Latest / The Dr. Joe Show / 168 - Flight of the Rondone with Patrick Girondi

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168 - Flight of the Rondone with Patrick Girondi · The Dr. Joe Show

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How can we make the
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world better by making ourselves better?
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The Dr.
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Joe Show explores how you can make positive personal change
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by using his groundbreaking and highly effective
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I am approach to understand who we are and why we do what we do.
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Join us now for the Dr.
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Joe Show with Mike Styles of Styles, Lore and your host, Dr.
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Joe Strand.
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Neurology Yes.
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Gastroenterologists and cardiologists,
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podiatrists, optometrists and barbers.
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Welcome to the Dr.
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Joe Show.
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You are hilarious.
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Do you think we could include anybody else other than the guests.
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Anyone and anyone?
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We're not just isms.
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We are all about this, this.
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And that is what it is.
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So really, it's it's welcome to everyone and to the Dr.
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Joe Show.
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We're delighted that you are listening tonight.
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It's going to be fantastic.
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But wow, it has been a rough few weeks here in the United States.
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What is going on, Tom?
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What are you what's happening?
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I mean, it's frustrating. It's
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thinking back like the worst thing about
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my days was finding recruitment stickers for Patriot Front.
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That's a fascist street gang here in our own town of Marshfield.
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So I'm thinking like what direction are we going in?
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And then a week later, a white supremacist walks into a supermarket in Buffalo,
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makes a long trip to get there, takes ten lives.
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Not a week later, we have another shooting and involved a Texas.
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19 children. Three adults.
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Four.
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If you count a heart attack.
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Yeah.
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Now it just gives me goose bumps.
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And in the middle of
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the war in Ukraine, I guess, from last week,
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you know, talking about the heartache that they're going through, the tragedy.
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And yet and this is the toughest part about the I am.
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You know so it's so easy to
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go limbic on this to judge it to get angry about it to get angry about it.
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But we have to be able to step back and go why?
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What has happened in this person's four domains
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that this is the best they could do.
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I don't have to like it and I don't I don't condone it
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and I don't people are held responsible.
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But I have to understand this.
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How are we going to change anything
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if we do not understand why people do what they do?
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We have to the man.
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Is it a challenge?
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We have a powerful person tonight who has a voice for all of us.
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Tom, could you introduce our guest?
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Absolutely.
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Dr. Joe, originally from the South Side of Chicago.
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He is an Italian-American singer, songwriter,
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author and founder of San Rocco Therapeutics.
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He has released five music albums and is the author of Diamond in the Rough.
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He has led his company, San Rocco Therapeutics, since
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1993 with the mission to cure sickle cell disease thalassemia.
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Welcome to the Dr. Joe Show. Patrick. Randy.
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Hey, thank you very much.
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It is wonderful to have you here.
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So I know that you've heard us chatting about this, but
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has this world affected you at this point?
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Well, I think, of course it affects me and
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I live in Europe or live in Italy off
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and on at least for 30 years.
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It's easy from time to time,
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I think, especially in the United States, for us to just take for granted
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that the rest of the world is exactly like we are.
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And I really don't necessarily
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think that that's the case.
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I look at a lot of the special interest groups the lobbyists.
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And, you know, when you talk about
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this, these mass murders, etcetera, which happen all over the world,
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by the way, unfortunately happen a lot more in the United States.
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I think you've got to look at who's doing that.
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And, you know, it's like, 70%
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of these people are 21 or younger
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And so we ask ourselves, well, what's changed in the last 40 years
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between a 21 year old in 1970 and a 21 year old in 2020
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And unfortunately I think a lot of it is drugs.
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And I'm not talking about illegal drugs, I'm talking about legal drugs.
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So, you know, Paxil for example, is a great example.
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OxyContin is another one.
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And unfortunately the drug companies are so powerful and so wealthy
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that they basically are turning our children legally and illegally
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into dysfunctional people.
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A huge difference between Paxil and an accident.
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Well, I don't know if it really is, because now,
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you know, GSK get Paxil came from GSK.
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You know, they got fined $3 billion because the government figured out
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that they had lied to people, that Paxil created suicidal tendencies, tendencies
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in adolescents and, you know, we lost 60,000 children, at least to Paxil.
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And it's still being portrayed, by the way.
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And it kind of goes before the show.
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You were telling me about this, I think, and I think it's great
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because I think that that's you're hitting the key.
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You're hitting everything I.
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Very interesting and I appreciate your endorsement.
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I hope it's an endorsement of the I am approach.
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But it really is true.
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We we are always doing the best we can but we have the ability to change as well.
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So let's hear about the book. Patrick.
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Sounds great.
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OK, so the book started years and years ago.
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I'm a kid from the South Side of Chicago.
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I started out chief starting on 51st Street,
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which with my Polish buddy Davey Palahniuk,
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you know, and then after that I bust tables at 12 years old
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at Club Bell Bianco and at 15
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I wash dishes at Northwestern Hospital
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in the meantime, I moonlighted a little bit,
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stealing car parts and, you know, dishing out parlay cards and stuff.
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I have 13 brothers
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and sisters half staff, you name it, and American selection.
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And at 16 I was lucky enough I went in front of a judge, Clarence Bryant.
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He's a dark skinned guy.
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He's dead now.
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He died in April 8th.
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And every place I kind of celebrate.
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It's kind of like a Saints day for me, you know.
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And I went before him ten times or I don't know how many times.
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And he was in the courthouse and 61st and racing
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and I went and he said, Young man,
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you came in front of me one too many times.
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What is this young man do back here
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November 4th, Your Honor,
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young man, on November 4th, I want you to come in here with an enlistment papers.
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So I was only 16.
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And the only
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the only service who taken was the Air Force
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because they had something called a late enlistment program.
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So if your parents or your mother, that for me it was my mother would sign,
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they would take you in when you turned 17.
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And so I enlisted.
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I you know, I mean, it really helped me out a lot.
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And I was in the military for nine months.
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In the meantime, my mother had written the Red Cross asking me to be
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sent back home so I could work and help help out at home, et cetera.
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And eventually that's what happened.
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I got back, I was 1920, I worked on the docks
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drove a truck, a little bay, Great Lakes Supply,
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and one of my good buddies growing up, Bobby Houlihan, he needed a favor
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and I took a job as a runner at the Chicago Board Officers Exchange
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one thing actually two, two cracks.
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I, one of my, one of my bosses
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gave me a crack or slack because I signed my own check.
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So I cracked him and I got fired.
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And then I got hired up and I got hired
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by a guy from Taiwan
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who didn't like everybody making fun of him
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when he went to the pitch to buy and sell options in stocks.
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So I was kind of famous because I cracked this guy on the floor.
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And so I started walking in behind him and all of a sudden nobody bothered him.
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And then I had another altercation.
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But my Taiwanese sponsor didn't think
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that he should be responsible for paying my fines for shocking people.
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And he's right.
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And I ended up losing that job.
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And by the lack of Christ, I'll Buda call it whatever you like.
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I'm a Catholic, and, you know, I'm taught that we're all brothers, and I
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certainly believe that.
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So it makes everybody my brother
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I go up to two guys, two Jews, Larry Blume, Corky Asian, God bless them.
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And I was brought there by Billy Powers,
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and they said, kid, we heard a lot of good things about you.
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You want to trade for yourself.
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So. All right.
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I mean, OK.
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I mean, that would be great.
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And about a month and a half later, I got called back in the office.
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They said, kid, you know, I went on vacation, I forgot to give you any money.
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And I said, that's all right. Later, I got money.
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Mike. Well, how'd you do it? Did you dig it up?
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I said, No, Larry, I did.
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Well, what about the fine pay?
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What about your seat leases?
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Hey, and how much money is in your car?
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About 8000.
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Oh, my God, that's great.
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And that's how it started.
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My account started 00000.
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So I knew my first day on the floor,
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I had to make a hundred, the one or $2, and the next day it was zero.
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$200.05 hundred.
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So like I said, I'm a I'm a very proud Catholic and
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and Jesus, you know, I, you know, I kind of follow the parables, et cetera.
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My favorite my favorite one or one of my favorite ones are two weeks ago
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when when Jesus said
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when he was asked, what's the most important rule to follow?
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And he said, love others as I have loved you so that they'll know
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that you're my follower.
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And you know what?
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That's what I try to do.
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And today we have you know, a lot of sickle cell disease patients in Dallas.
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You meet patients all over the world.
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Many of them are Muslims,
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some of them are Jewish, some of them are Hindu, whatever.
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And you know what?
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Because I follow my Catholicism, they're all my brothers and sisters,
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so I don't want to keep going on, but it's wonderful.
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So so how did you
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how did you
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want to with an interest in sickle cell and thalassemia?
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Well, so, I mean, after I gained notoriety in the United States,
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you always on the Oprah Winfrey Show twice as a guest and Playgirl
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magazine with Magic Johnson, Sylvester Stallone.
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Actually, I know Larry Magic's brother, real well,
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we've done a couple of things in charities
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and I really got lucky.
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I live the American Dream.
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And then they let me see improvement once I have a phrase.
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I've worked hard to be this lucky magic.
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I think you've done the same.
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You worked hard to be this lucky.
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Oh, you know lot.
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You know what, Doctor Joel we probably won't we won't find common ground on this.
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I mean, I'm sorry, I you know what?
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I was lucky if I hadn't been dead.
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United States,
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if I hadn't been born in Chicago, where they had these stock exchanges.
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I mean, it's like Oprah Winfrey.
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I'm sure she's a wonderful lady, but she actually been born in Bulgaria.
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She wouldn't be a media mogul, you know what I mean?
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You're saying this, and there is truth to that.
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There. There is.
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But you also you also are part
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of those four domains to home, the social, the biological.
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I see you respond to them.
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Oh, I don't know about that.
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The other thing is, you know that phrase, right?
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Trust in our the tie up your camel so you're doing that, too.
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All right.
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Let's go ahead and catch up.
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So go ahead.
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Thalassemia, sickle cell. Oh, OK.
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So anyway, I got married and my oldest son in 1992 was diagnosed with leukemia.
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Elastin is what's called coolest anemia in the Mediterranean.
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Anemia.
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It's a rare disease means that there's less than 200,000 cases
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in the United States. It's really rare because there's only about 25 hunter
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and it's
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a cousin disease the sickle cell
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and what I mean by that is that both thalassemia and sickle cell
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disease are defects on the beta globin gene.
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So when we're born we have the gamma globin gene which is fetal hemoglobin.
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When we get to be a year and a half old, it kind of turns off
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and turns into the beta globin gene or the adult hemoglobin
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and the problem is that the sickle cell disease patient and my son,
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like I said, they have cousin diseases, the beta globin genus defective.
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So I did not want to transfuse my son
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because the only cure for that, there's really no cure.
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The treatment for that is is doing blood transfusions in the early nineties.
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We still had and discovered the antibody for AIDS and hepatitis C.
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So there was no way I wanted to transfuse my son.
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I mean, no way.
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So I looked under every rock and I found
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a wonderful professor, Susan Perry, who today is at the University of Boston.
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But back then she was at Children's Hospital of Oakland Research Institute
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and she had something called Arginine Buter eight,
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which was a chemical compound and basically diluted into water
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that if it was infused, it stimulated
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the fetal hemoglobin again to produce
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and my son was on it for about
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six years.
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But the problem is there was experimental, so 30 days
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it cost me about 70,000 or 30 or 40 days 70,000.
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And worse than that,
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he had to be hospitalized because it was IV
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and the FDA said, no, you're doing an IV experimental drug, right?
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So you have to be in a hospital.
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So we my grandparents are from a small town in Tulia called Meldonium.
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So I ended up buying a home and moving to 20 miles away
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from my grandparents town and opening up a medical center in Altamira.
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My son did this experiment treat it
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until they found the antibodies for AIDS and hepatitis C, thank God.
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And finally my son began transfusing and maybe 9899
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in 2000.
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I read in Nature magazine that a French researcher working at Memorial
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Sloan-Kettering in New York had cured 60
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generation of thalassemia mice.
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So that was simek mice for sickle cell disease mice.
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In the end, it's roughly the same thing for what we're talking about.
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I met this doctor in Rome.
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His name is Michelle Settle,
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and by that time I had met dozens and dozens of researchers.
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Now I'm a street guy.
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I never graduate from high school, and that's a good thing and it's a bad thing.
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But the good thing is, is that when you're sitting down with a researcher
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or even a guy in a tie that went to Harvard,
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you know, I'm not smart enough to be intimidated by him.
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You know, I mean, I kind of look him in the eye and,
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you know, I just, you know, call it how it is, et cetera.
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And I kind of have a knack for that.
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This researcher was not a liar.
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This researcher was an honest man.
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And I believed him instantly and began to sponsor him.
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In 2005, we signed a license and took over this product.
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And I knew that it would cure my son.
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In 2010, we improved the product to the point
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where we made the world's first batch of gene therapy for sickle
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cell disease and thalassemia a commercial batch, because up until then,
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they were making gene therapy one person at a time, $1,000,000 prior.
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OK, we had gotten it down.
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My last batch was it cost me 1.3 million for ten people.
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So 130,000 people a person.
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Then it got sabotaged by a company called Bluebird Bio, which actually was trading
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at $230 at $12 million market cap in 2018 that today is $3 roughly.
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But I got sabotaged by
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Bluebird bio and third drug venture bankers
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from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I didn't know any of this.
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I knew who they were.
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They tried to buy my product and I told them you bought a bad product
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similar to mine, but it's bad, so I'll sell you my product.
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We can make a deal if you promise to use my product.
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I mean, because me it was all about my kids.
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And when I raised money from the bean, mostly from the soybean pit in Chicago
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where I traded, I mean, in 2005, I didn't even have a checking account
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and guys were coming up to me check for 75,000 50,000 100,000.
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This is for your kids.
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And I heard you're starting a company. I want to be part of it.
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And we had the same, by the way, we have 65 investors and most of them are
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with us today.
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And so I took over this product.
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It was great.
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There was another company competing with us.
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They had a horrible product
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and they wanted to buy mine.
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I said, Look,
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I'll sell it or we make a deal, but you got to use my product.
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And when I said that
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because it would take more time to get my product through than theirs,
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they believe and we found this out later in court, they went behind my back
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and they sabotaged it and I had no idea what was going on.
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But I saw that I turned my product over
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to Memorial Sloan-Kettering in 2011.
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That's where the researcher was, and they really didn't get to go forward
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quickly as I wanted.
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And in 20, 15 I went to court and I said, I want the product back
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because Bluebird by us catching up and we need to save these patients
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and they got a bad product and the judge says, well,
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I can't make them give it back to you because you didn't put it in the contract.
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So I started a case against Bluebird Vial
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and we went to court in December 28 of 2017.
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I was finally able to read the amended complaint.
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Our judges name was Judge All Stronger and boy was this guy colorful.
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I mean he was great.
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A New York Supreme Court judge, he was great.
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And there was something called the Attorney Eyes,
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only documents that I could never see.
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So I really never knew what had happened.
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And my attorneys couldn't tell me.
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I mean, this is how corrupt the court system has become in certain ways.
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And finally on December 28, 2017 Judge Joel Stroger said,
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No, no, no, no, no we're not going forward a more the plaintiff can see everything.
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He's got to see everything.
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And I was in Italy laying in my bed
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and trying to read on my telephone,
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you know, of course
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it was like 51 degrees in my house because I didn't want to turn the heat on
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because I was in, I'm in the lawsuit and I didn't have any liquidity.
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And it wasn't for Lloyd Feldman borrowing me money.
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We would have lost the court case.
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But anyway, I'm looking and I'm reading,
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I'm reading, and tears just came into my eyes because you know what?
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I think the worst part of life for me anyway
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is being disappointed, you know?
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So, you know, I kind of had an idea that I might have been screwed by these people.
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But you never really want to believe it.
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And then when all of a sudden you realize it, you kind of get really disappointed.
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Your feelings are hurt and that's what happened.
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And we went on with the case.
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We settled in November of 20, 20.
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I can't tell you the settlement exactly what it was because confidential.
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I can't tell you my attorneys got 11 million, if that gives you any idea.
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And now we have enough money to go forward.
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The product the product has been returned to us
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we are now again in court against Bluebird Bio
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because they're infringing on our product.
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They ended up stealing off of it.
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They're really not even trying to defend it.
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The problem is that their stock which was $230 in 2018
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their CEO Nick Lashley in 2014
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was voted C all of the year.
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There's not this is made up in 2020 he was voted the worst CEO by the way
20:01
and today that stock is $3 and they're waiting to try
20:05
to see if they can get approved by the FDA
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and it's interesting.
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Okay can I just can I just comment on something it's
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it's remarkable that for you the feeling was disappointment.
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What about betrayal?
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I mean.
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Yeah you know.
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But some people who are betrayed get angry
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at you.
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This is a powerful feeling to be disappointed.
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OK, but you know, Dr.
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Joe I have patients, right?
20:37
So the first person I have to think I mean, I've got
20:40
communication of patients all over the world and
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anger, you know,
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I mean, I think there every now and then there is a place for anger.
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And, you know, like everybody else, I'm human.
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But I, I try to look at the big picture like,
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you know, like you're kind of thinking, by the way.
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And I said, OK, what's going to be the best thing for my patients?
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Is it going to be that I kind of go crazy and start swinging like a nutty man?
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Or is it going to be that I proceed, try
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to get my product back and try to get back in the clinical trials?
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And, you know, that's that's what we did.
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And if I can recount a little funny little
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episode so
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Bloomberg bio had to have 30 attorneys.
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You know, I had my Jew attorney from New York and Sussman, he's like my brother.
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We love each other with all our hearts.
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And he's an entertainment attorney, but he kind of got the case
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because nobody else would take it.
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So we were accused
21:45
for the second time of contempt of court
21:48
for looking at these attorneys eyes only documents.
21:50
The first time we were fined 88,000, by the way.
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And it wasn't even true.
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I didn't see anything the second time we were really on the hot seat, et cetera.
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And a judge Ellis, I ended up getting off the second time.
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The third time they tried again.
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But this time not in the not in the federal court, but they tried
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in the Supreme Court of New York
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on in front of just Judge Ostreicher
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so this guy, his name is Jeff.
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I don't I won't give his last name because I feel sorry for him.
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And Jeff is going to the book and he's saying, Your Honor,
22:24
Daron, he had to know that we stole his product
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because if he didn't, he wouldn't have done this.
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And Your Honor, to Randy here to see that.
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Our point that said, if we get that drug, it'll make our stock work
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200 million more.
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And Your Honor, he went on and on and on and they were trying to insult me as well.
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You know, I didn't graduate from high school.
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He's a nice guy and all of that.
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And actually I was on WGN News Radio or no WGN television yesterday,
22:48
and the guy said, Hey, but Sloan Kettering said you're good intended,
22:51
but you were over your head, you know, water was over your head.
22:54
And I said, yeah, it's human way, not a swim, you know, but
22:57
so finally they telling the whole story.
22:59
And Kevin Murphy, one of my my Ken Sussman's assistants,
23:02
stood up and said, Your Honor, you know, they can't talk like that about Mr.
23:07
Durrani.
23:08
And the judge says, Counselor, sit down there.
23:11
Lay in your case up very nicely for you, you know, absolutely hilarious.
23:16
And Jeff, he drops his book on the ground.
23:19
All of the 30 attorneys behind him, you know, they're all giving him dirty looks.
23:23
And it was just it was a film.
23:26
It literally was a film.
23:27
And as much as the law system in the United States doesn't work,
23:31
sometimes it does work.
23:33
And it was just wonderful.
23:35
And so we got our product back and we're going for it.
23:38
And here's another story to start.
23:40
So we settle.
23:43
We get our product back.
23:44
We're going to pay our bills.
23:45
We're going to get back into.
23:47
So my my my buddy Joey calls me up.
23:50
Joey Feldman, who kept us alive, by the way, all these years.
23:53
He worked for me as a trader for years and years.
23:55
He said, you know, we got to give the
23:57
we got to get these attorneys to take a haircut.
23:58
I mean, we need enough money to do the show.
24:00
You're going to have to call out Ken and you're going to have to make them
24:03
you know, you've got to take a haircut, Miss Nash.
24:05
I said, Joey, you know, what am I going to do?
24:07
I mean, you know, the deal is a deal.
24:09
I mean, I can ask him, but I you know, whatever.
24:11
So, OK, whatever. I hang the phone up.
24:13
I said, I got to say problem. I said, hey, Ken.
24:15
Hey. Yeah, what's going on?
24:17
A, you know, Joy, a little air raid, you know, we said we need,
24:20
you know, money for research. We want you to take a haircut.
24:23
I'm not taking a haircut. That was a deal. Listen.
24:25
Yeah, I know what you mean.
24:26
I kind of told her the same thing, but, you know, what's he talking about?
24:30
I said, I don't know.
24:31
Can you think $1,000,000, you know that be too much?
24:35
He says, I'm not doing it.
24:37
Well, he said, I do it for you.
24:39
I'll give it to you. I'll give you $1,000,000.
24:41
But I'm not giving it to company. I'm not giving anybody.
24:43
Can you give me $1,000,000?
24:45
Yeah, I'll give you $1,000,000. And she thinks they're right here.
24:47
Goodbye, Joey.
24:49
Yeah, I got her. He's $1,000,000. You taking me out?
24:52
I mean, it was a 25 second conversation.
24:56
And when they talk about that, all attorneys are bad.
24:59
I'm going to tell you they're not all bad.
25:01
Now, Ken Sussman for me, you know, he's like my brother.
25:03
Like I said, here he was. 25 second conversation.
25:06
OK, I'll give you 1,000,005.
25:07
But this says a lot about you as well, Patrick, and the relationships
25:12
that you built with people,
25:14
the trust
25:15
that you have with people, respect and value.
25:18
Am I missing something here?
25:21
Well, I think that people know
25:25
I don't really care that much about money, and I wouldn't when I was a kid
25:30
and I was rhyming and stuff like that, I would never rob a poor person, you know?
25:34
But I mean, I think people are good people.
25:38
All people by the way, you know,
25:40
sometimes I just say they're bad people or good people do bad things.
25:43
And I think when they run into somebody like me
25:47
who like you know, really wants to help people,
25:50
maybe I'm not that bright, but I really am sincere about it.
25:54
And they trust me.
25:55
I think it moves mountains, you know, I agree with you.
26:00
Not many people I don't know many people would do that.
26:02
Oh, OK. I'll give you a million. But, you know.
26:05
Yeah, well, it's that respect, right?
26:07
Respect leads to value and value leads to trust.
26:10
And, you know, I think human beings are good.
26:13
I think in our in our heart of hearts, we are good.
26:16
We are.
26:16
And then sometimes, you know,
26:21
we respond in a way to
26:23
the world that other people don't understand,
26:26
and then they judge us and then we feel disrespected.
26:31
Then all sorts of things can happen that.
26:34
But this is a powerful story.
26:35
So tell me about your the program and the people that you're working with.
26:41
So, OK, so
26:44
I always say, you know, I don't like to be called a CEO because I say
26:47
CEO most of the time means crazed, egotistical, opportunist, opportunist.
26:52
So I kind of just call myself a founder.
26:54
I don't like to say that we're a corporation because I call
26:57
most corporations corrupt durations, by the way, and you can use either of those.
27:02
Thank you very much. I might. I might very well.
27:04
And so we started the company.
27:07
We went forward, and I was lucky enough to meet Michel.
27:11
Certainly he's a great guy in Memorial Sloan-Kettering, and we treated three
27:15
patients between 20, 12 and 15.
27:18
Those two out of three patients
27:19
today have a reduction of 43% after nine years and a transfusion.
27:23
We're going back into our patients.
27:26
In the meantime, I write books, I perform music.
27:29
I mean, I wrote the score for four culture
27:33
blues, which was a gold golden globe winning film in Italy.
27:37
Actually, in thousand 11, I have a video that won the video of the year
27:40
in Italy in 2010.
27:41
I think Living Without You and I like your music not to be wrong.
27:45
It's not bad for a show, but I think that Tom and Larry,
27:48
maybe they should listen to some of my stuff and maybe you could.
27:51
You know, one of my songs called It's Your Time
27:54
and one, my Croatian friend that had that cancer that wasn't cancer.
27:59
He loves one of the lines and it is and it says,
28:02
don't worry, just tomorrow starts in the morning.
28:06
Let's see what we can get this for our listeners. It's your time
28:30
now. Great big.
28:33
Time.
28:35
It can't be wrong.
28:41
To sing that song.
28:47
Well, have you seen it
28:50
done before?
28:53
But still.
28:54
What, honey?
28:58
Tomorrow starts in the on a
29:03
nice line on a new bill that you.
29:06
Need for a new pair of shoes.
29:09
There you go.
29:11
Notre Dame
29:14
sounds a lot
29:16
like sounds.
29:22
So, Patrick, I'm going to break this down this time.
29:25
We're going to post the link to this so people can listen to it.
29:29
What was the inspiration for this song?
29:32
OK, so this song,
29:34
I think, came in my 2008 album actually
29:40
so we were almost
29:43
we were preparing the final product.
29:45
I was certain my son would be cured
29:48
and it was, you know,
29:51
coming to the end of six years in the research world.
29:54
And I really felt that it was it was my turn and my time to be able to help my son
30:01
and, you know, to go forward.
30:03
And I was trying to use it to encourage
30:06
all of the parents, many of who lost their children,
30:10
you know, and, you know, I said, how can I what can I write to,
30:14
you know, kind of be uplifting and and, you know, let people hold on.
30:18
You know, we got to hold on and and it came out.
30:22
It's your time.
30:23
It can't be wrong.
30:24
You better learn to sing that song.
30:26
We've been hurt before.
30:28
We all have, you see, stung by stung by a stung before but still won, honey.
30:33
So and you know, it was kind of dedicated.
30:36
So at the end of the song, you'll see that so dedicated to all the parents of
30:40
children with orphaned diseases.
30:42
And then the plane goes over and puff and then the clouds are hope
30:46
and it was the cartoon was done by Salvatore Chantal who got the end
30:53
ports here.
30:54
Another Italian guy.
30:56
Anyway, to make a long story short, that's where it came from because I knew
31:00
the pain when they told me my son would make to be 14 years old.
31:04
And I knew that so many other people, you know, were having these pains.
31:10
And I just wanted to be their brother,
31:14
their their father, their son,
31:17
you know, I just wanted to say, come on, you know, just a little bit more.
31:20
Let's get in there and it's your time.
31:23
You know, we'll make it.
31:23
You'll make it
31:28
it's wonderful.
31:30
So we'll, we'll post links to to all the same.
31:34
But you say you have several books how do we find the books?
31:37
How do we find your music?
31:38
How do we find the company patch around?
31:41
AECOM has pretty much everything on it.
31:44
Of course, you know, just Google Patrick Grundy
31:47
and you'll find all of it on YouTube or whatever.
31:49
And, you know, that's it. I mean,
31:53
yes, I've been so lucky
31:55
and I'm lucky to run into people like you, Larry and Tom as well.
32:00
And, you know, it's just been so lucky.
32:03
Can I can I tell a little story please?
32:07
So I got a call one day
32:10
and from a family outside of Chicago and
32:15
they said, Mr.
32:15
Durante, I said, Please call me Patrick.
32:18
Can you come to our home?
32:21
Yes. Where do you live?
32:24
I drove
32:26
it was a husband. Wife
32:29
with three children, a boy.
32:33
And then two daughters that were twins.
32:37
And they said, Mr.
32:39
Durante, we've seen you on the Internet
32:42
and the work you do with the orphan diseases
32:46
our son was diagnosed
32:47
with a neurological disease,
32:51
and they said he's going to be gone by the time he's 14
32:54
and we saw that you basically
32:57
in the beginning had the same sort of prognosis.
33:01
Can you help us
33:03
of course I can help do whatever I can.
33:06
Trying to find medical centers that work on the research,
33:09
go through clinical trials, hook them up with researchers, et cetera.
33:13
And we became very good friends.
33:16
Well, after about a year, I got another call
33:19
to you.
33:20
Come again and talk to us. Of course, you
33:23
one of our twins was also
33:25
diagnosed with the disease.
33:29
I said, OK, all right.
33:31
And his family went on to be pillars in their community
33:39
and raised large sums of money
33:43
well,
33:45
in 2016, I got a call.
33:48
It was December.
33:49
I was in Chicago on my way home
33:53
and I knew that the son,
33:58
the first child diagnosed, had died in June of 2016.
34:03
And the
34:03
father called me and said, Pat, can you come to our house, please?
34:07
Yeah, of course.
34:08
I drove there.
34:11
The wife handed me
34:14
the gift
34:16
What is this?
34:17
Open it, open it, open it.
34:20
It was a an original Versace jacket.
34:24
Black shiny, beautiful.
34:27
You should pair
34:30
when you go home to Italy and you do your concerts.
34:32
Can you please sing
34:35
for our son?
34:36
Right.
34:37
Oh, my God.
34:39
Worship.
34:40
Of course I will.
34:42
And it never snows in southern Italy.
34:46
Or rarely
34:48
it did.
34:49
Snow.
34:51
And I knew an artist named Meghan Euchre.
34:55
I told her this story.
34:56
We didn't do the concerts,
34:58
and she said bring that jacket with you back to the United States.
35:01
And she made a sculpture of me in the jacket,
35:05
which I called the family up.
35:08
And I said, Look, here's this little token of me, this ugly
35:12
little Italian looking guy, you know?
35:14
And here it is. And
35:17
in about 2021,
35:20
the family, well, then 20, 20, they called me and asked me to sing
35:24
for the second daughter in 20, 2160 minutes,
35:29
did a big sector, you know, section on their family
35:32
and the good work that they've done for other people with the same problem.
35:36
And they called me up Pat did you see this KBS section or today
35:39
you know the 60 minute thing or I said no I didn't see it.
35:43
Oh you got to watch you watch it will.
35:44
Sure enough when the wife was speaking there
35:46
was that I'll give you a little attention that right there.
35:48
Did you see your statue.
35:49
Yeah I, but again there's not one of us
35:55
that doesn't past hardship and strife in our life.
35:59
But I learned so many much things, so many wonderful things
36:02
from these parents who many have time to see the lost
36:06
and how do you you can't even I mean, you can't even I
36:12
but again,
36:13
so my point is that I agree with you.
36:16
We're all good people.
36:17
Sometimes we do bad things and
36:21
you know, it's just a wonderful world, a wonderful life.
36:24
And we should just
36:27
it's your time.
36:29
You know, it's your time.
36:31
It is.
36:32
You know, we know about resilience.
36:35
I think that's part of what you're talking about.
36:37
And with every resilient child, there has been at least
36:40
one adult who's seen them as valuable.
36:43
And I think that's part of what we need more in the world.
36:46
We really do need to remind each other of our value
36:50
because then we can increase our own value.
36:53
You know, the I am coming to the end has to choose
36:56
because the four domains, the home, the social, biological
36:59
the icy interact, the small change can have a big effect.
37:03
You want to change everything.
37:05
And given what we're
37:06
talking about tonight, what small change can you recommend to our listeners?
37:10
I think that Whitney Houston
37:13
performed the worst song ever written,
37:16
and that song was the greatest song.
37:19
The Greatest Love of all is happening to you.
37:21
Learn to you, learn to love yourself.
37:24
It's the greatest love of all.
37:26
And Sykes might believe that the beginning of the end was Walt Disney World.
37:31
I think the beginning of the end was that song it's not about self-love
37:35
and stop following all of these people, you know, what's the punch phrase?
37:40
Oh, you got to love yourself and you got to love yourself.
37:42
I don't know how many men and women that I've talked to.
37:46
Oh, you got to love yourself.
37:47
And if you don't love yourself
37:49
and you're not happy, your kids aren't going to be happy.
37:51
And it's just another bullshit line for selfishness.
37:55
So my point is, my point is, is that forget about all that.
38:00
Love yourself.
38:02
Love others that you do it. Control No one.
38:05
Your influence, everyone. You've got 30 seconds.
38:07
You get to choose the kind of influence you want to be.
38:09
Patrick, what kind of influence do you want to be.
38:13
I always tell my kids, I know my die
38:16
there is all I want written on my tombstone is he was a nice guy.
38:21
No, that's all I want.
38:23
That's, that's it. I, I.
38:25
I think it's going to be there.
38:26
No question.
38:28
Thank you so much for being tonight, folks.
38:31
Check out the website.
38:32
We'll find all the links. Larry.
38:34
Thanks a lot, Fred and Sundance Blue Love.
38:38
As a designer, you.