“Can I Be Your Surrogate Grandpa?” — Dick & Van on the UVA Storytelling Night

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Well, top of the morning to you all.

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This is Nick Foth of Stories from the Road.

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And here we are in September, early in September.

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And we have a fun thing that we're doing.

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I have as my guest this morning, my favorite number one son-in-law.

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I only have number one.

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And it's Van Clements from Eugene, Oregon.

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Hello, Van.

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How are you?

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Hey, Pop.

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How's it going?

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It's going well.

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Is it raining in Eugene this morning?

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No, it's absolutely gorgeous.

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Are there fires in Eugene this morning?

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No, we're clear.

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Okay, we're good on both counts.

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So on the 1st of October, hopefully around the 1st of October, we are going to be releasing our newest audio book called Stories of Faith and Friendship.

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And it'll be released on Spotify and other audio platforms.

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And it has kind of a long history to it, I think.

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It was one that we recorded a couple of years ago, actually, in October of 2024 at the University of Virginia.

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But before we get into the particulars on that, just talk to me because we've been compadres in this.

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We've been...

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partners in crime or goodness or whatever it is you want to call it for the last few years.

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Tell our listeners about where the idea of audiobooks came from, how it started.

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Let's just do that for a few moments.

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Well, it was more about the live storytelling piece for you.

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And that's just kind of been the sort of sweet spot of your life.

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whether you're preaching or communicating with people at a large event, that somehow storytelling is who you are.

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And so we had a family, I think it was a Zoom call, and you were talking about possibly writing another book, and you've had good success with that.

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And I just had the thought that you should record you telling stories.

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What if we did like what a comedian does for an hour where he just...

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links things together over time.

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What if you did that with your stories?

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And I thought that would be pretty good.

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And so that kind of launched into how would we then produce it?

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And we decided, why don't we do an audio book?

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We had ran across a book by Malcolm Gladwell,

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where he had just, it was just an audio book.

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It wasn't a written book.

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And that gave us the idea for it.

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And then another book by someone who did it, was it Malcolm Gladwell who did it on Paul Simon?

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Yeah.

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So Malcolm Gladwell did his book, Bomber Mafia, which was about the time between the First and Second World Wars, and then Paul Simon did his.

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And a lot of on-site, kind of raw audio didn't have to be clean.

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It just had to be meaningful and authentic.

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Yeah, I think that was the context.

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That was the spark and said, why don't we do

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live tellings, record it, and then we thought, what if we added, you know, thinking back to your early days in Urbana when you did the radio program, Wake Up and Live, you loved bringing in other nuances or little stories or tidbits.

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And that's how you tell stories when you're sitting around the table.

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You'll tell a story and then it usually launches off into four or five other ones.

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And so the idea was, why don't we capture that in an evening of storytelling?

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And then when we get to the audio book portion, we can just have you

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go in the studio and tell some of that tidbit, set some things up, which we've done in this new book, and it's quite lovely.

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Well, it's interesting.

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When you look at the scriptures, of course, I think about something over 40% is narrative.

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It is the grand story.

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And you got a lot of songs.

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And if you're reading the Psalms, I would call them country Eastern songs, not country Western, but there's a story to be told in that.

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So story for which we're built is literally.

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quite literally in our DNA.

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Just as a little context for our listeners, I like this part where in Matthew's gospel, the 13th chapter,

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There's this thing said about Jesus using an illustration.

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The kingdom of heaven is like the yeast a woman used in making bread.

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Even though she put only a little yeast in three measures of flour, it permeated every part of the dough.

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And then this line.

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This is verse 34.

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Jesus always used stories.

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and illustrations like these when speaking to the crowds.

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In fact, he never spoke to them without using such parables.

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This fulfilled what God had spoken through the prophet.

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I will speak to you in parables and stories.

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I will explain things hidden since the creation of the world.

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We as human beings have this great capacity for remembering

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stories and being fascinated.

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People ask me every now and again, you tell stories, why do you do that?

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I say, well, I like stories.

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I like to hear them.

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I like to read them, so forth.

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So that evening, we were invited to the University of Virginia by my friend of almost 30 years or more now, Pete Bulette, who has been at the University of Virginia leading a group called Chi Alpha, which is a student organization, faith-based student organization.

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And they and their team a few times a year have access to a central performance center called Old Kabul Hall.

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and UVA is set up on this long lawn, if you will, back in Thomas Jefferson's day.

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And old cobble has been sight for many speakers, political, you know, Elizabeth Taylor to Queen Elizabeth, you know, Frank Sinatra to whomever.

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And, but that night it was just Pete Bulette and me, and an audience of young people, somewhere over 300, who are part of Chi Alpha, one of the larger student organizations on campus.

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and their reach.

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And we've done this, we did this before with a group of Chi Alpha folks from Colorado State here in Fort Collins.

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This was a bit larger group than that, but the same thing when you have young people in play trying to answer big questions in their lives, sometimes you get a group, a community,

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that's faith-based that just invites folks in.

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And that's, that's what it, it was.

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And I was, I have to admit, I was, I was just both overwhelmed and pleased at the, at the number of young people that showed up that evening, but it has, it has quite a reach.

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So, so you were there, Richard, who's helping produce this, this podcast, he was there and the, the Chi Alpha team were so tremendous in helping set everything up and,

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all of that.

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But for me, every evening like this was unique.

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Sometimes I say that's a, this person is unique, but some are uniever than others.

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I think maybe it was the context of this place is the brainchild of Thomas Jefferson, or, you know, you're an hour and a half, couple hours from Washington, DC, all of that stuff going on.

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Well, how did you, what, what,

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What did you feel or think as you participated in that evening?

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What struck you?

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I do think that the place was historic.

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I mean, I'd never been to UVA before.

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And so for that reason, it was great.

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The room was very cool.

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And the students were very...

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alive and interested, and they showed up with interest.

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And not unlike the time at Fort Collins for that book, the students leaned in, and I was amazed by that.

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I remember one of the salient moments for me was standing in the back as we got started,

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Pete introduced you in the opening line that's in the book is that, can I be your surrogate grandfather for the next hour?

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And people kind of chuckled a little bit and I just watched them for that next hour, just lean in and they laughed freely.

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Like they were open to you.

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This older gentleman, some of them may have met you, many had not.

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And they just leaned in and they, for some reason, you had access to their minds and their hearts and their funny bone.

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I mean, they laughed and enjoyed.

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And that was pretty amazing to watch, just see that overview of those students sitting in that well.

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Pretty cool.

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A really enjoyable moment for me was...

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In the middle, I had told the story about Ruth's collapse, my wife's collapse, up here in Estes Park 13 years ago, and at that point, 11 years before.

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And they didn't know if she was going to survive the night or she was in a coma, but they didn't know it was a heart thing.

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They didn't know if she would ever wake up, and in the middle of the night, a doctor walked in, a cardiac surgeon, not ours, walked in, and...

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chatted with me a moment and then asked if he could pray for Ruth.

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And I'd never really had that happen in that context ever.

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I said, absolutely.

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And he put his hand on her and he just prayed, Lord God almighty, I pray you raise Ruth up and so forth.

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Anyway, I told the story of that man and how he became my new best friend.

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And then he and his wife, who was a law professor, moved to D.C.,

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And in that context, he was chief of cardiac surgery at Suburban Hospital in Washington, D.C., which is a subset of Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.

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And she, since 2020, had been the first female dean of George Washington University Law School, Thomas and Dana Matthews.

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I told that and said, you know, I'd love if you could have met them.

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Well, actually you can't meet them.

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And they had driven down, two hour drive down on busy days to spend 10 minutes in an interaction with us.

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And just watching the students reaction, I mean, when I introduced them and they came up because she had gotten her law degree at UVA and he had had a nine year thoracic surgery residency at UVA hospital.

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And when they walked up, the place just exploded.

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And looking back on that, because this is a story of faith and friendship, and they had found faith and friendship at Harvard there years before.

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And for me, that embodied faith.

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the thing we were talking about that evening, stories of faith and friendship.

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And I just love that part.

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I think they did such a good job of going.

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It's like in their minds, they were transported back to when they were in college and they kind of talked to us from that vantage point.

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And it made it feel real for the kids.

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Because, you know, we've talked about this before, whether you're 54 or 84, in your mind, you lock in at a certain age, like in your brain, even though your body...

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may not be as movable.

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Your brain still feels like you're 20 something, you know, you still have dreams and hope.

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There's no need to get personal.

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Yeah.

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Well, I've just asked so many people that have that same feeling.

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And I feel like they just swooped in and just started talking about how they met each other.

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And it was funny and their interaction with one another.

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But then they talked about some really wise advice, which I think people will gain from that weren't even there that night as they listened to the

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How to choose your friends and how to make decisions and where to put your priorities.

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I mean, it was a great piece of the night for sure.

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That's great.

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So if you think about takeaways for you, what were a couple, three takeaways from that?

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Well, the first thing I'm always amazed at is just the way that God has given you the capacity to, through story, through your story, through learning other people's story.

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You always talk about stories of a Velcro ribbon that people can attach to.

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And I think that's what happens in these evenings.

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That's what will happen in the book as people...

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listen to it.

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They'll attach to certain pieces along the way.

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And from my hindsight, because it was a bowl, I could walk around the back and listen and feel, look at, we have great photos of the night that'll be in the PDF that people can look at.

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The engagement was incredible.

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And I'm thinking this is, you know, I love you and I've known you for, you know, 40, almost 40 years now.

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But these guys don't know you from a stump, and yet they allowed you in.

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And I think it's because it was real and because it was about the most important thing in life, and that's relationships.

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And I think they connected with that.

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And I think it felt like there was a desperate need on their part.

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Actually, I think there's a desperate need on all of our parts to learn how to love people more and better.

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And I just watched them lean in and engage and laugh and cry and respond.

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And, you know, you always talk about the fact that these are your people.

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And I'm always interested to know, why are these your people?

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Why do you enjoy this so much?

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I saw them enjoy it.

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Why do you think that you enjoy being with this age group so much?

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I think my college years.

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If I were to pick formative places in my life, many people have heard me talk about my earliest years in India when I was a little kid and how some couple of three values that I took away from that.

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I think the college years for so many folks, and only half the population would go to college now, those years when I'm between being a teen, if you will, or a high schooler at home, let's say,

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And being a fully fledged adult, you have college years a lot, right?

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And by that, you know, somebody defined, you know, you're an adult when you pay your first water bill.

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So I'm just, I'm using that time period.

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But here you have the energy of a high schooler and the capacity of an adult to move, to go, to do.

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And it's a profoundly formative time.

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When I, you know, I graduated high school.

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when I was 17 years old at Fremont High in Oakland, 440 in our class and 38 of the 440, almost 10%, went to Cal Berkeley, which was 10 miles away.

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And most of us went there because tuition was free back in the day.

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So you're going, right?

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And so that freshman year, I was struggling with my faith.

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I'd been brought up in a faith community and congregation.

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I had

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Started following Jesus as a young guy, but I'm 17 years old.

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And a lot of stuff goes on when you're 17 years old.

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And so I was in that moment in time.

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And it was during that year that I really came to grips with, okay, if there's a God, what is he like?

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And how do I follow him?

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And all of that.

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And the pressure of that moment, I think helped shaped that for me.

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There was something about that first year, the fall of 1959 and the spring of 60,

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that was very both settling and explosive all at the same time.

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And so I just feel very interested in it.

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I like talking to college students because most of them, not all, but most of them are away from home, so they've got that thing going.

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And then the point of a college or university is to, I mean, the reason it's called a university is to explain, quote, the universe of ideas and places and people and movements and cultures and music and religious systems and economics and history and yada, yada.

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I mean, it goes on forever.

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Anyway, I don't know that that's a very succinct – well, I know it's not a succinct answer to your question, but I think – when did you ever get succinct from me?

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Yeah, well, I used to use the phrase sometime about how you build relationships with folks and you would say you don't have to be interesting.

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You have to be interested.

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And I think that's part of the reason why you have sort of a panache with college students because you're super interested in them.

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Like you ask questions, you're inquisitive, and you treat them like humans, not as little kids.

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And you could easily treat them as, you know, from the millennials to the Gen Zers down to the alphas.

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You could like – but I think that's a beautiful thing, and it's why you have the capacity to speak to them because you just like them.

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I mean, at the end of the day, you just like them.

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Well, and they help me.

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I think there's a lot to learn from an 18-year-old today about the world because you got such challenge.

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I asked our grandson, Drew, who now is going to be 17, but a couple of years ago, I asked him, why do you think your age group and the generation before you, maybe two generations before you...

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are so filled with anxiety or anxiousness, because that's what all the data shows, the stories, the anecdotes.

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And he said, well, Grandpa, and he held up his phone.

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And he said, you know, I can deal with this, with the here and now, with this city or county or school or nation, but all I have to do is touch this button and we're in China and that's too much.

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So the information Niagara,

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especially now with AI, where you have this explosion of information.

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And some of it's true.

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Some of it's true, and you've got to figure out which it is.

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That's the challenge.

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That's a whole other level.

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People say, well, that guy speaks in half-truths, and you're saying, well, which half is that?

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What was the quote you gave me about how much people know and read now compared to the early part of the founding of the universe?

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Well, I think it's something like if somebody reads the New York Times today, it is more than one person would have read or more information than someone would have gotten about the world as a whole than when the country was founded back in the 1780s, 1770s, whatever.

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Yeah, I mean, today we get that at one shot, at one reading.

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And, you know, I suppose information is like medication at one level where you take a certain amount and it helps you take too much, it'll kill you.

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I think that's the beauty of the night.

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That's what I would say.

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Takeaway was it wasn't about a bunch of data or good even paradigms or.

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you know, a teaching apparatus to say, do these five things.

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It was just a focused moment to say relationships really matter.

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Investments really matter.

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And when you tell stories, like when you talk about mom, her poem to you, it goes to a place in a person's heart that you feel that like you don't let people into that place for very often, but story has a way to get into those places of our hearts and touch our emotions and our thoughts.

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And I think for that reason, people are going to enjoy this book again, because it has an ability to get to a place where mere data, more information won't help you.

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You just need to focus on loving your neighbor as yourself, maybe.

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Well, this has been fun.

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Thanks for doing this.

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This is, even though we had talked about certain ideas, this is unscripted.

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We're not reading from a script.

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My takeaway, one moment in time, captured the reason for why we did in no small part.

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This was advertised as stories of faith and friendship.

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So nobody was doing a bait and switch.

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Chi Alpha people who invited their friends were saying, you know, this will be something about faith as well as being friends.

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And afterwards, numbers of students came and chatted, and I'm sure you chatted with some.

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And one of them, a young Asian student, she came to me and said, you know, my friend here brought me, I knew it was about faith and friendship, but I had no idea.

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Honestly, I had no idea, but I just wanted you to know that tonight I have decided that

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to give God a shot.

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And, you know, I don't think I hugged her, but I wanted to hug her and her friend.

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That was the point that tells the large of the grand story.

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And it's worth all of the effort and expense.

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And of course, you guys, you and Richard and the team that did this, I mean, you've spent countless hours working on these things, as well as traveling to these places.

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So I'm very grateful.

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Well, man, this is the place I usually sign off.

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Say this is both, you know, thanks for subscribing.

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Thanks for listening.

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We'll catch you next time.

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And I'm gone now.

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But since you're on, why don't you sign off for us?

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Well, I would just love to tell people you need to get this book and listen to it.

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The night of storytelling was great.

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It was, we connected.

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It was great.

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But the stuff on this book that Pop has added, the added extras, it's going to be great.

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You're going to enjoy it.

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It'll take you just a little while to get through it, but it'll help you.

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It'll change your life.

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Maybe.

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Maybe.

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Who knows?

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But grateful to be a part of it.

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Signing off from my end here in Eugene, Oregon.