Ep 16 | Ron Hall | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Ron, your

your journey

is perhaps

one of the most unexpected.

Could you have planned a more bizarre path of your life?

Oh, Glenn, I'll have to tell you that if I read my books and saw my film,

I would want to call B.S.

on it because, you know, if it had not happened to me,

I couldn't believe anyone else would have lived or survived what we went through in this friendship with Denver.

Let me go back before we get to you and to Denver.

If I summarized your

one of the main points that I got from this story is

a good woman

can

change the world.

Well,

behind every successful man is a praying and good woman, I can tell you that.

Yeah.

And I was privileged to be married to one of the all-time best.

I think she will go down in history just through people that see our film and read our books as one of the most inspirational women of America, a very unlikely, very ordinary woman.

Brave.

Very brave.

Very brave.

But not always that way.

It was the last few years of her life, I believe that God was preparing her for something that would ultimately impact our country and hopefully the world.

And this is when I guess she was given an extra measure of bravery and maybe a bigger heart than she ever had.

So let's start at the beginning.

You grew up on a farm here in Fort Worth?

Well, no, out say 80 miles south of Fort Worth.

Okay.

And

you grew up picking cotton.

I did pick cotton.

I chopped cotton.

You chopped cotton.

And I picked cotton.

I don't think people even think of cotton anymore.

I mean, they just don't think of picking cotton.

I pulled corn.

Yeah.

So you grew up

and left home, went to college?

I did go to college, yes.

Join the army?

Join the army.

Well, I didn't actually join the army.

I was drafted.

You were invited.

I got a knock on my

fraternity house door one day saying, Congratulations, you have been selected to be in Uncle Sam's Army.

And it was due to my poor grades in school.

Really?

I had fallen below a 2.0 grade point average and that was just what the government was, Uncle Sam was looking for to

put a rifle in your hand and send you off to Vietnam.

So

because you're a very bright man, just to screw off?

Oh, absolutely.

I was majoring in fraternity and rich girls.

Right.

Because I had grown up so poor I couldn't pay attention.

Right.

And I came to TCU in search of a rich girl.

Literally, that's it.

Literally, that was my.

I had no plan to

for a future.

I didn't have

any other goal other than to marry a rich girl and maybe go to work for her daddy or something like that.

That's amazing.

That's a pretty shallow goal.

That's just, I went to a high school, Glenn, where only less than 10% of our graduating class went to college.

We didn't have a college advisor.

Just one day, the principal made an announcement and said, if anybody wants to go to college, you have to take a test, and we're going to give it on Saturday morning in the cafeteria.

Wow.

And about 20 people showed up to take the test, and

it was the ACT.

And the next thing I know, I went to the principal and I said, I do want to go to college.

And I said, where do you think I should go?

And he said, well, I only know of two colleges.

Oh, my gosh.

He said, it's called North Texas or East Texas.

I said, oh, well.

I said, I guess I'll go to East Texas because my mother had attended North Texas, and I didn't like Denton very much at the time.

And I've grown to love it now.

But I didn't, at the time, I just didn't have good memories of Denton.

So I went off to East Texas, never having been there.

And I spent a year there and then heard all the rich girls were at TCU.

All the farm girls were at East Texas at the time.

But the rich girls, I heard, were at TCU.

So that's why I decided to make my career plan and move to TCU.

And that's where you met your

wife?

My future wife.

I met her.

And what was she like?

Well, she was a stunning beauty, tall, and I remember her walking across the campus the first time I laid eyes on her.

She was in a military uniform because she was in

an honor society called the Angel Flight, where they wore Air Force blue uniforms like an Air Force officer would wear.

And

she was a tall, dark, and beautiful woman, but her name, it said short.

And I thought, it's an odd name for such a tall, beautiful woman to be short.

So I inquired about her.

And a friend of mine, we saw her walking through the student center.

And a friend of mine named Glenn Whittington was coming.

He was sitting there and I said, that's the girl I want to ask for a date.

And so he just stopped her and he said, hey, my my friend Ron wants to ask you for a date.

And so she looked over at me and she said, If he wants to ask me for a date, he will call me.

Boy, I tell you, as

much of this story so far that has changed in time, that hasn't changed.

That hasn't changed.

All right.

So, was she rich?

No, no, no, not at all.

Not at all.

This,

you know, even though I went in search of uh a rich girl um

i found one with a big heart

and um

and that was uh that was

i guess

what i had thought i wanted god had something else in mind for me she was spiritual not at the time not at the time oh no she was a fun-loving sorority girl and uh really oh yeah yeah but uh no, her spiritual journey came after we got married.

I guess when she realized that she had married probably someone without much vision.

Because you got a vision.

It sent her to her knees.

Right, right.

So

when you came back from the military,

you became a Campbell soup salesman?

I did.

My father had sold Coca-Cola.

And

he called on grocery stores, selling.

I mean, you would think, who needs to sell a Coca-Cola?

But they had salespeople that would go out and sell and try to get you to do big displays.

So he wanted me to be in the food business.

First of all, he wanted me to be a veterinarian so I could take care of his dogs for free.

And then

when I signed up for chemistry and I dropped it right before the final exam with a 13 average, I said, I don't think I'm going to make it into vet school.

So

I changed my

career path at the time.

The only thing I could think of to take was

to be an agriculture major because I loved ranching and farming.

I'd grown up on the farm.

I had even tried bull riding and bronch riding and became a team roper and things like that.

So I thought agriculture was a natural path for me.

So I signed up for Poultry 124

and

I signed up for livestock production

And never used it in your life.

Never did.

Well, you know, in Poultry 124, I discovered that's where,

you know, chicken don't have fingers.

Right.

Right.

Okay, good.

All right.

So you guys get married.

You become a Campbell Soup salesman.

How long are you doing that?

Oh, less than a year until I was in

the back of a Walmart, not a Kmart.

I was in the the back of a Kmart when a case of potted meat exploded into my face and took me down

when I was covered in goo head to toe.

And I was in the east side of Dallas and I had to drive back to Fort Worth with my heads hanging out the window of my car because I smelled like

spoiled potted meat.

And the next day, I said,

I read in the paper, actually, where they were looking for salespeople to make $100,000 a year.

And so I took this $100,000 a year job and moved to San Antonio.

And that job was?

The job was selling insurance,

selling stock in a new insurance company that went bankrupt after three weeks.

And they told me I had earned almost $10,000

in those first 10 weeks.

But when the company settled up with me, I got a check for $13.87.

Wow.

And we spent that $13.87

eating

10-cent bean rolls at Tecamolino in San Antonio for three weeks till we could figure out what to do.

And that's when I said, I think I need to go back to TCU and get an education.

So you eventually go to become a banker?

I did.

I graduated from TCU, got an MBA in finance.

And

I'm so proud of my university.

They just gave me this last year the Distinguished Alumni Award.

Really?

And I was the least likely person ever to receive this award because I did not have a distinguished career at TCU.

Right.

So you go into banking, and you

how do you discover art?

Well, I discovered art because I was in Houston bidding on some water and sewer bonds.

I was a bond trader for the First National Bank of Fort Worth and an underwriter.

So we would, when cities and municipalities were issuing bonds, we would go bid on them, and we had to have a certain amount of bonds in our portfolio.

So I was there bidding on bonds, and I had about three hours to kill

before the auction.

You actually had an auction for them back in those days.

It's all different today.

But

we didn't have computers back then, so we had to figure out our bids by hand.

And actually, the bank hired me, someone I'd never even seen a computer, to write the first computer program for trading bonds.

I don't don't know how I did it, but I did.

So while I had about three hours to kill, I just wandered into an art gallery that was nearby where the bidding was going to be.

And this guy was telling me about his life and traveling all over the world and buying and selling paintings.

He had just returned from Paris, and I had never been out of Texas except in the Army.

And I thought, well, that sounds exciting.

It sounds like a better job than sitting here in Houston waiting to bid on some water and sewer bonds.

Right.

So, and then go out to Fort Stockton, Texas, to sell them or something.

That was what I was doing.

So I asked him, I said, how do you become an art dealer?

And he said, well,

nobody's going to hire you to do it.

You have to buy and you have to sell.

So he gave me, he said, here's something you can make money on.

And he showed me a painting, and it was a Texas blue bonnet painting that had been painted in the 1930s.

And he said, he said, this is a $5,000 painting, $5,000, $6,000 painting.

I'll sell it to you for $3,500

and

you can make a couple thousand dollars on it.

And I thought, wow, that's a great offer, except I don't have $3,500.

And he said, well, are you an officer of the bank?

I said, yes, I'm an officer of the bank, but I haven't even received my first check yet.

We only got paid once a month, and I hadn't even been there a month.

So he said, well, I'll, you know, just you write me a check, and you go back to the bank.

I was only making $600 a month.

Wow.

So this would have been half of my annual salary.

My wife was teaching school making $300 a month.

This is in 1969.

Well, this is 1971 by then.

But

so I went back to the bank.

They loaned me the $3,500 to cover my hot check.

And they said, if you don't pay it off in 90 days, you know, you will lose your job.

And I said, okay.

So I had to go to work to selling this painting.

And on the 89th day, I finally sold it for $5,500.

I made $2,000 on it.

And then my mind was totally off of banking and had switched to art.

I want to

skip ahead a little bit.

This becomes big for you.

You become a big art dealer.

Well, within a year, I was making more than the chairman of the board of the bank,

where I was.

I was making more as an art dealer than the chairman of the board of the bank with a 40-year career in banking was making.

You have sold paintings and art to all kinds of famous people all over the world.

All over the world.

You were going to Paris.

You were going to Asia.

Rio, Hong Kong, every place.

I was all over the world.

And you were living a high life.

I was.

And your wife, how was she with this high life?

Was not, I'd have to say, she was secretly enjoying it because, you know, we were living in several million-dollar

homes and properties.

We had vacation homes, and

we were flying privately and things.

And it was a big life.

But, you know, her heart was not,

she,

in a way, way, could secretly enjoy it, but in another way, she saw that it was eating away at my soul.

Because I say that we both read a book called Purpose-Driven Lives, and I discovered, she discovered her purpose in life was

chasing after the Almighty God, and my purpose in life was chasing after the Almighty dollar and a few other things.

And you had some real rough patches in your your marriage.

And she said, if we get therapy,

we can put our marriage back together.

And

at what point is she now when she's really, when this is happening,

where are you mentally with God?

And where is she at the beginning of this cusp that's about to change your life?

Well,

you know, I,

out of when we first got married, when we adopted our first child in 1973,

we both realized that we needed something spiritual in our lives because we were just a couple of party animals with now a new baby that we had adopted.

So, you know, she began studying the religions of the world and she had decided that she thought Christianity was the best thing for her.

And along the way, I had decided the same thing, even though I became a believer in Christianity before she did.

So,

but

through this path, even though I was a believer, you know, I was a pew warmer in church and a check writer for certain causes, but was not active in really

pursuing them.

To be fair, in many ways, you were kind of the typical Christian.

I mean, there's a lot of there, right?

There's a lot of Christians that are like, no, I'm absolutely Christian.

You kind of go and you check in.

Well, I'll tell you a story about that later with Denver because he challenged me.

Well, I just said right now, the first day I ever met Denver, he asked me, he said, why is it all you Christians worship one homeless man on Sunday and turn you back on the first one you see on Monday?

So, you know, that was the homeless and people that were actually turned out to be smarter than me.

That was their view on Christianity.

And he told me one time, he said, there's way too much Bible study and there ain't nearly enough Bible doings.

That's absolutely right.

So,

but anyway.

Okay, so she is, she comes to you.

At what point does she come to you and say,

hey, we've got to go down to this mission, which is the scariest place in Dallas at the time.

Well, this was in Fort Worth.

We went to the Fort Worth mission and downtown Fort Worth.

But, well, you know, this was actually 10 years after I had my affair.

And that she told me, if you will not do this again, you can see it in our film.

I write about it in the books, but it's a really, it was a turning point in my life because

our lives had taken a totally different path.

I was ready to end a marriage and destroy a family.

And she wasn't quite ready to give up on me.

And so when she,

the day that I came home and admitted what I had done,

she told me, she said, if you will not do this again, if you will seek counseling, I will never bring this up again.

And she said, I will throw your sin as far as the east is from the west, and you are forgiven.

And I thought, wow,

that is a deal I cannot refuse.

So I said, okay, if you will do that, I will do anything you ask me the rest of our lives together.

And from that day forward, she never mentioned that again.

And we put our marriage back together and we had one of the most beautiful marriages in the world.

And

it was 10 years later, Glenn, that she asked me to do the very first thing that took me out of my comfort zone.

The only thing she had asked me to be was be faithful

after my falling.

And so

we rocked along.

Life was great.

Business was good.

Everything she was, I wasn't, she was becoming involved in a lot of homeless and just working with poor people.

She worked with AIDS babies at Brian's house in Dallas.

And she had started a couple of new ministries

that had to do with bringing in women out of prison and getting them resituated in homes.

And you're still doing the art thing?

I'm doing the art thing, totally.

I mean, I'm traveling all over the world.

I'm doing art fairs in every major country around the world.

And so I was not active in any of those things.

So

it was

in

the year of 1998, we moved from Dallas.

We lived in Highland Park in Dallas.

And we decided to move back to Fort Worth to be closer to our ranch, which was on the Brazos River west of Fort Worth.

And

so

at the first few days we were back in Fort Worth, she had a dream.

And it was a literal dream.

And

in her dream, she saw the face of a homeless man.

And the next morning she told me, she said, Ron, it was like the verse in Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament where Solomon wrote, there was found in the city a certain poor man who was wise.

And by his wisdom, our city was changed.

And she said, I think it's even more important, Ron, that our lives will be changed if we can find this man in my dream.

She said, my dream, I literally saw his face.

And would you go with me into the inner city to find this man in my dream?

What did you think of that?

Well, I knew she wasn't crazy.

She was a scholar at TCU.

She graduated with honors, and she was there on an academic scholarship.

So she wasn't nuts.

She was not nuts.

Was she somebody who claimed to have dreams before?

She had only had one other dream she claimed was spiritual, and it had come about, and it was true.

And she discovered a year after she had the dream, it was validated that it was true.

So, and that was a really exciting thing for her.

And this was only the second spiritual dream that she ever had, and it was probably three or four years after that first one.

So, that dream takes you to.

Well, the next morning after that dream, she asked me to go with her into the inner city.

So, instead of going to my art gallery that day, I get in the car with her, and we drive into the inner city of Fort Worth and began driving, you know, very slowly around

looking for this man in her dream.

That had to seem nuts.

Well, it did accept she was so absolutely certain that she would find him and that this dream was from God.

And so I was just being as nice about it as I could.

I didn't really want to be there.

But we drove around and we didn't see him.

Oh, the people were looking at us like we were crazy because, I mean, you know, when you're driving a very expensive vehicle in a place that people are trading drugs and prostrates.

And you've got two white people looking around like,

oh, let me see what your face looks like.

Yes, you're popular.

Yes, exactly.

So we had people were telling us to get out of there.

But we ended up volunteering that afternoon at the Fort Worth Union Gospel Mission.

And we had been there a couple of weeks.

Well, I'd say when I first walked in, when you mentioned the mission, It was just a run-down old cinder block building that stunked to high heaven.

And it's not a place that I had ever been in any place like that that smelled so bad or looked so bad.

And

I was a little bit terrified.

The people were looking like they were out of some horror movie that were there.

And so I asked the chef, I said, Are there any infectious diseases floating around this place that I should know about?

And he said, Oh, absolutely.

He said, We try to infect them all with love.

And I thought, this wise guy, why would he tell me that?

But anyway, so we began serving at the mission that day and

made a commitment that we would begin we would continue serving for the next whatever.

We didn't have an ending.

And you're d doing this on that day out of loyalty, out of respect,

but kind of begrudgingly, kind of

quietly, yeah.

Yes, yes, quietly, begrudgingly.

I mean, she could tell.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that she could tell.

You're going along with your wife.

I'm going along with the wife.

And the subject didn't come up that I was doing it to pay penance for

what I had done 12 years earlier, or 10 years earlier.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But

so

I just did it and said, this is something I have to endure.

This is Debbie, and I owe this to her, but I'm not telling anybody else that.

Right, okay.

So you're there.

Two weeks go by.

Guy walks in.

He's pretty violent.

He doesn't walk in.

Okay.

He storms in.

He breaks down almost a door coming in, and he's screaming at the the top of his lungs, I'm going to kill whoever done it.

I'm going to kill whoever stole my shoes.

And he starts turning over tables and throwing punches.

And he's, and I look, and here is this giant-looking man with no shirt and no shoes and some raggedy old unzipped breeches.

And he is destroying the place.

And there's blood and cursing and fighting everywhere.

And people are running and taking cover.

The only thing I could think to do was take cover myself.

So I'm standing behind a stainless steel serving line, which was the safest place in the whole building.

And because I had a barrier there, between me.

But I saw there where we had taken out some pots and pans, there were some holes where I could stick my head.

So I stuck my head under one of these things because I had taken a knockout punch in the golden gloves in high school, and I never wanted to get hit in the nose again.

That was not fun.

So the fight was getting closer to me.

So I sticked my head under this hole.

And all of a sudden,

I still hear all the screaming and the pandemonium.

And I'm thinking, I wonder what happened to Debbie.

So

all of a sudden, I was a self-preservation.

Yeah, no, you are not a white knight at any point so far.

So I stick my head out and I look and she is so excited.

She's jumping up and down like a cheerleader on the sideline of a football game.

And she's like, oh, that's him.

That's him.

And I said, that's who.

I reached up and I looked right over the edge and I said, that's who.

And she said, that's the man in my dream.

And by then, of course,

the whole dining room was filled with homeless men that were all fighting and trying to get away from the fight.

So I said, which one?

And she said, the one who's threatening to kill everybody.

And then she had to look down at me because I'm still on my knees.

And so she looked down at me and she said, and Ron, I believe I heard from God that you have to be his friend and find out if my dream is really from God.

And I said, but Debbie, I was not at that meeting you had with God.

If I'm going to be friends with someone who wants to kill everybody, maybe I should go talk to God myself.

So

I asked one of the guys who was standing next to me in the serving line, a homeless guy, and I said, who is that crazy man?

He said, nobody knows his name, but he's been on the streets longer than anybody here can remember.

And he said,

most people refer to him as the lion of the jungle because he rules the streets with fear and intimidation.

Oh, my God.

He said, a lot of people just call him suicide because messing with him is really the equivalent of committing suicide.

He said, he's crazy, he's dangerous, and he'll hurt you.

He said, keep your distance from him.

And I said, thank you.

That is really good advice that you're giving me.

Right.

As opposed to what my crazy wife is telling me.

And I have a feeling your crazy wife didn't care about that advice.

No, she did not.

In fact, she told me every morning,

well, the security guards and everybody, the police, they came, they dragged him away.

And for that day,

but at her insistence, every morning she would ask me to

please go into the inner city to see if I could get him in my car and take him to get coffee or something.

So every morning, this is literally every morning I would drive into the inner city and look for him.

And I would usually see him because I knew where he hung.

He hung out.

He lived really by a dumpster close to the mission.

And that was his, that was his campground there.

And I would see him and he would see me and then he would take off.

So I would secretly thank God.

Yes, thank God that, you know, he ran away.

I didn't have to meet him.

But it was actually a couple of weeks later we saw him come through the serving line again.

It was only the second time we saw him.

And he was the last person that came through the the serving line that day as we were about to shut down.

And so

Debbie had made a promise that she was going to learn the names of every homeless person on the streets of Fort Worth and specifically pray for their needs every day and become friends with them.

And so she had made an effort to do that.

And so he was one of the people that she had not learned his name yet.

So as he put two plates in front, which was against mission policy to serve two plates to one person, I was trying to, I said, you just guess the rules, buddy, you know, and she said, no, no, no.

So she put her face down really low and she said, hello there, my name is Debbie.

What is your name?

And he screamed at her.

You don't need to know my name.

He said, I'm a very bad man.

Now you just shut up and put some food on these plates and I'm going to get on out of here.

And I tell you,

the next thing I know, she leaps over the serving line like a high jumper in the Olympic finals.

I never saw anything like it in my life.

She leaps over the serving line.

She chest butts him like two football players

in a game.

And she starts tapping him on the nose saying, you are not a bad man.

You are in fact a good man that God has a calling on your life and you're going to live to see it.

His fists were doubled up like this and he was shaking.

I thought he's going to take her out.

And I looked down and my fists were shaking and I was doubled up like this and thinking,

well, if he hits her, I'm running out the back door.

She got herself in this mess.

I'm not going to fight a man they call suicide.

So, anyway, luckily, he sidestepped her and left the building.

And,

but some

person that was standing next to me said, My, my, my, I never thought I'd see some little skinny little white lady tame the lion of the jungle.

Wow.

And so that began our really serious adventure into a cat and mouse chase that lasted five months until I got him in my car.

How do you get him in the car?

We started doing a lot of things with the homeless.

We started having a movie night once a week.

We had a beauty shop day once a week where we would give pedicures and manicures and haircuts and styling and all these kind of things.

Debbie was doing everything and bringing our friends in to try to make a difference, you know, to put a new face on homelessness and make them look beautiful and elevate their self-image.

So,

in fact, my friend told me one time, Denver, after I got to know him, he said, you know, most people look at the homeless as a problem.

He said, but God looks at them as an opportunity for the faithful to show his love.

So we were taking this as an opportunity to show the love of God to people who considered themselves unlovable.

But so anyway, we were having a, we advertised we were going to have a

concert at the House of Blues, not a house of blues, at downtown Fort Worth at

Sundance Square.

We had had a theater down there.

So we announced we were having a concert, and he actually got in my car, though he didn't say a word, to go to the concert.

And that night he

I went to sit by him

and

he was sitting up in the concert.

He didn't say anything to me if we were traveling there, but I go up and sit by him and I said, Denver, I'm glad you came.

And I put my hand on his knee.

He grabbed my hand and threw it off his knee.

He said, man, don't you ever touch me.

And he scared me to death.

And then he got up and walked out.

So he missed the concert just because I sat next to him.

And And I thought, this guy's crazy.

But on the way out, he was standing by my car, and he was smoking a cigarette.

And he said, I want to apologize to you.

He said, you and your wife have been trying to be nice to me for a long time now.

And he said,

why don't you come by tomorrow, you know, by the dumpster where I live, and we'll go over to the mission and have some coffee.

So I went by the next morning and

picked him up, and we ended up going to

what was called the Cactus Flower Cafe in Fort Worth and had breakfast that morning.

What's his story?

He was a...

His story is a very tragic story.

But

his story is he was born on a plantation in Louisiana in 1937.

His mother was only 13 years old at the time and was not married, and she gave him up to the custody of his grandmother, who was the daughter of a freed slave who lived and still in the slave cabin with a shotgun slave cabin on a plantation with no running water, no electricity, or anything like that.

So his grandmother was raising him and a cousin.

He watched his grandmother burn up in a fire when he was about seven years old, and he tried desperately to save her.

He went back and forth into the house of the fire to save her, but she burned up and his cousin burned up in the fire as well.

And he went to live with his father.

They found his father, who was on another plantation, and then a few weeks after he moved in with his father, his father was stabbed to death in a fight

that Denver witnessed.

And so then he went to live with an uncle

who was a sharecropper and plowing behind mules.

So Denver was about seven years old, and his job was rolling cigarettes for

his uncle.

But after a year of doing that, his uncle died of a heart attack plowing behind the mules.

So he went to then live with a stepsister of one of his daddy's

other

half-sister of his, as he found out, on another plantation.

And

at 16 years old, as an innocent young 16-year-old sharecropper, is what he was.

He was a virtual slave, actually.

He was roped and dragged by the Ku Klux Klan behind horses for helping a white woman change a flat tire on the plantation.

And that day, the Klan made him promise that he would never again speak to a white lady.

And he made his own promise that day he would never again trust any white person.

And he had kept that promise for all those years until I met him when he was 64 years old, living by a dumpster on the streets of Fort Worth, Texas.

So

when he moved to Fort Worth,

he came, he was actually going to California, if I'm not mistaken.

Well, he was.

He went into the man's store there.

You know, he got no money, really.

He got credit at a man's store for working on the plantation.

And the work was falling off because of all the machinery that was now being used on the plantation.

There was less work to be done, so he was not able to pay his bill at the store.

He owed $35 to the man for the groceries that he had acquired over that year.

And so the man cut his credit off.

So he walked out of the store and saw a freight train standing there.

And there was a hobo standing by the train.

And he asked Denver, asking him, where are you going?

He said, well, I'm going to California.

And so Denver thought, well, well, I'm just going to get on and go.

He had no family, anything.

So he just got on the freight train.

And first place it stopped was Fort Worth, Texas.

And he thought it was California.

So he gets off the freight train and starts wandering around and ends up, you know, getting a meal at the mission.

And he only has the clothes on his back.

He can't read.

He can't write.

That's right.

He has no money.

That's right.

He can't get a job because he can't read or write.

That's right.

He had never been given the opportunity to go to school.

You see, on the plantation, there was not a black or colored school, they called it.

So all the white kids were, while they were in class, you know, he was working in the cotton fields.

He started working working at seven years old in the cotton fields now.

Nobody told him that there was a school for him.

Well, no, there was not.

There was not a school for him.

Not a school for him.

Okay.

And so, what does he do?

What year is that when he first arrives here?

When he first arrived, it was about 1957.

57.

He escaped the plantation basically when he was 20 years old.

And when you meet him?

When I meet him.

It is 19.

Well, yes,

he had another period here in his life.

I met him in 1998.

Okay, but in 57, when he first arrived, or 58, something like that,

he said, Mr.

Ron, I've lived my whole life not knowing what day it was, what time it was, or anything else.

He said, and all of a sudden, you know,

I've had lived my whole life with no place to be and plenty of time to get there.

And now you tell me I've got to be somewhere on time.

I don't even know what time is.

Watch on how to tell time.

But

he gets in a shootout in Fort Worth.

Some guy pulled a gun on him and tried to rob him of his shoes

the first night he was on the streets or first week he was on the streets.

And he turned the gun around and shot the guy.

Denver shot himself first in the leg and then turned around and shot the guy.

So he went and hopped a freight train that night and ended up in California.

So he spent a few years in California, and that's then he came back.

Well, he ended up and then ended up in prison in Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana.

He served 10 years there for attempted armed robbery of a city bus with a gun that didn't work.

It was a rusted gun that had no

barrel on it.

And he spent 10 years in Angola State Penitentiary, and he was released from that penitentiary in 1979.

And that's when he ended up going on the streets of Fort Worth.

And then it was 25 years later that I found him on the streets.

I find it fascinating that the first night he's in

Fort Worth, somebody steals his shoes, and the first time you meet him,

he's talking about somebody stealing his shoes.

That's right.

Well, when you only have one pair of shoes.

Yeah, that's a big deal.

Okay, so

you meet him.

What happens to you two?

Where do you...

Are you

not fast buddies?

Oh, not at all.

In fact, he asked me on that morning at breakfast, he says, what is it you want from me?

He said, man, I've had no peace in my my life since you and your skinny little wife showed up on the streets of Fort Worth.

And I said, hey, man, I just want to be your friend.

Well, that was actually a lie.

I didn't want to be his friend.

My wife wanted me to be his friend.

But I told him, I just want to be your friend.

And he said, you want to be my friend?

He had this incredulous look on his face for good reason.

And I said, yeah, that's all.

I just straight up, I just want to be your friend.

He said, man, I'm going to have to think about that.

And I thought to myself, hey, buddy, you just looked a gift horse in the mouth.

You don't know who you are talking to.

I am a millionaire, and I can do anything for you.

You are the man of my wife's dream.

And if she wants you to have new clothes, I can do that.

A car, I can do that.

An apartment, I can even buy you a house.

Anything that she wants you to have, I'm going to get for you because I owe this to her, and I'm going to do it for her.

So I said, you know, I was so arrogant.

I didn't think this man had one thing to offer me in a friendship.

And so it was about a week or so later.

I saw him taking taking trash out of the dumpster, and I pull up and I said, Hey, you want to go get some coffee?

And he said, Yeah, I guess so.

So he gets in my car, and we go to Starbucks, and we're sitting there, and he thinks, He says, I've been thinking a lot about what you asked me.

And I said, What did I ask you that required any thought?

And he said, You asked me if I'd be your friend.

And I said, Well, I sure do.

So, what do you think?

He said, Well, there's something I heard about white folks that really bothers me, and it's got to do with fishing.

And I said, Well, Denver, I'm not a fisherman.

I'm a cowboy and an art dealer.

And I said, I know a little bit about those things, but I don't even own a rod and reel or a tackle box.

And he said, but I bet you can answer the question.

I said, well, okay, then ask.

He said, okay.

He said, I heard when white folks go fishing, they do this thing called catch and release.

I said,

Denver, of course they do, because it's a sport.

Don't you get it?

And he said, no, sir, I don't get that.

Because back on the plantation where I grew up, we'd go out in the morning, we'd dig us a can full of worms, we'd cut us a cane pole, we'd sit on the riverbank all day, and when we finally got something on our line, we were really proud of what we caught.

caught and he said we'd take it back and we'd share it with all the folk.

He said, so it occurred to me if you just a white man fishing for a friend and you gonna catch and release, I ain't got no desire to be your friend.

Wow, this guy is.

He said, but if you fishing for a real friend, then you got one for life.

And my mind flashed back to Debbie's dream of this poor man who was wise because what he spoke to me at that moment was the wisest thing I had ever heard on friendship.

And I knew at that moment if I ever heard from God in my life, it was at that moment when I knew I had to take a chance and be his friend.

I couldn't go tell Debbie of this meeting and tell her that I had told him not to be, I was not going to be his friend.

But

I have to say that That was the best decision I ever made in my life.

As an art dealer, God all of a sudden just repainted the canvas of my life and rewrote my life story.

You know, we all have these moments in life where you face something that will be life-changing for you, and those decisions you make at that moment will forever alter your life.

And that moment, that catch-and-release meeting, forever has altered my life.

Did that humble you at that moment?

Oh, Lynn.

I enrolled in what I call Denver University the next morning.

I went by his dumpster because I was so enamored with this man and so fascinated with his wisdom that I went the next morning and sat on the curb next to him on a busy Lancaster Street in very busy, in the most dangerous neighborhood of Fort Worth.

I sat there on the curb with him by his dumpster, stinking dumpster, and began

asking him.

And he looked and he had this piercing look, laser beam lock on my eyes.

It was scaring me.

My heart was racing.

So I just decided to break the ice.

And I said, hey, man, tell me what's it like to be homeless.

I must have caught him off guard because he kind of looked at me and he said,

well, I don't know.

Why don't you tell me?

I said, hey, I've never been homeless.

I mean, I don't know what it's like.

He said, well, let me tell you something, Mr.

Ronnie Ray.

Whether we're rich or whether we're poor or whether we is something in between,

he said, This earth ain't no final resting place.

And he said, So, in a way, we are all homeless, just working our way home.

So, this is the title of my new book, Working Our Way Home.

How did this guy

how did he have such peace and wisdom?

And he was the same guy who walked into the shelter screaming, I'll kill you.

What is that?

Where was that?

That was his form of protection.

You know,

he acted angry

and he would say, Everybody that smiles at you ain't your friend,

and everybody that screams at you ain't your enemy.

But he said, You know, you just got to discern.

He said, Miss Debbie could see through all of that.

She could see through my confusion and anger.

She had Superman's eyes, and she could see right straight to my heart.

And he said, That throwed me off.

And

he said, So it was,

but he had no friends but he would spend every night though his only friend was God

and he talked to God like he knew him personally and he would

and he would he would talk to him in conversations and have long conversations with him

and

so that's where he gleaned these things

and and he didn't he didn't have any conversations except in anger and in a protective manner with anybody.

But

so that was, it was,

you know, one of the first few times I'm sitting at Denver University there on the curb.

And I was starting to ask him questions about people in judgment.

And he looked at me and he said, Mr.

Ron, look down at the end of the street there.

What do you see?

How do you mean, wait, wait, how do you mean in judgment?

You're asking questions in judgment.

Well, I would say, what are they on?

You know, I'd say, what are are they on?

Or, you know, they'd come by and hit me up for a dollar.

And I said, I'm not going to give them a dollar.

They're already too drunk or too high or something like that.

And

so

he looked down.

He said, Mr.

Ron, look down at the end of the street.

What do you see down there?

I said, well, you're talking about way down at the end of the street?

He said, I said, I see the courthouse.

He said, yes, sir.

Let me tell you something, Mr.

Ron.

That courthouse is full of judges, and God ain't looking for no more of them.

He said, God is looking for servants.

He said, if you want to come down here and spend time

with me on these streets, you need to come and leave your judge's robe back in your closet, and you come as a servant, and you and I are going to be getting along just fine.

But you ain't going to come down here and be judging my people here on the streets.

Jeez.

All right.

So this proceeds for a while.

Your wife gets sick.

She gets cancer.

She does.

Tell me.

But he is the one that prophesied that or predicted it.

Maybe five months into my Denver University education program, I was nearing a Ph.D.

at the time because I was getting so wise.

His wisdom was just coming in bucket loads.

So one day we're sitting having lunch

and

he looks very concerned that day.

And my life lesson for that day was, if the devil ain't messing with with you, he's already got you.

So after he began instructing me on that, he told me, he said, Mr.

Ron, what Miss Debbie is doing for the homeless, she has become precious to God.

He said, when you become precious to God, you become important to Satan.

He said, so watch your backside, something bad getting ready to happen to Miss Debbie.

And three days later, out of nowhere, she was diagnosed with cancer.

And for

the next 19 months when we fought the battle of all battles,

Denver is the one that God chose to encourage us the most during those 19 months.

And the man that I once thought had nothing to offer me in a friendship,

for 19 months every day he would show up on our front door.

knocking on it at sunrise or right after that and bring us a fresh relevant message that he had heard from God in the night.

And he was never, ever wrong.

And I just marveled at how God chose

the poorest, most dangerous man on the streets of Fort Worth to be the one that encouraged us the most during the darkest days of our lives.

It's the humble and the meek.

Isn't that just like God?

Yeah.

It's the humble and the meek inheriting the earth.

And

on the last day of her life, he came to tell me that he was talking to God in the night.

And

he said, God told me to come tell Miss Debbie to lay down her torch.

And he said, so I need to go in and talk to Miss Debbie, and I'd like to be that in private, if you don't mind.

So he went in,

she was lying in bed.

And he kneeled beside her on the bed, and he said, Miss Debbie, he said, I was talking to God last night.

And he said, the only reason you've been holding on this long, Miss Debbie, is because he told me, because you didn't know who's going to take care of the homeless when

you pass.

He said, but God told me, he said, Denver, you go tell Miss Debbie to lay down her torch and you pick it up, Denver, and you carry it the rest of your life for her.

He said, so that's what I'm going to do, Miss Debbie.

And he said, and I'm going to be here till God takes me, and I'll see you on the other side.

It won't be long.

And the man who had been made promised by the

Ku Kucks Klan never again to speak to a white woman kneeled beside her bed and gave her a kiss on the forehead and said, I'm going to see you on the other side.

And when he left her room, he came out.

He said, Don't worry, Mr.

Ron, nothing ever ends that something new don't begin.

And her final words to me were, Ron, please don't give up on Denver.

God is going to bless your friendship in a way that you can never imagine.

And a few hours later, God took her to heaven.

Three days later, Denver stood up and preached her funeral.

And he shared the message that all these years, 25 years on the streets, how a lot of people had given him a dollar bill and told him Jesus loved him and all these kind of things.

But, you know, no one had ever stopped to find out his name.

and see behind the anger and confusion.

He said it was like an old song that they used to sing back on the plantation when nothing else could help.

He said, it was love that lifted me.

He said it was the love of Miss Debbie.

He said

it was the love of Christ in Miss Debbie that gave me hope.

And he said, I'm here today to share that with you.

And Miss Debbie wanted me to share with you, too, that she wanted to build a new homeless mission in Fort Worth, Texas.

And I know there's a lot of you scillionaires sitting out there on a lot of paper.

So she'd make her real happy if y'all build that new mission for her.

When he got through speaking, he got a standing ovation from more than a thousand people at a funeral.

And by noon the next day, more than $500,000 came in from the people at the funeral.

Within one year, $5 million.

Within three years, $15 million.

We built this finest homeless mission in America in downtown Fort Worth.

And that year that we finished this mission, Denver was honored.

as the philanthropist of the year for the city of Fort Worth.

Unbelievable.

And as he stood to receive his award, he told the people, he said, a lot of y'all just thought I was trash on y'all's streets.

He said, but did y'all know that God is in the recycling business?

He's turning trash into treasure.

What

a life.

What a blessing.

But your new book

about

what everybody doesn't know.

You two were roommates for 11 years.

That's right.

11 years.

That's right.

The man who said, I'm going to kill everybody.

Yes.

The man who had the exact opposite life.

That's right.

Who was, I'm guessing.

Did he, was he at a place before you all got together, was he at a place to where he was happy on the street?

Like in a way.

He was happy.

He was, this was his kingdom.

Right, okay.

He was the king of his kingdom, and people would come by, and

they revered him and feared him because he was the strongest.

He was the lion of the jungle.

So he was not wanting to leave his kingdom.

He had become comfortable.

And you had become comfortable in your

billionaire life.

Well, it wasn't quite that good.

But yeah,

I was very comfortable in that.

And now you two

are living together.

Well, truthfully, Debbie asked me, please do not give up on Denver, but I did.

After she died,

he and I went to the ranch and we buried her at our ranch.

She wanted to be buried like the paupers on the streets.

So

we put her in a simple pine box, just dug a hole, a grave, on the highest point on our ranch overlooking the Brazos River.

I think this could only be probably done in Texas still.

It can only be done in Texas.

Well, we didn't ask for permission.

We asked for forgiveness.

Right.

And she's still there.

So

she's in heaven.

But I mean, but so Denver and I buried her there.

And

we

I asked him to move in with me and he said no.

And so

I just wanted to get away.

So I took off and went to Italy for about five months where I began

pursuing a career as art.

I wanted just to get away from all the pain, the anger, and find a different way to grieve than most people grieve.

So I went to Italy to grieve.

So I spent about four or five months in Italy painting and making sculpture and writing and all of these things.

And then one day,

this young Italian girl told me, she was reading my manuscript of what I was writing, and she said,

She said, the real story you've left behind.

This is not where you need to be.

And so a couple of days later, I came back to Texas and went into the hobo jungle of Fort Worth, Texas to find Denver.

And I found him and I asked him to move in with me.

And he said no, he wouldn't do it.

But he said I needed to there were more important things for me to do, and one was to repair my relationship with my father.

And he said, you must do that before I even want to talk to you.

So I began repairing the relationship with my father.

And then we,

my children and I were living together.

They were all grown and out of college by then.

So

we were sitting there one night and I'd been home about a month from Italy and we were sitting there one night and I said, what would that we were talking about?

What would mom want us to do about Denver?

Well, of course mom would want him living with us.

And I said, I know.

I tried.

I asked him to move in with us.

He won't do it.

And so my son, Carson, said, Dad, Dad, I'll go get him.

This was 10 o'clock at night.

So Carson gets in his car, and my son was about 22 at the time,

you know, small kid almost.

He was just like 5, 8, 120 pounds.

He drives in to the hobo jungle of Fort Worth, Texas, and starts hollering, Denver, Denver.

And

one of the homeless people in the jungle came up and said, Denver, I don't know what you've done to this some bad white boy out there looking for you, and he ain't leaving without you.

And I don't know what you did to him, but

he's coming after you.

Denver said, I ain't done nothing to no white boys.

Who are you talking about?

So Denver gets up and starts walking.

He hears Carson.

He says, Oh, man, he said, Mr.

Carson, what are you doing here, man?

You get yourself killed down here.

And he said, no, my dad told me to come get you and not to come home without you.

He said, well, I'm going to go home with you just so you don't get killed here in the jungle, but I ain't going to stay.

But he came in, and

Carson brought him home.

It was about midnight,

and I was waiting up for him.

And Denver came in, and he had one just garbage bag that was just a small garbage bag, and he had another shirt and change of clothes and a toothbrush in there, and that was about it.

And I looked at him and I said, Denver, is the rest of the stuff out in Carson's car?

He said, Mr.

Ron,

this is all I got in the whole world.

I said, This in this bag is everything you own in the whole world.

And you're 65 years old.

And he said, Yes, sir.

He said, But let me tell you something, Mr.

Ron.

And maybe one day you'll realize this.

He said, You will know that you have something when you can finally thank God for nothing.

And then He'll give you everything.

Tell me what that means.

Well, that means that he knew in his life he was content to be where God had him,

but God wasn't through with him yet.

And when he could thank God for his circumstances, even how poor they were,

he could praise a God that

is an almighty God, and he could praise him for nothing because he had nothing.

And God gave him everything.

That was a miracle.

I witnessed the miracle of

a homeless man, known as suicide, who did not read and write, become a number one New York Times best-selling author and stay on the list for three and a half years selling 2 million books.

I witnessed a man who had never drawn a stick figure, been in an art museum or an art gallery, become a successful artist

and selling more than 500 paintings.

I witnessed a homeless man who was penniless when he moved in my home and had been living in cardboard boxes, in hobo jungles, and dumpsters in Fort Worth, Texas, even in a grave.

He took up residence in a grave one time to get away from some of the confusion in the inner city.

It was a freshly drugged grave in a cemetery.

I witnessed him become a millionaire at age 72

and then give it all away back to the homeless and the poor.

I witnessed a man who for most of his life

disliked, mistrusted whites, become a symbol for racial unity in America, spreading a message that it's not the color of our skin or the language we speak that divides us, it's the condition of our hearts.

And I witnessed a man who for years sat in silence by this dumpster, speaking to no one, become a motivational speaker and get paid $10,000 for giving speeches and filling events like the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, packing it out.

I witnessed a man who, as a child, was taught that the White House was only for white people.

I witnessed him

become

be honored by the Bush family at the White House.

And

at a private luncheon when we were speaking for Barbara Bush's Foundation on Literacy in Washington, D.C.,

they had us and three other authors for a private luncheon in the White House.

But as we were leaving the White House that day,

Denver starts laughing hysterically, and he had had some embarrassing moments in there.

I write about him in our book, Working Our Way Home.

But as we were leaving the White House that day, he starts laughing hysterically.

I said, What's so funny, Denver?

You just embarrassed the tar out of me there at the lunch table with the Bush family.

And he said, Well, think about this, Mr.

Ron.

I'd have gone from living in the bushes to eating with the bushes.

He said, God bless America, this is a great country.

And I said, You are right, Denver.

God bless America.

This is a great country.

I said, The proudest moment of my life, I saw the President of the United States of America walk up to Denver Moore in his office and said, Denver Moore, what an honor to meet you, sir.

And I thought, wow, can you believe that the President of the United States knows the name of what was the most dangerous, craziest, homeless addict on the streets of Fort Worth, Texas?

And God has transformed that trash into a national treasure now and using him to give homelessness a new face so that people, when they see the homeless now, they will look at them and think what not what's going to happen to me if I stop to help but look at them and think what will happen to them if I don't would that be a dindler sitting there that maybe will impact our lives and our nation and I can tell you just as we are now at this Christmas season and we we are celebrating and worshiping the most famous homeless family in the history of the world that impacted the world.

Because Mary and Joseph were homeless that night.

They might have not been penniless.

In fact, homelessness is not about running out of money.

Homelessness is about running out of relationships.

When you've lost all hope, when you have lost your friends and your family, you might still have some money.

But without friends and family, you become homeless.

How did he die?

Denver's lungs gave out from smoking.

He had COPD.

Were you with him?

He was supposed to be with me at the ranch.

And

that day, he said he wasn't feeling like being at the ranch because he was not feeling well.

And we had been in and out of the hospitals so many, many times, back and forth, the hospitals, which are some of the craziest stories, how he would run away from the hospitals and what he called burn off.

I write about that in our new book, Working Our Way Home.

It's the craziest stories that you will ever hear.

They're hilarious, actually.

But

I went by to pick him up, and he said, No, he said, I can't go today.

He had lived with me.

He had just moved out and moved into a motel where he got a smoking suite because he had set my house on fire twice by falling asleep and smoking in bed.

And I said, Denver, you either quit smoking in the house or you got to go get a place to sleep.

Well, so he found a

motel.

A motel that would rent him a smoking suite so he could sleep and smoke.

And then he spent all day at my house because his art studio was there and he got all of his meals

at our house.

So it was not as if we weren't living together.

He just slept somewhere else.

So that morning I went by to pick him up, to take him to the ranch, and he said, No, I don't feel like going today.

And

that night they found him in his room.

He had died peacefully,

and just his lungs just stopped.

How lucky are you?

Well,

you know, I'd say I'm blessed.

Yeah.

I'm blessed.

I'd say that.

Why'd you get that education?

Why'd you get that?

I don't know.

You know,

I'd just say that

I was a willing participant in

something that

I fought, but somebody knew it was going to be the best thing for me.

And I think God just kept steering me in that direction.

Even though I fought it all the way, I finally gave in to it because I started seeing lives changed.

I love the great success story.

I've seen so many of them.

There's so many people in this homeless world that want out.

I mean, there's a good number of people in the homeless world that don't want to break through.

And there's a lot of mental issues there, but there are some really great people that want to escape it and they just need a leg up.

You know, not a hand out.

They need a leg up.

Denver told me one day when I was first sitting with him on the curb

and he asked me if I was a Christian and I said, yeah.

And I said, why do you think I'm down here trying to help?

And he looked at me and he said, trying to help?

He said, you mean to tell me that you think if you scoop some spaghetti on a metal plate, you're helping somebody?

No, he said, we can feed ourselves.

We're perfectly capable of putting that spaghetti on the plate ourselves.

And he said, do you think giving somebody a dollar bill going to change their life?

No, that ain't going to change their life.

Let me tell you what will change their life, Mr.

Ron, is if you crawl down in the ditch with them and you stay there long enough till they're strong enough to crawl out on your back, then you help somebody.

That'll be life.

changing.

And that's when you help somebody.

Other than that, you're blessing them.

And we like blessings.

But you ain't helping nobody but yourself feel better about yourself because you probably ain't done nothing for nobody but yourself in a long, long time.

And so here you are trying to make yourself feel better.

But, you know, if you want to help somebody, wow, you know how to do it now.

So.

I have a feeling that's what the judgment's going to be like.

It's just going to be super crystal clear.

You know what I mean?

He wasn't saying that condemning.

He was just speaking the truth, it seems.

And you're like, you must have felt like that big.

Oh, yeah.

He told me, he said, you know, you never know whose eyes God is watching you out of.

And it ain't going to be your preacher or your Sunday school teacher.

He said, it might be a fellow that looks like me.

And he said, it ain't me, but it might be a fellow that looks just like me.

God's checking you out to see what kind of person you really are.

What a pleasure talking to you.

He said, sometimes you successful folks, y'all rise up so high trying to get y'allselves some more stuff that on y'all's way up to the top, you don't even take time to get to know about God.

But let me tell you something, Mr.

Ron Hall.

You could never stoop too low down here on the streets to help somebody and have God miss knowing about you.

He was a wise man.

Debbie's dream was real.

And,

you know, his, I say that,

you know, although I became wealthy as an art dealer, which I'm no longer wealthy, we've taken care of that.

But

he, Denver, made my life rich.

The first book, the same kind of different as me,

the new book that talks about what happened after Miss Debbie went home,

is called Working Our Way Home by Ron Hall.

Thank you, Ron.

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