Believe.
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"I believe that raising children is the best work I've ever done.

I've been a fundraising events coordinator. I've co-written a book whose sales sponsor children's education in Nigeria. I've even taught birthing couples to bring their own legacy safely into this world. Still, mothering my four children to be morally-equipped, contributing beings that will replace me on this planet is my enduring pledge to it.

The hard part? Letting them go.

As parents, we pack their cars. We stand and wave until they're out of sight. And in time, we watch them make their lives with other people. At such a time, joy should reign—and does because we love them—but we can also ache.

I had such a day...a week...no, a month before I surrendered my oldest son to another woman in marriage. I found it wrenching, even though earnest love is what parents pray for their children.

Our son and his bride live in Florida, and we don't. So on their first Thanksgiving, my husband and I visited them. I smiled, noticing their freshly painted apartment as we scooted metal chairs up to a folding table. I thought back to our first place with its brown shag carpeting, and my eyes brimmed.

I longed to apologize to my mother for striding away on my wedding day without a backward glance. And so often since then. I see now devoted mothers just smile with wet eyes, so no one is the wiser.

At the holiday's end, I said goodbye to my son, as I'll continue to do for the rest of my life. I looked into this tall man's gold-flecked eyes and was as filled with wonder as the day I birthed him. I touched the hair escaping his collared shirt and with a sudden thrill, announced to him and every passerby, "I made you! You are one of the best things I've ever done."

It's hard to explain such vain pleasure, except to another parent.

We champion our child's graduation from reading about dinosaurs to waxing cynical about politics. But their joining us as contemporaries is the double-kiss hello and goodbye. They become an entry in our address book instead of puffing a sleeping breath on our face as we steal one more kiss. I know why parents cry at airports and celebrations, because that's my job now. And I comprehend their longing for their children to create a tender being, to begin the cycle anew...

My son is finishing his doctorate, studying climate change over eons. See what I started? Yet, I believe raising a child one day would be his best work."

I'm Paul Pendergraft, Senior Producer for News and Public Affairs with KUHF-Houston Public Radio. The radio series This I Believe is a national project designed to engage people by writing, sharing and recording their core values and beliefs that guide their daily lives.

This current version of "This I Believe" is actually a revival of a 1950s radio program of the same name, hosted by acclaimed journalist Edward R. Murrow. His program aired from 1951 to 1955.

In creating This I Believe, Murrow said ..."In this brief time each night, a banker or a butcher, a painter or a social worker, people of all kinds who need have nothing more in common than integrity, a real honesty, will talk out loud, about the rules they live by. The things they have found to be the basic value in their lives. We hardly need to be reminded that we live in an age of confusion. A lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism. ... Around us all ... is an enveloping cloud of fear. ... What truths can a human being afford to furnish the cluttered nervous room of his mind with when he has no real idea how long a lease he has on the future? It is to try to meet the challenge of such questions that we have prepared these broadcasts."

For five minutes each day, Americans heard from everyday people and many famous ones as well including Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Harry Truman and baseball legend Jackie Robinson.

The original "This I Believe" series has been revived and is now broadcast on National Public Radio and locally on 88.7 FM, KUHF-Houston Public Radio. The hallmark of this program is hearing the beliefs and guiding principles of average citizens...our neighbors, our coworkers and the people with whom we worship.

Just as in the 1950s, this is a time when our beliefs have a way of separating us as a nation. This series is designed to help us express our beliefs, hear what is really being said and find an understanding and a common ground that Edward R. Murrow called ..."the essence of brotherhood and the floor of our civilization."

For more information about "This I Believe," please visit the main site at ThisIBelieve.org.

KUHF-Houston Public Radio's "This I Believe" with Ron Mattocks

June 19, 2009
by: Paul Pendergraft

Ron is a native of Pennsylvania but has called Houston home for the last several years. After a successful stint as a home builder, Ron spends his time these days juggling others passions. While performing the full-time duties as a stay-at-home dad for his two daughters, Ron is also pursuing a writing career. Ron is penning a book and makes daily entries to his on-line blog. The value of humor, wherever you find it...is something Ron believes in...as he describes in his essay for KUHF's This I Believe.
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KUHF-Houston Public Radio's "This I Believe" with Mary Lawrence

June 12, 2009
by: Paul Pendergraft

Mary was born in New Jersey, but only lived there a few years before the family moved to Houston. They landed in the Clear Lake area. And today, many years later, Mary hasn't strayed far. She and her husband live in League City. Mary is the Lead Analyst in the Planning and Service Evaluation Department at Metro. In her work, Mary crunches numbers, but in her essay, Mary celebrates words and the impact they can have.
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KUHF-Houston Public Radio's "This I Believe" with Melanie Miller

June 5, 2009
by: Paul Pendergraft

Melanie is a native Texan, born in the small west Texas town of Pampa, but in 1984, broadcasting brought Melanie to Houston. She took a radio news job and continued in that industry for many years and for the last few years, Melanie and her husband have run a successful media consulting company specializing in crisis communication. Melanie's accomplishments are many, but overcoming deafness may be her greatest. In her essay, Melanie helps us understand the difference between hearing and listening.
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KUHF-Houston Public Radio's "This I Believe" with Rachel Reed

May 29, 2009
by: Paul Pendergraft

Rachel is a graduating senior at Cinco Ranch High School. She's also one of three winners in KUHF's first Student Essay Contest sponsored by Spectra Energy. Rachel is a gifted young person who loves art and science...and she also welcomes any opportunity to help a fellow student in need. In her award winning essay for KUHF's This I Believe, Rachel Reed explains how that help can come from an unexpected source.
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KUHF-Houston Public Radio's "This I Believe" with Lucy Liu

May 22, 2009
by: Paul Pendergraft

Lucy is a graduating senior at Taylor High School in Katy and she's also one of three winners in KUHF's This I Believe student essay contest. Lucy's award winning essay was a school assignment and when she decided on a topic, it turned out to be a memorable experience...literally. During a recent visit to a grocery store, Lucy saw a specific type of cookie that reminded her of being a little girl and spending time with her father. Lucy recounts that experience in her award winning essay for KUHF's This I Believe.
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