Lessons From 90 Years of Life and Public Service

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. Well, we’re in the middle of the summer and with us today and he’s still in New York. Andy Spano the great county executive from Westchester County and he was county executive for twelve years, and we had a big birthday party last month when President Clinton was there too. Well, Andy Spano, you were one of the

0:24 great executives, and you have a new book. Where would you like to start?

0:32 Speaker 2 Well, you know, it’s interesting, and I think I’d like to start with being ninety.

0:42 Speaker 1 You only look sixty five or seventy.

0:46 Speaker 3 Well, sometimes I see you nineties. I woke up that day and I didn’t realize that I would feel that way. I got up when I said, oh my, I’m ninety years old.

1:02 Speaker 2 I made it. Now. I could do anything I want because everything is behind me, everything’s gravy after it. It made me feel completely different. And then my book came out. And I wrote the book because I watched my grandkids and I said to myself, my god, I you know, when I grew up, people went through so much to

1:25 get where they are, and struggles were part of life, and I think that helped us. So I wanted to write this book. For them, you know, so they could see how I grew up, what my relatives gave to me, and how much I appreciated. I named the book Watched the Hands, and I wrote a second book said don’t

1:51 listen to the mouth, because my grandfather used to say to me, gua de le monic none of sta la boca, which means watch the hands, don’t listen to the mouth. And what he meant in the mouth can say anything, but you watch the hands and watch what they do.

2:08 Watch what people do, and then you know who they are.

2:12 Speaker 1 You know, that is great stuff. I mean, the old Italians and the old Greeks used to do that all the time. And I learned a lot from my father, who actually grew up with the Italians and work for the Italian government, and that is wonderful stuff.

2:31 Speaker 2 Yeah. But my mother had the greatest one, John, you’d appreciate this. She used to say, don’t be ashamed to put your hand in the toilet, and what she meant by that is, don’t be ashamed of doing hard work and any kind of work, because you got to respect that that’s something you do. And you know, when you

2:53 get into difficult times, you don’t worry about it. You just go do the work and get your self out of the problem.

3:03 Speaker 1 Absolutely. Now tell us, tell us about the book, how is it, How is it selling? Now? You’re going to have you put one book out now, but you’re going to put another book out afterwards.

3:17 Speaker 2 Well, when I was writing it, I was writing it just for the family, and I figured, well, you know, my experiences were interesting, and I started doing it around around that, weaving the family experience into what I thought would be interesting to the general public. But then I saw that I was I was writing. I thought I

3:38 was writing too much. So I brought it up into two books. One book goes from when I’m born to when I become County executive, and the other one goes through when I’m County executive to the president and uh, the second The first book is a lot of familiar stuff.

3:55 The second book is more in terms of the politics and what I what I went through, and the people I dealt with, you know, I, you know, I was critically involved in nine to eleven. I was one of the founders of the unit, the Federation of Teachers, founding members of the Teachers with Shatun and those guys and

4:15 you know, I’ve been through a lot. I’ve been through the sixties. I worked with drug acts, I worked with gangs on the West Side, and I thought, all that might be interesting to people. And what I learned from that experience.

4:29 Speaker 1 Understood. And are you going to have a third book that you want to run for governors?

4:35 Speaker 2 Other? Yeah, I said. I said to myself, you know, what could I do after ninety And I said, I can run for governor because you know, even though I’m a Democrat, I think both bodies have been responsible for the problems we have today. The Democrats got too intellectual and the Republicans got you know, too involved in earning

5:02 money and helping people who are wealthy. That’s the way I see it. Uh, you know, that’s my personal view. And I think that that both of them were sight of the general public and and and and the people who who who really do the work this country. The American dream isn’t about uh, getting a house, getting a car,

5:26 getting a great job, having a lot of money. The American dream is about just what the Declaration of Independent says, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. That’s the American dream. And the American dream is supposed to be permeated and helped by the government who is of the people, by the people, and for the people. And we have gotten away from all that.

5:53 And I think that I would I would love to be younger and run for us and and work on those two principles changing things. I mean, there’s so many things. The education system is. It keeps throwing money after it and it never gets any better. Why because it’s the system that’s wrong, not the teachers, not the fact that

6:17 it doesn’t have money. There’s more money available. We have the most expensive healthcare system in the world and it’s not the best system, you know, And I could go on and on like that. There’s enough money to do what we have to do right now, but when they’re doing it in the wrong way. And I would would

6:36 love to run on that issue. Those issues.

6:40 Speaker 1 Well, Andy Spano was a good talking to you, and we should continue this discussion. You know why, you have common sense and you know what’s good in the past, you know the mistakes are made now, and you know what you want to do in the future. And I think people want to listen to you and maybe take

6:59 your advice, and how do you put the Democratic Party back together again? Maybe it should be your mission and let’s see what happens.

7:09 Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, I just want one more comment, John. It’s not that Biden and Trump are too old, they’re just not old enough.

7:20 Speaker 1 Thank you so much,