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It is hard to find good memoir written by and about people who are not famous. And yet, these are some of the best memoirs to read. They are so much more relatable than celebrity memoirs. This is what inspired me to create Definitely Not Famous, a podcast where I interview memoirists about their stories. My goal with this podcast is to elevate the stories of everyday people who truly are More Extra than Ordinary.
[0:01] Imagine not being able to read. Every time you see a sign on the road,
[0:05] you don't know what it says. Every time you see a label on a can of food, you don't know what it means. Imagine how hard it would be to do your grocery shopping. This is what life was like for Arnie Stewart, a person who survived as an adult who could not read or write. Arnie Stewart and Janet Lee are the more extra than ordinary forces behind the book Always Ask for Help. Thank you.
[0:38] Welcome to Definitely Not Famous. I'm Rebecca Hogue, your show host. In this podcast, I seek out memoir authors who are not celebrities, at least not yet, and interview them about their books. I'm looking for stories that are more extra than ordinary. I met Janet Lee through my first podcast, Demystifying Instructional Design. When I asked her how she came to be an instructional designer, she spoke of her time as a teacher of high school students who were struggling with literacy. This led to her telling me about the story of how she met Arnie Stewart and when she initially committed to writing his book. And one day there was a presenter who came to the school and we all crowded into the library. And this guy, he was 59 or 60 years old and he was shaking and he looked scared. I thought, oh gosh, this guy's going to be a terrible speaker. And I looked at my students, I gave them that teacher look, don't you dare do anything wrong. So he starts talking and he said, my name is Arnie Stewart. I grew up in a little mining town in Cobalt, Ontario.
[1:47] I spent two years in grade one, two years in grade two, two years in grade three, two years in grade four, and one hour in grade five. I don't know what happened in school. I know I was always hungry and always ashamed and afraid to ask for help.
[2:06] I just couldn't seem to get the ABCs. And I really don't understand to say why not. So he proceeded to tell my students the story of his life and how he lived in a parked car for a while. He ate food out of a garbage can to survive. But his trick was he always bluffed his way through. So instead of reading the signs to go anywhere, he would just get in behind the bus and follow the bus wherever he was going. To get his driver's license, he took it seven times. And every time he would mark a different box until he finally passed. He was like the forest gump of literacy. And my students were totally enraptured by him. A lot of them cried. And one boy at the end came up to me and he said, Miss, if you look in the parking lot, see that car? I said, yeah. He said, my family lives in that car. I live in the car in the parking lot. And I'm asking for help. Can you help me? And I'm asking because of Arnie. That day I went and I found Arnie before he left. And I said, you don't know me, But my name's Janet Lee, and I want to write your book. I want to help you speak to more kids. So that's what we did. We got together, and we ended up traveling around. We spoke to 72 audiences about always asking for help and how important literacy is.
[3:30] When Janet first met Arnie, he was doing talks with the Literacy Coalition. He was volunteering his time, talking to students to help them understand just how difficult life is when you cannot read. Arnie was traveling from Niagara Falls to school gyms around Barrie, Ontario, to speak about life without literacy. As someone who could not read, he would follow the bus on the highway to figure out which exit he needed to get off at. He would drive around town street by street until he found the school that he was supposed to speak at.
[4:03] Janet shared just how more extra than ordinary Arnie truly was. The Literacy Coalition found him places to speak. So they found him a place where he could speak in Barrie, Ontario. And they would say, here's the address. Here's kind of where it is. And you got to be there on this date. The Literacy Coalition thought he could read.
[4:31] He couldn't. He was bluffing them, too. And no matter what they tried, he was still, like, kind of lying to them. And they thought, if I give you an address, you'll be able to get there. Well, he couldn't. So what Arnie would do is he would get in his car the day before in Niagara Falls. And rain or shine, snow or sleet, he would get on the 400 knowing where kind of Barry was. and he would drive there the night before, go round and round in circles. And if you know where this school is, it was in Innisfil. So it's not anywhere even near Barry. It's off by the lake. Anyway, he would go round and round and round and round until he would find the school. And then he would sleep in the parking lot overnight because he was afraid he would get lost and he would be late and he didn't want to be late. He would sleep in the parking lot. and in the morning he would oftentimes be frozen inside his car because you know what it's like with just snow and sleet and then the doors would be shut he'd have to jam his shoulder against the door and get out of the car and realize his face was full of whiskers because he'd slept there nine o'clock shadow he slept there overnight so he would go to the lake and hopefully sometimes it didn't work, but hopefully be able to break the ice and shave in the water.
[6:00] And then go in and speak. That's why he kind of looked like he did the first time I saw him, because he had actually slept in his car. Now, that's no reflection on the literacy coalition that sent him. They had no idea he was going through this. Or maybe they would have arranged a hotel for him. They had no idea that he was taking time off work.
[6:26] About a year and a half after Janet first met Arnie, she was no longer a classroom teacher. She worked for the school board as a literacy consultant. When she was tasked with training teachers, she returned to her promise to Arnie and designed a comprehensive plan to bring his story into classrooms. Here's how she told it. When I met Arnie, I was in a classroom. And by the time I circled back to my promise, it was probably about a year and a half. So I had left the classroom and had been promoted to consultant at the board office. And one of my tasks was to train teachers to recognize the students that needed help. And when I was tasked with that, I thought, I know exactly what to do. I got to get back in touch with Arnie and see if I can enlist him to go with me into schools. And what I'll do, I don't know where, it just came to me in the middle of the night. I know, I'll do like a before, during, and after thing with him. So I'll think about...
[7:36] What did I wish I knew about Arnie when he came to the school? I wish I had had a conversation with my students. I wish that we had done a little research about where he grew up or looked at a picture of him and made a prediction about what he might be coming to talk about. So that's what I did. I put together this little package that was like, okay, so this is the picture of this man and he's going to speak to us. What do you think he's going to speak about? And when you looked at the picture, you could see he was in the picture I would send was him in a library. So you could see books and the students would always say, oh, he's a professor. And they'd say, actually, no, he's an adult with low literacy. Let's think about that. What kind of problems do you think he might have had in life? And if he couldn't read, you know, tomorrow I want you to think about looking around your life. And if you can't read something, how that would affect you. And so they would have questions coming into his presentation. And I love that generating questions piece. And that's the part I knew how to do. my literacy background, right? So the students would come and they'd have their questions with them. And then they would be totally riveted and wanting to hear him tell his story because the teachers would prepare them. They would say, when he gets here, I want you to look at your questions and see if he answers your question.
[9:01] Unable to read and write, Arnie had his stories memorized. However, sometimes during the presentations, he would lose his place. Although Arnie was a great speaker, his talks were sometimes confusing. Arnie wasn't able to bring notes to stay on track. One day, he realized that he could ask Janet for help, allowing him to get back on track with his talk, but also modeling the behavior they were hoping to teach the kids. He had this canned speech. He had these stories memorized. eyes. He knew what would get the students to laugh or smile. And he naturally knew how to tell a story that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. But he never had note cards.
[9:43] So what I did, I have all of the titles of his stories in a logical order on a piece of paper in front of me. Every time he told him one of those stories, I would put a mark by that story. And he would tell the next story and I'd put a mark by that story. He'd get to like the fourth or fifth story and he would get confused and he would stop. Before we were together, he would just tell something, whatever else came to mind. And his stories were very confusing before we met. But when we were together, he had this idea. He said, when I get confused, I'm going to turn to you and I'm going to model asking for help. I was like, what? He said, yeah, I'm going to do this. I'm going to turn to you and I'm going to say, Janet, I don't know. I'm confused. What story should I tell next? And all I had to do was look down at where we were in the list and go, oh, Ernie, tell us how you got your driver's license. He'd go, oh, I had to take that test seven times. You know, there's 72 questions on, and then he would just launch into that story and be back on track.
[10:52] In addition to modeling asking for help, one of the innovations from their talk was the Arnie card, a way for the kids to use Arnie to ask for help. I didn't quite understand the true power of the Arnie card until Janet explained it to me. Well, you know, that's the powerfulness of Arnie's story. That he, what astounded us was that he could stand up and tell everybody his deepest secrets. He could stand there and say, I don't care if you think I'm stupid. But he'd used the word stupid i was like oh you know i don't care if you're gonna laugh at me i don't care anymore because i'm gonna tell my story and i'm somebody too because we all put our pants on one leg at a time wherein we all just want our our self-esteem and and it's okay to talk about the real the reality i really fear for people with low literacy right now i people People who are struggling and who are flying under the radar now, they're just, it's just not getting any better for people. It's not okay. And it's not okay to ask for help. And when you're so terrified, I mean, Arnie had psoriasis all over his arms and legs because he was afraid to tell his secret. He was afraid he would be found out. And as soon as he asked for help, his skin cleared up.
[12:08] Like just amazing. And when people are in having a fear response, they lose their voice. And that is what we're trying to give back to people, their voice. And that's what the Arnie card is about. When you put this on in front of somebody else with your name on it, it means I need help and I can't ask for it. I'm going to let Arnie do it. And, you know, it works in schools, but it also works in banks. It works in the real estate office. It works all over my little town here. There's Arnie cards in the windows of the businesses that have talked to me and know about people with low literacy. And if you know what that is, you know, when you go in there, those people will understand they're trained to help you. So instead of giving you a form, they will come around the desk and I'll help you fill it out. They'll ask you the questions. They'll sit with you. If they don't just tell you to fill it out in the kiosk, they'll do it for you. It's not enabling, it's supporting. And this is for the helpers as much as it's for the people who need the help. And if you don't know what support somebody needs, you can always ask them, how can I support you? Talk to me about this. Unpack this for me. You know, what are your questions?
[13:33] You know, I'm assuming this, but you talk to me. You know, and it's just, it's just about tone of voice, really.
[13:48] Janet is a force for literacy, but she's also a strong advocate for those with low literacy. I was super curious how she supported Arnie in writing the book. After a long day of talks at various schools, if they had energy left, they would turn towards writing. With audio recorder in hand, Janet had Arnie tell the stories of his life. She used simple questions to bring out sight, sound, and feel, and help coach him into sharing the details needed for the book. Arnie Central, my office. It was a room totally dedicated to his story and his world. I had a tiny white had a white macbook I did not have a good microphone. I had a little camera and I had a recorder like a voice recorder which Turned out to be horrible. Then I the audio is terrible from it, but the macbook Is great. The only problem was there was this fan that would turn on and off So I had to produce the audio book and every time he would open his mouth else he had his spouse teeth would make a noise. So I had to edit out every...
[15:03] Throughout the whole thing. So it was one second, cut, delete, join it. There was no like ripple delete at that moment. So the audio book is kind of a piece of art in itself. And how I learned to be good at editing was listening to a story and pulling out the noises that were in the background, but also he would say, I remember a lot. I would just kind of listen for the flow of his story and take out any I remember that were too many. But that room, it had a place for him to sit very comfortably. It had his banner hanging, had a lot of pictures of us and of his family around so that he could feel supported and safe while doing, you know, while talking about his story. But when it came to actually describing where he lived. So he grew up in Cobalt, Ontario, in a bit of a shack.
[16:04] It's gone now, just so you know. There's nothing there anymore. That's how flimsy this place was. I said to him, well, what did it look like? He said, oh, and you can hear in the book, he says, well, it was a box. It had a bottom and a top, and it was a box. And I would have to pull that out of him and say, okay, but what was it like? Where did you sleep? And he'd say, okay, well, there were steps. And then you turn in, there was one bed and we all slept in that one bed. And then I'd say, okay, Arnie, what did it feel like? He says, well, I would look up and I should have become a star teller at night because I could see through the roof at the stars.
[16:49] And in the wintertime, the icicles would form and they would come down and they would be looking at you. And I thought, that's brilliant. And part of his writing, like I never tried to interject too much because it was the genuineness of how he described things that got me. So I would encourage him and I kind of learned to keep my mouth shut. That's why a lot of times you never hear me. There's only very few moments where we talk together, but I try and keep my mouth shut because to me, all along, this was his book and I didn't want to interject. I didn't want to ask, because when I did say, what does the school look like? He would say, or what does your house look like? He'd say it's a box. And okay, but that's really not his way of describing it. I had to get to the point where, like, tell me more about that. You know, and then he would just, he would do it, but you'd have to give him some prompts to get there.
[17:53] The title of the book is Always Ask for Help. This had me wondering about a time when Janet needed to ask for help. She was an English teacher and had never written a book. Having started writing, she reached out to a writer's group for feedback. Unfortunately, that didn't go so well. Fortunately for us, she found a great editor that was able to give feedback in a way that worked well for her.
[18:18] Asking for help is something that did not come naturally for me. And I struggled for a long, long time. I asked for help from my colleagues. I wanted them to kind of read over it. But at the same time, when you write a sort of memoir and you're including your own story in it, it's embarrassing. It was this journey I had to take of allowing people to know about me, allowing them to know that I struggled too. And I'm not perfect and I don't know all the answers. And it's very apparent in this book. So asking for help for editing was really hard for me. It wasn't until I met somebody named francesca donlin who the minute I met her I trusted her and she was a little far removed from my project, but I knew that she Had experience editing books and I said to her. All right, i'm gonna give you Some money and I want you to take this and tell me what's important about it And then come back and talk with me and we we did meetings. We had a collaborative document going she would cut some things out, she would suggest I fill in certain pieces.
[19:26] And asking her for help and then having her come back in a way that didn't hurt me, didn't shut me down, was really important. And it was rare. I went to a writer's group and asked them for help. And they got into a huge discussion about whether or not I should include a certain part of this one piece of the story, and it made me cry. And I cried in public. I actually, halfway through their conversation about my work, I got up and went to the washroom, and I cried. And I came back, and it was still tearing it apart.
[20:03] Really, it was jarring and it was very brutal what they did. And they still apologize today. Like I've had people come up and say, yeah, sorry about what we did to your work because it shut me down. I mean, it was years before I could pick it up again. And that's what's taken so long. I mean, I say it's a 22-year journey. Well, part of that journey is me overcoming my self-esteem. And when you ask for help, it's the way other people respond. That will either make or break you. Which is why I say, if you pick something, make sure you're passionate about it. Because those moments where you ask for help and they shut you down or they turn you away and they tell you no, those moments will just kill it. I'm at the point where I can ask for help, but it's still scary. And I hope that's part of this project that people ask for help. But those of us who can help other people do so in such a way that it maintains the integrity of the asker.
[21:16] Having written and published the book, Janet felt the need to continue to find new ways to tell Arnie's story. The idea of writing a book about someone with low literacy didn't sit right with Janet. The book would reach people with high literacy, but it wouldn't reach people with low literacy. With the book finished, Janet took the next big step and started working on telling Arnie's story through film. My promise was just to tell his story. That it wouldn't die.
[21:47] And that's my, that's where I'm going with this project. I'm fulfilling the promise. I feel like the book is there, and that's one way to fulfill the promise. But the other way is if I'm worth anything, if I learned anything, I know that a book is not the medium that gets to people like Arnie. If I learned anything, it's that my promise was not the smartest promise. If you think about it a literacy project let me write a book it's great and for those of us who are literate we can read it there are some of us who like to listen so if you want to listen to it the beauty is you can hear arnie because i recorded him it's him it's not somebody else it's actually there are a couple family members who who filled in a few places that were too um that the quality was eroded too much to keep. But most of the audio book is actually Arnie's voice. Yay. And some kids, that sort of thing. But what I know gets across, I know that movies, I know visual representations of this really matter.
[23:04] And, but, but I'm running into some issues because the stories of the story Arnie told of growing up in Cobalt, of his box, of a house, of a cold, of sleeping in his car the night before he came in to speak at my school, those are lost. How do we represent those? Well, in a documentary, you can do a recreation and that's fine. But if you've ever seen a recreation, I know that there's that stop in your head that goes like, okay, yeah, this isn't really Arnie. I don't know if you ever think that, but it's very subtle. But when you watch a recreation in a doc, you can tell it's not the real footage, and it interrupts your understanding of it. So we wanted to do a different way of telling those stories. And I got this idea. The students gave us letters, and in the letters, many of those kids drew what they thought Ernie looked like when he was little. And they drew these great representations of him and his car and clouds, the sun, rainbows, flowers. And I thought, well, what if we animate the actual student's art?
[24:16] And I have it still. I'm still in Arnie Central right now, sitting in the office full of all the archives. So I went back through all of the letters and I scanned them in very high definition. And now we're bringing those actual pictures to life. And it's layered. And that's how I feel, you know, this is the perfect time for this project because had I completed it back then when I was just recording him on my little MacBook, I would have needed a whole different set of production. I may have done recreations, but because it's been so long, we are at a time where there's no problem layering different animations for less money because of the programs we have and the know-how that we have these days. And it would get across this idea that Arnie's stories are real and hard-hitting and sad, but with the eight of the children's illustrations, they become genuine.
[25:20] And through those kids' eyes, it's touching on a whole different level. Like you're just blown away that he told these stories to the children, and the children are telling the stories to you through their art. And to me, there's this poetry. It's so beautiful. I'm so glad it's taken so long because this is, oh, you know, on my vision board, I've taken everything off of it. And there's one post-it note on there right now. And it says, make an outright masterpiece.
[25:51] And that's my whole thing. That's what I want to do. This is a masterpiece.
[25:56] All the people that have come on board and helped me and helped us tell his story, his family, organizations of film people, and all, you know, people who want to give us their money to help, but people who also lend their support and their expertise. You know, everybody believing in this is going to make it a masterpiece. This thing is going to get across the promise. You know, My original promise was about a medium, a book, but now it's going to be something that will reach the people that need it most. And that's what Arnie's whole mission in life was, to help people, to help one person. And I think that this is going to do it.
[26:42] In the making of the film, I was curious. The audio book is four hours long, so there is no way that everything in the book would make it into the film. I wanted to know about something about the book that's likely not to make it into the film. On page 100 of the book, it says, congratulations, you made it to page 100. And there's a bunch of teachers, like stars and gold stars down. And it's Arnie because he said, when I got to page 100 of Huckleberry Finn, I broke down and cried because never in my life did I think I could read to page 100 and that only smart people could read that far. One of the reasons why I had to publish it the way I did was because I wanted page 100 to be special. And publishing didn't understand that and wouldn't do that for me.
[27:34] This has been a passion project for Janet for more than 22 years. She's finally succeeded in publishing the book. I asked Janet about what advice she would give to aspiring memoir writers. Allow people to help you. And if they say they will, and then they don't allow them to go, because it's okay, you will attract the people that will support you in this journey. And if they can't, you need to be able to cut them pretty sooner. And also, if there's something you want to write about, it's that thing that...
[28:08] Keeps you up at night that you should write about. And it's that aha moment, the pivotal aha when you go, all right, this is something that means this is my reason. This, this. And because that reason, the passion for that topic you choose will get you through the really hard times because there will be hard times. And I said just recently, this is a marathon and it's not a sprint. You have to be able to keep going no matter what. And you know, sometimes you do have to put it down. And there were moments where I was about to throw stuff away. I got, I was like, you know, that's never gonna happen. Nobody cares. I'm throwing this out, but don't, don't throw it out. You need a break. That's part of the journey too. Like if you can put it down and you feel like, well, I quit that, I'll never do that. Well, that's not necessarily true. So maybe it's the timing that you need. You just need a minute, but pick something that you're super passionate about and that'll get you through the hard times of this. And you know what? Like have the audacity to tell the story. You don't know who needs it.
[29:24] This could be the reason somebody picks their life up again and keeps going. It's awesome. You can't pretend to know why you're doing what you're doing. You just have to tell the story.
[29:44] Janet has set up the website alwaysaskforhelp.com. On the site, you can see the latest information about the project. You can also purchase the book directly from Janet. All of the proceeds from the book go towards our project. And we also are fiscally sponsored by a company called From the Heart Productions. And there's a link on our website where you can click and go and donate directly to our project. What we're needing right now is we need funding to finish production. So we have this animation team who are on board. And there are students involved who are getting internships, but there are also leaders who are award winners, and they're pretty much doing that out of the goodness of their hearts right now. So if we can raise some funds, it would be fantastic to be able to pay the leadership, the people who are pulling these students together and getting exemplary work from them and training them at the same time. Once the animations are complete, we'll move into post-production, and our editor is the person who we will need to fund to finish and to cross the finish line with this project. So the link, like I said, is on alwaysaskforhelp.com.
[31:05] I want to thank Janet for being my first guest on Definitely Not Famous, More Extra Than Ordinary. I'm sure you'll agree that both Janet and Arnie are more extra than ordinary. The easiest way to support this podcast and the creation of the Arnie documentary is to purchase the book using the affiliate links in the show notes. Show notes are published on, Thanks for listening to Definitely Not Famous. This podcast is brought to you by Rebecca Hogue, the host and the producer for the show. To support the show, please consider purchasing the books using the affiliate links in the show notes. Alternatively, you can support the show using Patreon or PayPal links available on the show notes website, definitelynotfamous.com. I'm looking for more authors to talk to. If you have read a great memoir and want me to interview you the author, please complete the listener's form on the website. If you're an author and you'd like to be a guest on this podcast, please complete the author guest form on the website.