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Understanding 9/11tv Chiseled CSPAN June 3, 2017 12:56pm-1:16pm EDT
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the voyage, and not crossing the continent again, in the united states. >> we continue our look at eugene's literary culture. televangelist danuta pfeiffer and her memoir "chiseled" which looks at her lifetime including the 700 club show with pat robertson as he began campaigning for the republican party presidential nomination in 1987, and 1988. >> danuta pfeiffer worked on a series of radio intelligent programs but is best known as the cohost of the 700 club with pat robinson from 1983 to 1987 and in her book "chiseled" she talks about her time there and the rest of her life story. >> it wasn't a book about me. it was a book about my father.
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and a polish war hero and olympic medalist, would tell us the stories of heroism, and one day i would tell my story and one day you will write it. posthumously i discovered some tapes, made about his life so i was taking the tape, transcribing them, doing research and connecting dots, and writing the story as a little girl. circumstances changed that drove me to realize i wasn't writing a book about him at all. it was a book about me. my response in general.
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>> how was your childhood. >> my father was a sculptor, sculpted these statutes for churches and some institutions. a great artist and ski instructor, doing sculpting in the summer and in the winter where he could teach as a ski instructor and at one point in our lives we had a letter patch of land in the woods surrounded by birch trees but we had no money. we were living in a circus tent donated by a ringling brothers circus, donated to a church and the church gave it to a band of polish gypsies living in the woods and living in this tent for a while, it was a huge big top 10. my father didn't believe in
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chopping down trees. the tent, trees are permanent, tend is temporary. so we have trees growing in the middle of the tent which were the four pillars of our bed. we lived in that tends until my dad could, by hands, build a cabin in the woods with my mother working in detroit sending of her checks as a nurse so it was a fascinating childhood where we ate over bonfires at night. that was our cooking stove and we 8 venison and deer and anything else my father could get with a bow and arrow. it was a real rather primitive, wonderful way to grow up as a little girl. >> how did that road trip from michigan to alaska come about?
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>> at the age of 16 i was raped by a boyfriend but i couldn't tell my parents. i especially couldn't tell my father. i felt so guilty and so traumatized by that particular event so i ended up hiding my pregnancy. my mother eventually new. we kept it from my father. one day my mother and father were out. it was in northern michigan, a big snowstorm. i was home alone. my brother was in school. i was in 10th grade and i had the baby alone in the house. when my parents came home my father, of course, was shocked. and disowned me. told me that i was not allowed to even finish school and i was thrown out of the house. ..
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to go to alaska. it was because of airman needed the car in alaska and we were going to deliver to it him by driving there. little did we know we were driving through the snowstorm of the century so we drove 4,400 miles through a devastating storm, ice fog, temperatures that were 60 below zero, and possibly more. a time when you couldn't turn the car off because the engine would freeze. no other people on the road. the the al-can was 25 areas old
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so it was a rugged, dangerous, treacherous road, with no guardrails, no signs, very few gas stations, little lodging areas, and we drove through that, and my mother just kept driving, and it was one of the most treacherous things, going over glaciers war were milling, over mountaintops that looked like teepees. weight -- quite the journey. >> what was going through your mind? >> i would traumatized, frankly. didn't have a solid thought in my head. i was frightened, i was unsure of myself, i was just following the direction of my mother, who
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said just -- this is what we're going to do, how we're going to do it, and i just followed. she adopted my son as her own, and now my son had become my brother, and i just took her lead. my mother had a way of saying, just look forward. never look back. don't look back. don't even think about it. that was the way i survived, by not reflecting too much on what happened in the past, and she just kept telling me that i could finish school, i could go to college, i still had a life ahead of me and it was through the strength of my mother. and so my father and god almost were -- could replace each other, and as a little girl, started thinking of my father as this huge god in my life, and so later on in college, i was still
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looking for some connection to the divine. i still was struggling with looking for some kind of redemption, even though it wasn't my fault i was raped. my father made me think it was. and so i tried all sorts of religions. i was all over the map, and finally i met a man who led me to jesus over a margarita and an avocado orchard in san diego, and this is while i was a tv host and radio news journalist in san diego. so now i was a born-again christian. it felt great. welcome to jesus. and while i was working in san diego, somebody had sent a tape -- not me -- sent a tape to pat robertson at the 700 club, and i got a letter from them asking me if i would like to be the new news director at a
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bureau in jerusalem. and i jumped at the chance. so, i was now steeped in religion and tv evangelism, and i really wasn't quite prepared for what i found. >> host: when did you officially join the 700 club and what was that experience like? >> guest: i really didn't join the 700 club. it joined me. i thought i was going jerusalem, and i was their co-host on the 700 club at the time had apparently had a nervous breakdown. they didn't tell me that. they just said, we just lost our co-host. could you sit in for two days, thursday and friday, on the 700 club with pat robertson and ben and co-host and we'll get you your ticket to jerusalem on
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monday. said, sure. never seen the show. never met pat robertson so i didn't have much information when i sat down on that set. but monday i go in to pick up my ticket to jerusalem. i'm still living in a hotel. i'm thinking i'm going. and i walk into the human resources department, and there are memos all over the walls and on cubicle doors saying, please welcome denuta as the new co-host of the 700 club. i didn't get to jerusalem. it was a big learning curve for me because within a matter of weeks, not even months, i was now being asked by churches and christian organizations around the country to preach. now, i know how to talk but preaching was a different story. and not only that, i was asked to heal the -- the laying on of
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handed. the movement there's a belief you can x-ray lay on hands, in the name of juts somebody could be healed if that had the faith and there was a power in that prayer. i was astonished how hungry people were. i was surprised at how a lot of the people, viewers would watch the 700 club, was willing to take the word of somebody on television above and beyond their own sense of faith. television had a tremendous power over people, as if god got cable or something. and so somehow we had become the intermediaries to the lord because we were on television, but behind the scenes, other things were taking place. pat was deciding to run for president. there was the presidential jet.
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there were the -- some tran satisfactions in africa going on willed gold mines and diamond minds and the irs was getting involved in money distribution, with nonprofit organizations, and political ambitions and super pac and all of this been was going on and it was throwing the show and me and the producers off balance a bit. it got to be very uncomfortable, and as pat is running for president, he finds out from a reporter that my brother is really my son. pat confronts me about it. he is afraid that the news is going to hurt his political campaign. his co-host has this past.
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and so he compels me to tell my son -- that he is actually my son and that was -- pretty uncomfortable. not sure he was ready for that information, just to save a man's political career and to destroy a family unit and to invade that privacy was very uncomfortable. my son took it pretty well, but it was another reason, like am i in the right place? should i be dog this? is all of this as altruistic as i hoped? i defended i was going to leave, and i was in florida, making that decision that i would probably leave the 700 club and good back to san diego and pick up my career as broadcast journalist there. and i was confronted unexpectedly by three elders
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from cbn, church elders from the christian broadcasting network, who pounded it into me that i was not supposed to leave. that jesus wanted me there i was supposed to stay on at the 700 club, that my purpose was set, and for three days they were praying over me and showing me biblical scriptures about why jesus wanted me to stay; inflame i succumbed. i said, okay. i'll stay. two days later, back at cbn from florida, i'm fired in the parking lot and told that my services would no longer be needed because pat's son was going to take my place on the 700 club. pat is now officially off because he is running for president in the primaries, and i was sort of standing there wondering which jesus was talking to me?
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the jesus of the beach in fort meyers or the jesus not parking lot? that put me into a tailspin for many, many, many months, and so in order to save my own soul and my own sanity, i decided to throw the baby out with the bath water, religion and religionosty and god and jesus and everything and start over. i went for a 2,200-mile bicycle ride to clear my head. >> host: how did that translate to when you found the tapes of your father and you kind of discovered more about him to just now that you felt free, like what were you discovering? >> guest: well, i met and married my husband, robin. i have to sort of take a little backtrack on that question because at the point of being totally empty and having
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nothing, was one of the most powerful feelings i'd ever had. it was empty -- emptiness was not something to fear but something to rejoice in because i could only be filled up. i mean, when your cup is completely empty, nature hates a vacuum and it was coming, and i felt quite energized by it, and it was during this time when i met my husband, robin, threw through newspaper add i wrote and we met and fell in love and he asked me to mary -- marry him. that was 23 years ago. now i have met the've of -- the love of my life, who managed and planted a vineyard on his family farm here in oregon.
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one day he said to me, what is one of your dreams? i said to one day go to poland and do research on the book i'm writing about my father. he said there's no such thing as one day. let's make it happen. we went to poland, and there i discovered that all my father's stories were lies; that he never -- he wasn't a big war hero. that he didn't escape from dachau, didn't win all those olympic medals for skiing. it was all a lie. and this book i had been writing was 350 pages of falsehoods and i realize i would i was now having to change the story, and the story was about my reaction to all of this. so as i started rewriting the story of my father, was actually
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writing my own. >> host: what would you want people to take away from this book? >> guest: there is an art to forgiveness. it's very important that even though you feel you have been betrayed, not to carry that stone in your backpack. it will bring you down. so, forgiveness is a very big part of life. i learned to forgive my father. i learned to forgive that god in the parking lot. forth giveness is terribly important. another thing is don't be afraid of emptiness. don't be afraid of losing anything. and don't ever think you're stuck. if you feel stuck in life, there is so much life waiting for you out there. don't be afraid to let go of
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those things that are not working for you and to grab on, even if there's nothing to hold on to, hold on to the faith that potential is waiting for you. and you will be fulfilled. so, fear has no place in the ups and downs of life. it'sed a adventure. >> host: this has been a wonderful conversation and thank you. >> guest: my pleasure. thank you, johnny. >> trails like this one that went look the willamette river provides about residents an opportunity to enjoy nature. come along on this trip on oregon trails. >> eugene is in a beautiful spot but also a fragile place, and peoples of defensive about that. our former governor, tom mccall, shocked ti
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