December 17, 2024 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Rikk Dunlap has always been a writer, but he never dreamed that his work would eventually become a regular feature film on the biggest holiday movie channel around—Hallmark. Here he is to share his astonishing story.... just in time for the holidays.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
And we're back with our American stories. And up next
you're gonna hear from Rick Dunlap. He'd never dreamed that
his creative writing will be featured on the biggest Christmas
movie channel around, until, of course, it was.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
My name is Rick Dunlap, and I am the author
behind Hallmarks Christmas under the Stars. I am also on
the maintenance crew at a Chicago suburban high school. We
are charged with taking care of the grounds, anything that
(00:49):
needs repairing inside the building, from lights to plumbing to flooring,
whatever the case may be, that's what we're there to
take care of. I think from a very early age
I was really destined to be a writer. We lived
in Chicago Heights, Illinois, and the neighborhood that we lived
in there weren't a lot of children there. I had
(01:13):
my younger sister, she was a year younger than me.
Other than that, I had to create my friends and
things for us to do. So I think writing was
really just a natural progression from me. Like most authors,
I always had that real active imagination and I liked
(01:35):
writing little stories and pictures to go along with them.
It wasn't until April of nineteen ninety one when I
got into recovery. My life had pretty much fallen apart
(01:58):
at that time, and I was faced with this decision
of either moving on with life or basically just giving up.
And thankfully I chose recovery. I chose to keep moving forward.
What I had to do was really get down to
what was causing me to drink, what was behind my drinking.
(02:22):
The easiest way for me to do that was through writing.
So I began to write different pieces and first person,
third person, but I would separate myself. I would not
be the main character and whatever I was writing, and
I would put these characters through things, what they were feeling,
what they were going through, and how they came out
(02:43):
at the other end. And that's what really helped me
to get down into the sludge and the grime that
I needed to get to in order to clean myself out.
Christmas under the Stars is based on my novel Thechristmas
Tree Lot, and that story is based on a real
(03:04):
Christmas tree lot in Richmond Park, Illinois. So I would
pass this Christmas Tree Lot going to the train and
in the evening coming home from the train. It was
one thing that always excited me about the approaching holiday season,
I would go by in the morning and there's this old,
just beat up trailer sitting in a lot. And then
(03:27):
I would come home in the afternoon, and now the
tent is up. And then the following morning I would
go to work and maybe they would have some of
the snow fence up around it or some of the decorations.
Come home that afternoon and now the trees are there,
and they're all on the ground, and then netting, and
then over the next few days, all that netting would
be cut, the trees would be put up, the lights
(03:47):
would be turned on, and it was just this fantastic,
very quaint, little Christmas tree lot. So for years I
wanted to write a story about this Christmas tree lot,
but I didn't quite know what I wanted to write.
(04:08):
So I started creating characters anyse scenarios, and they were
just bad. One was just as worse as the other.
I created my characters pretty much out of nothing. But
sometimes a character comes to me, like a real person
who already exists and has been waiting for us to meet.
(04:29):
And that character is Clem and he was this old
man who ran the Christmas tree lot. And the more
I began to know this character, and the more I
began to know his background in his story, all of
a sudden, the story itself and the tree lot itself
became dimensional. This wasn't just something on the page. And
(04:53):
then other characters came along and the next thing I know,
I've got myself a story. Once the novel was complete,
it was time to get it out there into the world.
So I started searching for an agent. And that is
a daunting task at best, to just go through lists
of agent and try to find those ones that you
(05:15):
think you can connect with. And I did. I am
very blessed to work with a great agent. Her name
is Christina Hogerbrie. She was able to get the Christmas
tree lot in front of Hallmark, and Hallmark was interested.
They contacted her and they said, how would you feel
(05:36):
about this being a movie? She contacted me and asked
me the same question, and I'm like absolutely. I was
just floored that this could potentially be a movie. Christmas
under the Stars is about a young man, Nick Beckwith,
who's pretty full of himself and he pulls a couple
(05:58):
of very unscrupulous moves at the that he works for
loses his job as he's trying to piece his life
back together. He meets Clem Marshall, who owns and runs
the Christmas Tree Lot. Clem convinces him to come and
work for him at the lot, to go ahead and
band up the trees and tie into people's cars. Nick
(06:19):
meets Julie. They get to know each other, and in
true Hallmark fashion, they fall in love. And it all
began right there at the Christmas Tree Lot. What started
next was contracts were coming in, agreements. There were a
few things of that, just more legal matters really, But
(06:42):
when it all became real for me was when I
saw the first production photos. There was Clark Peters as Clem.
There was Jesse Metcalf and Autumn Reeser as Nick and Julie.
These were characters that I had created, and now they're
(07:03):
real people, and there's the trailer and there's the lot.
So that's when it really became real for me. Word
got out and I was interviewed by a small local paper.
There were radio interviews. Eventually the Today Show came to
the school and they filmed this wonderful piece for their
(07:26):
show right there in the hallway. One day, I was
working with the guys in the gym and we're setting
up for this big basketball game, and this call goes
over the radio for me to come to the office.
When I get there, I was handed a post it
note with a name and a phone number, and then
written at the very bottom of the post it was
(07:49):
People Magazine. And I just stared at this piece of paper,
thinking this is just gone beyond anything that I could ever.
What I did is I put the paper in my pocket.
I'm still on the clock. I have work to do.
(08:09):
The guys are waiting for me. We have things that
we need to accomplish by the end of the day.
We have a game in a few hours. That's how
I was able to keep things in perspective. Yes, People
Magazine is waiting to hear from me, but they're going
to have to wait until I'm done working.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
And you've been listening to Rick Dunlap tell his story,
a maintenance crew worker in a Chicago area high school
who did what maintenance workers do, working on the ground
with the lights, the plumbing, whatever needed to be done.
But he was writing on the side to work out
what he said was the sludge and grime of his life.
You've been recovering from alcoholism and now trying to figure
(08:52):
out why he drank and how he could proceed with
his life. As he put it, I needed to move
on or give up. Writing became that way of moving on.
When we come back, more of this remarkable story of
the man who never dreamed that his creative writing would
appear on the biggest Christmas channel around. The story of
(09:14):
Rick Dunlap continues here on our American Stories. And we're
(09:39):
back with our American Stories and the story of Rick Dunlap,
a chicagoary, a maintenance man whose novel was turned into
a Hallmark Christmas movie. When we last left off, Rick
was setting up for a high school basketball game with
his fellow maintenance men when he was notified that People
magazine wanted an interview, an interview that Rick decided could
wait on until his work was done. Back to Rick
(10:02):
for the rest of his story.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Once a movie was finished and it was ready to
come out, Hallmark held this premier event in Los Angeles,
and this was a red carpet affair at a place
called The Grove. They flew me out to Los Angeles,
and I have to say that the folks at Hallmark
were all just outstanding people. They were friendly, upbeat. They
(10:34):
were just a pleasure to be around. And at this event,
I'm standing there and I'm watching all of these movie
stars and Hallmark movies walk the red carpet and there's
like twenty photographers taking pictures. There's producers, there's directors, all
of these people walking to carpet and I'm standing or
(10:54):
just taking all of this in. And then this guy
turns to me and he says, Okay, it's your turn.
I said, well, no, I'm just here. I'm not any
of these people. He goes, no, we know who you are.
He held up a piece of paper with my name
on it. All the photographers took a picture and he
said go and I'm walking the red carpet. And it
(11:16):
was just this unbelievable moment because, like I said, there's
twenty photographers all taking pictures and I'm trying to take
this in and yet at the same time, I'm thinking,
do you people really know who I am? If we
were back home, I'm one of the guys who would
help set up the red carpet and the stanchions and
(11:39):
the chairs and get everything ready. After that, there was
a reception upstairs and I had the opportunity to meet
Autumn Reser, and she is the actress who played Julie
Gibbons from the movie, and she was just this wonderful,
down to earth person. We talked briefly about books and
(12:03):
favorite authors. After that, I met Jesse Metcalf, who of
course plays Nick in the movie, and he too was
just this really neat guy, and we shook hands and
we just started talking like we had already known each other.
I had a little time to myself before we moved
(12:23):
on in the event, so I started walking around the
grove and the whole place is decorated in Christmas. There's
huge trees and lights. This is in Los Angeles. All
of a sudden, it just starts snowing, and it was
the coolest thing in the world. I'm in Los Angeles.
Some people are in shorts and short sleeves and it's
(12:46):
actually snowing. They had snow machines on the roof, and
it was just a really neat experience. I don't even
think we had snow back home yet at that time.
We all went across the grove to AMC Theater and
Christmas under the Stars was on the Marquee and we
(13:07):
all go into the theater and they had a reserved
seat for me down in the front, but I sat
as far back as I possibly could because I just
wanted to take all of this in. I wanted to
see the heads of Hallmark as they were talking about
their season of movies, and as they were talking about
(13:27):
the success of Christmas under the Stars. I wanted to
see everybody in the audience enjoying what they were watching.
Before I returned to the hotel, I went out by
myself and I bought this ridiculously huge steak dinner. That's
(13:49):
when I really sat down and celebrated what had happened.
After I returned to the hotel, I did call the
representative of the Hallmark representative that I had been talking
to for a month or two prior to that, and
I actually broke down as I was thanking her for everything.
(14:12):
It just it just all hit me at once, and
it was just one of those wonderful, overwhelming moments. The
day before I had left for Los Angeles, my dad
was admitted into the hospital, and for the previous couple
(14:33):
of years he had just been struggling with an array
of health issues. So my uncle and I we went
to see him in the hospital. Now, my dad, he
was not this touchy feely guy. He never saw the
Hallmark movie. He and I were really were kind of
polar opposites in that way. But my uncle and I
went to see him in the hospital and I told
(14:55):
him everything that had happened. We just I went through
the story two three times. We laughed about it, and
I just shared this experience with my dad, and I
can see it in his eyes just how happy he
was to see how happy I was over this entire experience.
(15:15):
That was the last real conversation that my dad and
I had had. He died a short time later. What
is so meaningful to me in that conversation that we
had in his hospital room was that, for a short time,
(15:38):
for that moment, he and I came together as father
and son. I saw the pride and the excitement in
his eyes. We had struggled for years my entire life
really to make that father son connection. But in that
(16:02):
moment in that hospital room, sharing this experience with him,
we were both able to make that connection. And if
there had to be any way that my dad and
I parted in this life, that's how I would want
it to be. There was no, I'm sorry I wasn't this,
(16:25):
and I'm sorry I wasn't that. There was just laughter
and there was enjoyment and we just sat taking in
each other's company. When I had returned to work, I
was back for about a week and I received a
(16:47):
letter from a ninety two year old woman in Florida.
She didn't know my home address, so she had sent
the letter to the school. In a short letter, she
told me how much she enjoyed the movie and how
it was beautifully acted. She had a few other things
(17:08):
to say that we're just very endearing to me. And
that's when I knew that I had achieved what I
set out to do, and that was to write something
that touched people's lives. And in all of this, her
letter is the only piece that I have framed and
(17:32):
hanging in my office. Christmas under the Stars was released
in twenty nineteen, and it has played almost constantly since
its release. And it's great because I'll get phone calls
occasionally or texts from people saying, you know, hey, your
(17:53):
movie is on, and it just it brings a huge
smile to my face. If it's the middle of July
or if it's the beginning of December, and I know
that this is just something that I will get to
relive for the rest of my life and hopefully people
will enjoy for the rest of theirs. The fascinating thing
(18:19):
about creativity is it's all around us. And I know
this when I walk down the halls at school and
I see these kids drawing and singing, dancing, and I
can't wait to see them discovered and put on a
stage or in a film or a gallery, and maybe
(18:40):
they'll get to connect with someone close to them like
I was able to do with my dad. I wrote
a story about a Christmas tree lot that I intended
to be a book, and even with all the rejections,
I never gave up. I kept belie Then the universe said,
(19:04):
instead of a book, it's going to be a movie.
And I know there's more to come. If this can
happen for a guy like me I'm a maintenance worker
in a high school, I think could happen for anyone.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
And a special thanks to Robbie for the help on
the production on that piece and to John Elfner for
doing the interview finding the story. John is a Chicago
area history teacher, and what a story we have to
thank Rick Dunlap too for sharing the ups and downs
of his life at that last meeting with his dad.
His dad's in a hospital bed, and he'd struggled to
(19:43):
connect with his dad for years and years, and at
the end they had this moment. His father, Rick said,
was so happy to see that his son was happy.
And there were no regrets in that room, just laughter
and joy. What a way to leave this world. The
father and son an action finally established the story of
Rick Dunlap, the story of how a book The Christmas
(20:05):
Tree Lot turned into a movie Christmas under the Stars.
Here on our American Stories
And we're back with our American stories. And up next
you're gonna hear from Rick Dunlap. He'd never dreamed that
his creative writing will be featured on the biggest Christmas
movie channel around, until, of course, it was.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
My name is Rick Dunlap, and I am the author
behind Hallmarks Christmas under the Stars. I am also on
the maintenance crew at a Chicago suburban high school. We
are charged with taking care of the grounds, anything that
(00:49):
needs repairing inside the building, from lights to plumbing to flooring,
whatever the case may be, that's what we're there to
take care of. I think from a very early age
I was really destined to be a writer. We lived
in Chicago Heights, Illinois, and the neighborhood that we lived
in there weren't a lot of children there. I had
(01:13):
my younger sister, she was a year younger than me.
Other than that, I had to create my friends and
things for us to do. So I think writing was
really just a natural progression from me. Like most authors,
I always had that real active imagination and I liked
(01:35):
writing little stories and pictures to go along with them.
It wasn't until April of nineteen ninety one when I
got into recovery. My life had pretty much fallen apart
(01:58):
at that time, and I was faced with this decision
of either moving on with life or basically just giving up.
And thankfully I chose recovery. I chose to keep moving forward.
What I had to do was really get down to
what was causing me to drink, what was behind my drinking.
(02:22):
The easiest way for me to do that was through writing.
So I began to write different pieces and first person,
third person, but I would separate myself. I would not
be the main character and whatever I was writing, and
I would put these characters through things, what they were feeling,
what they were going through, and how they came out
(02:43):
at the other end. And that's what really helped me
to get down into the sludge and the grime that
I needed to get to in order to clean myself out.
Christmas under the Stars is based on my novel Thechristmas
Tree Lot, and that story is based on a real
(03:04):
Christmas tree lot in Richmond Park, Illinois. So I would
pass this Christmas Tree Lot going to the train and
in the evening coming home from the train. It was
one thing that always excited me about the approaching holiday season,
I would go by in the morning and there's this old,
just beat up trailer sitting in a lot. And then
(03:27):
I would come home in the afternoon, and now the
tent is up. And then the following morning I would
go to work and maybe they would have some of
the snow fence up around it or some of the decorations.
Come home that afternoon and now the trees are there,
and they're all on the ground, and then netting, and
then over the next few days, all that netting would
be cut, the trees would be put up, the lights
(03:47):
would be turned on, and it was just this fantastic,
very quaint, little Christmas tree lot. So for years I
wanted to write a story about this Christmas tree lot,
but I didn't quite know what I wanted to write.
(04:08):
So I started creating characters anyse scenarios, and they were
just bad. One was just as worse as the other.
I created my characters pretty much out of nothing. But
sometimes a character comes to me, like a real person
who already exists and has been waiting for us to meet.
(04:29):
And that character is Clem and he was this old
man who ran the Christmas tree lot. And the more
I began to know this character, and the more I
began to know his background in his story, all of
a sudden, the story itself and the tree lot itself
became dimensional. This wasn't just something on the page. And
(04:53):
then other characters came along and the next thing I know,
I've got myself a story. Once the novel was complete,
it was time to get it out there into the world.
So I started searching for an agent. And that is
a daunting task at best, to just go through lists
of agent and try to find those ones that you
(05:15):
think you can connect with. And I did. I am
very blessed to work with a great agent. Her name
is Christina Hogerbrie. She was able to get the Christmas
tree lot in front of Hallmark, and Hallmark was interested.
They contacted her and they said, how would you feel
(05:36):
about this being a movie? She contacted me and asked
me the same question, and I'm like absolutely. I was
just floored that this could potentially be a movie. Christmas
under the Stars is about a young man, Nick Beckwith,
who's pretty full of himself and he pulls a couple
(05:58):
of very unscrupulous moves at the that he works for
loses his job as he's trying to piece his life
back together. He meets Clem Marshall, who owns and runs
the Christmas Tree Lot. Clem convinces him to come and
work for him at the lot, to go ahead and
band up the trees and tie into people's cars. Nick
(06:19):
meets Julie. They get to know each other, and in
true Hallmark fashion, they fall in love. And it all
began right there at the Christmas Tree Lot. What started
next was contracts were coming in, agreements. There were a
few things of that, just more legal matters really, But
(06:42):
when it all became real for me was when I
saw the first production photos. There was Clark Peters as Clem.
There was Jesse Metcalf and Autumn Reeser as Nick and Julie.
These were characters that I had created, and now they're
(07:03):
real people, and there's the trailer and there's the lot.
So that's when it really became real for me. Word
got out and I was interviewed by a small local paper.
There were radio interviews. Eventually the Today Show came to
the school and they filmed this wonderful piece for their
(07:26):
show right there in the hallway. One day, I was
working with the guys in the gym and we're setting
up for this big basketball game, and this call goes
over the radio for me to come to the office.
When I get there, I was handed a post it
note with a name and a phone number, and then
written at the very bottom of the post it was
(07:49):
People Magazine. And I just stared at this piece of paper,
thinking this is just gone beyond anything that I could ever.
What I did is I put the paper in my pocket.
I'm still on the clock. I have work to do.
(08:09):
The guys are waiting for me. We have things that
we need to accomplish by the end of the day.
We have a game in a few hours. That's how
I was able to keep things in perspective. Yes, People
Magazine is waiting to hear from me, but they're going
to have to wait until I'm done working.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
And you've been listening to Rick Dunlap tell his story,
a maintenance crew worker in a Chicago area high school
who did what maintenance workers do, working on the ground
with the lights, the plumbing, whatever needed to be done.
But he was writing on the side to work out
what he said was the sludge and grime of his life.
You've been recovering from alcoholism and now trying to figure
(08:52):
out why he drank and how he could proceed with
his life. As he put it, I needed to move
on or give up. Writing became that way of moving on.
When we come back, more of this remarkable story of
the man who never dreamed that his creative writing would
appear on the biggest Christmas channel around. The story of
(09:14):
Rick Dunlap continues here on our American Stories. And we're
(09:39):
back with our American Stories and the story of Rick Dunlap,
a chicagoary, a maintenance man whose novel was turned into
a Hallmark Christmas movie. When we last left off, Rick
was setting up for a high school basketball game with
his fellow maintenance men when he was notified that People
magazine wanted an interview, an interview that Rick decided could
wait on until his work was done. Back to Rick
(10:02):
for the rest of his story.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Once a movie was finished and it was ready to
come out, Hallmark held this premier event in Los Angeles,
and this was a red carpet affair at a place
called The Grove. They flew me out to Los Angeles,
and I have to say that the folks at Hallmark
were all just outstanding people. They were friendly, upbeat. They
(10:34):
were just a pleasure to be around. And at this event,
I'm standing there and I'm watching all of these movie
stars and Hallmark movies walk the red carpet and there's
like twenty photographers taking pictures. There's producers, there's directors, all
of these people walking to carpet and I'm standing or
(10:54):
just taking all of this in. And then this guy
turns to me and he says, Okay, it's your turn.
I said, well, no, I'm just here. I'm not any
of these people. He goes, no, we know who you are.
He held up a piece of paper with my name
on it. All the photographers took a picture and he
said go and I'm walking the red carpet. And it
(11:16):
was just this unbelievable moment because, like I said, there's
twenty photographers all taking pictures and I'm trying to take
this in and yet at the same time, I'm thinking,
do you people really know who I am? If we
were back home, I'm one of the guys who would
help set up the red carpet and the stanchions and
(11:39):
the chairs and get everything ready. After that, there was
a reception upstairs and I had the opportunity to meet
Autumn Reser, and she is the actress who played Julie
Gibbons from the movie, and she was just this wonderful,
down to earth person. We talked briefly about books and
(12:03):
favorite authors. After that, I met Jesse Metcalf, who of
course plays Nick in the movie, and he too was
just this really neat guy, and we shook hands and
we just started talking like we had already known each other.
I had a little time to myself before we moved
(12:23):
on in the event, so I started walking around the
grove and the whole place is decorated in Christmas. There's
huge trees and lights. This is in Los Angeles. All
of a sudden, it just starts snowing, and it was
the coolest thing in the world. I'm in Los Angeles.
Some people are in shorts and short sleeves and it's
(12:46):
actually snowing. They had snow machines on the roof, and
it was just a really neat experience. I don't even
think we had snow back home yet at that time.
We all went across the grove to AMC Theater and
Christmas under the Stars was on the Marquee and we
(13:07):
all go into the theater and they had a reserved
seat for me down in the front, but I sat
as far back as I possibly could because I just
wanted to take all of this in. I wanted to
see the heads of Hallmark as they were talking about
their season of movies, and as they were talking about
(13:27):
the success of Christmas under the Stars. I wanted to
see everybody in the audience enjoying what they were watching.
Before I returned to the hotel, I went out by
myself and I bought this ridiculously huge steak dinner. That's
(13:49):
when I really sat down and celebrated what had happened.
After I returned to the hotel, I did call the
representative of the Hallmark representative that I had been talking
to for a month or two prior to that, and
I actually broke down as I was thanking her for everything.
(14:12):
It just it just all hit me at once, and
it was just one of those wonderful, overwhelming moments. The
day before I had left for Los Angeles, my dad
was admitted into the hospital, and for the previous couple
(14:33):
of years he had just been struggling with an array
of health issues. So my uncle and I we went
to see him in the hospital. Now, my dad, he
was not this touchy feely guy. He never saw the
Hallmark movie. He and I were really were kind of
polar opposites in that way. But my uncle and I
went to see him in the hospital and I told
(14:55):
him everything that had happened. We just I went through
the story two three times. We laughed about it, and
I just shared this experience with my dad, and I
can see it in his eyes just how happy he
was to see how happy I was over this entire experience.
(15:15):
That was the last real conversation that my dad and
I had had. He died a short time later. What
is so meaningful to me in that conversation that we
had in his hospital room was that, for a short time,
(15:38):
for that moment, he and I came together as father
and son. I saw the pride and the excitement in
his eyes. We had struggled for years my entire life
really to make that father son connection. But in that
(16:02):
moment in that hospital room, sharing this experience with him,
we were both able to make that connection. And if
there had to be any way that my dad and
I parted in this life, that's how I would want
it to be. There was no, I'm sorry I wasn't this,
(16:25):
and I'm sorry I wasn't that. There was just laughter
and there was enjoyment and we just sat taking in
each other's company. When I had returned to work, I
was back for about a week and I received a
(16:47):
letter from a ninety two year old woman in Florida.
She didn't know my home address, so she had sent
the letter to the school. In a short letter, she
told me how much she enjoyed the movie and how
it was beautifully acted. She had a few other things
(17:08):
to say that we're just very endearing to me. And
that's when I knew that I had achieved what I
set out to do, and that was to write something
that touched people's lives. And in all of this, her
letter is the only piece that I have framed and
(17:32):
hanging in my office. Christmas under the Stars was released
in twenty nineteen, and it has played almost constantly since
its release. And it's great because I'll get phone calls
occasionally or texts from people saying, you know, hey, your
(17:53):
movie is on, and it just it brings a huge
smile to my face. If it's the middle of July
or if it's the beginning of December, and I know
that this is just something that I will get to
relive for the rest of my life and hopefully people
will enjoy for the rest of theirs. The fascinating thing
(18:19):
about creativity is it's all around us. And I know
this when I walk down the halls at school and
I see these kids drawing and singing, dancing, and I
can't wait to see them discovered and put on a
stage or in a film or a gallery, and maybe
(18:40):
they'll get to connect with someone close to them like
I was able to do with my dad. I wrote
a story about a Christmas tree lot that I intended
to be a book, and even with all the rejections,
I never gave up. I kept belie Then the universe said,
(19:04):
instead of a book, it's going to be a movie.
And I know there's more to come. If this can
happen for a guy like me I'm a maintenance worker
in a high school, I think could happen for anyone.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
And a special thanks to Robbie for the help on
the production on that piece and to John Elfner for
doing the interview finding the story. John is a Chicago
area history teacher, and what a story we have to
thank Rick Dunlap too for sharing the ups and downs
of his life at that last meeting with his dad.
His dad's in a hospital bed, and he'd struggled to
(19:43):
connect with his dad for years and years, and at
the end they had this moment. His father, Rick said,
was so happy to see that his son was happy.
And there were no regrets in that room, just laughter
and joy. What a way to leave this world. The
father and son an action finally established the story of
Rick Dunlap, the story of how a book The Christmas
(20:05):
Tree Lot turned into a movie Christmas under the Stars.
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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