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A STORY for FATHER’S Raising DAUGHTERS

Before finding and reading my father’s letters to my mother, I only knew her side of the story, the letters she had written to him. They painted a picture of a young woman who was frightened, pregnant, and in love, or maybe more infatuated than in love. I think she had built him up in her mind as someone larger than life. My mother never wanted the small town, farm life future that had been set up for her. She had every advantage…loving parents, sister twenty years older, and friends who supported her. But at eighteen, she left college and fled to New Orleans to dance on Bourbon Street. That’s where she met my father. By nineteen, she was pregnant. Her letters from that time are full of insecurity, uncertainty about her future, about whether this man she loved could provide stability, or even stay. Friends wrote to her, encouraging her to be strong and independent, reminding her of everything she had going for her. But her tone, again and again, is one of apology and self doubt. There’...
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Chasing Howard (Part 1)

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Her entire life, Lois Burak was told her family’s story could be a true-crime series, the  kind that starts with ambition, controversy, and ends in tragedy. Chasing Howard follows the connection between that past and her own pursuit decades later: the behind-the-scenes journey of creating The LoLo Show, an internet radio program built with one goal in mind to earn a place within the Howard Stern universe. Told through archival footage, family letters, and firsthand interviews, Chasing Howard connects a father’s battles for truth with a daughter’s search for belonging. It’s about the cost of speaking up and the weight of inherited chaos told with satirical humor sprinkled throughout to balance the darkness with wit and perspective. The series traces how the scars of survival play out in real time and how the same battles still surface in new forms today. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Who knows what causes the pull of attraction. Is it metaphysical? I’m not talking abou...
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HATE THY NEIGHBOR

Growing up as the daughter of one of the last old-timers of Jewish background in our changing neighborhood was a recipe for years of feuding. Every summer brought a new generation of juvenile delinquents who posted up on the corner, drinking beer, getting high, and stirring up chaos. They vandalized property, broke into homes, and pushed boundaries just far enough to get away with it. Sometimes neighbors - the few who were still hanging on, including older Jewish women who remembered my father's local influence, would call on him for help dealing with the bad element. They remembered when his name carried weight, when his brief flicker of celebrity still meant something. But it was a losing battle. I remember crouching behind a tabletop hockey game box with my brother, shielding us from rocks that might come crashing through the window while we tried to watch TV. Those preteen years were some of the scariest of my life. One night, all the electricity went out- someone had yanked...
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Cause & Effect

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I don't know what drives a person to be a Michael Moore or young Howard Stern-someone who constantly throws himself into controversy to make change, to go down in history, to serve those who can't help themselves, because you truly believe in something, self sabotage, for money, or to get attention. Maybe all of the above. Howard Stern once said he threw himself into controversial arenas early on simply because he craved attention. But from what I'm told and can gather from photos and awards, my father at one time was having a perfectly good career as a radio personality in the early 1960s. The more controversial he became, the harder money was to come by. So I can't believe it was for the money. A reporter who'd had dealings with my father in his later years once told me an amusing anecdote about my father being quite enamored with his newfound Waterpik. That little story not only made me smile but brought to light a substantial memory for me. I remember my dad get...
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There's more to say

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I was sixteen when I watched my mother shoot and kill my father. I got caught in the crossfire-shot in the leg, the bullet nearly missing my kneecap.  Trauma takes many forms. A piece of mine-a bullet-still rests in my leg. The doctors figured leaving it in was less trouble than the alternative-a scar running up the back of my thigh that would make shorts season awkward. I received no therapy, no counseling, no help processing what happened...just a sixteen-year-old in a wheelchair, trying to make sense of what had just happened and what would come next. No matter how bad things are, they become your normal. And when that normal is ripped away in an instant, survival requires a kind of adaptability most adults don't have, let alone a teenager. In the days after, I asked myself endless questions-the kind that don't have answers but beg to be asked anyway. Did he know I'd wished him dead? Would he forgive me? Would he try to reach me, the way Houdini promised his wife he w...
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There's Going to Be an Explosion

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This phrase scared the living daylights out of me every time I heard it. It was my mother's warning-code for when my father was about to lose it. I don't know how she always knew, but she did.   Maybe she'd become so accustomed to his mood swings that she could predict them like a monthly cycle.  Maybe she felt she had done something to provoke him. I'm not sure, but when there was an explosion, it was like living in hell. I can remember crying and saying, "God, please take me away from this," and wishing he was dead. I wanted the pain to go away so badly I could barely wait to get out on my own. Usually the target was my mother. He'd drag her down emotional rabbit holes, rehashing every past mistake, badgering her unmercifully. I remember the level of anxiety hitting me as a child-the fear, the anticipation of what to expect next. Would he break things? Would he become so angry and intense that he'd force her into humiliation? I remember one time ...
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Pennway Street:

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We just called it "Pennway Street." 5174 Pennway was where my father was born in December 1930, and where he would die fifty-two years later. It was the house my grandmother passed down to him, where he brought my mother as a young bride to live with his parents, where my brother and I grew up surrounded by intellectual brilliance and domestic chaos in equal measure. If those walls could talk, they would tell the story of a brilliant man's rise and fall, of a neighborhood's transformation from middle-class Jewish enclave to battleground, of a family that loved fiercely despite everything threatening to tear them apart. My grandmother's tastefully decorated 1940s home had fallen into disrepair and neglect, where her fine wallpaper had become part of the dirty, worn plaster walls. The original carpet lay flat with huge holes and black gummy stains throughout. Cigarette smoke had yellowed everything. In our bedrooms, my brother and I drew on the walls as our form of ...
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