>> we continue our look at eugene's literary culture. next, former televangelist danuta pfieffer and her memoir "chiseled: a memoir of identity, duplicity and divine wine" which looks at her life story including her time cohosting the 700 club show with pat robertson as he began campaigning for the republican party presidential nomination in 1987 and 88. . >> danuta pfieffer worked on a series of radio and television programs but is best known as the cohost of the 700 club with robertson. from 1983 to 1987. her book chiseled, she talked about her time there and the rest of her life story. >> it wasn't a book about me to begin with, it was a book about my father because as i was growing up, my father who is polish, a polish war hero and olympic medalist and tell us these stories of his heroism and even when i was a little girl he would say one day i will tell my story and one day danuta pfieffer, you will write it.

so eventually, posthumously, i discovered some tapes that my father actually made about his life and so i was taking a date, transcribing them, doing research and connecting the dots on his story and writing the story of his life as i had promised as a little girl. >> but eventually, the six circumstances change that drove me to realize that i wasn't writing the book about him at all. it was a book about me. and my responses to him and my response to life in general. >> so where did you grow up, how was your childhood and how was the family? >> we grew up in northern michigan and my father was a sculptor and sculpted these statues for churches and some institutions so he was a great artist and he was also

a ski instructor in the wintertime so he traveled a lot. we had to be in a place where he could do sculpting in the summer and in the winter, where he could teach as a ski instructor and one point in our lives we had a little patch of land in the woods surrounded by birch street but we had no money so we were living in a circus tent that was donated by a traveling circus by a ringling brothers circus, donated to a church and then the church gave it to this little band of polish gypsies that were living in the area so we were living in this tent for a while and it was a huge big top tent and my father didn't believe in chopping down trees. and he says that is, the trees are permanent, the tent is temporary so we had trees growing in the middle of the 10th which was before colors of our bed. and we lived in that tent until my dad could buy hand build a little cabin in the

woods. with my mother working in detroit sending up her checks as a nurse. so it was a fascinating childhood where we ate over bonfires at night, that was our cooking stove and it was, we ate venison and deer and anything else my father could get with a bow and arrow. it was a real was a real primitive way to grow up as a little girl. >> out of that road trip you describe in the book in michigan to alaska and up. >> well, 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 but we kept it from my father.

and one day my mother and father were out, it was in northern michigan, it was a big snowstorm, i was home alone. my brother was in school. i was in the 10th grade and i had the baby alone in the house. and 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 there and i was thrown out of the house. so my mother in order to protect me took my little four-year-old brother and my baby son and myself, got a driveway car, a car that and airmen in alaska wanted and she got thecar from detroit , got us in this car, no snow tires, faulty heater and we

decided to go to alaska. >> was because the airmen needed the car in alaska and we were going to deliver it to them by driving there. did we know we were driving through the snow storm of the century. >> so we drove 4400 miles through a devastating storm, ice, falling, temperatures that were 60 below zero and possibly more. a time when you couldn'tturn the car off because the engine would freeze . no other people on the road but our webcam was only 25 years old at the time so it was arugged , dangerous , treacherous road with no guardrails, no signs, very few gas stations, little lodging.>> you lodging areas and we drove through

that. and my mother just kept driving. and it was one of the most treacherous things i think we've ever done billing under glaciers that were melting. over mountaintops that looked like tvs, it was quite the journey. >> what was going for your mind during this time. ? >> i was traumatized. >> quite likely, i really didn't have, i really 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 said you know, this is what we're going to do. this is how we're going to do it and i just followed. she adopted my son as her own and so now my son had become my brother and i just took early.

my mother had a way of saying just look forward, never look back. don't lookback, don't even think about it and that was the way i survived , by not reflecting too much on what had happened in the past and she just kept telling me that i could finish school, then i could go to college, i still had a life ahead of me and that was true the strength of my mother and so my father and god almost were, could replace each other. and as a little girl i started thinking of my father as this huge, this huge god in my life. and so later on in college, i was still 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 avocado orchard in san diego. and this is while i was a tv host and a radio news journalist in san diego. but now i was a born-again christian. well, it felt great, welcome to jesus. and while i was working in san diego, somebody had sent the tape, not me, and said to take 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 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. >> when you officially join the 700 club? what was that experience like? >> i didn't really join the 700 club, it joined me. i thought i was going to jerusalem and i was, their cohost on the 700 club at the time had apparently had a nervous breakdown. they didn't tell me that. they just said gee, we just lost our cohost. could you sit in for two days . thursday and friday. on the 700 club with pat robertson and ben kinslow and a cohost and we will get you your ticket to jerusalem on monday. sure. never seen the show, never met robertson so i really didn't have very much information when i sat down on that set. >> so 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 walked into the human resources department and there are memos all over the walls and on cubicle doors saying please welcome her as the new cohost of the 700 club. i didn't get to jerusalem five, 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 laying on of hands in the karen as movement, there is a belief that you can play and lay on hands and in the name of jesus somebody could be healed if they had the faith and there was a power in that prayer and i, i was astonished at how hungry

people were. >> i was surprised at how a lot of the viewers who watched the 700 club were willing to take us somebody on television about me beyond their own sense of things. television has a tremendous power over people. it's 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 scene, other things were taking place, patwas deciding to run for president . there was the presidential jets, there was the, some transaction in africa going on with gold mines and diamond mines and the irs was getting involved in money

distribution with nonprofit organizations and political ambitions and super pacs and all of this business 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 if pat is running for president, he finds out from a reporter that my brother is really my son. pat confronts me about it. >> he's afraid that the news is going to hurt his political campaign. >> that his cohost has this past and so he compels me to tell my son, to tell that he is actually my son and that was, that was pretty uncomfortable. i'm not sure he was ready for that information. >> just to save amends political career and to

destroy a family, a unit and to invade that privacy was very uncomfortable. >> my son took it pretty well but it was, it was another reason like, michigan in the right place and should i be doing this. is all of this as altruistic as i had hoped?so i decided that i was going to be and i was in florida. making that decision that i would probably leave the 700 club and go back to san diego and pick up my career as a broadcast journalist there. and i was confronted, unexpectedly by three elders from cdn for church elders from the christian broadcasting network, who pounded into me that i was not supposed to leave, that jesus wanted methere, that i was supposed to stay on . 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. until i succumbed, i said okay, i'll stay. >> two days later, i cdn 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 sitting there wondering which jesus was talking to me, wasn't the jesus of the beach in fort myers or was it the jesus in the parking lot. >> faculty into a tailspin. and for many many months, so in order to save my own soul and my own sanity i decided

to throw the baby out with the bathwater. religion and ritual religiosity and god and jesus and everything, start over. >> so i went for 2200 mile bicycle ride to clear my head. >> that translate to when you found the tapes of your father and you kind of discovered more about him to this now that you like, you felt free, what were you discovering? >> i met and married my husband robin. >> i had to sort of take a little backtrack on that question because of being totally empty and having nothing was one of the most powerful feelings i've ever had. >> it was emptiness was not something to fear but something to rejoice in. >> because i could only be

filled up. >> when your cup is completely empty, nature is a vacuum. and it was, it was common and i felt quite energized by it. and it was during this time when i met my husband robbie through a newspaper ad that i wrote and we met, fell in love and within 12 days he asked me to marry him. >> that was 23 years ago. >> so now, i've met the love of my life. >> managed and planted a vineyard on his family farm. >> here in oregon. one day he said to me what is one of your dreams and i said one of my dreams is one they go to poland and do some research on the book that i'm writing about my father. and he said well, there's no such thing as one day, let's

make it happen and he took me to poland, we went to poland and there in poland i discovered that all my father's stories were lies. he never, he wasn't of a war hero. >> that he didn't escape from dachau, that he didn't win all these olympic medals for skiing. it was all alive. and this book i had been writing was you know, 350 pages of falsehood. >> and i realized that i was now having to change the story. >> the story was about my reaction to all of this so as i started rewriting the story of my father, i was actually writing my own. >> what would you want them to take away from this book. >> 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 this is a very big part of life. >> i learned to forgive my father, i learned to forgive that dotted the parking lot. >> forgiveness is terribly important. another thing is don't be afraid of emptiness. don't be afraid of losing. losing anything. and don't ever think your stock. if you feel stuck in life, there is so much life waiting for you out there. don't be afraid to let go of those things that are working for you. to grab on, even if there's nothing to hold onto. 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 is an adventure. >> this is been a wonderful conversation and thank youfor allowing us to cover you.>> like was, thank you johnny . >> the river provides residents an opportunity to enjoy nature., along with us author bill sullivan who shares a history for his book or on trips and trails. >>. >> eugene is in a beautiful spot but it's also a fragile place. and people are a little bit defensive about that. former governor, call shot initial tv audience with when he went on air to tell people not to come to oregon. he said visit all you want, we love tourists but