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CNN Connie Chung Tonight

Connie Shares Her Most Memorable Interviews of 2002

Aired November 28, 2002 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


ANNOUNCER: This is CONNIE CHUNG TONIGHT. From the CNN Broadcast Center in New York, Connie Chung.
CONNIE CHUNG, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone and a happy Thanksgiving.

Tonight, a rare, close-up look at a world famous Luciano Pavarotti, a big man in his 60s whose extraordinary talent and don't laugh, bad boy charisma, have made him an international superstar.

Then, the inspirational story of how two women who never would have known each other met and became friends all because of September 11. I know it touched me deeply -- get out your Kleenex -- and I think you'll understand why.

We're using this special Thanksgiving encore program to revisit some of the most powerful stories we've told, some of the most uplifting and some of the most human. Tonight, you'll also meet a man who lived for years like a 19th Century mountain man and found everything he needed in life except love.

And finally, you'll meet some women who are boldly going where no women have gone before. Stick with us and you'll see what I mean.

But first, we are going to start with that bad boy I told you about. Pavarotti shared the stage with everyone from Bono to James Brown and appropriately enough for today, the Cranberries. He has sold more than 100 million albums and once packed New York's Central Park with a half million fans.

But recently he left hundreds of faithful fans fuming. To find out why, I went to Italy to interview the best selling classical music singer of all time.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHUNG (voice-over): Luciano Pavarotti is a big man with a big voice. And when the most famous opera singer on the planet, The Maestro, who can count as his audience kings and queens, popes and presidents, the man who has shared the stage with mega-stars -- the man with the biggest voice in the world -- when he doesn't sing, it's big news.

Just last month he was scheduled to sing at the New York Metropolitan Opera season finale. It was rumored to be Pavarotti's final performance at The Met.

But a few days before, a drama began to play out like, well, an opera. Will he sing or won't he? He did not sing.

We went to his villa in Pissarro (ph), Italy just above the shores of the Adriatic Sea. And for the first time, Pavarotti answered questions about his controversial no-show on Saturday, May 11.

(on camera): At the New York Metropolitan Opera, you were scheduled to perform. What happened?

PAVAROTTI: I was sick.

CHUNG: You were sick?

PAVAROTTI: Yes. If one singer is sick, what should they do? Cancel?

CHUNG: I presume so.

PAVAROTTI: I presume so, too. I did, and it was an explosion like atomic bomb.

CHUNG (voice-over): The explosion first hit inside The Met. The audience that night, some of whom had paid $1,800 a ticket, erupted in a chorus of boos when told Pavarotti would not perform.

PAVAROTTI: In one way, thank you very much to make this big boo, boo, boo, boo about my cough. Made it the most important cough in the world.

CHUNG: And the controversy spilled over to the newspapers the next morning.

PAVAROTTI: I think it is stupid, absolutely stupid, make such a big fuss.

CHUNG (on camera): I think there were some who felt that you should have gone there and personally said, I can't sing tonight.

PAVAROTTI: Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Not for one reason. First, I was unable to talk.

CHUNG: You weren't even able to speak? You had laryngitis?

PAVAROTTI: Yes.

CHUNG (voice-over): While other tenors have stepped off the stage at age 50, Pavarotti, at 66, has never even broached the subject of retirement.

PAVAROTTI: I am busy for two or three years more. And after I will retire.

CHUNG (on camera): After?

PAVAROTTI: In three years I will retire.

CHUNG: You will?

PAVAROTTI: Yes.

CHUNG: You have never announced your retirement.

PAVAROTTI: I will announce it to you.

CHUNG: Honestly, you're going to retire in three years?

PAVAROTTI: My birthday, 19 -- no, 2005.

CHUNG: 2005?

PAVAROTTI: Write it down.

CHUNG: I am going to write it down. 2005, Luciano Pavarotti will retire.

PAVAROTTI: Twelfth of October.

CHUNG: Sorry?

PAVAROTTI: Twelfth of October.

CHUNG: Are you going to hold to that date? That's a promise?

PAVAROTTI: Yes. I never sing even in the bathroom, not even when I'm taking the shower.

CHUNG: What tells you that it will be time?

PAVAROTTI: I hope it is going to be time. I don't know.

CHUNG: Is it because you feel your voice is gone?

PAVAROTTI: No. No, no, no, no.

CHUNG: Is it your health?

PAVAROTTI: No.

CHUNG: Is it...

PAVAROTTI: It's a little everything.

CHUNG (voice-over): It's been a difficult year for Pavarotti. Just last month the father he worshiped died at age 89, with Luciano at his side.

Just four days later, still grieving, Pavarotti took the stage to perform at his annual charity concert, Pavarotti and Friends.

PAVAROTTI: We come out, very beautiful concert, except that you see I am empty. There is nothing in my face. There is nothing.

CHUNG: That wasn't the first time he sang through his grief. In January, his beloved mother died, the woman who pushed him to pursue opera.

Just one day after her death, Pavarotti sang at London's Covent Garden as scheduled.

CHUNG (on camera): I think many people would not have been able to do what you did: sing after your father died, sing after your mother died -- only 24 hours later after your mother died.

PAVAROTTI: I just can tell you one thing: On the stage of Covent Garden, I was not alone.

CHUNG: On the stage, you were not alone?

PAVAROTTI: No. Even there in the concert, I was not alone.

CHUNG: They were with you?

PAVAROTTI: Yes.

CHUNG (voice-over): When he was a boy playing on the beach in Pissarro (ph), Italy, young Luciano Pavarotti would often look up the hill.

PAVAROTTI: I see this house when I was a boy. And I say to myself, look that countryman, how lucky he is.

And then when I have the money, I build the house.

CHUNG: Now Pavarotti is building a new house as he moves into a new personal life.

His 34-year marriage collapsed after scandalous photos surfaced of him and his 26-year-old secretary Nicoletta.

Today, six years later, Luciano and Nicoletta are still together. The unpredictable Maestro sprung a few more surprises on us: marriage and children.

CHUNG (on camera): She says you're getting married later this year. Is that true?

PAVAROTTI: If the house is all finished, I hope. I hope they finish the house in time.

CHUNG: And when the house is built and finished...

PAVAROTTI: We marry.

CHUNG: You will get married?

PAVAROTTI: Dah-dah-dah-dah, yes, yes.

CHUNG: Did you propose to her formally?

PAVAROTTI: I proposed to her several years ago. She says yes. And she's still in the -- she still say yes. I think she's a masochist.

CHUNG: She's what, a masochist?

Now, she is young.

PAVAROTTI: Very.

CHUNG: She's half your age.

PAVAROTTI: Yes, exactly.

CHUNG: Exactly. Might you want to have some children?

PAVAROTTI: We are thinking about.

CHUNG: How many, do you think?

PAVAROTTI: I don't know. One or two or three or four. We would like to have more children.

CHUNG: You have three daughters from an earlier marriage. In fact, they're older than Nicoletta. Would you like a son?

PAVAROTTI: Yes.

CHUNG: And would you like a son?

PAVAROTTI: Not necessarily.

CHUNG: You are already 66.

PAVAROTTI: Yes.

CHUNG: Wouldn't you be concerned about your health?

PAVAROTTI: Yes.

CHUNG: Because the baby will grow up and...

PAVAROTTI: So?

CHUNG: ... maybe you won't be around?

PAVAROTTI: So what? So what? The mother is very young. Life goes on like that.

CHUNG (voice-over): Pavarotti says hip and knee surgeries have not slowed him down. He's fine. But he will acknowledge a weight issue.

(on camera): Are you dieting now?

PAVAROTTI: Yes. I'm good; good enough.

CHUNG: You didn't say that with a lot of conviction.

PAVAROTTI: You did ask me if I am dieting. You did not ask me if I am starving. So I'm not starving. I'm dieting, yes.

CHUNG (voice-over): Pavarotti now plans his workload carefully. He schedules about 40 performances a year, earning him a reported $35 million.

(on camera): Are you missing anything in life?

PAVAROTTI: At this precise moment, the question is absolutely, obviously yes, I miss my father and my mother. And they just left.

But like I say, when I think about them, I'm never sad. I'm really so -- these two beautiful people together. They stayed 74 years together. Such a beautiful memory.

CHUNG: Yes.

PAVAROTTI: And that is not sad. You see me sad inside, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a big loss.

CHUNG: Yes.

PAVAROTTI: But every time I'm thinking about them, I don't cry. I smile.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHUNG: His girlfriend, by the way, is now pregnant with twins. When we spoke, Pavarotti said that he may come out of retirement once in 2006 to sing with the other two tenors at the World Cup. You know, the Three Tenors? That would be the last time.

And when we come back you'll meet another man who does it his way,. But his way means living in the woods and killing his own food. Could you do it? I don't think so. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHUNG: Now here's something to think about on this Thanksgiving Day. Are you thankful for enjoying the American standard of living, with your remote controlled, high definition, text messaging, broad band digital, hands-free, wireless, online, CD burning, laptop, PC, TV, DVD player? Well if you are, then ask yourself why someone would give it all up and consider himself better off than you are.

Well get ready to meet a man who lives with no heat, no lights, no car, not a single luxury. He's Eustace Conway and for him, today might as well be Thanksgiving Day 1802. We asked CNN's Bruce Burkhardt to track him down.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The American frontier, officially declared dead back in the 1890s. Not everyone got the announcement.

As far as I know, I'm the last person that's quite like me that has all of those American frontier ethics.

BURKHARDT: Eustace Conway is the real deal.

EUSTACE CONWAY, MOUNTAIN MAN: That's probably a snake. There it is. OK, see him? Look right here.

BURKHARDT: There is very little that slips by Eustace out here in his natural surroundings: the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. His senses have been sharply honed these past 25 years, ever since he left his dysfunctional suburban family as a 17-year-old in 1977 and move into a teepee.

CONWAY: This past summer, I found these buffalo toes and a buffalo skeleton out west. I brought them home and made my doorbell with them. A lot of times, Indian people would use the feet or the toes to make jingles.

BURKHARDT: His story has been chronicled by local Carolina television, how he chose to live like a Native American would have lived several hundred years ago, killing animals for food and clothing, no running water, no matches for fire, no modern conveniences at all, and no wife, though there have been many candidates.

CONWAY: The things of nature make sense to me. So I was like attracted to nature, and perhaps repelled from people. So you could make some of those spicewood sticks and even tie like a little bundle of them with a string, throw it in the pot, boil it for a few hours with something like groundhog to sort of sweeten the taste of the meat.

BURKHARDT: For Eustace, it's not some masochistic exercise in hardship. It's freedom. It's kinship with what he calls the foundational things.

CONWAY: It all comes back down to a belief system, is what you believe is important and believe that you can do something.

BURKHARDT (on camera): Man and teepee, what a great story. It's better than man bites dog. But Eustace Conway has evolved. And what was necessary then isn't now. It's no longer man and teepee, it's man in cabin.

CONWAY: That after 17 years in a teepee, I had accomplished part of what I wanted to accomplish, is to know and understand a teepee. People come up here having read an article that I can rub two sticks together and they want to see. It's like, show me. It's like, just strike a match, man.

BURKHARDT (voice-over): All those years in the teepee, Eustace had a dream. This is the dream. Cherrill Island Preserve (ph). he calls it, a thousand-acre wildlife education center. Land he acquired in bits and pieces over the years, and has developed into a working pioneer era farm.

CONWAY: I'm going to clean it out there a little bit. BURKHARDT: It's what he sees as his mission, his calling, to show the world we don't need all our worldly possessions, just a little common sense.

(on camera): (UNINTELLIGIBLE) How do you know how much to feed them?

CONWAY: I'm going to feed them until they quit eating.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHUNG: We brought him to New York City and when we come back, my interview with Eustace Conway, the last American man. In just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHUNG: We just saw Eustace Conway and his world, a world that was familiar to Americans 100, maybe 200 years ago., a world that might as well be Mars to some Americans today. The mountain.

His story has been chronicled in the book "Last American Man" by Elizabeth Gilbert. And I persuaded him to join me in my world, a world of wireless mics and flatscreen TVs and he doesn't even have a TV.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CONWAY: No, no, I haven't watched TV in, I guess, about 23 years.

CHUNG: Really? Oh, my gosh.

CONWAY: So I can't say I've never seen you. Never heard of you.

CHUNG: That's fine.

CONWAY: I guess shows come and go, and I don't know they exist. It suits me just fine.

CHUNG: I know it does. When you were a kid, though, you used to watch TV.

CONWAY: Yes, I watched...

CHUNG: "Leave it to Beaver."

CONWAY: Yes, "Leave it to Beaver" and "Gilligan's Island."

CHUNG: Well, there you go. All right. So tell me, Eustace, do you have electricity in your home?

CONWAY: No, no, it's oil lamps and natural.

CHUNG: No TV. What else do you not have that I have in my home and everybody else does?

CONWAY: I don't know what you have, but one thing do I have is a lot of beautiful sounds, the birds and that. I don't have refrigerators that go zzz, a lot of those modern inconveniences -- I mean conveniences, they make a lot of noise and actually deter some of the quality of the beautiful sounds around me in the forest, so I choose not to have them, and don't have any of that stuff.

CHUNG: All right. We're going to find out more about you in just a minute, OK?

CONWAY: Cool.

CHUNG: We're going to take a commercial break. The time -- we're going to tell you about the time that Eustace went for two weeks without a single morsel of food. Is that true?

CONWAY: The porcupine story.

CHUNG: Yes! The porcupine story.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHUNG: We are now back with Eustace Conway, the so-called last American man. He's the subject of a book by Elizabeth Gilbert. He has spent most of his life without most of the amenities that we all take for granted. So do you have store-bought food in your cabin?

CONWAY: Some, but that's not really what I rely on. I mostly can my own food and eat fresh food and hunt food.

CHUNG: You hunt food?

CONWAY: Yes.

CHUNG: Do you kill animals?

CONWAY: Yes. That's the way I get my meat.

CHUNG: Uh-oh.

CONWAY: I raise a few chickens, too, but I mostly just eat the roosters, but mostly I eat deer and turkey and squirrel.

CHUNG: Do you have a gun?

CONWAY: I do. Yes, I have several guns. I grew up hunting with a bow and arrow. Once I got a gun, I found out that works a lot better.

(LAUGHTER)

CHUNG: I want to you tell me the porcupine story.

CONWAY: OK, that happened back on the Appalachian Trail, one of the many adventures I've taken in my life to sort of learn more about natural living. I took off and hiked that trail with my friend Frank Chambliss (ph). We started way up north in Maine, and it was really cold and windy and wintry.

We started the first day of May. We climbed Mt. Katahdin, which is way early that time of the year. We didn't have much preparation. We just sort of spur of the moment thought to do the trail, so we didn't have enough food, and we were going real hungry. After a couple of weeks of hardly having anything to eat, I found this porcupine, and it was walking along on the trail, and I recognized that was food, and I was really starving, so I ran and jumped right over it, and sort of got around front of it, yelled at it, and it put all its quills up.

I looked around while it was paused and grabbed a stick, and it had started running up a tree. I waited until it got just about chest level and I just smashed the skull up against the tree.

I was really glad that I had something to eat, so I skinned it out and I started a fire right there in the middle of the trail, and I started cooking it, and I was sitting there watching it. I was so hungry and impatient. I thought, "Well, I bet raw porcupine ain't that bad," and I ate a leg, and I ate two legs before the rest of it was cooked.

CHUNG: No!

CONWAY: Oh, yes.

CHUNG: What did it taste like?

CONWAY: Life. It was a chance to live.

CHUNG: Yes, I know, but what did it taste like?

CONWAY: It sounds corny, but it really tasted like piney, like porcupine -- it actually had a pine flavor taste.

CHUNG: Pine taste to it. Did the fully cooked part taste better?

CONWAY: It was better, yup.

CHUNG: So what did do you with those pines?

CONWAY: What you do when you skin a porcupine, you have to make sure you don't ruffle it.

CHUNG: Right. Because it'll go and get you, right?

CONWAY: As long as you go with the grain of the air, it doesn't stick you.

CHUNG: How did you know that?

CONWAY: I figured it out. I'd never skinned a porcupine. Where I lived, down in the mountains of North Carolina, at Turtle Island Preserve, we don't have porcupines. But I figured it out real fast.

CHUNG: Yes. Did you do anything with those -- are they called pines?

CONWAY: They're quills.

CHUNG: Quills, sorry.

CONWAY: I actually skinned -- saved the skin and saved the tail, and I took the tail and I pulled all the quills out, and they have really stiff hair on the tail, and I made a hair brush out of it to use to brush my hair.

CHUNG: Well, imagine that. Let's backtrack. Why did you -- I mean, you were living in a regular, normal suburban life, right?

CONWAY: Fairly normal. We had electricity, we had a hot bathtub and that.

CHUNG: Right. And at what age you decided to go off and live in a teepee?

CONWAY: When I was 17 I moved out into the forest full time. About 23 years ago.

CHUNG: Why?

CONWAY: When I moved out I didn't really think, "Well, I'm going to live for the next 23 years in a teepee." I thought, "Well, the woods is a nice place to go." There's a lot of education, there's something to learn. I wanted to be close to nature and see what it would teach me. I went camping and it was nice. I stayed, and stayed a little longer.

CHUNG: Didn't you like things at home? Didn't you like the comforts of home? And you have parents, right?

CONWAY: Yup.

CHUNG: You have siblings.

CONWAY: Yup. The natural environment is just totally what I was motivated towards. I wanted to see what was going on in the forest and how to live. I'd read about, like, Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone and all the Native American forefathers of this country, and I wanted to see how you could actually live in the forest like that.

CHUNG: What did your parents think of the fact that you were out there in nowhere, you know?

What did your parents think of the fact that you were out there in nowhere?

When I said I had a somewhat normal childhood, you know, we had a suburban home and a car and all that but I would go into the forest all the time, ever since I was a little child. Like, Elizabeth (ph) brings that out in her book, how my mom actually let me go out when I was four years old. I'd go out most of the day, just roaming in the forest, and learned how to move through the forest, and all the poisonous plants and poisonous snakes, and what to eat and what not to eat.

CHUNG: But you know what, I have to tell you, if I were your mother, you know, I would say, what the heck are you doing? Aren't you going to get a job?

CONWAY: Oh, but she knew that was best for me, I think. She knew that was where my heart was. And I figured that if I was enjoying it and felt good about it, that would be all right.

My dad really has looked it and said, that's kind of strange. Like, why are you moving into the forest? So he didn't quite get it, but my mom allowed it. And over the years I think they both recognized that it's where I should be.

CHUNG: In the book it's described that you didn't have a great relationship with your dad.

CONWAY: Right. In fact, Liz (ph) goes into looking at the history of American people, men and forefathers of our country that are heroes today, and recognize that a lot of those early people were, like, going to the frontier not necessarily to go to a place they wanted to go to, but running away from a father, troubled relationship.

It was very interesting, what she brings out. It's quite a historic perspective.

CHUNG: And yours was that way, was it was not?

CONWAY: Very similar, yes.

CHUNG: Yes. Troubled.

CONWAY: But at the same time I was very much attracted to the wild land. And that, because I wanted to see what it had to offer me. And it's been a whole lot that it has to offer me.

CHUNG: So tell me, when you were living in the teepee, did you ever get sick?

CONWAY: Hardly ever, really. You know, like one of the first years I lived in a teepee somebody saw me drinking a soda pop. And they said, you know, that's not really good for your health. Really? I found out about it, and I haven't had a soda pop for 23 years. You know, it just -- there's no need to drink stuff like that, that's not good for you.

So I drink mostly spring water, eat natural food. And all that is very healthy for you. And so I hardly ever get sick.

Sometimes I get hurt. Like, one time I smashed my face really bad right here. I was riding a horse, and I rode it into a tree. CHUNG: How did you take...

CONWAY: I sewed it up myself, yes.

CHUNG: No!

CONWAY: Yes, quite a few times I've sewed myself up. And I sewed up friends, too.

I got by -- it was at night, actually. I had to put candles by the mirror. And it was -- my lip was cut in half here, here, and this lip was cut in half...

CHUNG: Did you use a needle?

CONWAY: Yes, just a needle and thread, and just pull it back together. I didn't really know if I could do it, because there was so much blood, and it was swollen by then real bad. But I sewed...

CHUNG: Did you sterilize the needle?

CONWAY: Yes, I put it down in some white lightning, moonshine.

But like that cut right there, I sewed that one up myself. And I did a bad one right up here one time; I couldn't sew it up. I made my little brother Jetson (ph) sew it up.

But, you know, that's one thing about that natural living: You can learn that you can do all kinds of things that the modern world says, oh, you can't do that.

CHUNG: Well, tell me -- I know you do have a philosophy. You like to teach children at your Turtle Island how to live, right?

CONWAY: That's right. Not just children, but adults. We have programs open to anybody.

CHUNG: And how would you explain your philosophy of life?

CONWAY: Well, there's this big question, big answer. But basically I like to get people in touch with nature. I think that nature has a lot to offer us. And if you get in touch with the roots of where your food comes from and understand what comes into your life and where your waste goes, you have more of a kinship with the natural world, and you recognize it, and value that we need to be taking care of the environment that supports our life, and not polluting so much.

CHUNG: Eustace, you're going to have to come back and talk to me a little more. You know...

CONWAY: Well, you have to come down to my place. It's a lot nicer down there.

CHUNG: OK. Thank you so much for being with us.

(END VIDEOTAPE) CHUNG: These days, Eustace Conway is building new facilities for his school at Turtle Island. Two things that haven't changed: still no girlfriend and he's just about committed as ever to bringing people to nature and nature to people. For that at least, as we sleep off our Thanksgiving dinners in our modern homes, we can give thanks.

And when we come back, how two moms came together to survive the pain of losing their loved ones on September 11. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHUNG: We aired our next story on September 11, 2002. It's about two moms who were brought together to lean on each other and learn from each other because of what they lost on September 11, 2001: their husbands.

We started off with Stacy. She's a small woman, .but aI found her to be a tower of strength, an instant inspiration.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(SINGING)

STACY STAUB, 9/11 WIDOW: He was the most amazing person I've ever met in my entire life. And he was hilarious. He was so funny all of the time.

(SINGING)

CHUNG (voice-over): You didn't know Craig Staub, but his wife, Stacy, knew him inside and out. And, boy, did she love him.

S. STAUB: I respected him so much. He was my best, best friend. And that's why we were so good together.

CHUNG (on camera): That sounds like quite a love affair.

S. STAUB: He was perfect. I used to say, "You're as perfect as perfect can get, Craig."

CHUNG (voice-over): Their relationship hardly started out that way. In fact, when they first met, Stacy wasn't even nice to him.

S. STAUB: But I finally let my guard down and realized, this is a nice guy. I could just chat with him. After about an hour, that was it, every day ever since.

CHUNG (on camera): How long did you wait before you got married?

S. STAUB: Oh, he made me wait a very long time. I was ready to get married immediately.

(LAUGHTER)

S. STAUB: Within the first year, I was ready to get married. But when he asked me, it was great. It was wonderful. And he had brought a dozen roses to the restaurant in advance. And he had each waiter come up to me, one at a time, and give me a rose and say, "Congratulations," until the vase was full. I loved him so much. I used to tell him he was my everything. And that was what was on his ring: "You are my everything."

CHUNG (voice-over): Six months after their wedding, Stacy got pregnant. It was just too perfect to be true.

S. STAUB: When I used to lay in bed at night, it was always a fear of mine that Craig would die.

CHUNG (on camera): No?

S. STAUB: Yes, it was, actually. People have thought that that was very strange. But it was too good. My life was too good. And I knew something was going to happen, because it couldn't stay that good. CHUNG (voice-over): But no one could have imagined what was going to happen that September morning.

S. STAUB: And I walked him to the front door, because he was stressed and he had been have something bad days. And he was hoping today would be better. Honest to God, he went to sleep that night hoping that the next day would be better. And so I wanted to give him that extra hug and kiss. And he walked down the driveway to the car. And I screamed, "I love you." And then he closed the car door.

CHUNG: Craig arrived at his office on the 89th floor of the south tower, where he was senior vice president of an investment firm. At 8:30 a.m., Craig's weekly interview was on WebFN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CRAIG STAUB, STACY'S HUSBAND: Particularly on the growth fund companies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHUNG: Meanwhile, a very pregnant Stacy had gone back to sleep, finally getting up a little before 9:00.

S. STAUB: And my doorbell rang. "Who on Earth is at my house this early in the morning?" I opened the door and two of my neighbors were there. And they looked weird.

And they wanted me to call Craig at work and just make sure he picked up the phone and he was OK. And I looked at them. And I was like, "OK." So, I went to my kitchen and I picked up the phone and called him at work. And the line was busy. And, as I was doing that, one of my neighbors was putting the television on. And it was at that point that I noticed there was a message on my answering machine.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

C. STAUB: Stacy, this is Craig. Are you there? Stacy? OK, listen, you'll be hearing news reports. A plane crashed into the other tower of the World Trade Center, actually right near us. We can see it clearly. It's right on our level, too. I'm OK. Everyone here is OK. It's kind of pandemonium, though, just because we don't know what the heck happened there. So give me a call when you get this, OK? Bye.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

S. STAUB: He didn't have enough time to get out. He didn't have enough time. My heart knew, when those buildings collapsed, that he wasn't coming home. So, when I think about his last moments, it tortures me, because I know he must have thought, "How will she handle this?"

CHUNG: With a broken heart, Stacy somehow persevered.

Eleven days after 9/11, you went into labor.

S. STAUB: I had Craig's picture everywhere. No matter where I looked in that room, his picture was there. There was no period of time during the birth where I was ecstatic, because, at the same time that you're incredibly excited, you're realizing, "But Craig's not here."

CHUNG (voice-over): Juliette Craig Staub, 6 pounds, 14 ounces, was born on her dad's birthday, September 22. Craig would have been 31.

S. STAUB: We didn't want to share his day, but that was my due date. And as much as he was complaining, it's nice that way. It's nice that way. It's always going to be, "Happy birthday, Juliette Craig and daddy."

Juliette, what are you doing down there?

CHUNG: That wasn't all they shared. Look at a baby picture of Craig and a baby picture of Juliette. Uncanny.

S. STAUB: It's really very scary. And it's funny, because this is, like, his last laugh. And he's the only man I know that, when his wife was pregnant, was like, "I hope the baby looks just like me."

And I was like, "Aren't you supposed to want the baby to look just like your beautiful wife?"

"No."

CHUNG: Stacy treads a fine line between laughing and crying. But she's found support from a complete stranger, Andrea Russin. Andrea's husband, Steve, also worked at the World Trade Center and died September 11, leaving behind a very pregnant Andrea and a 2-year- old son, Alec.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE RUSSIN, WORLD TRADE CENTER VICTIM: Look on the TV, Alec. Daddy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHUNG: On September 15, their twins were born: Olivia, who looks just like daddy, and Ariella, who acts just like him.

ANDREA RUSSIN: And my entire life changed at that time. Nothing was the same. Everything else is completely different.

CHUNG: Stacy and Andrea meet every Wednesday night for comfort, support, friendship. Sure, there are other single mothers out there, but what these women share is a unique bond.

A. RUSSIN: What's different about our friendship is that, with most new mother groups, they're very happy. We -- that was taken away from us. S. STAUB: When I have gotten together with other mothers with babies my daughter's age, there's a disconnect. There's a huge disconnect, because the things that they talk about and the things that are important in their lives right now are wildly different than mine.

A. RUSSIN: We're trying to figure out how our children are going to go to college, how our children are going to go to the nursery school, what we need to make it through tomorrow, let alone 18 years from now. So we're dealing with everything all at once.

CHUNG (on camera): By yourselves.

A. RUSSIN: By ourselves.

S. STAUB: By ourselves.

A. RUSSIN (singing): Take me out to the...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ball game.

A. RUSSIN: Crowd.

CHUNG (voice-over): For Andrea, a stoic determination keeps Steve alive for their children.

A. RUSSIN: Come here, cutie.

CHUNG: For Stacy, pictures aren't enough. She even keeps Craig's clothes and shoes where they were, all so Juliette knows the daddy she never had the chance to touch.

JULIETTE RUSSIN: Dada, Dada, Dada.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHUNG: And one final thought. Andrea Russin also told us that she had been worried about her unborn twins early on the morning of September 11, but decided not to go to the hospital because it would have kept Steve from going to work that day. Instead, she let him sleep.

When we come back, women on the gridiron. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHUNG: Thanksgiving is known for turkey, family, sleep and of course, football. But these days there's a new kind of football out there. You might not notice the difference if you're in the nosebleed sections. That's why we sent CNN's Jeanne Moos out for a close-up look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Remember the days when the only padding a girl wore was in her bra?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Make sure they're really, really tight. Otherwise they're going to come up when you run.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's the way, April.

MOOS: You know it's not the Dallas Cowboys when the players bring cupcakes to the game to sell at the concession stand.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're still warm.

MOOS: We've never been to a National Women's Football League game. So we stepped gingerly into the locker room.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's been some mishaps with some girls putting their pads on the wrong places.

MOOS: While the players warmed up, so did the hot dogs, at two lonely tailgate parties out in the parking lot.

A dad spoke of his linebacker daughter.

(on camera): Was it weird the first time you saw her in shoulder pads?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Certainly. I didn't know she was that big. I tell you, she's tough.

MOOS (voice-over): It was the Connecticut Crush versus one of the top teams, the Massachusetts Mutiny. The coaches tend to be men.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're going to make each other look good tonight. It's not a one-ladies show. No way.

MOOS: On the first play of the game, number 34, Melanie Depamphilis tore a knee ligament. Melanie's not just a player, she owns the Connecticut Crush franchise.

MELANIE DEPAMPHILIS, OWNER/PLAYER, CONNECTICUT CRUSH: You get tangled up, you know, knees go one way, bodies goes the other way. MOOS: It was a little bit like watching high school football. But there was plenty of spirit.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, baby!

MOOS: And the game was actually exciting. The star of the Crush, number 20, April Maier (ph), is not only the quarterback, does everything from return kickoffs to play defense.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a rush.

MOOS: The small crowd of several hundred was mostly relatives.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A father always wishes that his son can play football. Well guess what, I got a daughter that can play football, and she plays the game real well.

MOOS: And what is it she really likes?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The intensity, the hitting. I really like the hitting.

MOOS: So does Carolyn Bell.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What does that say?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It says ding dong, the quarterback is dead after our Bell crushed her head.

MOOS: The Connecticut Crush lost, but weren't crushed. After the game, future football players took to the field, boys and girls. One thing we can swear to, the language is cleaner in women's football.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHUNG: That report from CNN's Jeanne Moos.

Joining me now from the National Women's Football League, La'Tonya Jill Watters, the Atlanta Leopards owner and offensive tackle, and Tammy Lowrey-Ridgley -- Ridgley, right?

TAMMY LOWREY-RIDGLEY, ASSOC. GENERAL MANAGER/PLAYER, PENSACOLA POWER: Yes.

CHUNG: Linebacker and associate general manager for the Pensacola Power.

Thank you for coming.

LA'TONYA JILL WATTERS, OWNER/PLAYER, ATLANTA LEOPARDS: Thank you.

CHUNG: Now, you know, when I was watching all that, you all are tough, right?

WATTERS: Yes, we are.

CHUNG: I tell you, you are really tough. But I was expecting you to be big. You're not. I mean, you're not huge women. I mean, you're actually quite tiny. You used to be a cheerleader, right?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: I cheered all through my whole life. I never played football.

CHUNG: Well, how did you get from the sidelines to the field?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Well, I wanted to play football my whole life, but my parents wouldn't let me. So we used to just play. Me and my brother would go over to the park and play sandlot football.

And then I started getting to an age to where they were like, "You can't do that anymore. You can't do that."

I'm like, "Why not?" And so then I tried out for high school cheerleading, and cheered and played softball and volleyball and did all the girl sports. And then the opportunity came up and I was like, "I just got to try out."

CHUNG: Look at you. You've got a great body. Look at those arms.

I want everybody to see Tammy's arms.

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Oh, my goodness.

CHUNG: No, we're going to come back in a second.

There we go. Right? Great arms.

(LAUGHTER)

CHUNG: Now, tell me, you are a child therapist, is it?

WATTERS: Child therapist in Atlanta/supervisor/treatment coordinator.

CHUNG: All right.

So, what did your family think when you said you wanted to go play football?

WATTERS: Well, they were not really too surprised, because they've always been supportive. And I have always played sports all of my life. However, football is a sport really I didn't have an option to play because it was just not allowed for women to play.

So, once I mentioned it to my family, told them, "Hey, this is something I'm interested in doing," they were very supportive. It was a little unique, because you just don't really hear about women playing full-contact important.

CHUNG: Exactly. The thing that really kills is that you liked it so much, you bought the team. Right?

WATTERS: Yes, that's correct.

(LAUGHTER)

CHUNG: Isn't that expensive?

WATTERS: Yes, it is. It's very expensive.

(LAUGHTER)

CHUNG: And you run the team?

WATTERS: Well, yes. I'm the owner and I also play. And I have a general manager as well as a P.R. person. So, they make it a lot easier, when you have the extra help.

CHUNG: Right. Right. Oh, my gosh.

Now, Tammy, you -- let's see. Who owns your team?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Roy Jones Jr.

CHUNG: Oh, the boxer.

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: The best pound-for-pound boxer in the world.

CHUNG: He is great. He's an awfully nice guy, too. I've met him. He's terrific.

Now, what do you do for a living?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: I am Roy Jones Jr.'s athletic trainer.

CHUNG: Oh, there you go.

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: I take care of the medical -- I'm a certified athletic trainer.

CHUNG: No wonder you're in such good shape.

(LAUGHTER)

CHUNG: So, when is your season, from what to what?

WATTERS: We play from April to June. And the championship game is in July.

CHUNG: And I assume that you really want to be out there so that young girls can go play football, huh?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: That's a dream, but we also want to hit everybody with the thing that, don't ever quit dreaming, because this is something that we never thought that we would be able to do.

Yes, we want to promote women's football. We want women to be able to play. And they should be able to do things that they want to do in life. But it can really relate to anybody as far as living their dreams in life.

CHUNG: La'Tonya, what is it in you that you want to accomplish with this team, the league, everything?

WATTERS: Well, I just want to accomplish -- whenever you have a dream, it is really difficult for people to understand, because, when it's something you've wanted to do your whole life and you've been told no, because it's really not of the norm -- it's like, when they said football tryouts, I can't run out on the field in high school, because women could not play. So we could basically just play flag football.

But now is an opportunity where we can play. I have women who walk up to me today who are like 45, 50, and say: "Where has football been? I have always wanted to do it." But now they are at an age where they cannot participate. And I'm at an age where I can. So, I'm just so grateful to our president, Catherine Masters, for making this dream come true, not only for myself, but for young girls of today.

CHUNG: I think it's so great.

Tammy, was your husband a pro player?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Yes. He retired. His last team that he played with was the New Orleans Saints.

CHUNG: Right. Right. Not when they were the Aints?

(LAUGHTER)

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: No. But he finished up because he had a couple major knee operations. So he finished it off.

CHUNG: So does he give you advice?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Sometimes. At first, he thought -- he was like: "What is wrong with you? Why do you want to go through what I went through?" And then now he just gets the biggest kick out of it. He thinks it's really neat.

CHUNG: Well, good for him.

Have either of you had any serious injuries?

WATTERS: Not personally, but we've -- we've lost at least three or four players to some injuries.

CHUNG: Yes?

WATTERS: As well as sportsmanship. But, yes.

CHUNG: What do you mean? WATTERS: Well, I mean, certain players, if they do things they shouldn't do, that's where the ownership part comes in. And you have to dismiss them, if you have to.

CHUNG: You're a tough owner.

WATTERS: Yes, I am. You have to be to succeed in this business.

(LAUGHTER)

CHUNG: How about you, Tammy? Any injuries?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: I've been very fortunate. But the last two years that we've been in the season, we've seen a lot of ACLs and typical injuries that I saw when I worked in the NFL Europe league.

CHUNG: Any advice for those girls out there?

WATTERS: Well, I would just say, don't ever let someone tell you you can't do something, because this like a lifelong dream come true. And I'm still on cloud nine. Our record was like 2-6, but I feel I like win every time I walk off the field and every time I walk on the field, because it's a dream. It's an accomplishment. And I'm just so happy about it.

CHUNG: Do you have a Super Bowl?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Yes.

WATTERS: Yes.

CHUNG: Yes?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: We're in the playoffs.

CHUNG: Oh, good for you.

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Pensacola Power is 8-0 right now. So we have our first playoff game Saturday.

CHUNG: Good for you. Terrific.

Well, it's so nice to meet you. You go, girls. I think it's great.

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHUNG: My guests didn't make it to the Sup-Her Bowl in July. But you know they're pros when they tell you, There's always next year.

And when we come back, we'll have a quick word on tomorrow's program. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHUNG: And tommorrow, you'll meet an American husband and wife who are trying to take on gigantic leap that may just rival a trip to the moon. They want to give birth to the first human clone.

"LARRY KING LIVE" is next. Thanks for watching. Have a good night.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired November 28, 2002 - 20:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANNOUNCER: This is CONNIE CHUNG TONIGHT. From the CNN Broadcast Center in New York, Connie Chung.
CONNIE CHUNG, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone and a happy Thanksgiving.

Tonight, a rare, close-up look at a world famous Luciano Pavarotti, a big man in his 60s whose extraordinary talent and don't laugh, bad boy charisma, have made him an international superstar.

Then, the inspirational story of how two women who never would have known each other met and became friends all because of September 11. I know it touched me deeply -- get out your Kleenex -- and I think you'll understand why.

We're using this special Thanksgiving encore program to revisit some of the most powerful stories we've told, some of the most uplifting and some of the most human. Tonight, you'll also meet a man who lived for years like a 19th Century mountain man and found everything he needed in life except love.

And finally, you'll meet some women who are boldly going where no women have gone before. Stick with us and you'll see what I mean.

But first, we are going to start with that bad boy I told you about. Pavarotti shared the stage with everyone from Bono to James Brown and appropriately enough for today, the Cranberries. He has sold more than 100 million albums and once packed New York's Central Park with a half million fans.

But recently he left hundreds of faithful fans fuming. To find out why, I went to Italy to interview the best selling classical music singer of all time.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHUNG (voice-over): Luciano Pavarotti is a big man with a big voice. And when the most famous opera singer on the planet, The Maestro, who can count as his audience kings and queens, popes and presidents, the man who has shared the stage with mega-stars -- the man with the biggest voice in the world -- when he doesn't sing, it's big news.

Just last month he was scheduled to sing at the New York Metropolitan Opera season finale. It was rumored to be Pavarotti's final performance at The Met.

But a few days before, a drama began to play out like, well, an opera. Will he sing or won't he? He did not sing.

We went to his villa in Pissarro (ph), Italy just above the shores of the Adriatic Sea. And for the first time, Pavarotti answered questions about his controversial no-show on Saturday, May 11.

(on camera): At the New York Metropolitan Opera, you were scheduled to perform. What happened?

PAVAROTTI: I was sick.

CHUNG: You were sick?

PAVAROTTI: Yes. If one singer is sick, what should they do? Cancel?

CHUNG: I presume so.

PAVAROTTI: I presume so, too. I did, and it was an explosion like atomic bomb.

CHUNG (voice-over): The explosion first hit inside The Met. The audience that night, some of whom had paid $1,800 a ticket, erupted in a chorus of boos when told Pavarotti would not perform.

PAVAROTTI: In one way, thank you very much to make this big boo, boo, boo, boo about my cough. Made it the most important cough in the world.

CHUNG: And the controversy spilled over to the newspapers the next morning.

PAVAROTTI: I think it is stupid, absolutely stupid, make such a big fuss.

CHUNG (on camera): I think there were some who felt that you should have gone there and personally said, I can't sing tonight.

PAVAROTTI: Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Not for one reason. First, I was unable to talk.

CHUNG: You weren't even able to speak? You had laryngitis?

PAVAROTTI: Yes.

CHUNG (voice-over): While other tenors have stepped off the stage at age 50, Pavarotti, at 66, has never even broached the subject of retirement.

PAVAROTTI: I am busy for two or three years more. And after I will retire.

CHUNG (on camera): After?

PAVAROTTI: In three years I will retire.

CHUNG: You will?

PAVAROTTI: Yes.

CHUNG: You have never announced your retirement.

PAVAROTTI: I will announce it to you.

CHUNG: Honestly, you're going to retire in three years?

PAVAROTTI: My birthday, 19 -- no, 2005.

CHUNG: 2005?

PAVAROTTI: Write it down.

CHUNG: I am going to write it down. 2005, Luciano Pavarotti will retire.

PAVAROTTI: Twelfth of October.

CHUNG: Sorry?

PAVAROTTI: Twelfth of October.

CHUNG: Are you going to hold to that date? That's a promise?

PAVAROTTI: Yes. I never sing even in the bathroom, not even when I'm taking the shower.

CHUNG: What tells you that it will be time?

PAVAROTTI: I hope it is going to be time. I don't know.

CHUNG: Is it because you feel your voice is gone?

PAVAROTTI: No. No, no, no, no.

CHUNG: Is it your health?

PAVAROTTI: No.

CHUNG: Is it...

PAVAROTTI: It's a little everything.

CHUNG (voice-over): It's been a difficult year for Pavarotti. Just last month the father he worshiped died at age 89, with Luciano at his side.

Just four days later, still grieving, Pavarotti took the stage to perform at his annual charity concert, Pavarotti and Friends.

PAVAROTTI: We come out, very beautiful concert, except that you see I am empty. There is nothing in my face. There is nothing.

CHUNG: That wasn't the first time he sang through his grief. In January, his beloved mother died, the woman who pushed him to pursue opera.

Just one day after her death, Pavarotti sang at London's Covent Garden as scheduled.

CHUNG (on camera): I think many people would not have been able to do what you did: sing after your father died, sing after your mother died -- only 24 hours later after your mother died.

PAVAROTTI: I just can tell you one thing: On the stage of Covent Garden, I was not alone.

CHUNG: On the stage, you were not alone?

PAVAROTTI: No. Even there in the concert, I was not alone.

CHUNG: They were with you?

PAVAROTTI: Yes.

CHUNG (voice-over): When he was a boy playing on the beach in Pissarro (ph), Italy, young Luciano Pavarotti would often look up the hill.

PAVAROTTI: I see this house when I was a boy. And I say to myself, look that countryman, how lucky he is.

And then when I have the money, I build the house.

CHUNG: Now Pavarotti is building a new house as he moves into a new personal life.

His 34-year marriage collapsed after scandalous photos surfaced of him and his 26-year-old secretary Nicoletta.

Today, six years later, Luciano and Nicoletta are still together. The unpredictable Maestro sprung a few more surprises on us: marriage and children.

CHUNG (on camera): She says you're getting married later this year. Is that true?

PAVAROTTI: If the house is all finished, I hope. I hope they finish the house in time.

CHUNG: And when the house is built and finished...

PAVAROTTI: We marry.

CHUNG: You will get married?

PAVAROTTI: Dah-dah-dah-dah, yes, yes.

CHUNG: Did you propose to her formally?

PAVAROTTI: I proposed to her several years ago. She says yes. And she's still in the -- she still say yes. I think she's a masochist.

CHUNG: She's what, a masochist?

Now, she is young.

PAVAROTTI: Very.

CHUNG: She's half your age.

PAVAROTTI: Yes, exactly.

CHUNG: Exactly. Might you want to have some children?

PAVAROTTI: We are thinking about.

CHUNG: How many, do you think?

PAVAROTTI: I don't know. One or two or three or four. We would like to have more children.

CHUNG: You have three daughters from an earlier marriage. In fact, they're older than Nicoletta. Would you like a son?

PAVAROTTI: Yes.

CHUNG: And would you like a son?

PAVAROTTI: Not necessarily.

CHUNG: You are already 66.

PAVAROTTI: Yes.

CHUNG: Wouldn't you be concerned about your health?

PAVAROTTI: Yes.

CHUNG: Because the baby will grow up and...

PAVAROTTI: So?

CHUNG: ... maybe you won't be around?

PAVAROTTI: So what? So what? The mother is very young. Life goes on like that.

CHUNG (voice-over): Pavarotti says hip and knee surgeries have not slowed him down. He's fine. But he will acknowledge a weight issue.

(on camera): Are you dieting now?

PAVAROTTI: Yes. I'm good; good enough.

CHUNG: You didn't say that with a lot of conviction.

PAVAROTTI: You did ask me if I am dieting. You did not ask me if I am starving. So I'm not starving. I'm dieting, yes.

CHUNG (voice-over): Pavarotti now plans his workload carefully. He schedules about 40 performances a year, earning him a reported $35 million.

(on camera): Are you missing anything in life?

PAVAROTTI: At this precise moment, the question is absolutely, obviously yes, I miss my father and my mother. And they just left.

But like I say, when I think about them, I'm never sad. I'm really so -- these two beautiful people together. They stayed 74 years together. Such a beautiful memory.

CHUNG: Yes.

PAVAROTTI: And that is not sad. You see me sad inside, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a big loss.

CHUNG: Yes.

PAVAROTTI: But every time I'm thinking about them, I don't cry. I smile.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHUNG: His girlfriend, by the way, is now pregnant with twins. When we spoke, Pavarotti said that he may come out of retirement once in 2006 to sing with the other two tenors at the World Cup. You know, the Three Tenors? That would be the last time.

And when we come back you'll meet another man who does it his way,. But his way means living in the woods and killing his own food. Could you do it? I don't think so. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHUNG: Now here's something to think about on this Thanksgiving Day. Are you thankful for enjoying the American standard of living, with your remote controlled, high definition, text messaging, broad band digital, hands-free, wireless, online, CD burning, laptop, PC, TV, DVD player? Well if you are, then ask yourself why someone would give it all up and consider himself better off than you are.

Well get ready to meet a man who lives with no heat, no lights, no car, not a single luxury. He's Eustace Conway and for him, today might as well be Thanksgiving Day 1802. We asked CNN's Bruce Burkhardt to track him down.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRUCE BURKHARDT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The American frontier, officially declared dead back in the 1890s. Not everyone got the announcement.

As far as I know, I'm the last person that's quite like me that has all of those American frontier ethics.

BURKHARDT: Eustace Conway is the real deal.

EUSTACE CONWAY, MOUNTAIN MAN: That's probably a snake. There it is. OK, see him? Look right here.

BURKHARDT: There is very little that slips by Eustace out here in his natural surroundings: the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. His senses have been sharply honed these past 25 years, ever since he left his dysfunctional suburban family as a 17-year-old in 1977 and move into a teepee.

CONWAY: This past summer, I found these buffalo toes and a buffalo skeleton out west. I brought them home and made my doorbell with them. A lot of times, Indian people would use the feet or the toes to make jingles.

BURKHARDT: His story has been chronicled by local Carolina television, how he chose to live like a Native American would have lived several hundred years ago, killing animals for food and clothing, no running water, no matches for fire, no modern conveniences at all, and no wife, though there have been many candidates.

CONWAY: The things of nature make sense to me. So I was like attracted to nature, and perhaps repelled from people. So you could make some of those spicewood sticks and even tie like a little bundle of them with a string, throw it in the pot, boil it for a few hours with something like groundhog to sort of sweeten the taste of the meat.

BURKHARDT: For Eustace, it's not some masochistic exercise in hardship. It's freedom. It's kinship with what he calls the foundational things.

CONWAY: It all comes back down to a belief system, is what you believe is important and believe that you can do something.

BURKHARDT (on camera): Man and teepee, what a great story. It's better than man bites dog. But Eustace Conway has evolved. And what was necessary then isn't now. It's no longer man and teepee, it's man in cabin.

CONWAY: That after 17 years in a teepee, I had accomplished part of what I wanted to accomplish, is to know and understand a teepee. People come up here having read an article that I can rub two sticks together and they want to see. It's like, show me. It's like, just strike a match, man.

BURKHARDT (voice-over): All those years in the teepee, Eustace had a dream. This is the dream. Cherrill Island Preserve (ph). he calls it, a thousand-acre wildlife education center. Land he acquired in bits and pieces over the years, and has developed into a working pioneer era farm.

CONWAY: I'm going to clean it out there a little bit. BURKHARDT: It's what he sees as his mission, his calling, to show the world we don't need all our worldly possessions, just a little common sense.

(on camera): (UNINTELLIGIBLE) How do you know how much to feed them?

CONWAY: I'm going to feed them until they quit eating.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHUNG: We brought him to New York City and when we come back, my interview with Eustace Conway, the last American man. In just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHUNG: We just saw Eustace Conway and his world, a world that was familiar to Americans 100, maybe 200 years ago., a world that might as well be Mars to some Americans today. The mountain.

His story has been chronicled in the book "Last American Man" by Elizabeth Gilbert. And I persuaded him to join me in my world, a world of wireless mics and flatscreen TVs and he doesn't even have a TV.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CONWAY: No, no, I haven't watched TV in, I guess, about 23 years.

CHUNG: Really? Oh, my gosh.

CONWAY: So I can't say I've never seen you. Never heard of you.

CHUNG: That's fine.

CONWAY: I guess shows come and go, and I don't know they exist. It suits me just fine.

CHUNG: I know it does. When you were a kid, though, you used to watch TV.

CONWAY: Yes, I watched...

CHUNG: "Leave it to Beaver."

CONWAY: Yes, "Leave it to Beaver" and "Gilligan's Island."

CHUNG: Well, there you go. All right. So tell me, Eustace, do you have electricity in your home?

CONWAY: No, no, it's oil lamps and natural.

CHUNG: No TV. What else do you not have that I have in my home and everybody else does?

CONWAY: I don't know what you have, but one thing do I have is a lot of beautiful sounds, the birds and that. I don't have refrigerators that go zzz, a lot of those modern inconveniences -- I mean conveniences, they make a lot of noise and actually deter some of the quality of the beautiful sounds around me in the forest, so I choose not to have them, and don't have any of that stuff.

CHUNG: All right. We're going to find out more about you in just a minute, OK?

CONWAY: Cool.

CHUNG: We're going to take a commercial break. The time -- we're going to tell you about the time that Eustace went for two weeks without a single morsel of food. Is that true?

CONWAY: The porcupine story.

CHUNG: Yes! The porcupine story.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHUNG: We are now back with Eustace Conway, the so-called last American man. He's the subject of a book by Elizabeth Gilbert. He has spent most of his life without most of the amenities that we all take for granted. So do you have store-bought food in your cabin?

CONWAY: Some, but that's not really what I rely on. I mostly can my own food and eat fresh food and hunt food.

CHUNG: You hunt food?

CONWAY: Yes.

CHUNG: Do you kill animals?

CONWAY: Yes. That's the way I get my meat.

CHUNG: Uh-oh.

CONWAY: I raise a few chickens, too, but I mostly just eat the roosters, but mostly I eat deer and turkey and squirrel.

CHUNG: Do you have a gun?

CONWAY: I do. Yes, I have several guns. I grew up hunting with a bow and arrow. Once I got a gun, I found out that works a lot better.

(LAUGHTER)

CHUNG: I want to you tell me the porcupine story.

CONWAY: OK, that happened back on the Appalachian Trail, one of the many adventures I've taken in my life to sort of learn more about natural living. I took off and hiked that trail with my friend Frank Chambliss (ph). We started way up north in Maine, and it was really cold and windy and wintry.

We started the first day of May. We climbed Mt. Katahdin, which is way early that time of the year. We didn't have much preparation. We just sort of spur of the moment thought to do the trail, so we didn't have enough food, and we were going real hungry. After a couple of weeks of hardly having anything to eat, I found this porcupine, and it was walking along on the trail, and I recognized that was food, and I was really starving, so I ran and jumped right over it, and sort of got around front of it, yelled at it, and it put all its quills up.

I looked around while it was paused and grabbed a stick, and it had started running up a tree. I waited until it got just about chest level and I just smashed the skull up against the tree.

I was really glad that I had something to eat, so I skinned it out and I started a fire right there in the middle of the trail, and I started cooking it, and I was sitting there watching it. I was so hungry and impatient. I thought, "Well, I bet raw porcupine ain't that bad," and I ate a leg, and I ate two legs before the rest of it was cooked.

CHUNG: No!

CONWAY: Oh, yes.

CHUNG: What did it taste like?

CONWAY: Life. It was a chance to live.

CHUNG: Yes, I know, but what did it taste like?

CONWAY: It sounds corny, but it really tasted like piney, like porcupine -- it actually had a pine flavor taste.

CHUNG: Pine taste to it. Did the fully cooked part taste better?

CONWAY: It was better, yup.

CHUNG: So what did do you with those pines?

CONWAY: What you do when you skin a porcupine, you have to make sure you don't ruffle it.

CHUNG: Right. Because it'll go and get you, right?

CONWAY: As long as you go with the grain of the air, it doesn't stick you.

CHUNG: How did you know that?

CONWAY: I figured it out. I'd never skinned a porcupine. Where I lived, down in the mountains of North Carolina, at Turtle Island Preserve, we don't have porcupines. But I figured it out real fast.

CHUNG: Yes. Did you do anything with those -- are they called pines?

CONWAY: They're quills.

CHUNG: Quills, sorry.

CONWAY: I actually skinned -- saved the skin and saved the tail, and I took the tail and I pulled all the quills out, and they have really stiff hair on the tail, and I made a hair brush out of it to use to brush my hair.

CHUNG: Well, imagine that. Let's backtrack. Why did you -- I mean, you were living in a regular, normal suburban life, right?

CONWAY: Fairly normal. We had electricity, we had a hot bathtub and that.

CHUNG: Right. And at what age you decided to go off and live in a teepee?

CONWAY: When I was 17 I moved out into the forest full time. About 23 years ago.

CHUNG: Why?

CONWAY: When I moved out I didn't really think, "Well, I'm going to live for the next 23 years in a teepee." I thought, "Well, the woods is a nice place to go." There's a lot of education, there's something to learn. I wanted to be close to nature and see what it would teach me. I went camping and it was nice. I stayed, and stayed a little longer.

CHUNG: Didn't you like things at home? Didn't you like the comforts of home? And you have parents, right?

CONWAY: Yup.

CHUNG: You have siblings.

CONWAY: Yup. The natural environment is just totally what I was motivated towards. I wanted to see what was going on in the forest and how to live. I'd read about, like, Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone and all the Native American forefathers of this country, and I wanted to see how you could actually live in the forest like that.

CHUNG: What did your parents think of the fact that you were out there in nowhere, you know?

What did your parents think of the fact that you were out there in nowhere?

When I said I had a somewhat normal childhood, you know, we had a suburban home and a car and all that but I would go into the forest all the time, ever since I was a little child. Like, Elizabeth (ph) brings that out in her book, how my mom actually let me go out when I was four years old. I'd go out most of the day, just roaming in the forest, and learned how to move through the forest, and all the poisonous plants and poisonous snakes, and what to eat and what not to eat.

CHUNG: But you know what, I have to tell you, if I were your mother, you know, I would say, what the heck are you doing? Aren't you going to get a job?

CONWAY: Oh, but she knew that was best for me, I think. She knew that was where my heart was. And I figured that if I was enjoying it and felt good about it, that would be all right.

My dad really has looked it and said, that's kind of strange. Like, why are you moving into the forest? So he didn't quite get it, but my mom allowed it. And over the years I think they both recognized that it's where I should be.

CHUNG: In the book it's described that you didn't have a great relationship with your dad.

CONWAY: Right. In fact, Liz (ph) goes into looking at the history of American people, men and forefathers of our country that are heroes today, and recognize that a lot of those early people were, like, going to the frontier not necessarily to go to a place they wanted to go to, but running away from a father, troubled relationship.

It was very interesting, what she brings out. It's quite a historic perspective.

CHUNG: And yours was that way, was it was not?

CONWAY: Very similar, yes.

CHUNG: Yes. Troubled.

CONWAY: But at the same time I was very much attracted to the wild land. And that, because I wanted to see what it had to offer me. And it's been a whole lot that it has to offer me.

CHUNG: So tell me, when you were living in the teepee, did you ever get sick?

CONWAY: Hardly ever, really. You know, like one of the first years I lived in a teepee somebody saw me drinking a soda pop. And they said, you know, that's not really good for your health. Really? I found out about it, and I haven't had a soda pop for 23 years. You know, it just -- there's no need to drink stuff like that, that's not good for you.

So I drink mostly spring water, eat natural food. And all that is very healthy for you. And so I hardly ever get sick.

Sometimes I get hurt. Like, one time I smashed my face really bad right here. I was riding a horse, and I rode it into a tree. CHUNG: How did you take...

CONWAY: I sewed it up myself, yes.

CHUNG: No!

CONWAY: Yes, quite a few times I've sewed myself up. And I sewed up friends, too.

I got by -- it was at night, actually. I had to put candles by the mirror. And it was -- my lip was cut in half here, here, and this lip was cut in half...

CHUNG: Did you use a needle?

CONWAY: Yes, just a needle and thread, and just pull it back together. I didn't really know if I could do it, because there was so much blood, and it was swollen by then real bad. But I sewed...

CHUNG: Did you sterilize the needle?

CONWAY: Yes, I put it down in some white lightning, moonshine.

But like that cut right there, I sewed that one up myself. And I did a bad one right up here one time; I couldn't sew it up. I made my little brother Jetson (ph) sew it up.

But, you know, that's one thing about that natural living: You can learn that you can do all kinds of things that the modern world says, oh, you can't do that.

CHUNG: Well, tell me -- I know you do have a philosophy. You like to teach children at your Turtle Island how to live, right?

CONWAY: That's right. Not just children, but adults. We have programs open to anybody.

CHUNG: And how would you explain your philosophy of life?

CONWAY: Well, there's this big question, big answer. But basically I like to get people in touch with nature. I think that nature has a lot to offer us. And if you get in touch with the roots of where your food comes from and understand what comes into your life and where your waste goes, you have more of a kinship with the natural world, and you recognize it, and value that we need to be taking care of the environment that supports our life, and not polluting so much.

CHUNG: Eustace, you're going to have to come back and talk to me a little more. You know...

CONWAY: Well, you have to come down to my place. It's a lot nicer down there.

CHUNG: OK. Thank you so much for being with us.

(END VIDEOTAPE) CHUNG: These days, Eustace Conway is building new facilities for his school at Turtle Island. Two things that haven't changed: still no girlfriend and he's just about committed as ever to bringing people to nature and nature to people. For that at least, as we sleep off our Thanksgiving dinners in our modern homes, we can give thanks.

And when we come back, how two moms came together to survive the pain of losing their loved ones on September 11. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHUNG: We aired our next story on September 11, 2002. It's about two moms who were brought together to lean on each other and learn from each other because of what they lost on September 11, 2001: their husbands.

We started off with Stacy. She's a small woman, .but aI found her to be a tower of strength, an instant inspiration.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(SINGING)

STACY STAUB, 9/11 WIDOW: He was the most amazing person I've ever met in my entire life. And he was hilarious. He was so funny all of the time.

(SINGING)

CHUNG (voice-over): You didn't know Craig Staub, but his wife, Stacy, knew him inside and out. And, boy, did she love him.

S. STAUB: I respected him so much. He was my best, best friend. And that's why we were so good together.

CHUNG (on camera): That sounds like quite a love affair.

S. STAUB: He was perfect. I used to say, "You're as perfect as perfect can get, Craig."

CHUNG (voice-over): Their relationship hardly started out that way. In fact, when they first met, Stacy wasn't even nice to him.

S. STAUB: But I finally let my guard down and realized, this is a nice guy. I could just chat with him. After about an hour, that was it, every day ever since.

CHUNG (on camera): How long did you wait before you got married?

S. STAUB: Oh, he made me wait a very long time. I was ready to get married immediately.

(LAUGHTER)

S. STAUB: Within the first year, I was ready to get married. But when he asked me, it was great. It was wonderful. And he had brought a dozen roses to the restaurant in advance. And he had each waiter come up to me, one at a time, and give me a rose and say, "Congratulations," until the vase was full. I loved him so much. I used to tell him he was my everything. And that was what was on his ring: "You are my everything."

CHUNG (voice-over): Six months after their wedding, Stacy got pregnant. It was just too perfect to be true.

S. STAUB: When I used to lay in bed at night, it was always a fear of mine that Craig would die.

CHUNG (on camera): No?

S. STAUB: Yes, it was, actually. People have thought that that was very strange. But it was too good. My life was too good. And I knew something was going to happen, because it couldn't stay that good. CHUNG (voice-over): But no one could have imagined what was going to happen that September morning.

S. STAUB: And I walked him to the front door, because he was stressed and he had been have something bad days. And he was hoping today would be better. Honest to God, he went to sleep that night hoping that the next day would be better. And so I wanted to give him that extra hug and kiss. And he walked down the driveway to the car. And I screamed, "I love you." And then he closed the car door.

CHUNG: Craig arrived at his office on the 89th floor of the south tower, where he was senior vice president of an investment firm. At 8:30 a.m., Craig's weekly interview was on WebFN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CRAIG STAUB, STACY'S HUSBAND: Particularly on the growth fund companies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHUNG: Meanwhile, a very pregnant Stacy had gone back to sleep, finally getting up a little before 9:00.

S. STAUB: And my doorbell rang. "Who on Earth is at my house this early in the morning?" I opened the door and two of my neighbors were there. And they looked weird.

And they wanted me to call Craig at work and just make sure he picked up the phone and he was OK. And I looked at them. And I was like, "OK." So, I went to my kitchen and I picked up the phone and called him at work. And the line was busy. And, as I was doing that, one of my neighbors was putting the television on. And it was at that point that I noticed there was a message on my answering machine.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

C. STAUB: Stacy, this is Craig. Are you there? Stacy? OK, listen, you'll be hearing news reports. A plane crashed into the other tower of the World Trade Center, actually right near us. We can see it clearly. It's right on our level, too. I'm OK. Everyone here is OK. It's kind of pandemonium, though, just because we don't know what the heck happened there. So give me a call when you get this, OK? Bye.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

S. STAUB: He didn't have enough time to get out. He didn't have enough time. My heart knew, when those buildings collapsed, that he wasn't coming home. So, when I think about his last moments, it tortures me, because I know he must have thought, "How will she handle this?"

CHUNG: With a broken heart, Stacy somehow persevered.

Eleven days after 9/11, you went into labor.

S. STAUB: I had Craig's picture everywhere. No matter where I looked in that room, his picture was there. There was no period of time during the birth where I was ecstatic, because, at the same time that you're incredibly excited, you're realizing, "But Craig's not here."

CHUNG (voice-over): Juliette Craig Staub, 6 pounds, 14 ounces, was born on her dad's birthday, September 22. Craig would have been 31.

S. STAUB: We didn't want to share his day, but that was my due date. And as much as he was complaining, it's nice that way. It's nice that way. It's always going to be, "Happy birthday, Juliette Craig and daddy."

Juliette, what are you doing down there?

CHUNG: That wasn't all they shared. Look at a baby picture of Craig and a baby picture of Juliette. Uncanny.

S. STAUB: It's really very scary. And it's funny, because this is, like, his last laugh. And he's the only man I know that, when his wife was pregnant, was like, "I hope the baby looks just like me."

And I was like, "Aren't you supposed to want the baby to look just like your beautiful wife?"

"No."

CHUNG: Stacy treads a fine line between laughing and crying. But she's found support from a complete stranger, Andrea Russin. Andrea's husband, Steve, also worked at the World Trade Center and died September 11, leaving behind a very pregnant Andrea and a 2-year- old son, Alec.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE RUSSIN, WORLD TRADE CENTER VICTIM: Look on the TV, Alec. Daddy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHUNG: On September 15, their twins were born: Olivia, who looks just like daddy, and Ariella, who acts just like him.

ANDREA RUSSIN: And my entire life changed at that time. Nothing was the same. Everything else is completely different.

CHUNG: Stacy and Andrea meet every Wednesday night for comfort, support, friendship. Sure, there are other single mothers out there, but what these women share is a unique bond.

A. RUSSIN: What's different about our friendship is that, with most new mother groups, they're very happy. We -- that was taken away from us. S. STAUB: When I have gotten together with other mothers with babies my daughter's age, there's a disconnect. There's a huge disconnect, because the things that they talk about and the things that are important in their lives right now are wildly different than mine.

A. RUSSIN: We're trying to figure out how our children are going to go to college, how our children are going to go to the nursery school, what we need to make it through tomorrow, let alone 18 years from now. So we're dealing with everything all at once.

CHUNG (on camera): By yourselves.

A. RUSSIN: By ourselves.

S. STAUB: By ourselves.

A. RUSSIN (singing): Take me out to the...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Ball game.

A. RUSSIN: Crowd.

CHUNG (voice-over): For Andrea, a stoic determination keeps Steve alive for their children.

A. RUSSIN: Come here, cutie.

CHUNG: For Stacy, pictures aren't enough. She even keeps Craig's clothes and shoes where they were, all so Juliette knows the daddy she never had the chance to touch.

JULIETTE RUSSIN: Dada, Dada, Dada.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHUNG: And one final thought. Andrea Russin also told us that she had been worried about her unborn twins early on the morning of September 11, but decided not to go to the hospital because it would have kept Steve from going to work that day. Instead, she let him sleep.

When we come back, women on the gridiron. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHUNG: Thanksgiving is known for turkey, family, sleep and of course, football. But these days there's a new kind of football out there. You might not notice the difference if you're in the nosebleed sections. That's why we sent CNN's Jeanne Moos out for a close-up look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Remember the days when the only padding a girl wore was in her bra?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Make sure they're really, really tight. Otherwise they're going to come up when you run.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's the way, April.

MOOS: You know it's not the Dallas Cowboys when the players bring cupcakes to the game to sell at the concession stand.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're still warm.

MOOS: We've never been to a National Women's Football League game. So we stepped gingerly into the locker room.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's been some mishaps with some girls putting their pads on the wrong places.

MOOS: While the players warmed up, so did the hot dogs, at two lonely tailgate parties out in the parking lot.

A dad spoke of his linebacker daughter.

(on camera): Was it weird the first time you saw her in shoulder pads?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Certainly. I didn't know she was that big. I tell you, she's tough.

MOOS (voice-over): It was the Connecticut Crush versus one of the top teams, the Massachusetts Mutiny. The coaches tend to be men.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're going to make each other look good tonight. It's not a one-ladies show. No way.

MOOS: On the first play of the game, number 34, Melanie Depamphilis tore a knee ligament. Melanie's not just a player, she owns the Connecticut Crush franchise.

MELANIE DEPAMPHILIS, OWNER/PLAYER, CONNECTICUT CRUSH: You get tangled up, you know, knees go one way, bodies goes the other way. MOOS: It was a little bit like watching high school football. But there was plenty of spirit.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, baby!

MOOS: And the game was actually exciting. The star of the Crush, number 20, April Maier (ph), is not only the quarterback, does everything from return kickoffs to play defense.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's a rush.

MOOS: The small crowd of several hundred was mostly relatives.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A father always wishes that his son can play football. Well guess what, I got a daughter that can play football, and she plays the game real well.

MOOS: And what is it she really likes?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The intensity, the hitting. I really like the hitting.

MOOS: So does Carolyn Bell.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What does that say?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It says ding dong, the quarterback is dead after our Bell crushed her head.

MOOS: The Connecticut Crush lost, but weren't crushed. After the game, future football players took to the field, boys and girls. One thing we can swear to, the language is cleaner in women's football.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHUNG: That report from CNN's Jeanne Moos.

Joining me now from the National Women's Football League, La'Tonya Jill Watters, the Atlanta Leopards owner and offensive tackle, and Tammy Lowrey-Ridgley -- Ridgley, right?

TAMMY LOWREY-RIDGLEY, ASSOC. GENERAL MANAGER/PLAYER, PENSACOLA POWER: Yes.

CHUNG: Linebacker and associate general manager for the Pensacola Power.

Thank you for coming.

LA'TONYA JILL WATTERS, OWNER/PLAYER, ATLANTA LEOPARDS: Thank you.

CHUNG: Now, you know, when I was watching all that, you all are tough, right?

WATTERS: Yes, we are.

CHUNG: I tell you, you are really tough. But I was expecting you to be big. You're not. I mean, you're not huge women. I mean, you're actually quite tiny. You used to be a cheerleader, right?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: I cheered all through my whole life. I never played football.

CHUNG: Well, how did you get from the sidelines to the field?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Well, I wanted to play football my whole life, but my parents wouldn't let me. So we used to just play. Me and my brother would go over to the park and play sandlot football.

And then I started getting to an age to where they were like, "You can't do that anymore. You can't do that."

I'm like, "Why not?" And so then I tried out for high school cheerleading, and cheered and played softball and volleyball and did all the girl sports. And then the opportunity came up and I was like, "I just got to try out."

CHUNG: Look at you. You've got a great body. Look at those arms.

I want everybody to see Tammy's arms.

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Oh, my goodness.

CHUNG: No, we're going to come back in a second.

There we go. Right? Great arms.

(LAUGHTER)

CHUNG: Now, tell me, you are a child therapist, is it?

WATTERS: Child therapist in Atlanta/supervisor/treatment coordinator.

CHUNG: All right.

So, what did your family think when you said you wanted to go play football?

WATTERS: Well, they were not really too surprised, because they've always been supportive. And I have always played sports all of my life. However, football is a sport really I didn't have an option to play because it was just not allowed for women to play.

So, once I mentioned it to my family, told them, "Hey, this is something I'm interested in doing," they were very supportive. It was a little unique, because you just don't really hear about women playing full-contact important.

CHUNG: Exactly. The thing that really kills is that you liked it so much, you bought the team. Right?

WATTERS: Yes, that's correct.

(LAUGHTER)

CHUNG: Isn't that expensive?

WATTERS: Yes, it is. It's very expensive.

(LAUGHTER)

CHUNG: And you run the team?

WATTERS: Well, yes. I'm the owner and I also play. And I have a general manager as well as a P.R. person. So, they make it a lot easier, when you have the extra help.

CHUNG: Right. Right. Oh, my gosh.

Now, Tammy, you -- let's see. Who owns your team?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Roy Jones Jr.

CHUNG: Oh, the boxer.

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: The best pound-for-pound boxer in the world.

CHUNG: He is great. He's an awfully nice guy, too. I've met him. He's terrific.

Now, what do you do for a living?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: I am Roy Jones Jr.'s athletic trainer.

CHUNG: Oh, there you go.

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: I take care of the medical -- I'm a certified athletic trainer.

CHUNG: No wonder you're in such good shape.

(LAUGHTER)

CHUNG: So, when is your season, from what to what?

WATTERS: We play from April to June. And the championship game is in July.

CHUNG: And I assume that you really want to be out there so that young girls can go play football, huh?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: That's a dream, but we also want to hit everybody with the thing that, don't ever quit dreaming, because this is something that we never thought that we would be able to do.

Yes, we want to promote women's football. We want women to be able to play. And they should be able to do things that they want to do in life. But it can really relate to anybody as far as living their dreams in life.

CHUNG: La'Tonya, what is it in you that you want to accomplish with this team, the league, everything?

WATTERS: Well, I just want to accomplish -- whenever you have a dream, it is really difficult for people to understand, because, when it's something you've wanted to do your whole life and you've been told no, because it's really not of the norm -- it's like, when they said football tryouts, I can't run out on the field in high school, because women could not play. So we could basically just play flag football.

But now is an opportunity where we can play. I have women who walk up to me today who are like 45, 50, and say: "Where has football been? I have always wanted to do it." But now they are at an age where they cannot participate. And I'm at an age where I can. So, I'm just so grateful to our president, Catherine Masters, for making this dream come true, not only for myself, but for young girls of today.

CHUNG: I think it's so great.

Tammy, was your husband a pro player?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Yes. He retired. His last team that he played with was the New Orleans Saints.

CHUNG: Right. Right. Not when they were the Aints?

(LAUGHTER)

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: No. But he finished up because he had a couple major knee operations. So he finished it off.

CHUNG: So does he give you advice?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Sometimes. At first, he thought -- he was like: "What is wrong with you? Why do you want to go through what I went through?" And then now he just gets the biggest kick out of it. He thinks it's really neat.

CHUNG: Well, good for him.

Have either of you had any serious injuries?

WATTERS: Not personally, but we've -- we've lost at least three or four players to some injuries.

CHUNG: Yes?

WATTERS: As well as sportsmanship. But, yes.

CHUNG: What do you mean? WATTERS: Well, I mean, certain players, if they do things they shouldn't do, that's where the ownership part comes in. And you have to dismiss them, if you have to.

CHUNG: You're a tough owner.

WATTERS: Yes, I am. You have to be to succeed in this business.

(LAUGHTER)

CHUNG: How about you, Tammy? Any injuries?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: I've been very fortunate. But the last two years that we've been in the season, we've seen a lot of ACLs and typical injuries that I saw when I worked in the NFL Europe league.

CHUNG: Any advice for those girls out there?

WATTERS: Well, I would just say, don't ever let someone tell you you can't do something, because this like a lifelong dream come true. And I'm still on cloud nine. Our record was like 2-6, but I feel I like win every time I walk off the field and every time I walk on the field, because it's a dream. It's an accomplishment. And I'm just so happy about it.

CHUNG: Do you have a Super Bowl?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Yes.

WATTERS: Yes.

CHUNG: Yes?

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: We're in the playoffs.

CHUNG: Oh, good for you.

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Pensacola Power is 8-0 right now. So we have our first playoff game Saturday.

CHUNG: Good for you. Terrific.

Well, it's so nice to meet you. You go, girls. I think it's great.

LOWREY-RIDGLEY: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHUNG: My guests didn't make it to the Sup-Her Bowl in July. But you know they're pros when they tell you, There's always next year.

And when we come back, we'll have a quick word on tomorrow's program. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHUNG: And tommorrow, you'll meet an American husband and wife who are trying to take on gigantic leap that may just rival a trip to the moon. They want to give birth to the first human clone.

"LARRY KING LIVE" is next. Thanks for watching. Have a good night.

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