Episode 673
Kathryn Schulz, Keanon Lowe, and John Craigie
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Kathryn Schulz (The New Yorker) unpacks her memoir Lost & Found, which weaves together the loss of her father with finding the love of her life; football coach and mentor Keanon Lowe recounts the day he intercepted a potential school shooter with a hug; and storyteller and singer-songwriter John Craigie explains having to sing around "naughty" words for public radio appearances, before performing "Laurie Rolled Me a J" from his album Mermaid Salt. Plus, host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello discuss the coolest (and most random) things found by our listeners.
Kathryn Schulz
Writer for The New Yorker
Kathryn Schulz is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. She won a National Magazine Award and a Pulitzer Prize for “The Really Big One,” her article about seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest. Her memoir, Lost & Found, which Andrew Solomon called “a masterpiece of metaphysical insight,” grew out of “Losing Streak,” a New Yorker story that was anthologized in The Best American Essays. Her work has also appeared in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, The Best American Travel Writing, and The Best American Food Writing.
Keanon Lowe
Football Coach, Mentor, and Writer
Keanon Lowe was a wide receiver for the Oregon Ducks and an NFL offensive analyst before he returned home to coach the football and track teams at Parkrose High School in Portland. Within two years, he led a football team with a 23-game losing streak to their first conference title in 53 years. But that’s not his best-known legacy at the school. On May 17, 2019, while working as a security guard, Lowe disarmed a student who’d come to school with a shotgun and a suicide note. Disney announced that they would be making a movie version of his heroic story, “The Keanon Lowe Project,” in 2020. Lowe is now the author, with Justin Spizman, of Hometown Victory: A Coach’s Story of Football, Fate, and Coming Home.
John Craigie
Singer-Songwriter
John Craigie has been called “the lovechild of John Prine and Mitch Hedberg” (The Stranger), and it’s true that he is as much a storyteller and a humorist as he is a singer-songwriter. Known for his easy Americana style and his clever, life-affirming wit, Craigie carries on the legacy of such clear-eyed troubadours as Woody Guthrie and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. A Portlander when he isn’t on the road, Craigie has toured with Jack Johnson and received fan mail from Chuck Norris. His two latest studio albums are called Mermaid Salt (2022) and Pagan Church (2024)—both available on streaming now.
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Luke Burbank: This episode of Live Wire was originally recorded in February of 2023. We hope you like it. Now let's get to the show.
Elena Passarello: From PRX, it's Live Wire! This week Writer Kathryn Schulz.
Kathryn Schulz: I think actually a lot of this book, although it is about losing and about finding and love and grief, is actually about how you kind of take the side of joy.
Elena Passarello: And football coach and author, Keanon Lowe.
Keanon Lowe: In losing my best friend, I ended up saving a young man's life inside a school by following my heart.
Elena Passarello: With music from John Craigie.
John Craigie: As a kid I was the funny guy so people who knew me as a kid they'll come to the show and they're like hey Not bad on the music, you know.
Elena Passarello: And our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now, the host of Live Wire Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone all over the country for tuning in. Of course, we ask Live Wire listeners a question each week. This week we asked, what's the coolest thing you've ever found? We're talking to the writer, Kathryn Schulz, about her really incredible book, Lost and Found. We're going to hear those listener responses coming up in just a few moments. First, though, we've got to kick things off with the best news we heard all week. This is our little reminder at the top of the show that there is some good news happening out there in the world. Elena, what is the best news that you've heard all week?
Elena Passarello: Well, I guess this is sort of in keeping with the Lost and Found theme because this story involves a loss of revenue.
Luke Burbank: Wow. All right. Way to make that work.
Elena Passarello: It's the best news because it's funny. A couple weeks ago, it was just this random Thursday night in Chesterfield Township, Michigan, and six-year-old Mason was winding down with his dad, Keith, at the end of the day, and Mason, every evening, gets 30 minutes on his dad's phone to play an educational app. And then, usually, because he's six, it's kind of a struggle to get Mason to go to bed, but... On this particular night, after 30 minutes, he handed the phone back and he was like, good night, and he ran upstairs and went to bed. And Keith, his dad, was like all right, and then the doorbell rang.
Luke Burbank: Oh my goodness.
Elena Passarello: And then he saw another pair of headlights in the driveway and the doorbell rang again and he finally went outside and there was close to a literal ton of Grubhub food. Waiting on the porch. We're talking a hundred pieces of jumbo shrimp. We are talking multiple chicken sandwiches, pizzas out the way, grape leaves galore from a bunch of different restaurants. Yeah, dolmas from a shawarma place. There was a Coney Island hot dog place, a pizza place.
Luke Burbank: Love the range for Mason. You know, a lot of six year olds are not going for the dolmas.
Elena Passarello: So you, you figured it out that it was Mason who did this.
Luke Burbank: I was able to, you know, just kind of jump maybe to the end of the story there. I don't mean to step on your ending.
Elena Passarello: Oh no. Once Keith figured it out, he stormed upstairs and there was Mason and he was in his bed and he says the covers were pulled up to his eyes and his dad started to talk to him about the fact that he had just charged $1,000 worth of Grubhub onto his dad's account and Mason held his hand out and said, hold on one second, dad, have the pepperoni pizzas come yet? Ha ha! But luckily, because Mason's mom, Keith's wife, has an at home bakery business, they have a bunch of fridges and freezers and ways of storing this food. They're also going to give some of the food away. And then when Grubhub found out about this little snafu, they gave the family a thousand dollars worth of GrubHub gift cards, which is really just enabling Mason to do this again, as far as I'm concerned.
Luke Burbank: Well, it was an educational app for Mason. He learned that he's not supposed to do that anymore.
Elena Passarello: That's correct, yes.
Luke Burbank: Uh, the best news that I saw this week, uh, involved the story of Flacco, the owl. Flaco is a Eurasian eagle owl. Now, you know all about birds, Elena. You also write for Audubon Magazine, so I'm not sure if you've been following the case of Flaco, but the bad news that happened was that the Central Park Zoo in New York had some vandalism go on where somebody cut basically like an enclosure open. And that happened to be where Flaco the Owl was living. And now Flaco's been at the Central Park Zoo since he was like under a year old. So pretty much everything Flaco knows about existing in the world has been in captivity. By the way, I have to say Flaco, like I live in Baltimore and we're talking about the quarterback, Joe Flacco.
Elena Passarello: Flaco. Oh, no, that's right. Good. I really have that coming through here. Come on, Baltimore.
Luke Burbank: So so Flaco has been like in Central Park living in the trees and they've been following Flaco, but they can't seem to catch him. He's fairly elusive. And the concern there is that Flaco doesn't really know how to survive in the wild because Flaco's never lived out there on his own. And and so he was just kind of like Flaco by the way, means like skinny in Spanish, and he was getting very close to achieving that. Goal his first couple of weeks in the wild because he didn't know how to hunt. And he was like flew up to a shopping mall somewhere in Manhattan. Firefighters tried to catch him. That was unsuccessful. But something really incredible recently happened, Elena. And as a bird enthusiast, you'll appreciate this. Flaco started vomiting the bones and fur of rats. Flaco has been apparently successfully hunting in Central Park.
Elena Passarello: So they can't catch him, but they can catch his pellets, his barfed up pellets.
Luke Burbank: And they've been analyzing what's coming out of Flaco and it appears that Flaco has figured out how to hunt the let's just say extremely large population of Central Park and because of this they have decided that Flaco is now just allowed to live in Central Park Flaco has figure it out how how to how to Hunt and how to keep feeding himself so the news this week from the zoo is We're gonna leave Flaco alone. We've basically released him into the wilds of Central Park, where by the way, I will actually be this week, so I'll be doing my traditional little jog in Central Park and I'm gonna keep an eye out for Flaco.
Elena Passarello: Are they going to change his name if he keeps feeding himself so well to Gordo?
Luke Burbank: We're all hoping that Flaco can get to gordo status out there and and learn those it's a win-win because it'll be reducing the rat Population in Central Park. So Flaco thriving in Central park is the best news that I heard this week. All right, let's welcome our first guest on over to the program. She's a staff writer for The New Yorker, where she won a Pulitzer Prize. Her work has also appeared in the best American travel writing, the best, American food writing as well. Her latest book is Lost and Found. It's a memoir. It talks about losing her father at about the same time that she was finding the love of her life. Here is our chat with Kathryn Schulz, recorded in front of a live audience at the Holt Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon. Kathryn, welcome to the show.
Kathryn Schulz: Thank you.
Luke Burbank: This book is, first of all, it is absolutely incredible. I can't say enough about it, and it has so many different elements to it. It's, in a way, sort of a two-parter. It talks about the loss of your father. It also talks about you finding the love of your life. It's sort of woven together at the end. I'm curious when you thought that this life experience is something that could make a good book.
Kathryn Schulz: It was the love, as it so often is. I had written a little bit about my father's death not long after I lost him. And I wrote about it in the context of losing all these other things, keys, cell phones, elections. It was a bad year. But yeah, I didn't really wanna spend two, three, four years of my life just thinking about grief. But there was this moment when I realized, ah, well there's this mirror image story I could tell. Would kind of explore the category of discovery, but that would have the emotional heart of a love story at the core of it. And that to me started seeming awfully interesting.
Luke Burbank: You also really go into a bit of a deep dive on just the science of losing things, starting with the fact that a lot of us don't really fully understand the origin of the word lost.
Kathryn Schulz: Yeah, I was quite surprised by that. When we say something like, I lost my father, I had just always assumed that that was, frankly, a euphemism, like saying, oh, my father passed or whatever. But it felt really right to me, and I don't normally like euphemisms, so I got kind of interested in the word. And it turned out I was completely wrong. Actually, originally, the very earliest use of loss, when it showed up in the English language, had that sense of being separated from someone you love or being bereft, in a sense. In fact... That that word lost is related to the lorn in forlorn. So it's always had this note of real grief and sorrow inside it.
Luke Burbank: Um, true that the average person loses nine items a day. That's in this book, and I was shocked by that.
Kathryn Schulz: It's quite shocking. Yes, according to like insurance companies and places that bother to gather information like this. I like to think that at least two members of my family have skewed the average so drastically in the direction of loss that the rest of us only lose like two or three things a day, but apparently it's true.
Luke Burbank: You write in this book about the sort of two theories as to why we lose things, and one is kind of scientific, and the other is, I guess you would say, Freudian in some way. What are the theories on that?
Kathryn Schulz: Yeah, I mean, the short version is I think they're both kind of unsatisfying. But the scientific one is, you know, our minds are fallible, as you might imagine. And we fail to either encode a memory of where we left something, or we encode it just fine, and we fail the retrieve the memory. And so lo and behold, like, who knows where my cell phone is? The psychological one is actually, frankly, much more interesting. But I'm personally inclined to think it's bunk. That's the theory that you only lose something that you just want out of your life.
Luke Burbank: That's the Freudian idea, right?
Kathryn Schulz: That's the Freudian idea like I lost my cell phone because I'm tormented by modern technology and I or I had there's some text Message in it. I can't bear to read and so, you know, it goes missing and the minute I resolve my deep emotional issues about cell phones It will be materialized in my life. That's happened for me. Never
Luke Burbank: Ha! This is Live Wire from PRX. We are talking to writer Kathryn Schulz about her latest book, Lost and Found. When we come back, we're gonna find out how Kathryn managed having a deadline for a Pulitzer Prize winning article for The New Yorker and also going on a first date with her future wife. This all happened on the same day. We're gonna hear about it coming up on Live Wire. Welcome back to Live Wire, coming to you this week from the Holt Center here in Eugene, Oregon. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We are talking with New Yorker writer Kathryn Schulz about her latest book, Lost and Found. This book focuses the first part of the book on your father, who was just an absolutely brilliant man, but also hopeless with losing things, with just whatever it would be, keys, passports, you name it. Is there anything to that idea of the kind of absent-minded genius or that our brains are only capable of being good at like knowing about the law or baseball in his case, but not remembering where our stuff is?
Kathryn Schulz: Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm always reluctant to give too much credence to stereotypes, but it is incredible the degree to which my father, despite not actually being a professor, was truly an absent-minded professor. And I did sometimes feel like, well, you know, what's rattling around in your brain? You know, seven languages that you're fluent in all of, you spoke English more beautifully than I ever could hope to, and that was his last language. You know, write all of his kind of legal studies. He was a lawyer. The entire works of, you know the Western canon basically. And I thought maybe there's just not room to remember where your other shoe is. It could have.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. Your dad's story is really incredible. He was born in Tel Aviv. Then you write in the book, and I had to reread this a couple times because I wanted to make sure I was getting it right. You write, in one of the more unlikely trajectories in the history of modern Judaism, they left what was about to be the state of Israel and moved to, wait for it, Holtz Center, Germany.
Kathryn Schulz: I mean, for history buffs out there in February of 1948.
Luke Burbank: I had no idea that that was, however microscopic, that that was a migration that was happening.
Kathryn Schulz: It's quite unusual. I mean, there were certainly still Jews in Germany, some who had survived. And then as it turns out, there was quite a lot of refugee camps in Germany. So some people went just to try to reunite with families there, but no, no, not my family. They weren't trying to reunite. My grandfather was frankly trying to make a buck, which in fairness, they were desperately poor. And he had three children by then and wanted to feed them. And he heard, as it turned out correctly, that it was possible to make a pretty decent living on the black market in post-war Germany. So some of my father's earliest memories are, you know, like of being in his dad's sidecar on his motorcycle, basically like being a decoy. He was sitting there, this very cute little round-cheeked adorable boy on top of a stack of like American cigarettes and like a camera. That's what brought them to Germany.
Luke Burbank: One of the things that comes through in this book is your dad's incredibly kind of turbulent personality and how he just kind of lit up every room he was in. And considering the trauma of his childhood, have you sort of tried to figure out how it is that he as a person was able to, you know, push past that or push it far enough into the rear view mirror that he could live, you know the life that you saw him living?
Kathryn Schulz: I certainly have thought about it a lot. And in some ways, I think it's actually kind of the, it's very close to the heart of this book in the sense that I think actually a lot of this book, although it is about losing and about finding and love and grief, is actually about how you kind of take the side of joy, even in the face of pain and suffering. And the thing I admired about my dad, it's not like he just was sort of glib and a Pollyanna optimist. He just... He somehow managed to have this, as you say, a brilliant joyful spirit while still looking squarely in the face that the various woes of the world. How he was like that is a real mystery. I mean, that's kind of the mystery, right? Like how, why are we the way we are? Why are some people able to find joy in those moments? And I write toward that, but if I had an answer, they'd be paying me more money to be in a much larger auditorium. Listen.
Luke Burbank: Next year, we're getting over to the real the biggie. Yeah, I promise. That's our that's our goal. Um, the We're talking to Kathryn Schulz about her book lost and found the found part of this book is you finding your now wife A couple things about that one you describe your first date with her that some mutual friends had set you up And she was passing through where you were living and I think the Hudson Valley and you go out and you have this spectacular Afternoon together and you're completely bewitched And then at the end, you say that you were surprised that she wanted to go on another date because you didn't realize or know if she was gay. What did you think was going on on this date?
Kathryn Schulz: I'm really impressed you're the first person to ask me that question. I know, what was I thinking, right? Like weird, rare, crucial failure of my gaydar. What did I think was going on? I think maybe there was not sufficient introspection on my part in that moment. I mean, I knew what was happening in my head, which was like, this woman is unbelievably brilliant and incredibly interesting and also strikingly beautiful and... Gosh, that shirt looks nice on her and what pretty long fingers. So it's not that I wasn't having a series of thoughts, but I don't know, I mean, it's so funny since you've already blown my cover as the author of the earthquake piece. The truth is I was on deadline for that piece during that lunch.
Luke Burbank: Oh, the, the...
Kathryn Schulz: In fact revealed live for the first time
Luke Burbank: Wow, the now famous in the Northwest earthquake piece.
Elena Passarello: You were on deadline for that piece when you met the love of your life?
Kathryn Schulz: I was actually like two weeks behind deadline. So in my mind when I went off to that lunch, you know, I didn't know we're from Adam. And it wasn't meant to be a set up actually. It was just here's this friend of a friend driving through town. I'll be nice. I'll go have lunch. But when I set off for that lunch I was like 45 minutes tops, you know, yes, I got to eat something but so fine. I'll meet the stranger. And then of course four hours later there we still are. But it's safe to say I was not, you know, it's not on my game that day.
Luke Burbank: There were two seismic stories unfolding in your life at that time. Can I get a rim shot? No, okay, I don't deserve one for that. The way that you write about your wife is like it gives like Neruda a run for his money. Like it is really just one of the most beautiful descriptions of two people falling in love and how much a person can love another person and the reasons why they can love that person. I mean, it's just really gorgeous. I'm curious though what it was like for you to write that about the person you are currently in a relationship with and for her to read it later because this is a, you know, a hit book. And it's very personal, the stuff you're talking about. And like, had you told her all of that stuff before you wrote it? Like, I like this about you. And that one time I saw you in the sunlight doing this. Like, what was the impact on her of reading this?
Kathryn Schulz: Well, you know, I must say she is a very patient person. You know, the truth is there was no indication when we met, or frankly, when we married, that I was going to go off and write a memoir. It's not really my thing. I give you seismology. That's kind of my thing, but then I went and wrote it. And for me, it was completely delightful, to tell you the truth. Nothing turns out to be more fun to write than a love story, and you know I would. Every day I would sit and work on whatever section I was working on of that love part of the book, and then at night I would take it up to bed and read it to her like a bedtime story. And it was delightful, honestly. And to her great credit, she edited me the way she always edited me, which is to say, that's going on too long, but she never once said, could you please just not?
Luke Burbank: Would you ever have like a not great day, maybe, you know, a disagreement about something and you'd be thinking, I gotta rewrite some of this stuff.
Kathryn Schulz: I have to say I haven't had any second thoughts about the love section and I hope never to do so.
Luke Burbank: One thing that I'm a bit curious about is that you only used your wife's first initial for the book, C. I'm curious why you made that decision.
Kathryn Schulz: Well, certainly not to keep a secret. My wife is the amazing Casey Sepp who was on this very show some years ago.
Luke Burbank: Who wrote Furious Hours, the incredible book about Harper Lee. Yes, that's right, that C in this book is Casey Sepp, but I'm curious why you chose to be a little bit, you know, nonspecific.
Kathryn Schulz: You know, the truth is part of why I shouted out my wife's patience is, she actually is a more private person than I am. And I think it was, she did sort of raise her eyebrows when I embarked on this project, but raised them quite privately. And I felt when I sat down... The truth is, when I very first tried to do it, I actually, the first scene I wrote, there was no name at all, there were just pronouns. And then it turns out to be grammatically completely unsustainable to do that for more than like six paragraphs. So I gave up on that, but I somehow felt like, well, you know, it felt right in the way some choices sometimes do in writing, like, okay, you can have this much of her, and it's true, and it it's honest, and she would sign off on it as well, but there's all the rest too, and she gets to keep that, and I get to keep, and her family gets to keeps that. So it was a little tiny nod to, you know memoirs to some extent are always acts of withholding as much as they're acts of divulging, on her behalf, and mine withheld a little bit.
Luke Burbank: It seems like a big theme of this book is that the loss that we feel, like particularly when we lose people, is because we found them, you know? And that that's the kind of essential tension of life is that feeling you can really only feel the loss of somebody who you found and who made the impact that your father made in your life. Where do you sort of land on that towards the end of the book? What are you hoping to kind of say about that?
Kathryn Schulz: I suppose that it's worth it. I think that we cannot ward off all loss. Some of them are just baked into the terms of our existence. And frankly, the hardest ones are baked into the turns of our existence. I hate to break it to you here on this lovely and actually mostly comic and lighthearted night, but you guys are, you're gonna lose it all. No, you are gonna lose your loved ones, you're, you know, you yourselves are gonna die. And I guess for me, I do feel that there's something useful about that knowledge, which is that the fact that we're going to lose everything does, I think, remind us of how precious it is and remind us to cherish it while we have it and to tend to it and pay attention to it. These are all actually very cliched lessons, but somehow they're impossible to retain. So I became the 450 billionth writer to try to write about them.
Luke Burbank: But, in a really incredible way in this book, I can't recommend it highly enough, it's lost and found. Kathryn Schulz, everyone. That was Kathryn Schulz right here on Live Wire. We recorded that at the Holt Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon. Kathryn's latest book, Lost and Found, is available now. Live Wire is brought to you by Powell's Books, a Portland institution since 1971. Powells offers a selection of new and used books in stores and online at powells.com. This is Live Wire. Of course, each week we ask our listeners a question based on Kathryn Schulz's book, Lost and Found. We ask the listeners, what is the coolest thing you've ever found? Elena has been collecting up those responses. What do you see?
Elena Passarello: I love this one from Tina. Tina says, when I was at the thrift store, I found a sweater that I had given away years ago. It wasn't a common sweater at the time, and it had a hole in the exact spot my old sweater did. I gave the sweater away in Wisconsin, but found it at a thrift stores in Chicago. Which, I mean, they're not too far away from each other, depending on where in Wisconsin you're talking about. So I think that's plausible. That's amazing.
Luke Burbank: Wow now does the listener mention if they then bought the sweater
Elena Passarello: No. Oh, wasn't that?
Luke Burbank: Like, did it boomerang back into their life, or did they just kind of wave at it in the secondhand store? Like, hello, fellow traveler. Good to see you again. We'll check in in about 15 years. What's something else cool that somebody found?
Elena Passarello: I like this one from Eric, my great aunt ran off with the tall man in the circus and among my family's mementos, I found a charm bracelet that he gave her from the World's Fair.
Luke Burbank: Oh, my gosh, like the tall man meaning the guy on the stilts?
Elena Passarello: I'm assuming, yeah. You know, the thing that makes me think about is no one ever just, you know, walks at a regular pace with someone from the circus. One always must run off.
Luke Burbank: Absolutely. It's the only the only speed that you can join the circus at nobody strolls off with the circus or saunters off with The circus. Yeah, what's something else cool that one of our listeners found?
Elena Passarello: Short and sweet from Angela. Angela found quote 20 bucks at a park at night when I was really broke.
Luke Burbank: Oh, yeah, that'll get you out of a couple of jams. And also that feels like the kind of thing where 20 bucks is an amount of money that I think you can keep and not be too worried that it's been totally and completely devastating to someone like you find a bag full of money or if you find an envelope. Yeah, it's got you know, maybe it says Bailey savings and loan on it. That's got a bunch of Christmas time Scrooge McDuck dollar signs. All right, one more cool thing that one of our listeners found before we move on.
Elena Passarello: Oh, this is this is great from Heather. Heather says my girls and I were out dog walking and we came across two bikes that were Exactly their sizes and they were practically new and they were leaning against a tree with a free sign on them. We've been on the hunt for used bikes because they'd both outgrown theirs
Luke Burbank: That is serendipity. I'm so glad, by the way, that we got the detail about a sign that said free, because otherwise, Heather is just describing.
Elena Passarello: Theft.
Luke Burbank: We found these two bikes that were perfect, they were just in someone's garage, but the door was open and we wheeled them right out of there. Hey, thanks to everyone who sent in a response to our question. We got a question for next week's show, which we will reveal in just a few minutes. In the meantime, just a reminder, this is Live Wire Radio. We've got a very interesting interview that we want to play next. It's with Keanon Lowe. Now Keanon Lowes' story is that he was a big college football star at the University of Oregon. And he eventually ended up coaching in Oregon at Parkrose High in Portland, coaching the football team when something very intense and very dangerous happened. It was May 17th, 2019. Keanon writes about this in his book. It's called Hometown Victory. And before we get started, just to note that this conversation does mention suicidal ideation and also gun violence, so please listen with care. This is Keanon Lowe recorded in front of a live audience at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland Oregon. Hello, Keanon. [Keanon: Hello.] Welcome to the show. Now, you were a star athlete, so you probably did a lot of interviews. What is it like doing book interviews versus I caught a touchdown in the Orange Bowl interviews?
Keanon Lowe: Yeah, usually when you do an athletic interview, it's about the game that just got played, and no game is the same. But at this point, I've done the same interview about 18 times in the last two days, so.
Luke Burbank: Do you want to put some pads and like eye black on just so it gets you back in that comfortable space?
Keanon Lowe: Those days are gone, man. Those days are gone for me, so I'm excited to be an author now.
Luke Burbank: Yeah. Well congratulations, the book is a really good read. And the book is a great read, and of course the crux of it is this incident that happened at Parkrose, which we'll talk about, but really the book also goes through your life and experiences, and well, for instance, the thing that brought you from working for the San Francisco 49ers, you're like on, you know, a track to maybe someday be an NFL head coach or something, and then something happened that ultimately led you to come back to the Portland area. What happened?
Keanon Lowe: Yeah, I was on a good path. Fresh out of college, I got a job in the NFL, worked for the Philadelphia Eagles, and then worked for San Francisco 49ers. So I was fresh out of the college on a nice career path, and then I get a call from home, and it's one of my friends, and he tells me our best friend, Taylor Martinick, passed away of an opioid overdose, and Fentanyl ended up taking his life. So in that process, life happened fast. And I came home to mourn and be with my friends and family. And then when I was home, everything started to make a little bit more sense being around the people I loved. The career and the money and that path that I was on didn't really matter so much because I just lost my best friend. So I came and I decided I was gonna move home to continue to search for whatever I was missing for. And in that process, I found a school that was on a 0-23 game losing streak that hadn't won a game in three years at Parkrose High School. A bunch of tough kids in a tough part of town. And they were a school, a team without a coach, and I was a coach without a team. So it kind of worked out that way. And I was blessed to find them and make an impact there.
Luke Burbank: How do you how do you turn a team around that has lost that many games in a row where a lot of the kids Hadn't played football before and then you ultimately like in two seasons, right got them to their first ever Playoff win at the state level. How do actually get these kids to perform and don't say give it 110% cuz that. Save that for the sports interview. [Keanon: That is a good recipe though.] No, but I mean, I just don't understand how you teach kids how you coach kids up and get them like running, catching, throwing that much better in two seasons. How did you do that?
Keanon Lowe: I think it comes down to trust and just me being the adult in the situation, the coach and the mentor to those young men in that program and I showed them that I was willing to commit to them and fight their fights with them, that I'm willing to show up day in and day out with them before I ever asked anything of them and then once I started to show them that was there for them and willing to fight with them they decided to trust me, and once they started trusting me... And I started sharing some of my story of why I came back home, stories about my friends and stories about me playing football and those things. That trust continued to build. And once you have trust, especially with a young person, once you trust with them, then they'll do anything for you. They'll run through a wall for you, and as a coach, I tried to commit as much as I could to them, and they returned that favor.
Luke Burbank: Now, you were the football coach, you were also the track coach, and then you were one of the security guards at Parkrose, which you write in the book was, to some degree, just because you liked being kind of at ground level with a lot of those students, seeing them in the halls, both your players and just other students at the school. I'm curious, what is a regular day like as a security guard at a public high school? What are the calls you get called out on typically?
Keanon Lowe: Every day was different, I'll say that. Some of the calls were calls to break up fights and escort kids to A and B places. It was a job that was a very thankless job, but once I started to really do it and once I start to live it and be with those kids day in and day out from seven a.m. to four p.m., I really started to see what they go through on a daily basis and I really start to see the struggle some of those kids were really fighting every single day.
Luke Burbank: Well, and that obviously became extremely relevant on this day in May, back in 2019. They asked that you would go to a classroom and escort a kid out of the classroom. Did you know why you were gonna be taking this kid somewhere else?
Keanon Lowe: No, unfortunately, I didn't know. But like I said, that was just kind of the job. It was security, can you please go do this job for us real quick and bring the student here? And that was pretty much all I knew. So it was pretty surreal when I got there.
Luke Burbank: Because you get to the class, and he's actually not in the classroom, this particular student, and you're asking around, is this guy here, and they say no, and then you turn around and he comes into the classroom and basically pulls a shotgun out. What goes through your mind?
Keanon Lowe: Yeah, I'm in the classroom for about probably 30 seconds asking where the kid is and 30 seconds later, I'm probably four feet from the door, just on the inside of it and that door opens up and there's a young man with a big coat and he pulls out a shotgun right in the doorway, probably about four or five feet away from me. So it was like a movie. Everything seemed to go slow motion and I was able to think very clearly for whatever reason. And I was able to analyze it really quick and see the look in his eyes first and foremost. And I could tell it was a young man that needed help, a young men going through a mental health crisis. And kids are obviously screaming and it was really scary situation. But for whatever reason, my instincts told me to stay calm, my instinct told me to go lunch for the gun. And once I grabbed the gun, we kind of wrestled around the classroom and spilled into the hallway. And that's kind of where that viral video starts there where I'm able to take the gun from them. And hand it off to a teacher. And then ultimately, I decided to give him a hug.
Luke Burbank: When you were grappling with that gun, I mean, I think it's important to clarify that this student was attempting to harm themselves, and they pointed the gun at themselves. And something I didn't realize until I read this book that was remarkable was they pulled the trigger and it clicked.
Keanon Lowe: Yeah, it was a scary situation.
Luke Burbank: But what are the chances of that shotgun jamming in that particular
Keanon Lowe: You know, one in a million, you know, there was some divine intervention, I would like to think. Yeah, and when you look at just the whole story in itself, and even just my whole journey, I, you know, what are the chances I'm in that exact spot at that exact moment for that kid going through a mental health crisis that decided to do that on that exact day. And then the only reason I ultimately how I ended up at that school is because I lost my best friend. You know I so I lost in losing my best friends and him losing his life. I ended up saving a young man's life inside a school. By following my heart. So it was really special and it was really exciting to put that into words. Yeah.
Elena Passarello: I heard this story, you know, three years ago, and I was so excited when I learned that you had written a book. And it just makes me so curious, having told the story on TV and for people and for reporters for so many years, how did you feel about the opportunity to put it into words and how did approach it? Because it must be so codified by the time you get this book opportunity.
Keanon Lowe: Yeah, it was really cool to figure out that structure and be creative in that way. And that moment, a lot of people have seen that, and I've gotten thousands of messages through the last few years saying thank you and whatnot, because they've seen that video. But I like to think that there's a whole bunch more that led up to that video, you know? And that was exciting to be able to put that into words, whether it was stuff I've learned when I was a kid, growing up with an awesome single mother who's here tonight. Hey, shout out! And learning from awesome coaches that I played for and got to coach under in the NFL and then the experiences I had with with my best friend and and you know I've just been through so much in life. You know I had kids that were that were homeless that I coached at Parkrose. I had kids that had anger issues that went to went to bed hungry at that school and and so so my story and the story of what happened in that hallway is just it's so much more that led up to moment. All that led up to my instincts telling me to just take care of this young man, hug this young man, and tell him that you care about him. And you know what, when you tell someone you care about him, you don't know how far that can go for that person, whether you know him or not.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, totally.
Luke Burbank: What is it like for you? Have this probably be maybe the defining kind of moment of your life because you've been talking about how this was a journey for you of becoming Keanon Lowe who could be in that moment present enough to do this thing but that isn't your whole life that this is this was two minutes of your live that is now the thing that a lot of people know you for what's that like for you to have a quick moment be what you are known for.
Keanon Lowe: Yeah, it's pretty cool, but before that I was known for being a good football player at Jesuit High School and then I was known for being good football players at the University of Oregon. Then I was known for a young coach, so it just changes. This journey of life is, you only got one of them, and for my life I've decided to do good things for people that, whether I know them or not, I'm going to continue to treat people kindly. And I figured out in my life, the nicer I am to people and the... The more kind I am to people, all of a sudden, people are really nice to me, too, and it feels good. So, it's a pretty simple recipe that I think everyone can solve that, you know?
Elena Passarello: Wow.
Luke Burbank: It's uh... It's been a real honor getting to talk to you Keanon and thanks again for all you've done Keanon. That was Keanon Lowe, recorded in front of a live crowd at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon. Keanon's book, Hometown Victory, A Coach's Story of Football, Fate, and Coming Home is available now. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We've gotta take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. When we come back, we're gonna hear a chat and also hear some music from musician John Craigie. And we'll find out what bad word he is allowed to say on public radio. I don't know what that is. I guess we're all gonna find out together in a minute here on Live Wire. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. Excited to play a round of station location identification with you this week, although this one is a little bit, let's just say boutique. I want to manage everyone's expectation of this, including yours.
Elena Passarello: Okay, okay
Luke Burbank: You take this very seriously. [Elena: I do.] I quiz Elena about a place that Live Wire is on the radio. She's got to guess where I'm talking about. I mean, your success rate with this is incredible. Again, this one is a beautiful, but maybe slightly out of the way place where we're on the radios. That's a hint in itself. Well, it was a home to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist William Alan White. His house was called Red Rocks and its historical landmark there. People who visited that house include Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge. Hmm. How about this? This city is home of the National Teachers Hall of Fame, a museum dedicated to honoring exceptional career teachers and the heritage of the teaching profession. [Elena: Is it Des Moines, Iowa?] Oh, you are in the right part of the world. Maybe head more to Jayhawk territory.
Elena Passarello: Oh, is it Topeka, Kansas?
Luke Burbank: It is in Kansas and it's a town which their name has always made me think that they must sell a lot of stuff. Like it sounds like a store. [Elena: Walmart, Kansas.] Emporia, Kansas! This where we are broadcasting on KANH, Kansas Public Radio, they're in Emporia, Kansas. Sometimes checking your email, let's be honest, can be a little stressful, but we want to change that over here at Live Wire. We want to make checking your email more joyful with our weekly newsletter, which is only good news. That's all we do over here at the Live Wire newsletter. We got sneak peeks and deep dives on upcoming events, details on where you can join us live, new episode drops, and even more than that. Getting this drop of joy, it's super easy too. You head over to livewireradio.org, and you click. Keep in touch, it takes like 30 seconds, 25 if you're speedy. So help us help you have a little more fun in your inbox with the latest from the Live Wire newsletter. This is Live Wire. All right, before we get to our musical guest, a little preview of next week's show. Writer Gabe Henry will swing by to talk about the strange history of something called simplified spelling, which he writes about in his new book, Enough is Enuf, E-N-U-F, our failed attempts to make English easier to spell. Then we're gonna get a reading from William Nuʻutupu Giles. He's a Samoan writer and poet from Honolulu. Uh, who joined us for a special Live Wire event in Seattle at the Hotel Crocodile, plus we're going to have some music from Texas soul funk ensemble. Sir Woman. So make sure you tune in for next week's show. All right. Our musical guest this week has been called the love child of John Prine and Mitch Hedberg. Those are two quality individuals. He's played with Jack Johnson. He's gotten fan mail from Chuck Norris. Uh, he describes his style as humorous stories mixed with serious folk. His latest studio album, Mermaid Salt, which is really good. Really enjoyed this record. It's out now. Take a listen to this. It's some chatting and some music. From John Craigie, recorded in front of a live audience at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon. Hi, John. Welcome back to Live Wire.
John Craigie: Thank you. It's good to be here.
Luke Burbank: I love this new album. It is just a really great listen and it struck me that you really are a really talented musician and I think there could be a potential for a little bit of that to be lost because you're also a really funny storyteller, very folksy but it's not like you're a guy telling a story and you just kind of are like dinking around on the guitar. Like there's a real musicality to what you do. Do you feel like every once in a while you want to reaffirm that with folks?
John Craigie: I think that just is coming slower, you know, I think as a kid I was the funny guy, so people who knew me as a kids, they'll come to the show and they're like, hey, not bad on the music, you
Luke Burbank: You didn't even have to look at the guitar when you were playing it, you just know all those chords.
John Craigie: That's been a slower grow for me, you know. I think with, I'm still learning a lot with music. So I like those kinds of compliments because I feel that way with each album. I feel like I learned a new chord or something and.
Luke Burbank: So you're going back out on tour, and you're gonna play the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville with Mary Chape and Carpenter? Holy! That's pretty cool, right? Is that like on your list of places that you know, you might dream to play someday?
John Craigie: Yeah, I think it's the only thing on the, that's not a list I keep, you know? My goals are usually more like more obscure, but I think if I had a venue dream list, it would just be that one. So I'm excited to, I gotta pick a new one now, you know, after that.
Luke Burbank: What song are we gonna hear?
John Craigie: I wanna do this song, it's called Laurie Rolled Me a J. Thank you. I got an email this morning from my manager Phil, and he said, Live Wire had some thoughts on the song you were gonna play. And I said, oh cool, and he says, they're worried about the lyrics. Then he sent me the quote, and the quote was, hey Phil, the drug stuff is great. That made me happy.
John Craigie: But he says a few bad words in the song, so could he not. And I said, no problem. I know how radio is. I've done this before, not just this, but other things. Sometimes they catch me off guard, which is hard. One time I was at this show, I was about to get on stage, and the guy was like, "John, listen, this is gonna be broadcast on the radio, so could you not say any bad words?"
John Craigie: And I was like, oh man, I wanted to. And he said, which ones? And I said, most of them. So he thought for a second and he was like, you know what, I'll give you ass. And I was like, excuse me. He said, the word, I'll give it to you, because he said, ass is in the Bible. I said, I don't think I use it in the biblical way. He said, but you want more than ass, right? And I said, yeah. So he said, well, here's what we could do. He's like, do you have like a song where all your bad words are in one song? Because you could play that first and then we'll just start recording afterwards. And I was like, no.
John Craigie: I feel like that would be way more disturbing. Like if you came to my show, my first song was just blankety blank blank blank. And then I never cussed again. Alright, cool. Let's do this song now. This is because I love, I respect radio, I love Live Wire. We're doing the Live Wire version.
Luke Burbank: This is John Craigie here on Live Wire.
John Craigie: [John Craigie performs "Laurie Rolled Me a J"]
Luke Burbank: That was John Craigie right here on Live Wire. His latest album, Mermaid Salt, is available now. That's going to do it for this week's episode of Live Wire. A huge thanks to our guests, Kathryn Schulz, Keanon Lowe, and John Craigie. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines. This episode is dedicated to the memory of our former Live Wire performer and our friend, Andrew Harris.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michele is our Executive Director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our assistant editor is Trey Hester. Our marketing manager is Paige Thomas. Our production fellow is Tanvi Kumar. And Yasmin Median is our intern. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Ayal Alvez, and A Walker Spring, who also composes our music. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer, and our house sound is by D.Neil Blake.
Luke Burbank: Additional funding provided by the Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency funded by the state of Oregon and the National Endowment for the Arts. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week, we'd like to thank members Judy Clark of Portland, Oregon, and Tim Fredrickson of Spokane, Washington. For more information about the show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to livewireradio.org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Pasaarello and the whole Live Wire crew. Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.
PRX.
