American Achievers

Season 4, Episode 1: Bill Hardgrave

Bill Hardgrave talks about becoming the first person in his family to graduate from high school, using basketball to earn a college education, and how technology powered his unlikely journey into higher education—culminating with his appointment as president of the University of Memphis.

Season 3, Episode 14: Gabe Kallos

Gabe Kallos talks about the rise of antisemitism in his native Hungary and how it affected how he saw himself, somehow avoiding the gas chambers as a teenage slave laborer at the Auschwitz concentration camp, emigrating to the United States, and carving out a good life as a Southern California dentist.

Season 3, Episode 13: Paul Coffman

Paul Coffman talks about being shaped by the values of a small Kansas farming community, walking onto the football team at Kansas State, where he eventually earned a scholarship and a starting position, and negotiating the arduous road from undrafted free agent to Pro Bowl tight end for the Green Bay Packers.

Season 3, Episode 12: Norman Gaddis

Part 2 of 2: Norman Gaddis talks about the day he was captured by the North Vietnamese, the torture he endured, how he survived 2,124 days at the infamous prison camp known as the Hanoi Hilton, and the joy he felt when he reunited with his family and resumed his Air Force career.

 

Season 3, Episode 11: Norman Gaddis

Part 1 of 2: Retired Air Force General Norman Gaddis talks about the moment of initiative during World War II that changed his life, flying escorts in the Berlin Airlift, volunteering for duty as a fighter pilot in Vietnam, and the fateful day when his F-4 was blasted out of the sky.

Season 3, Episode 10: Robert Finnigan

Silicon Valley pioneer Robert Finnigan talks about losing his mother at age eight, gravitating to the then-nascent field of electronics after World War II, and betting his future on the commercial viability of the revolutionary quadrupole mass spectrometer.

Season 3, Episode 9: Carol Bates Brown

Carol Bates Brown talks about being affected by the radicalization of her college campus in the late 1960s, how she and a friend developed the popular bracelet that brought attention to the issue of Vietnam War POWs and MIAs, and how the cause took control of her life.

Season 3, Episode 8: Randy Cross

CBS Sports football analyst Randy Cross talks about the impact of his father’s alcoholism, why his ambition to be a professional football player developed slowly, what he learned about chasing success from Bill Walsh, and how he leveraged his three Super Bowl rings with the San Francisco 49ers to achieve a long career in television.

Season 3, Episode 7: Susie Scott Krabacher

Part 2 of 2: Susie Scott Krabacher talks about struggling to find her way after PLAYBOY, meeting the love of her life, dealing with the lingering effects of her abuse, and the purpose she has found in leading a charity dedicated to nurturing and protecting Haiti's most vulnerable children.

Season 3, Episode 6: Susie Scott Krabacher

Part 1 of 2: Susie Scott Krabacher talks about the abuse she suffered as a child, a promise she made to God, her rocket ride to fame as a PLAYBOY centerfold, confronting the dark side of that world, and the marriage to a conman that eventually left her homeless.