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CNN Live Today

Life, Loss And Love; What's In A Name?

Aired April 28, 2006 - 10:30   ET

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

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: And now a story that is sure to move you. A grandfather meets his first grandchild, and is moved to write a series of letters. Those letters can now be found in a book called "Letters to Sam." It's filled with lessons on life that we can all relate to.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN (voice-over): You're watching a love affair...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No more!

DANIEL GOTTLIEB, AUTHOR, "LETTERS TO SAM": Come on!

KAGAN: ... between a grandfather and a grandson. The type of relationship you see every day. This one, though, has a twist. Grandpa is Daniel Gottlieb, psychologist, host on a National Public Radio, and a quadraplegic.

GOTTLIEB: My accident took place 26 years ago. I was driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Harrisburg to buy a surprise 10th anniversary gift for my wife. An 18-wheeler truck lost one of its wheels, the whole wheel, and it bounced and hit my car, crushed it and broke my neck.

KAGAN: Gottlieb has been paralyzed from the shoulders down ever since. He says he doesn't remember much about the accident.

GOTTLIEB: I don't recall anything except seeing a black thing in the sky moments before it hit my car. My -- I often say to people, though, that's not my story. That's so many people's stories. So many of us are hit by a black thing. You discover a lump or a spouse says I can't do this anymore or something happens to a child or -- or. Most of us are hit by a black thing at some point in our lives.

KAGAN: And that's how Gottlieb works, takes his unusual journey and applies it to the rest of our lives.

GOTTLIEB: I've learned lessons over these last 25 years about how to cope with it, how to enjoy one's life living inside the body that I have.

KAGAN: Nothing has given Gottlieb more joy than the birth six years ago of his first grandchild, Sam.

GOTTLIEB: Anybody who's had a child experiences a perfect love when they see that child for the first time. Their hearts are wide open. And that's what I feel when I see Sam. Not that he's a perfect child, but that that the love is perfect.

KAGAN: And an inspiration to write a sears of letters, a book, grandfather to grandson, about love, loss and the gifts of life. The focus of the book changed right after Sam turned one. Doctors diagnosed him as autistic.

GOTTLIEB: Once I discovered that Sam had autism, it did feel more urgent to write this book, because I had so much more I wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell him all about what it means to be different and how to cope with alienation, how to deal with other people who look at you differently or worse, don't look at you at all.

KAGAN: From his wheelchair, Gottlieb points out, the world sees his disability on the outside. While Sam looks normal, he has challenges inside.

GOTTLIEB: He can't do big emotions. And most important, he doesn't read subtleties in other people's emotions. He just can't do it. And that's why they have difficulties socially.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How many lady bugs? Who wants to tell me how many lady bugs?

KAGAN: Gottlieb knows there will be things that are hard for Sam, in some ways the same things that are difficult for everyone. That understanding led to the letter about loss.

GOTTLIEB: "Sam, almost everything you become attached to we'll eventually lose: our possessions, our loved ones and even our youth and our health. Yes, each loss is a blow, but it's also an opportunity. Sam, there's an old Sufi saying that says, 'When the heart weeps for what it's lost, the soul rejoices for what it's found.'"

KAGAN: As they each sign the book, it's clear Dan Gottlieb has found a partner in his grandson, a partner for teaching the world what it means to be different.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: And Dan Gottlieb is my guest this morning, live from Philadelphia. Dan, good morning. Great to have you here with us.

GOTTLIEB: Thank you so much. It's great to be with you.

KAGAN: I sent you a note saying you need a disclaimer on the book, that it has to be read with a box of Kleenex.

GOTTLIEB: You're right. I should have.

KAGAN: Nearby. But not because it's a sad story, it's not sad at all. Rather you have this way of writing it and you turn the page and boom, you hit us that somehow, through your journey, you're able to understand feelings that all of us have.

GOTTLIEB: My story -- on my business card I don't have psychologist or family therapist on it. My only label is human. That's what the book is about. That's what my life, my career, is about. It just touches on what it means to be human.

KAGAN: Well, since the book is called "Letters to Sam," I'd like to have you read some of the letters to us. And I tried to pick out a few or parts of them, which wasn't easy, by the way. But since so much of the book is about being different, if you could read the passage where you talk to Sam about what it means to be different and feel different.

GOTTLIEB: Sure. "Sam, your differentness and my differentness are just facts. Sometimes what we do with our minds turns those facts into pain and sometimes we can just read them as facts, acknowledging them but not feeling them. But the more you feel your differentness, the more lonely you'll feel."

KAGAN: And the reason that touched me --- and I think so many people -- and you touch on this in the book -- being different isn't being in a wheelchair or having autistic. So many people feel different and feel apart, but it's something that we do to ourselves.

GOTTLIEB: It's not so many people, Daryn. It's all of us. You know, there's a great writer who once said, "The divine child, that spiritual child inside of all of us, is always an orphan." It's a quality of being human that we experience alienation. We are orphans, and the challenge is what we do with our orphanhood. And most of us deny it and pretend that if we're good enough, if we're strong enough, smart enough, rich enough, powerful enough, then we won't be orphans anymore. But if we can stop fighting that experience, we can simply be who we are and stop fighting. We can discover that the world has created for us a wonderful orphanage and we connect with people at that level.

KAGAN: You also talk about something that is tough for everybody, and that is change. Now, friends of mine that have autistic children explain to me that change can rock an autistic child's world. But everybody has trouble with change. And you talk about it while you're talking to Sam about when he decides to give up his binky or his pacifier.

GOTTLIEB: You want me to read that quote?

KAGAN: Yes, read the passage, the beginning part where you're talking about what change is really at its core.

GOTTLIEB: "Sam, change is difficult for all of us. The older we get, the more change we face. Sam, all change involves loss and we -- whenever we lose something, we ache to have it back. Everything I've lost in my life -- big things, little things -- I've wanted back."

KAGAN: And how does change affect Sam?

GOTTLIEB: Sam reacts pretty strongly. Sam reacts quantitatively different to change than the rest of us. His mom, my daughter, has to print out a picture card for him every morning from a computer whenever his day is going to be different, so that he knows exactly what to expect during the day, or else he'll react pretty strongly.

KAGAN: No one has had bigger changes in their life than you have, and you're so honest about discussing your accident and what it's meant to your life. You call this book, the end title of it, "And the Gifts of Life." I've heard you describe the experience of having this accident and spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair as a gift. Do you really think that's true?

GOTTLIEB: You know, when I -- yes, I do. When I heard people saying that shortly after my accident, I didn't believe them. I didn't like them saying it. In hindsight, my experience of what happened is when my neck broke, air got in and my soul began to breathe. As a result of my accident, I became the man I always was inside. I never would have become the man I am today if it weren't for the accident, and that involves the gifts of loss.

When I lost what I did, I stopped fighting. I stopped fighting against my orphanhood, because I knew I was going lose that battle. I stopped fighting against everything I lost, and started becoming the man I am.

KAGAN: How long did it take you to get to that point?

GOTTLIEB: A lifetime, maybe more. I went through a pretty severe clinical depression, about four or five years, after my accident. I would imagine it took about 10 years, and I really am, Daryn, still evolving and growing. I -- my body is broken, my mind is neurotic and truly, my soul is at peace, Daryn.

KAGAN: Well...

GOTTLIEB: Who could ask for more?

KAGAN: We get to see pieces of all that. The mind, and the soul and explanations of your body in the book. It's "Called letters to Sam." And as I said, if you have any smarts, you'll have some Kleenex nearby.

Dan Gottlieb, thank you.

And I understand part of the proceeds going to an autism foundations.

GOTTLIEB: All of the proceeds to cure autism, and other children's charities.

KAGAN: Excellent.

Thank you so much for making time for us and thank you for the thoughts from the book.

GOTTLIEB: Daryn, thank you.

KAGAN: Thank you, Dan.

Forty-two minutes past the hour. Coming up, a mysterious disorder. It leaves people trapped inside their own bodies. Now there's a race for the medical key that could set them free.

Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta has the story when CNN LIVE TODAY returns.

KAGAN: Marketing matters, a political name game, a closer look when CNN LIVE TODAY returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: A secret code is cracked simply by following the letter of the law. A lawyer reviewing the "Da Vince Code" court case noticed some letters in the judge's ruling were actually italicized. When the lawyer asked the judge about it, he confirmed there was a secret code embedded in the document. It took the lawyer just one day to crack the code using a method in "The Da Vinci Code." The message, "Jackie Fisher who are you dreadnought." That's an obscure reference to a Royal Navy admiral and warship. The code-cracking lawyer talked to Miles O'Brien on CNN's AMERICAN MORNING.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

M. O'BRIEN: So what does have to do with copyright infringement, Jesus and the possibility that Jesus might have lineage, or is it deliberately not anything to do it?

DAN TENCH, LAWYER WHO CRACKED CODE: It is deliberately, absolutely nothing to do with it. What he is demonstrating is how you can use codes, which of course was what the subject matter of the litigation was all about, how you can use codes to put secret messages. And if you like, convey your -- whatever your own personal interest is, and the judge's own personal interest was Admiral Fisher.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: Well, it's the law today in Alabama. Segregation-era convictions can be wiped off the books. Little fanfare. Alabama Governor Bob Riley has signed the Rosa Parks act. A pardon, though, is not automatic; it must be requested. The new law could mean clean legal slates for Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and hundreds of others arrested during the civil rights movement.

What's in the name? Apparently quite a bit. Take Senator Hillary Clinton, for example. She's been called a lot of things. But what does she call herself?

Senior political analyst Bill Schneider reports from "THE SITUATION ROOM."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): During her first years of marriage, Hillary Rodham kept her maiden name.

Then, after one term as governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton lost his bid for reelection. When he ran again, two years later, his wife became Hillary Rodham Clinton. And he won. Now she is Senator Hillary Clinton. Or is it Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton?

Nationwide, in the latest CNN poll taken by Opinion Research Corporation, Hillary Rodham Clinton gets a slightly higher favorability rating than Hillary Clinton, 50, as compared to 46 percent favorable.

It makes a big difference what part of the country people are from. Among Southerners, Hillary Clinton is more positively regarded, married name only. Outside the South, people definitely prefer Hillary Rodham Clinton. If you combine responses to both names across the country, the public's view of Senator Clinton is closely divided, 48 percent favorable, 43 percent unfavorable.

Compare that with the public's view of a Republican front-runner, Senator John McCain. McCain gets about the same favorable rating as Clinton, but he has lower negatives. Senator Clinton has been making an effort to establish her bipartisan credentials...

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: It's also true that I have worked with Newt Gingrich, and it makes strange bedfellows.

SCHNEIDER: ... while Senator McCain has been asserting his credentials as a staunch Bush supporter.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Anybody who says that the president of the United States is lying about weapons of mass destruction is lying.

SCHNEIDER: But the old images persist. Clinton still divides Americans by party, 76 percent favorable among Democrats, 20 percent favorable among Republicans. McCain still has the image of an independent and a maverick. He has a rare nonpartisan image in this highly partisan era.

(on camera): That may be an advantage for McCain, but there would be other would be other factors at work if the two were to face each other in 2008, like the desire for change.

Right now President Bush has a very negative image, 57 to 40 percent unfavorable. And former President Bill Clinton? Just about the reverse, 57 to 38 favorable. There may be some nostalgia out there for the good times of the Bill Clinton era.

Bill Schneider, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Bill Schneider is part of the best political team on television. It's right here on CNN.

Well, she's got game. Dakoda Dowd makes her LPGA tour. It's a dream come true for her terminally-ill mother. Their story's ahead on CNN LIVE TODAY.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) KAGAN: Now the story of a dying mother and a daughter who is fulfilling her last wish. She's doing it like a pro. Thirteen-year- old Dakoda Dowd shot two-over-par in the round one in the Ginn Club Resort's Open outside Orlando. She birdied her first hole. The LPGA bent the rules to get her on the green.

CNN's Candy Reid has their story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CANDY REID, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Like any young golfer, Dakoda Dowd dreamed of playing at the highest level. But it was her mother's dream that caught national attention.

KELLY JO DOWD, DAKODA'S MOM: Wouldn't it be incredible if she could go all the way and go ahead and go on the LPGA?

REID: In 2002, Kelly Jo Dowd was diagnosed with breast cancer. She appeared to have beaten the illness in 2004, but last year, the vicious disease returned with a vengeance.

K. DOWD: It now has spread to bone cancer, stage four, and liver cancer as well so it was quite -- it was quite obviously a smack in my face.

DAKODA DOWD, MAKING LPGA DEBUT AT 13 YEARS OLD: It just didn't seem like she had cancer. It was like, how could this just, like, pop up again so bad when we get tests every single month. So it just didn't make sense.

REID: Last fall, when the sponsor of this week's LPGA events heard about the Dowd's story, they made an unprecedented offer, extending one of two exemptions to Dakoda, allowing her to compete against the tour's best. It was a phone call that changed their lives.

MIKE DOWD, DAKODA'S DAD: Said we're going give Dakoda sponsors exemption. Mr. Guinness (ph) is going to do that for her to play. And then I just start crying. That was too much.

K. DOWD: Once he told us about this exemption, our family was in high gear. I mean, it actually put a different type of positive attitude and energy in our household.

REID: While the exemption was an exciting opportunity for Dakoda, it came with a big question mark. Kelly Jo was given just months to live by her doctors, and there were no assurances she'd be there in April. But the prospect of seeing Dakoda play on the LPGA tour gave her mom all of the incentive she need.

K. ROWD: God willing and my health prevailing, I will be there, front center and stage, watching my daughter tee it off.

D. DOWD: I want to be with my mom all the way up until forever, but if that doesn't happen, I want to be with her as long as I can every day. Candy Reid, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: And here's wishing Dakoda good luck in that tournament.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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