The Conversations That Shaped a Year

He's 88 years old. You all know who he is. Immediately, you'll recognize his voice. If you're on YouTube, you'll recognize his face. I consider him a kindness broker, a kindness broker, and somebody that if you just watched him, I think he'd just live better if you emulated many of the things that he does in his life. This is the great judge Frank Caprio joining us today. Judge Frank, thank you for being here today. It's an honor to have you. Well, thank you for the opportunity. You said, you know, the way you grew up, you're poor, and you actually called that a privilege. Do you really mean that? And if you do mean it, what what was the privilege of being poor? It's true. I did I did have the privilege of being brought up poor because I appreciated because of my upbringing with both parents, you know, who are immigrants, the fabric of America and the riches that we have here, not so much in money, but in what we we're entitled to and how we're treated it. And my father constantly preached that about what a great country this was and that we had opportunity. And I can remember, you know, just simple little things that he when I was 10 years old, he said to me, someday you're gonna be a lawyer. And it was like a edict, you know, from above. I wanted to be anything else but a Hoyer from the time I was 10 years old. How did you or did you keep this outlook that people are good in general and that we should treat them well? I was very fortunate that it wasn't only my father. It was my mother as well. You know? My mother was known in the neighborhood for feeding people that were hungry. Yep. If you were hungry, come to my house. Don't worry. You will get a nice meal. And it was always like, let's help other people. But I was saying that, but, anyone that was in distress will stop by our house and and they were they were helped. Mhmm. My father, one of his jobs was he was a milkman. He'd wake my brother and I up at four in the morning. He'd go to work on the truck. Oh, yeah. If you don't wanna do this the rest of your life, make sure you stay in school. But I learned something from from that. If someone could not pay their milk bill, the company had a policy that after three weeks, you stopped delivery. That was their policy. His policy was if they had children, he would never stop the milk. And he can't every policy was. And many times, he'd take money out of his own pocket and put and say they're making an effort to pay. Oh my gosh. So these were the examples that I saw, you know, by way of example. These were speeches that …